What do you do if your customer service team members have untapped strengths?

2 Provide training and coaching

Once you have identified your team's strengths, you need to provide them with the appropriate training and coaching to help them develop and apply those strengths. You can offer them online courses, webinars, workshops, mentoring programs, or shadowing opportunities that match their learning needs and preferences. You can also encourage them to learn from each other, by creating peer groups, buddy systems, or cross-functional teams that can exchange skills and knowledge. The key is to make learning fun, relevant, and rewarding for your team members, and to give them regular feedback and recognition for their progress.

3 Assign challenging and meaningful tasks

Another way to use your team's strengths is to assign them challenging and meaningful tasks that align with their strengths and interests. You can do this by creating new projects, roles, or responsibilities that require them to use their strengths in different ways, or by giving them more autonomy and flexibility in how they perform their existing tasks. For example, you can ask a team member who has a flair for writing to create a blog post, a newsletter, or a case study for your website, or you can let a team member who has a knack for problem-solving to handle more complex or escalated customer issues. The idea is to give your team members opportunities to grow, to add value, and to feel fulfilled by their work.

4 Encourage collaboration and innovation

Finally, you can leverage your team's strengths by encouraging collaboration and innovation among your team members. You can do this by creating a culture of trust, openness, and feedback, where your team members can share their ideas, opinions, and suggestions without fear of judgment or criticism. You can also facilitate brainstorming sessions, hackathons, or competitions that challenge your team members to come up with new solutions, products, or processes that can improve your customer service operations. By doing this, you can foster a sense of teamwork, creativity, and ownership among your team members, and enhance your team's performance and productivity.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?