A shoddy piece of outsourced customer service in Sure\u2019s early days \u2013 where the customer service department told a customer to remove a problematic cat flap from their door and send it back \u2013 led to the resolution to handle as much internally as possible. In the ensuing decade, the turnover in the customer service department has been miniscule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn seven years we had no turnover,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cSince then we\u2019ve had three people leave actually, but one of them has come back.\u201d Crucially, through creating a great place to work, they\u2019ve generated great customer service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MSD Animal Health recently acquired Sure Petcare. Sarah admits that this posed certain challenges \u2013 they began as a four-person start-up and are now part of a major multinational pharmaceutical company \u2013 but they\u2019re as focused as ever on creating connection between their staff. This includes doing fun things together like Christmas jumper day, a moustache grow for Movember and dressing up for Halloween, but it also goes much deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure Petcare has been intent on creating an environment where people can bring their whole selves to work. They don\u2019t want employees adopting a formal work persona; they should feel comfortable enough to express themselves. \u201cAll of the rest of the pieces about delivering great service come from having those connections and those relationships,\u201d says Sarah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prior to talking at the 2019 Happy Workplaces conference, Sarah asked her people what makes them happy at work. The answers included how easy it is to get help, the fact they don\u2019t have their performances assessed, and being given freedom, control and flexibility. However, what really stood out for Sarah were the things she doesn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Metrics and service level agreements tend to be closely monitored in a customer service environment, but Sarah saw this micro-managey scrutiny as a great way destroy the customer experience. \u201cSo I don\u2019t actually have SLAs or metrics,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other things she doesn\u2019t do include not getting mad if someone\u2019s late because they\u2019re stuck in traffic; not measuring people; and not asking them how long they\u2019re going to be on the phone for. \u201cI train them very, very well and then I let them do their jobs with a very clear guideline that their job is to do what it is that makes the customer happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sarah Metcalfe is Head of Customer Service at Sure Petcare and she knows that a happy workplace is essential for enhancing the customer experience. Sarah points to research indicating that by 2020, 90% of customers will be choosing where they do business based on the customer experience. To achieve a net promoter score of around 9 or 10, it takes a human going to great lengths.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where you have the difference between an OK experience and an amazing one,\u201d says Sarah. It all starts with the people who\u2019re providing the service.<\/p>\n
In this full length video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Sarah explains how Sure Petcare have created an environment that allows people to bring their whole selves to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"blog-post-type":[37],"class_list":["post-8874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-videos-full","blog-post-type-blog-guest-feature"],"acf":{"featured_guest_name":"About Sarah","featured_guest_biography":"Originally from British Columbia, Sarah has a wealth of customer service experience from a background that includes charities, logistics and manufacturing.\u00a0Sarah joined Sure Petcare in 2010 (then SureFlap), taking responsibility for the company\u2019s customer service and guiding it through an extraordinary period of expansion and growth.\r\n\r\nShe now leads a talented multi-lingual team who deliver outstanding customer service and happiness to all Sure Petcare customers around the world.","featured_guest_image":8875,"read_or_watch_time":"Watch: 33 min watch","video_url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Z6zuxgTY3Xk","transcripts":"I\u2019m Sarah. I\u2019ve been to every happy workplace conference, because it\u2019s amazing. I\u2019m hugely honoured to be up onstage and I\u2019m going to tell you the story of Sure Petcare and about why a happy workplace matters to the customer experience and to customer service.\r\n\r\nSo our company, Sure Petcare, started in 2008. Our MD is a physicist trained in Oxford and Cambridge, one of the smartest people I know, and he had a problem. His cat was getting stressed in his own house by other animals coming in. Cats hate collars, so the only solution to that at the time was to put a magnet on your collar. Did anyone here have a magnetic cat flap at any point in their life? Did you have lots of ball bearings, forks, larger items [coming towards it]? Yeah, it\u2019s quite a common issue.\r\n\r\nSo he just a developed a new technology as you do when you have a problem and that\u2019s how Sure Petcare was born. We started with making microchip operated cat flaps, giving your pet their own door key is what we said. We\u2019ve moved into feeders, stopping pets from eating each other\u2019s food or your little humans from eating your cat food.