Customers are vital to the success of every business and for organisations, Customer Service Week is a great opportunity to show appreciation to their customers for their support and patronage. From sending goodwill messages, and giving customers various treats, companies invest a lot of resources during this period to acknowledge their customers.
Celebrated annually, the weeklong program highlights the importance of providing excellent customer experience, strengthening relationships with customers and identifying ways of improving service delivery. The theme for this year’s celebration Dream Team underscores the spirit of teamwork in promoting growth and improving service excellence.
The question is what does building a dream team really mean? Mostly, we celebrate success stories of individuals and organisations without giving much thought to other behind the scenes factors. It takes a whole lot to make it happen. Behind every successful individual, brand, business leader we see, there’s a team working tirelessly to make those milestones, accomplishments and dreams happen irrespective of the challenges they may encounter.
American novelist, Louisa May Alcott once said, ‘‘It takes two flints to make a fire.’’ Collaborating with others helps you to work towards a common objective and achieve set goals. Teamwork is the lifeline of every business and plays a major role in business growth. Let’s take a look at how organisations can build a sustainable business through teamwork.
Invest in people
Building a sustainable brand requires businesses to invest in their most valuable asset – people. Employees tend to have an ownership mentality in a business if they feel valued. Finding the right people is key to business success. Building a dream team requires more than just finding someone to fill a particular role. You need people that identify with your vision and are willing to run with it.
A key indicator in choosing team players are identifying the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and leveraging on their strengths to achieve objectives while creating an avenue to improve upon their weaknesses. Investing in people goes a long way to enhance performance and increase business growth. Employees should be given opportunities to grow and develop themselves.
Have a defined culture
Having a set of shared values, goals, attitudes and practices as an organisation is very important. Company culture impacts every facet of the business. It helps to determine how staff interact with clients, and increase performance. If employees are constantly reminded of what company values, principles and goals, it will go a long way to enhance teamwork and improve customer experience.
Reward efforts
It’s important for business owners to reward staff for both individual and collective efforts. Though most rewards are measured in monetary terms, not all rewards need to be monetary. Sometimes, giving employees the opportunity to work on other projects outside their scope of work, cross-skilling or affirmations helps them to understand that their efforts are being recognized and spur them to put in more work.
Communication
Good communication increases the efficacy of teams in accomplishing tasks and objectives. Constant communications helps team members to be in sync, be aware of developments and other details that are crucial to accomplish goals. Communication can be via in-person or virtual. Virtual interactions and meetings have increased significantly over the past few months. Developing effective communication skills is also necessary to clearly articulate ones message.
Build Trust
Trust is crucial to building successful teams. Customers make purchasing decisions based on brands they trust. To be able to work efficiently as a team, members need to trust each other. Building trust depends on having open conversations, commitment, integrity, collaboration, reliability and mutual respect.
Maintain a positive attitude
Maintaining a positive attitude is necessary to attaining team success. Being able to focus on finding solutions, building mutual respect and enabling a healthy work environment is essential in building a strong team.
Collaboration
Teamwork thrives on the collective efforts and cooperation of all team members. It enhances analytical and critical thinking skills through effective communication, idea sharing and helps members to look beyond their differences, improve team performance and promotes team bonding
Show Commitment
Showing commitment to team and organisational goals is a key step in achieving results, and delivering on expectations and fostering unity among team members.
Leadership
Team leadership helps team members to focus on the big picture and commit to shared goals. A good team leader must be able to delegate tasks and ensure that objectives are being met. Team leaders are responsible for building team strengths and facilitate communication, collaboration, cooperation, and commitment among all team members. Effective teams need to establish ground rules to govern activities and avoid miscommunication. This includes defining roles, results, and rules for team interaction.
Ultimately, teams must produce desired results. When a company employs a results-oriented approach to targets, team members are motivated to collectively deliver on results. Using these tips can foster teamwork among employees and enable them to achieve business objectives. It takes a lot of work to build a dream. As Colin Powell puts it ‘‘A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.’’ Building a dream team can be honed with the right practices and commitment.
As we climax the celebration of Customer Service Week, let’s use this opportunity to reflect on the spirit of teamwork and acknowledge the efforts of all the people dedicating their lives to making dreams happen and improving service excellence. Ayekoo!
>>>Nana Akua Frimpomaa Amofa is a Writer and Creative Lead of Scripted Impressions, a creative consulting agency that helps individuals and brands tell their stories. She works as Senior Editor at El-Evangel Publications. Her work involves content development, strategy and review of publications. She is also the Project Lead for Community, a platform that provides support and resources to aspiring professionals and entrepreneurs. Connect with Nana Akua via Instagram/Twitter: @missamofa, LinkedIn: Nana Akua Frimpomaa Amofa, Email: [email protected]
