The first contact any person has with your company are the customer service or sales people, your front-liners. They are our company’s brand ambassadors. And so they have to be at their best—delivering ultimate experience and creating stories of delight for our customers. Now that is not an easy job! Thus, our people may experience stress everyday of their lives at work.
The Weight On Frontliners’ Shoulders
Being in the front line, a great part of the responsibility for success or failure is on the hands of these people. As a result, our employees can actually make or break our company. They can make our guests happy or unhappy with our service. They can make them mad and they would have to deal with them. Our staff can solve the situations or lose our customers because of dissatisfaction. All these add up to the weight they carry on their shoulders.
Our front line staff represents our products and services. They also represent the management. But most of all, they represent our values.
And so with these responsibilities, stress at work can take a toll on the productivity of many employees from different industries. Job stress is innate in most lines of work. For instance, customer service representatives of BPO industries may eat curses from their customers for breakfast. Or our honest and diligent government employees may receive their shares of offensive words from dissatisfied clients. And maybe sometimes, sales people have to try to please their obnoxious target buyers. Those may be common experiences attached to their jobs. But let us not forget that they can grow tired and exhausted too. They are human beings.
These people are our front line staff. They are the company’s most valuable assets. And they are prone to stress and eventually, burnout.
4 Tips on Stress Management
So how can we help our people who get first-hand complaints and recipients of disgruntled talks, curses and swears? Here are some tips to manage job-related stress for our frontline staff.
- Move your bodies and stretch your minds. Focus on your physical and mental well-being. Eat well. Also, get some exercise. Release some stress by getting into shape through walking, running, biking or whatever can make your muscles stretched. Calm your mind and get enough sleep. Stay healthy for success.
- Start your day with a Positive Mental Attitude. Get into an agreement with yourself that you will not be affected by negative vibes coming from your colleagues, boss and your customers. You will remain cool and be in control. Practice this attitude and reward yourself.
- Don’t take it personally. The anger or dissatisfaction of your customer has nothing to do with you. Don’t allow it to get into your mind and soul. Let go. Move on. You and your team will take care of the complaint, solve it and improve for the better.
- Neutralize negative emotions. When you feel stressed, think about things that make you happy. Take note of the times that you really had a good laugh. Think about your family, people you love. Happy thoughts could help a lot.
Helping our Employees Cope
Our front line staff must possess the skills of managing stress. A lot of times, they are confronted with irate customers or overwhelming requests from clients. All of those can produce stress and burn-out if not handled well. Our customers are the life blood of our companies but equally important are our employees. They make things happen. If they cannot manage stress, every aspect of the organization may be affected. Let’s help them. Learn more about managing stress in Businessmaker Academy‘s Stress and Time Management Class.