\r\n\r\nHow many people here actually own a Sure flap or a Sure Petcare product? Oh my god, that\u2019s the most amazing thing. I\u2019ve been talking for a number of years and I sometimes get one person, so thanks. How\u2019s the customer service? Yeah! Awesome.\r\n\r\nOK, so we started this business, we knew we had a great product, but nobody knew about the technology and nobody knew that it existed. So it actually didn\u2019t matter that we had a great product if we didn\u2019t back it up with great service. What happened really early on was a fantastic\u2026 we outsource our customer service and someone had a problem with their cat flap. So the customer service department asked them to take the cat flap out of the door and send it back to them and they would fix it and send it back. If anyone has a cat flap in their door they\u2019ll know that means you\u2019re left with a giant hole in your door for an indeterminate amount of time. Not the most amazing of customer experiences, as you can imagine.\r\n\r\nWe very quickly decided, actually, we should do that as much of ourselves as we could and that was going to be one of the major factors in how we built the business. In the last ten years \u2013 we just celebrated our ten year anniversary \u2013 we\u2019re now selling in 35 countries, we\u2019ve got over a million customers, we support them in over four languages. Our net promoter score has been anywhere between 90 and 97 for over nine years. How many people here work in customer service or customer facing organisations? And how many people know what net promoter score is? OK, so I won\u2019t have to explain it too much.\r\n\r\nThe turnover in my customer service department is fantastic. I used to be able to say we had no turnover \u2013 in seven years we had no turnover. Since then we\u2019ve had three people leave actually, but one of them has come back. And really all the important things that come from great customer service has actually been about creating a great place to work.\r\n\r\nI know a lot of you work in the charity industry and I left a charity to go and work for a cat flap company. I found out that I was happier at work and I had more purpose at a cat flap company. I\u2019ve actually spent the last nine years since I left that charity trying to figure out how that\u2019s possible. So that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to share with you. It\u2019s actually about having a great workplace and a happy workplace. In customer experience, it\u2019s the biggest differentiator.\r\n\r\nBy next year, 90% of customers will be choosing where they do business based on the customer experience. I found this quote, which is hugely important because we used to work with our hands, right now we work with our heads, but the future of business is really we\u2019re going to be working with our hearts. The top leadership statistics about what people wanted coming out of LinkedIn this year have to do with empathy, resilience. So those much softer skills, some people say maternal skills, are now becoming the top leadership qualities.\r\n\r\nIn customer experience, what we know is that the difference between a crappy customer experience and an amazing \u2013 so on that NPS score, a 0 to 6 and a 9 or 10 \u2013 if you listen to the free text of that, what happened was a human did something extraordinary. That\u2019s where you have the difference between an OK experience and an amazing one. It\u2019s all about the humans. Great customer service starts with the people who deliver it. That\u2019s what we discovered.\r\n\r\nThis is at our tenth birthday party. We took a picture and put it all together of every employee over the ten years. Every time it stops, that\u2019s one year in our staff. We realised over the years, what you can see is actually most of those people were there really, really early on over those ten years and we\u2019ve had really low turnover the whole way along. But the difference in customer experience and in a happy workplace is the same; it\u2019s the people.\r\n\r\nOne of the things that\u2019s the most important for me is creating a connection with your staff. We\u2019ve had a huge amount of change and growth over the years. We were acquired in 2015 and we\u2019ve actually just been acquired again. That has its own challenges coming from a very small start-up where there was four of us in a building to now being part of MSD, which is a multinational pharmaceutical in the tens of thousands of employees.\r\n\r\nWe do a lot of things to intentionally create connection between our staff, but it\u2019s really, really key to do it with intention, not just to create fun. So this is some of the fun stuff we do: we have Christmas jumper day and Christmas parties, we had a moustache grow for Movember a couple of years ago, we dress up for Halloween and we have a lot of fun together. But I\u2019d like to tell you a little story about what it means to me to create a personal connection.