Simply put employees who feel cared for by their organization will show care for the customer. And it is amazing what happens when customers feel that someone cares and is taking a genuine interest in their business – they spread positive word of mouth, decide to choose your services over any other, and may even go out of their way to do business with you. It even gets better than that – as your customers experience exceptional service time and time again, they will begin to feel emotionally connected to your business. When that happens, you have a customer for life.

But the unfortunate truth is that a record number of customer facing employees are disengaged today. Published statistics related to customer service turnover suggest that average voluntary turnover rates are between 40% and 80%. A recent study conducted by

PeopleMetrics into the state of Employee Engagement in the U.S.today revealed that 37% of customer service workers are disengaged. This means that nearly two in five employees involved in serving customers are unlikely to recommend their company as a great place to work, stay at the organization, exert extra effort, and feel passion or an emotional connection to their company. These are the highest levels of disengagement across all job functions identified.

So, what can you do about this situation? Our study revealed that the key elements of the work experience that impact the engagement (or disengagement) of customer service workers are emotional in nature. That’s right, it is not about pay and benefits or job resources so much as about the non-functional, softer aspects of the work experience and environment. Specifically, we found six key drivers of

Key Drivers of Engagement of Customer Service Representatives:

1.	The work itself (enjoyable, sense of purpose, etc)
2.	Ability to be successful at the company
3.	A fun work environment
4.	Internal customer service ethic
5.	Internal communications
6.	External customer service ethic

To make a difference today among your customer service staff, consider the following: