10 Christmas Customer Service Ideas for Festive Fun!

We share lots of tips for having a “holly jolly” Christmas with your customer service team, helping you to bring some festive fun into your contact centre.

After all, Christmas really is a great Claus for celebration!

1. Let It Spin!

Here’s the wheel that The White Company uses for this Christmas-themed incentive, with each colour representing a different prize.

Why not play “Spin the Wheel”, where advisors can win great (and some pretty terrible) Christmas-themed prizes?

Spins can be based around products sold, added value to the customer, customer feedback and CSAT/NPS.

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).

Creating an environment where people want to come in makes all the difference in this festive season.

With this in mind, it is also great to ask leaders to stop their day-to-day floor walk and ensure they are there and ready to support the floor.

Thanks to The White Company’s contact centre team

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!

Thanks to Sky’s contact centre team

For more great tips from Sky, read our article: 14 Fresh Ideas From the Sky Contact Centre

3. If the Contact Centre Is Quiet…

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 Christmas thank you for all their hard work.

The company has started a Little MOOsters Morning, where employees can bring their children to work for crafting, games and to meet Santa.

Also, the company has started a Little MOOsters Morning, where employees can bring their children to work for crafting, games and to meet Santa.

Christmas is also a time for giving back to the local community, so MOO are running a coat drive for the homeless, filling holiday gift boxes for those less fortunate and donating to a local food bank.

Thanks to MOO’s contact centre team

For more great tips from MOO, read our article: 19 Things We Learnt at the MOO Contact Centre

4. Ugly Christmas Jumpers and Photobooths

It’s a nice idea to plan an “ugly Christmas sweater” day and to bring in a photobooth and provide some quirky accessories.

These quirky accessories could include reindeer ears, Santa hats and, of course, lots of tinsel!

Who doesn’t love an ugly Christmas jumper?

The team can then post the pictures on the intranet system or an online community group and ask everyone to vote for their favourite.

The winner will get a token prize, like a mug filled with hot chocolate, while everyone can take home the photos, which will hopefully become great Christmas memories.

Just remember, you don’t have to do big prizes, especially if you are a public organization.  Even if we could, we would not for this activity, as we want to maintain the festive fun factor.

Thanks to Denis

5. A Giant Advent Calendar

A giant advent calendar has worked well in the past, with a golden ticket for an hour off as a prize, as well as wine, chocolate, a duvet day, all the normal stuff.

The unpredictability and the ability to win in order to see what’s behind the door adds some healthy competition, which helps to spread that festive fun.

Instead of creating a big advent calendar, you could wrap gifts, giving them a different number, for the winning advisor to open on the corresponding day.

The only trouble that you may have is in how you determine who opens the calendar and wins the prize.

So, our advice is that every day there should be different criteria, so all your people have an equal opportunity to win the prize.

Examples could be most improved, motivational team member as voted for by the team, highest sales, highest quality score, customer feedback etc.

Thanks to 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.

Each time a specific call outcome is achieved, the package is passed to the next person who achieves the outcome.

Each time a specific call outcome is achieved, the package is passed to the next person who achieves the outcome. They hold onto the package until the next person achieves the outcome, and so on.

Have an alarm clock set for a specific time unknown to staff, and when it rings the people with the packages open them up to get their gift/prize.

Thanks to Marc

7. Start a 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.

This can all start with a morning email to advisors that is sent out on each of the 12 days leading up to Christmas Eve, which can simply have the following format:

On the first day of Christmas xxxxxxx (the name of the company) gave to me… a…

On the second day of Christmas xxxxxxx (the name of the company) gave to me… and a…

Vax also had a successful 12 Days of Christmas initiative in their Droitwich contact centre.

What a great way to start the day and build some festive cheer that will help advisors to treat everyone like a VIP.

Then, you can surprise advisors throughout the day by giving out the gift at a random point, to help build anticipation and a sense of merriment.

Thanks to 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.

The Dogs Trust even installed a sleigh when decorating their contact centre this Christmas.

That winner can then be given a prize, such as decorating a big Christmas tree at the centre of the contact centre floor.

With affordable prizes like this, which help to create an extra buzz around being at work during the Christmas period, winning is snow laughing matter!

9. A Christmas Lunch Bingo Competition

Design a bingo card, adding Christmas words and phrases. Then, sit with your team and run a bingo hour where each time someone uses a word they mark their card.

First one to complete = bingo! Random, but great fun!

Try “Christmas lunch rapport bingo”, where advisors work to get all the constituent parts of a great Christmas lunch into their conversations!

One great way to play this game is to try “Christmas lunch rapport bingo”, where advisors work to get all the constituent parts of a great Christmas lunch into their conversations!

Perhaps the winners could all be invited to a small Christmas lunch celebration that lasts for two to three hours, so you can stagger advisors off the phones. After all, food can always be a great ingredient for fun!

However, it can be good to only give small prizes for this game. We don’t want advisors to throw the words into conversations inappropriately to try to win. Doing otherwise would be elfish…

Thanks to 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.

So, 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.

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.

Also, just 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.

Thanks to The First Word team

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!

Author: Robyn Coppell