\r\n\r\nWhen I came back from maternity leave in 2017 we had been acquired and I really wasn\u2019t sure that this was still the right place for me. There was a lot of change and a lot of difference and I wasn\u2019t feeling connected to the company in the way I had previously. And I came in and that week two things happened. One of my staff who had been with us for a number of years came into work and let us all know that her mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but she wanted to come to work to be with people who she knew supported her. She knew that she was safe and in a place where she could bring herself to work in those worst case scenarios \u2013 on your worst day she could come to work and be with the people that she has a connection with.\r\n\r\nFour days later one of our other staff members came in to show us a picture of a scan. He and his wife had been trying to have a baby for ten years and we were the first people that he brought that scan picture to after telling his family. And that week, no matter what the challenges were, showed me that by creating that connection in my team \u2013 by creating an environment where people brought their whole selves to work \u2013 that that was a place I still wanted to work. We could have our highest highs and our lowest lows together and that was important. All of the rest of the pieces about delivering great service come from having those connections and those relationships.\r\n\r\nSo my first question to you, I\u2019ll get you just to talk to your neighbour or talk as a group, what\u2019s something you could do, it could be big it could be small, to create a deeper connection, a meaningful connection with the people in your team when you go back to work tomorrow?\r\n\r\nDelegate 1: \u2018Sounds a bit corny, but just being curious or having a curious intent.\u2019\r\n\r\nSM: Awesome. He\u2019s totally stealing my thunder for my next slide, honestly. Anybody else?\r\n\r\nDelegate 2: \u2018We were just saying about noticing the little things and remembering, not work things, just personal things. You know, how did your wedding go at the weekend? Or little nuggets.\u2019\r\n\r\nSM: Yeah, because we know those things don\u2019t we. That\u2019s an awesome way to do it.\r\n\r\nDelegate 3: \u2018We had space issues so I gave up my desk so I\u2019ll just sit anywhere now, but that\u2019s had a big impact sitting in different teams. You don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going to be sitting sometimes when you go in, but you\u2019re amongst different people so I think maybe being deskless and moving around if possible.\u2019\r\n\r\nSM: Yeah, create those connection places, right? That\u2019s great. They\u2019re really simple things to do actually and just continuously building those simple things.\r\n\r\nSo I\u2019m going to share with you, I do a lot of public speaking, I\u2019ve done eight countries in nine weeks, which is a really bad idea \u2013 don\u2019t ever do that. Henry phoned me on Monday and said, \u2018I would like you to tell more stories and give a different presentation than you usually give.\u2019 And I went, \u2018shit, OK.\u2019 And he said, \u2018You know Sarah we\u2019ve known each other for a long time, but I don\u2019t actually know what you do to make your staff happy. So I want to challenge you to tell people that.\u2019 And I went, \u2018Awesome idea, thank you Henry.\u2019 He\u2019s so good at making me really uncomfortable and grow as a human being, so I\u2019m very grateful.\r\n\r\nThen we hung up and I went, oh my god, I don\u2019t know what I do. I just do it, because for me it comes naturally. It\u2019s something that I\u2019ve never thought about. I\u2019ve spent all that time trying to figure it out because it just feels right, so I work in my why of feeling a lot. So I did what I always do, actually, which is part of the key \u2013 I asked my team, \u2018what makes you happy at work?\u2019 And they said a lot of things about it being easy to get help, not having their performance assessed, freedom, control, flexibility; all of those pieces I think we\u2019ve heard over and over again today.\r\n\r\nBut the thing that stood out for me really actually was it was really more about what I don\u2019t do. So in a customer service environment, we\u2019re very keen on metrics. We love what we call SLAs, which are service level agreements, which makes no sense, actually. We like to measure all sorts of things like average handling time and first call resolution and ten out of ten call metrics. And I think that\u2019s a really great way to destroy the customer experience and provide the worst possible customer service you can.\r\n\r\nI\u2019ll give you an example of that. A ten out of ten call metric could go just like this: \u2018Hello Henry,\u2019 so I\u2019ve ticked that I\u2019ve used his first name. \u2018How are you today?\u2019 I have greeted him in a kind and friendly manner. And then after not solving his problem I could end the call by saying, \u2018Is there anything else I can do to help you today?\u2019 And that would score a ten out of ten in our customer service world.\r\n\r\nSo I don\u2019t actually have SLAs or metrics. I really believe in training my team very, very well. So I tell them to give themselves six months before they should feel comfortable and confident with our products. Other things I don\u2019t do \u2013 I don\u2019t get mad if they\u2019re late because they\u2019re stuck in traffic. That came up from five different people. I don\u2019t measure people. I don\u2019t ask them how long they\u2019re going to be on the phone for. I train them very, very well and then I let them do their jobs with a very clear guideline that their job is to do what it is that makes the customer happy.