There are irrefutable benefits to approaching your work creatively. If you are working in customer service, by being creative you can serve more customers in less time and with less effort, satisfy more requests successfully and build a positive vibe around your business.
I believe, creativity does not come easy to most of us. The reason it takes some effort is because it’s a walk uphill. Creativity requires a certain fine-tuning of the mind, a certain level of receptivity. For sure though, it can be developed.
In this post below I would like to share a few tips, my own experience mixed with observations from other people, on how one can bring on more creativity in a customer service work place.
-
Pay attention to small details, listen carefully, observe and notice
Recently I stumbled upon a quote on creativity by one of my favorite spiritual teachers Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: “Everything that human beings have created is only an imitation and modification of what is already there. If you look at creativity in terms of art, everything that you do is just a small imitation of nature. There is no real creativity as such. Creation has already happened. You only imitate creation”.
I can’t help but agree with his description of creativity, because indeed, if we look at it, every creation starts in our mind. And what mind does is recycling of all the data and information that has been input. The mind cannot create anything which is totally new. It can create a new thing by processing the old stuff.
As a confirmation to this may serve the multiple plagiarism stories in the media when one artist is charged with a claim that he has copied another artist’s looks or a tune. It is true, of course, that plagiarism does exist. But at the same time, such coincidences when one creation resembles another are inevitable simply due to the nature of our mind, which stores all the visual, audio, sensual data that it once received and then processes it in its own way, in most cases not remembering the sources of that information.
When it comes to customer service, if you would like to boost that creative power of your mind, one of the things you could do is to start collecting and storing in your mind all the customer data that comes your way – what questions they have, how they approach you, what are their reactions to different kind of response etc. In other words, you need to become extremely attentive and listen carefully to your customers. Any audio, visual or other kind of information that you receive and don’t discard as non important will serve as a working material to your mind when you challenge yourself with a task of serving your customers more creatively.
-
Get totally involved with every client
Getting totally involved is the necessary foundation which allows you to become more attentive and a good listener, which was the first point of my article.
Full concentration on every client gives you several benefits. The first one is it allows you to absorb all the information about the customer and their problem, which will later give you the material to get creative with.
The second benefit of total concentration is it puts you into a certain mode of functioning, where you as a customer service person disregard your own self, the mood you may be in, your personal problems you may have to deal with today. You become so receptive of another person’s state of mind, their situation and the problem, that the best solution that you can give in their particular case comes to you as an insight, intuitively, spontaneously. And this is what true creativity is.
-
Remain positive
Once you can get totally involved with clients, remaining positive comes really easy. The reason is you have already put aside your own self and personal problems. Your attention is directed at the client. As a result, you are not suffering your own psychological world.
Once you are dedicated to serve others, the burdens of your own life succumb and positive attitude becomes natural. You don’t have to strive for it anymore.
Here some people may argue with me. As in the question with chicken and egg, which one comes first, some may say that if you work on being positive, then getting totally involved with other people and dedicating yourself to them will come easy and not vice versa.
I will leave this choice to you. I think it can be different for different people. For some it will be easier to keep themselves positive and then they will be able to fully concentrate on customers. For others, like myself, thinking in terms of service and dedication seems easier and helps to develop positive attitude to everything and everyone. I encourage you to have a look inside yourself and find your own answer to this question.
In the end, after your succeed in keeping yourself positive and being totally involved with what you do, you will see how your creativity will flourish.
-
Be responsible for your own workplace and for the results that you produce
Feeling responsible for how the customer feels after being served by you gives you a great power and inspiration to perform to the best of your ability. For each one of us there is a space to grow. I see responsibility as a kind of an engine which keeps fueling our journey in creativity.
If you feel responsible for the results that you produce, you will inevitably seek new and better ways to serve customers and you will have no other choice but to become creative in your workplace.
How do you approach the questions of creativity in a customer service workplace? I would love to hear your comments.