You can get a lot of great ideas from listening to customers.

A few years ago, I met a client for coffee. She had sent her entire team through my customer service training program and the results were looking good. Still, my client was worried.

"I want to keep my team sharp by continuously reinforcing the skills they learned in training," she said. "My challenge is I don't always know how to do that. I wish I had an easy way to remind them... and to remind me."

We brainstormed a little until we hit upon a simple solution. 

I created an automated system that emailed one customer service tip per week to each person on her team. My client would get the email too so she could follow-up with them.

My Customer Service Tip of the Week email is now available to anyone. Here are five ways you can use it to boost your team's customer service:

#1 Team Meeting Topics

Many customer service teams have regular meetings. You can use the Customer Service Tip of the Week to generate discussion topics to share with the team.

Let's say the current tip was Use Positive Body Language.

You could lead a discussion with your team to brainstorm ways that body language can positively impact your customers. Then, at the next team meeting, you could ask for people to share success stories and challenges they experienced when being mindful of the body language they displayed.

#2 Address A Specific Need

You can also use the tips to address a specific need. It might be something you’re working on personally or something your entire team is working to improve.

Let’s say you’re working on building rapport with customers. You might keep an eye out for weekly tips that are most applicable to rapport and try to implement each one.

You might not want to wait for an applicable tip to come along. That’s why I created the Customer Service Tip of the Week book.

It puts more than 52 of my favorite tips in one collection and organizes them by category. There’s also a chart on pages 12-13 that shows common customer service challenges and tips for addressing them.

#3 Generate New Ideas

The tips are designed to be reminders, but many of the tips contain helpful new ideas that your team can use to elevate their service.

For instance, the Five Question Technique is a terrific way to build rapport with customers while simultaneously identifying additional ways to serve. Best of all, even introverts can use this technique to become skilled conversationalists.

#4 Reinforce Training

The tips were originally designed to reinforce concepts taught in my customer service training programs. The reminders help participants retain what they learn long after they attend the training.

These reminders can also be used to reinforce other training programs because many are so general in nature.

#5 Feed Your Curiosity

Some people just want to know the most cutting edge ideas in customer service. That's why most of my weekly tips contain a link to a blog post or a helpful resource.

One of my recent tips was Tell The Truth. The email contained a link to a bonus blog post that detailed how a service failure and a lie created a customer service uproar that briefly grabbed national headlines.

Sign-up

Anyone can sign-up for the Customer Service Tip of the Week email here. Or pass this blog post on to your team and have them sign-up, too.