\r\n\r\nA number of years ago we switched from having a 30 day money back guarantee to a 30 day happiness guarantee, because actually most people who interact with you, your service, your product \u2013 and this goes for internal as well \u2013 they don\u2019t want their money back. They\u2019re not going to buy your product because they want their money back. They buy your product because they want to be happy with it. So what\u2019s the problem you\u2019re trying to solve with your product? Then they want to be happy with it.\r\n\r\nMy team have the ability to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. And that means they can go to their homes, they can phone up fitters and have them come in and do that. It means we don\u2019t make customers take their cat flap out of their door and send it to us so we can fix it. We trust our customers and we just send them a replacement and a free post bag and we get it back when they\u2019re ready and when it\u2019s convenient for them.\r\n\r\nI\u2019d like you to think about that now and think a little bit about what\u2019s something you could stop doing. I know Henry did the huge thing and he stopped making decisions, which I\u2019m getting there. So what\u2019s something you could stop doing right now that could help you deliver better customer experience or a better employee experience if you don\u2019t have customer service?\r\n\r\nOK, you guys clearly have a lot of stuff you could stop doing. Just think about the savings in time alone in your organisation, right, when you don\u2019t do stuff. Does anyone feel comfortable sharing what they\u2019re going to stop doing?\r\n\r\nDelegate 4: \u2018The number of emails I send, because being HR we were just saying that we\u2019re very driven by this thing of audit trail and you\u2019ve got to know what happened, when and who. But obviously there are situations where you don\u2019t need to send an email and especially if you work in a large open place office with everybody else. So that\u2019s something I\u2019m going to try and be more mindful of.\u2019\r\n\r\nSM: That\u2019s an awesome idea, not sending as many emails. Anybody else have something they can stop doing?\r\n\r\nDelegate 5: \u2018So I said I want to stop trying to make everybody happy. [Laughter]. I got that laugh at the table. We\u2019re trying to make everybody happy and we\u2019re ending up making nobody happy.\u2019\r\n\r\nSM: I disagree just ever so slightly with the delighting our customers. I think delighting our employees is great. Delighting our customers means we might never solve their problems but we\u2019ll send their grandmother a stuffed toy giraffe because we saw it on Twitter, right?\r\n\r\nDelegate 5: \u2018All of our stuff\u2019s internal. I\u2019m thinking about some of our policy people, maybe, and not necessarily trying to focus on our internal customers and not all the other stake holders we have.\u2019\r\n\r\nSM: Anybody else? Something I started doing a long time ago that I still am not great at but I have a Post-It Note on my desk to remind me, which just says \u2018What do you think?\u2019 Because as a manager it\u2019s really fast and easy for me to answer someone\u2019s questions and tell them what to do when they ask me, so I have to set myself that reminder to actually say, \u2018What do you think?\u2019 And just like Henry did for me, it makes my team very uncomfortable, but it\u2019s good for their personal growth so I\u2019m going to keep doing it.\r\n\r\nThis is a question that Henry can attest to that every year for the last seven years at the end of the conference I put up my hand and I say, \u2018How come we\u2019re not doing it?\u2019 We all know that happy workplaces make more money, they\u2019re more profitable, there\u2019s more creativity, lower turnover, less shrinkage \u2013 who doesn\u2019t want that? Every possible metric in a business or a charity or any organisation you want is improved by creating a happy workplace, right?\r\n\r\nThe reason this belongs in customer service is, if you look at that value-service-profit chain, happy customers spend more, they\u2019re more loyal, they\u2019ll stay with you longer and you\u2019ll make more money, but you can\u2019t do that without happy employees. You will not get great customer service without happy employees. So that\u2019s one of the pieces for me about why we\u2019re not doing it.\r\n\r\nAndy de Vale who has been here a few times, he did this for Corporate Rebels. He allows me to use this in my presentations, I think it\u2019s beautiful and I think this is a huge part of the problem. The people who do the work have the answers. Those are the people who speak to your customers, who hear their frustrations, who use your systems, who hear the difficulties that your business has every single day. That\u2019s what you pay them for. And what do we do? We get consultants in and they tell us where our problems are and they charge us lots of money and they tell managers how to fix it and managers tell leaders how to fix it and they tell their team members how to fix it and the staff go [puts head in hands].\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s a fantastic story, not my story, but I love this story. A gentleman I know phoned up a bank. Him and his girlfriend they live together in the same house. That bank has fantastic AI and it has voice recognition technology so it answered the call and said, \u2018hi David.\u2019 And he explained him and his girlfriend have lived together for a long time, they both have accounts. They go, \u2018yes we know. We know your partner. We can see she lives at the same account, no problem.