In case you aren’t aware, this is a pretty special week in the customer service industry: national Customer Service Week.

Customer Service Week, an annual week-long event first implemented in 1992, serves as a reminder about the importance of showing some extra love to the people who directly support your business on an ongoing basis. It’s also designed to recognize all of the people within your organization who work hard to maintain top-of-the-line customer service. And, it’s a great time to do a gut check to make sure your department is performing at an optimal level.

As you could imagine, there’s a lot that you can do to improve your department’s strategy during Customer Service Week, and so you may be feeling overwhelmed. Here are some ideas to consider:

Offer some amazing deals: First and foremost, round up your marketing department and get them on board for this important week-long event. If possible, run some last minute markdowns for your customers and offer fun promotions in your store or on social media.

Spend some time in your customers’ shoes: Next, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and see exactly how your customers experience your business. Dial into your contact center with a question, so you can get a better sense of your interactive voice response (IVR) software is working, what the on-hold experience is like and evaluate your agents’ performance. Have some other supervisors do this, too. Then, call a meeting to discuss your insight.

Interview your agents: Pull some agents aside, and interview them about how management can make the department an ideal place to work. First, ask if they feel in command of customer interactions with the software they are using. Also, look for little ways you can boost morale like increasing your kitchen budget or buying a ping pong table to relieve stress during breaks. 

Dig into your data: This is an ideal time to analyze your key performance metrics (KPI). Some KPI to analyze include hang ups, resolutions and average handle times. For this step, it helps to have the services of a robust cloud-based dashboard, which can provide easy access to historical and real-time data. 

Finalize your 2016 customer service budget: The first week of October also signifies the start of 4Q2015, which means 2016 is right around the corner. So after you analyze your KPI from the past year, and you have a better sense of your department’s needs, you will be able to make a more informed decision about how you can best distribute your budget for next year. 

Last but not least, don’t forget to celebrate your staff with a party on Friday!