All the (Business) World's a Stage

William Shakespeare via last.fm

One of the most difficult concepts to teach front line customer service representatives is that the job sometimes requires you to act. I may be having a string of bad luck, a difficult life, or a bad hair day, but my job is to serve the customer with a smile on my face and to give that customer my best (even if I don't feel like it).

Disney has made their concept of every employee being a "cast member" a legendary concept. Business, however, has had a difficult time translating the concept into the call center, the cubicle, or the local strip mall.

One of my associates is a great coach, and she regularly tells her charges that their shift in the customer service role is "the 9-to-5 show starring you!"

The reality is that all Customer Service Reps have much to learn from good actors:

1. Voice-tone. Your voice is a tool and you can control the inflection, power and pace. A great CSR, like a great actor, knows how to control their voice to communicate effectively in a wide variety of circumstances.
2. Focus. One of the disciplines of stage actors is the ability to maintain focus on their role despite a myriad of things that may happen beyond "the fourth wall." Audience laughter, heckling, crying babies and cell phones threaten to distract them at all times, but they focus on the task at hand. CSRs can equally be distracted by any number of things, but great CSRs focus on their customers and resolving the issue at hand.
3. Discipline. Great acting takes discipline to memorize lines and blocking. Even the art of improvisation (though it seems like a contradiction) is a well-honed discipline which requires effort and practice. The same can be said of great customer service. Learning procedures, processes and how to improvise in difficult conversations requires time, attention, training and practice.

A few businesses have discovered that CSRs have much they can learn from actors. After all, "All the world's a stage (even the business world), and we are all merely actors in it."