\u2019 So they\u2019d like to take one of their individual accounts and convert it to a joint account. Fantastic, they can see them, they know who they are, that\u2019s wonderful.\r\n\r\nThen the voice of the customer service agent dropped when she said, \u2018I\u2019m going to need you to go to a notary public with your girlfriend and have them sign this six page document stating that you live at the same address and then mail it to us, and it should take six to eight weeks for us to be able to open that account for you. I\u2019m really sorry.\u2019\r\n\r\nSo we put these barriers in place of our customer service departments and they know, they hate having to tell customers those things, when they know it\u2019s wrong, when they know it doesn\u2019t have to be that way. Sometimes things are regulatory and you have to do that. That particular one wasn\u2019t because after six weeks and I think 10,000 complaints, they scrapped that completely.\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s a piece in this digital world where we\u2019ve got this fantastic augmentation that we\u2019re going to use, which is automating the transactional, like opening up a new bank account, and leaving space for the human interaction where it\u2019s emotional, where it\u2019s complex and when it matters to your relationship \u2013 that\u2019s when you put your people in. But don\u2019t confuse them and don\u2019t use paperwork as an excuse or a process.\r\n\r\nSo back to my question. Why aren\u2019t we doing this? There\u2019s two things. One: delivering happiness is simple not easy and we\u2019ve heard that a lot. It\u2019s really simple and it\u2019s a lot of small things today are the things you can do to make changes and a lot of them are free. One of the problems is the message isn\u2019t clear. So just like in customer service we measure all the wrong things, in workplaces we give people all the wrong things. We give them ice cream, free smoothies, apples, fruit bowls, compensation, perks, benefits.\r\n\r\nTo Cathy\u2019s point first thing this morning, I don\u2019t think anyone put up their hand when they had something with joy about being well paid. That\u2019s not what makes us happy at work. We give people nap-pods and slides and ball pits, free coffee and all of those wonderful things.\r\n\r\nRight, this is the hard thinking bit, but it\u2019s the bit I love the most. I have spent all this time asking people how come we\u2019re not doing this? We know this is the right thing to do. I was very lucky to go to Denmark last year and train with Woohoo, and if you don\u2019t know them I recommend you look them up. The piece that I took away from that was we\u2019re doing the wrong things because that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been told to do.\r\n\r\nDaniel Kahneman states that we\u2019ve got two kinds of happiness. We\u2019ve got what we call evaluated wellbeing, which sits up here, and experience wellbeing, which sits in our hearts. So our heads and our hearts. What happens is all of the things that we think about when we evaluate, actually, I\u2019ve had a bad day at work or I\u2019m not happy at work, but I get paid well and we\u2019ve got free coffee and I enjoy working there, it\u2019s a lovely office space and I get a good bonus, so actually I\u2019m pretty happy.\r\n\r\nAll that does in real life is actually help you decide to move to Google because Google has all those things. And I know this because my cousin works at Google and she said that that\u2019s what attracted her. She got a huge pay rise and all sorts of fantastically wonderful things and it has bicycles and colours and nap pods and anything you could possibly want. But actually what makes her happy at work is she gets to go to work every day with the smartest people she\u2019s ever worked with and do amazing work with them.\r\n\r\nThe things that actually make us happy at work are the things that everyone has alluded to today, and that is doing great work together with great people. So do you have results? Do you know that what you do matters? And do you do it together with great people? That is the key to happiness at work. That gives us all of the positive benefits we want. And the reason that we don\u2019t do it is because we haven\u2019t been told the right things, but also because that\u2019s a lot more difficult.\r\n\r\nWhat that means is we have to give of ourselves and the same is true in customer experience, because humans are happy in both places. So what makes our customers\u2019 experience amazing is that we delivered them an outcome, the results they wanted, and we had a relationship with them. So it\u2019s exactly the same. What makes us happy at work is what makes us happy at home.\r\n\r\nThe impact on happiness at work is way bigger on job satisfaction. So even if the only thing you want to do is attract people to your company then you can still just make people happy at work. And the only thing that you can\u2019t do is take away those ice creams, because it has a massive negative impact on people. So if you have all of those things then I\u2019m afraid you\u2019re stuck with them.\r\n\r\nWe did that at work. We thought we were spending lots of money on company lunches, which we do every Thursday to increase our connection with our staff and give them a place to connect, and we thought we could spend that money on things like healthcare or free gym memberships or any of those types of things that sit in that bottom box. And we got a resounding 99.9% of people do not want to give up their company lunch.