Get ready to sprinkle some festive cheer into your contact centre! In this article, we share creative ways to make the holiday season brighter for your customer service team – spreading joy, and ensuring customers feel the Christmas spirit too.
After all, ’tis the season to be jolly… and a great Claus for celebration!
10 Festive Ways to Celebrate in Your Contact Centre
Bring some holiday cheer to your contact centre with these fun and festive ideas. From games to giveaways, here’s how to make the season merry for your team!
1. Let It Spin!
Why not play “Spin the Wheel”, where advisors can win great (and some pretty terrible) Christmas-themed prizes?
Creating an environment where people want to come in makes all the difference in this festive season.
How it Works
Agents can spin the wheel and earn Christmas themed prizes.
Spins can be earned based on:
- Products sold: Reward advisors who meet their sales targets.
- Added value to the customer: For those who go above and beyond to ensure customers have a positive experience.
- Customer feedback: Spins can be awarded for positive feedback or compliments from customers.
- CSAT/NPS scores: High scores on customer satisfaction or net promoter scores can earn a spin too.
In addition, The White Company has its very own in-centre store where advisors can earn points to buy gifts, with lots of food-based thank-you prizes (think mince pies).
Contributed by: The White Company
2. Beware of the Grinch
In 2017, a contact centre manager for Sky celebrated Christmas in their live-chat-only contact centre by hiring an actor to play the Grinch and surprise the customer service team.
The fun was captured in the video below, where the Grinch could be seen jokingly dismantling a Christmas tree, starting a snowball fight and even giving a team-talk to a group of new recruits.
As well as this fun idea, advisors at Sky were given a stocking and could choose items from a catalogue to go in to it. Advisors could choose up to £40 worth of gifts!
Contributed by: Sky
If you want to find out more tips from Sky’s contact centre, read our article: 14 Fresh Ideas From the Sky Contact Centre
3. Festive Time-Off
Aside from festive food, advent calendars, and obligatory Secret Santa, time can be the best gift of all.
The run-up to Christmas is actually a quiet time for MOO, after a busy November and Cyber Sale, so giving additional time off to agents to spend with family or for last-minute Christmas shopping is a great way to thank them for all their hard work.
Little MOOsters Morning
MOO introduced a Little MOOsters Morning, where employees can bring their children to work for a day filled with crafting, games, and even a chance to meet Santa! It’s a fantastic way to create a family-friendly atmosphere at the office and spread extra festive cheer.
Christmas is also a time for giving back to the local community. To help make the season brighter, MOO runs a coat drive for the homeless, fills holiday gift boxes for those less fortunate, and makes donations to a local food bank.
Contributed by: MOO
For more great tips from MOO’s contact centre, read our article: 19 Things We Learnt at the MOO Contact Centre
4. Ugly Christmas Jumpers and Photobooths
It’s a fun idea to plan an “ugly Christmas sweater” day at the office!
Add a photobooth to the mix and provide some quirky accessories to make the day even more festive.
Provide Accessories Like:
- Reindeer ears
- Santa hats
- Lots of tinsel
The team can then post their photos on the intranet or an online community group and encourage everyone to vote for their favourite!
The winner can receive a small token prize, like a mug filled with hot chocolate, and everyone can take home the photos as festive mementos.
Remember, you don’t have to offer big prizes – especially if you’re a public organization. Keeping it light and fun is key to maintaining the holiday spirit!
Contributed by: Denis
5. A Giant Advent Calendar
A giant advent calendar can bring excitement to the festive season, with a mix of fun and rewarding surprises behind each door.
Prizes can include:
- A golden ticket for an hour off
- Wine, chocolate, or a duvet day
- Other festive treats
The element of unpredictability adds healthy competition, keeping engagement high and spirits merry.
How to Decide Who Opens the Calendar
To keep things fair, set different criteria each day so everyone has a chance to win. Some ideas include:
- Most improved advisor
- Motivational team member (voted by the team!)
- Highest sale or best quality score
- Outstanding customer feedback
Contributed by: Victoria
6. Pass the Merry Parcel
For this festive twist on the classic game, use two or three packages wrapped up in Xmas paper each with a gift/prize from Santa.
Just make sure one of the gifts is something team members would want and another is a novelty gift like – singing a Christmas carol to the team during a break.
How to Play
- Each time a team member achieves a specific call outcome, they pass the parcel to the next person who hits the target.
- Have an alarm clock set for a specific time, unknown to staff.
