No to burnout! Help your customer service team thrive in their work with these steps.

Customer service can be an exhausting job. Whether in-person or by phone, listening to complaints while trying to appease clients can wear out any employee. 

According to customer feedback platform GetFeedback, finding that “employee motivation” is the number one obstacle standing in the way of delivering a successful customer experience. 

So, how can you protect your customer-service team from quickly burning out from their jobs? Becky Cantieri, Chief People Officer at customer experience platform Momentive, shared some strategies:

Focus on their mental health

Mental health initiatives are becoming a standard staple in businesses today. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2021 Employer Health Benefits Survey, 39% of employers have already updated their health plans to include mental health access.

However, Cantieri said that besides updating health plans, employers should also add dedicated mental health days to their paid time off (PTO) policies. This could push employees to take a break from work whenever they need to instead of neglecting themselves and focusing on their jobs. 

Inclusion and culture

Whether hybrid or on-site, workers often rely on emotional support from their work colleagues and their companies. 

Establishing and funding employee resource groups, setting values related to inclusion, and giving employees channels to voice their concerns safely could significantly boost your workers’ mental health. 

Allowing employees to feel understood, connected, and heard could make them feel like they are “thriving” in the workplace and lessening the chance of attrition. 

Career growth opportunities

Upskilling could help employees not feel “stuck” in their positions and jobs. 

Besides, the pandemic, supply chain issues, and the push for digitalization have required customer-facing employees to learn new skills in approaching customers. 

Giving them the space to grow and enrich their careers can add meaning and satisfaction to their usually exhausting working life as the de-facto face of the company. 

Let’s admit it, customers are becoming less pleasant and less patient. And in the fast-growing world of digitization, they are increasingly expecting their requests to be granted and their problems to be solved more quickly. 

So, adapting Cantieri’s strategies to the workplace could eliminate the burden from your customer service team’s shoulders and allow them to feel more happy and proud of their work. 

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