Meeting with your staff to discuss ways to improve customer support is one way of making every member of the organization actively involved in the implementation of your customer service strategies. There are many ways you can get your in-house staff or the agents from your call center in the Philippines excited about being part of this vital group session. Your goal must be to take advantage of the opportunity by processing all possible insights from the same people who run your daily operations.

Conducting a brainstorming session is a good way of soliciting as many different ideas and opinions about a specific customer care issue as possible. Your focus at this point isn t really on the depth of the discussion but rather on the quantity of useful ideas you can extract from your workforce.

Starting things right

In order to motivate your employees to actively participate in your meeting, they must realize how important the issues are to them and to the organization. It s frustrating for them to attend a meeting where they are unable to contribute ideas because they don t have anything to say about the topic. Introduce issues that affect everybody s function in the organization, and explain how resolving them now can later impact their ability to deliver excellent customer service.

Avoid making anyone in the group feel unwelcome. Your customer support employees must be aware from the beginning that everything they say will be received without any judgment. The main purpose of brainstorming is to lay all possible ideas and suggestions on the table without having to decide whether those insights are good or bad. Rejecting ideas early in the discussion can discourage people to continue contributing, so evaluating the quality of their contributions must be done at the end of the brainstorming session.

Generating ideas from the willing and unwilling

In any group discussion, there will always be people who talk less than the other members. As a facilitator of a collaborative meeting, you must emphasize that it s important for everyone to speak up. Rather than asking the less talkative members to think of new ideas, you can ask for their ideas on the general issues that were already brought up in the meeting. Some employees just need some push before becoming willing to share their opinions.

Facilitating a brainstorming session isn’t just about listening and reminding people to speak up. You are also supposed to intervene when things go out of hand. For example, if there are people whose personality intimidate others or limit their opportunity to share ideas, you might need to manage the speaking time allotted for each member. If there are members who are more talkative than others, you can politely say that you are also interested in hearing what the quieter ones have to say before giving others the chance to speak.

The secret to a successful brainstorming meeting is giving members a liberal amount of time to express their thoughts. Your employees have several ideas in their minds that are just waiting to be heard. By taking time to focus on the really important issues and building on each one of them through opinion sharing, you can make the most out of your customer service meeting with your employees.