- The cycle continues until the mystery alarm rings.
- Whoever is holding a parcel when the alarm goes off gets to open it and claim their prize!
Contributed by: Marc
7. 12 Days of Christmas Initiative
Do you want to start the twelve days leading up to Christmas with some merry cheer? Well, surprising advisors with a small gift, a festive treat or a fun game each morning may be a great way to begin.
How it Works
Morning Email: Start each day with a festive message following the classic format:
- On the first day of Christmas, [Company Name] gave to me… a [gift/treat/game]!
- On the second day of Christmas, [Company Name] gave to me… a [gift/treat/game]!
Surprise Gifts: Hand out the treat at a random time during the day to build excitement and keep the festive spirit alive!
Contributed by: Helen Pettifer at Helen Pettifer Training
8. Deck the Halls With a Decorating Competition
Every year we all get a little bit excited to decorate our houses at Christmas time, so why not bring that excitement into the contact centre!
Let the team decorate their spaces with fairy lights, tinsel and other Christmas ornaments and, if you want to add a bit of healthy competition, why not have teams compete against each other. The contact centre manager can choose the winner.
How it Works
- Let the Decorating Begin – Encourage teams to transform their areas into winter wonderlands with lights, tinsel, and ornaments.
- Make It a Competition – The contact centre manager picks the best-decorated space. The winning team gets a special prize, like decorating the big Christmas tree in the centre of the office!
- Why It Works – Affordable prizes like this keep spirits high and make coming into work during the holidays something to look forward to
You could even add a “Positivity Tree” to the festive glamour, inviting your team to decorate an old Christmas tree with sweets and motivational quotes, so if somebody has a bad call, they can go and get an inspirational quote and a sweet to cheer them up!
9. A Christmas Lunch Bingo Competition
Add a fun twist to the workday with Christmas Lunch Bingo! A simple, engaging game that brings laughter and festive cheer to the contact centre.
How it Works
- Design a Bingo Card – Fill it with Christmas words and phrases.
- Play During Calls – Advisors mark off words when used naturally in conversations.
- Bingo! – The first to complete their card wins!
Christmas Lunch Edition – Challenge advisors to work the key elements of a Christmas lunch into conversations (e.g., turkey, stuffing, crackers).
Winners could enjoy a mini Christmas lunch celebration, staggered off the phones. Just remember, keep it natural! No forcing phrases just to win… that would be elfish!
Contributed by: Mike
10. Bring Good Tidings to All
Think about the impact your words have at Christmas. Grinch-like service? Santa’s elves packed the wrong product? Rudolph running late? These problems mean more to customers during the festive period.
Show you understand the impact they’ve had on their lives by reflecting back what they’ve told you. Don’t be scared to use words like upsetting and frustrating if that’s what they told you.
- “I can see how frustrating this must be for you.”
- “That sounds really upsetting. Let me fix this for you.”
Remember, a sorry goes a long way. It could be the difference between a customer you have this Christmas and one you’ll have for many more to come.
Contributed by: The First Word
Other Fun Ideas
Let’s take a step back from all of the fun and games to consider the opportunity to delight customers and spread a warm season’s greetings that Christmas presents us with.
If we get customer service right at this time of year, customers may remember the positive impact that you made year after year. This can be great for your business.
So, let’s help to ensure that every customer is warmly greeted, taken care of and given the full attention they deserve.
To do this, we want to keep our customer service teams as happy as possible, which we can do through each of the ten ideas above.
But we’re not done quite yet! Below is a list of even more ideas that have been sent in by our readers, which you may also wish to try out.
- Play Christmas music in the break room
- Run charity fundraisers
- Start an Advent Quiz
- Build Santa’s Grotto
- Christmas Chorus Competition
- Pin the Nose on Rudolph
- A Christmas Wrapping Competition
We hope that all these ideas help you to have a great Christmas in your contact centre this year. But one thing is for sure, if you don’t give them a go, Yule be sorry!
From all of us here at Call Centre Helper; Happy Holidays!
If you want more ideas to spread Christmas cheer is your contact centre, read these articles next:
- 10 Christmas Office Games to Motivate Your Team
- Top 20 Motivational Games for the Contact Centre
- 100 Great Staff Incentives to Motivate Your Team
Author: Robyn Coppell
Reviewed by: Hannah Swankie
Published On: 11th Dec 2021 - Last modified: 20th Mar 2025
Read more about - Call Centre Management, Fun, Games, Helen Pettifer, Motivation
