How National Customer Service Week Can Benefit Your Museum Store

November 7, 2016

By Bill Gessert

In 1984, the International Customer Service Association (ICSA) spearheaded the first National Customer Service Week (NCSW). Since then, during the first full week in October, businesses and organizations nationally and internationally use this week as an opportunity to do something special for their customer service staffs. (Think celebrations with fun and games, food and beverages, and employee recognition.)

But is fun and games what the founders of NCSW had in mind back in 1984? No, not really. The true spirit of the week goes beyond fun activities. Its real meaning is a much deeper, more important philosophy that can change the level of service in your museum store.

The goal was to inspire businesses and organizations to deepen their understanding of how the customer experience impacts the satisfaction and loyalty of their customers—and how that loyalty translates directly to the bottom-line success of their companies.

And that’s something that all museum stores can benefit from.

Taking this a step further, ICSA looked to raise awareness of the impact that customer-facing staff have on the customer’s experiences with their brands. And make no mistake, it is a powerful connection: To consistently craft excellent customer experiences, a business or organization (like your museum store) has to consistently craft excellent employee experiences!

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Visit GlassDoor.com and look at what employees are saying about their companies. Is the chatter positive or negative? Then, go to American Customer Satisfaction Index and look for those same companies. You will find that companies with employees who speak enthusiastically about their employers all score higher on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. This is a fact that has been proven empirically over and over again and takes us back to how NCSW can benefit you: It is a roadmap to excellent customer service in your museum store. It is a vehicle for training, managing and empowering your museum store staff.

• Want satisfied customers? Create satisfied employees.
• Want loyal customers? Create loyal employees.
• Want to provide your customers with consistently excellent experiences? Create consistently excellent experiences for your employees.

Don’t worry if you missed this year’s NCSW—there’s another one in 2017. But don’t wait until then to begin investing in your store employees. Lead your store toward a deeper commitment to customer service now with ICSA blog posts and videos from several of the most recognized customer experience experts, as well as some of the top brands in America, on how they create exceptional experiences. Use these resources to implement actionable plans to enhance both your employee and customer experiences within your store.

Now is your chance to launch an internal campaign designed to consistently craft excellent experiences for your museum store employees. If you do, it will be only a matter of time that those same employees consistently craft excellent experiences for your museum store customers.

By starting now, you will ensure that when NCSW 2017 rolls around, you and your store team will have plenty to celebrate!

Bill Gessert, speaker, writer and all-around good guy, is the volunteer President of ICSA, the only nonprofit professional association dedicated to the professional development and recognition of customer service professionals and the organizations for which they work.

He has been working in the customer service and customer experience space nearly his entire career. During that time, he’s had the good fortune of assisting companies including: 3M, Pfizer, Nike, Macy’s, BIC, United Health Plans, IBM and many more, in efforts to improve the experiences they provide to their customers. Bill’s current day job is director of new business development with Fernley & Fernley, the association management company working with MSA. Bill and his wife, Lisa, live in Staten Island, NY, with their faithful companion, Sunny.