Customer Service Team Building Activity: Walk A Mile

Most experienced customer service representatives have had their fair share of “difficult” customer interactions. Perhaps a customer was upset, or rude before even reaching someone to speak to. Because it is sometimes difficult to not take negative customer interactions personally, this exercise serves as a great reminder that every customer is a person, too, with real challenges of their own. A terse word to a customer service representative is often misplaced or unintended, and certainly not to be taken personally. Let’s walk a mile in our customers shoes.

Activity: Walk A Mile

You’ll need: 6 or more participants, broken into groups of 3 or 4, and paper and pens for each.

How to play:

Round 1: Have each participant think of a rude or demanding statement that customer could say based on an experience of their own. Write this statement on a piece of paper, at the top, and fold it in half without sharing with the group. When everyone has finished, hand the paper to the person sitting to their left. Allow 5 minutes.

Round 2: Have each participant create a back story with the statement that they received from the participant next to them. Why was the customer difficult? Perhaps they’ve had a bad day already, perhaps they have been attempting to resolve an issue to no avail and are now getting upset. When everyone has finished, again hand the paper to the person sitting to their left. Allow 10 minutes.

Round 3: Have each participant create a helpful and positive response or outcome based on the statement from Round 1, and the story from Round 2. Allow 10 minutes.

Share as a group.

The lesson to share: This is a great exercise to remind your customer service team that customers are real people, who do not choose to be angry or difficult for no reason at all. They could be a past negative experience setting the expectation, or even a simple bad day. While these are not excuses for the customer’s bad behaviour, it is important to keep in mind that there is often a chain of events that have lead them to this point. The goal here is to remain objective and helpful and to not take the interaction personally.

Ideas adapted from this list of customer service team building activities: https://www.comm100.com/blog/customer-service-training-activities.html