\r\n\r\nHow many people have worked somewhere where they used to give you free coffee or they used to give you sandwiches and then they took them away and you still talk about it? Yeah, humans don\u2019t like to lose stuff; we\u2019re not very good at that.\r\n\r\nThat for me was the biggest eye-opener I think I\u2019ve had in my life and it means that we have to spend a lot more time and a lot more personal effort on our staff and how we do that. Until and unless we do that with the help of fantastic human professionals, we will not make people happy at work, they will not stay longer, and they will go elsewhere. Millennials are much more switched onto this than most of people of my generation.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m just going to give you a couple of my examples of things that I do that are small that maybe you can add to your growing list of things you have to do tomorrow. So the 20 second rule I believe is one of the easiest ways to get people to do that. My team have a rule, which is if something is making their lives or our customers\u2019 lives 20 seconds more difficult \u2013 and you can even make his smaller, you can make it five seconds \u2013 if you imagine making something 20 seconds easier and multiply that by the number of your staff and the number of calls you get into your customer service organisation and the number of cases that happens, you\u2019re getting a lot of time back by solving one very tiny solution.\r\n\r\nWe have a 20 second rule list in our office, which we\u2019re consistently updating. So, any time they come across something that\u2019s making our lives more difficult we encourage them to write it down and then my job, I believe, as a leader and manager, is to fix that.\r\n\r\nI think it was Dom at your [previous happy workplaces conference] who suggested letting your new staff tell you what to fix. So I gave them a book which I said, \u2018Can you write down the crazy shit we do in that book,\u2019 and they called it something different. I gave this to my new staff, every time they start, to write down those things they can see that we don\u2019t. You just do stuff naturally, don\u2019t you, the longer you\u2019ve been there? And you don\u2019t see that it seems insane to take this and walk it over to this department and then get them to stamp it and then walk it back to your department over here, because you just do it naturally, that\u2019s the way it\u2019s always been done. Maybe, like us, those departments used to be next door so it made sense at the time.\r\n\r\nSo we allow them to do that and then we change things based on that or explain to them why it\u2019s like that, and then probably change them anyway. What that does is two things. It creates a connection with them \u2013 it makes them know straight away that what they say matters in your business and it gives them the ability to later on share when things are really bad and really wrong and they trust that you will make things better. So you\u2019re building up trust and connections straight away.\r\n\r\nI love random acts of kindness. If I could do that for my job and get paid for it that\u2019s literally all I would do.\r\n\r\nWe stole this from Tim Dorsett at Innocent Drinks. They had a lift of love. We don\u2019t have a lift, we just have a lunchroom, so we created the lunchroom of love and we played Barry White all day and we asked people to write Post-It Notes about the other members of staff, things they were grateful for and things they liked for them. We as the committee actually put a whole bunch up, because you never want to be the first person to put up a sticker or raise your hand at a conference, right?\r\n\r\nIt was great. It had a super impact on that day. People loved it. They were coming and they were laughing, they got cake, it was great, it was fun, but we took it a little step further and we surprised them later. So at the end of the day we took all of the Post-It Notes and we kept them for a month. Then a month later \u2013 it was actually about six weeks later \u2013 we stuck them into a card and delivered them in the morning to everybody\u2019s desks, so they got to relive what people had said about them. Every single member of our staff \u2013 that was in March \u2013 still has their card on their desk.\r\n\r\nIt means so much to hear those small little pieces from your colleagues creating those relationships together about what they like about you. I would recommend that you take five minutes and go and speak to a different member of your staff everyday and you can ask them what you can do for them. Gary Vaynerchuk says the most important thing you can do is to ask your staff \u2018what can I do for you?\u2019 So take that away tomorrow and everyday ask a different member of your team \u2018what can I do for you?\u2019 and the answers will surprise you.\r\n\r\nThe last thing is to give people time, because everything I\u2019ve talked about and everything that you\u2019ve heard here today takes time. I guarantee you that if you do any of these things, if you focus on happy staff and especially happy staff in your contact centre, if you remove those stupid rules and get rid of those barriers to allowing them to do their job properly, your customer service will soar. Those are my nickables."},"yoast_head":"\n