Customer Service Week tends to celebrate wins: the strong quarter, the team that hit every target, the agent who turned a frustrated caller into a loyal customer. Those moments deserve the spotlight. But the habits behind them take years to build, through thousands of conversations, including more than a few that didn’t go as planned.
So this Customer Service Week, we asked six leaders at The Office Gurus a simple question: what is the most valuable customer service lesson you’ve learned? Their answers were remarkably consistent. None of them were about tools, dashboards, or process. They were about people: how you listen, how you show up, and how you treat the team doing the work.
If you’re evaluating an outsourcing partner, these lessons matter for a practical reason. The people who lead your account shape the decisions your agents make on every interaction. Here’s what ours have learned, and what each lesson means for the programs we run.
What Is Customer Service Week?
Customer Service Week is an annual celebration of customer service and the people who deliver it every day. It’s held during the first full week of October; in 2026, that’s October 5–9.
The International Customer Service Association created the event in 1984, and the U.S. Congress recognized it nationally in 1992. Many organizations use the week to recognize frontline teams. We’re using it to share what our leaders have learned from working alongside them.
6 Customer Service Lessons From Our Leadership Team
1. Great customer service starts long before the phone rings
“Great customer service starts long before the phone rings. It starts with how we treat our own people. When agents feel supported, trained, and genuinely valued, that care shows up in every conversation. Our clients’ customers can hear the difference.”
— Ben Alpert, Vice President of Strategic Development
Troy Sanders, [Job title], sees the same connection: “How we take care of our people at TOG inspires them to provide excellent service for our clients’ most important assets: their customers.”
Why it matters: Agents can’t extend care they don’t receive. Training, support, and recognition show up in the details customers notice, like tone, patience, and the willingness to stay with a problem until it’s solved.
What it means for your program: When you evaluate a partner, ask how they support their agents, not only how they measure them. At TOG, a dedicated team trained on that account serves every client, so the people who learn your brand are the people who represent it.
2. Listen to understand, not simply to respond
“The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is to listen to understand, not simply to respond. Great customer service starts with truly understanding what someone needs, what matters to them, and sometimes what they aren’t saying directly. When we get that right, we’re in a much better position to solve the right problem and create an experience that builds trust.”
— Jaimie Bell, Vice President of Client Experience
Eduardo Parker, Global Director of Workforce Management, frames it the same way: “The best customer service doesn’t start with an answer. It starts with listening, understanding the need, and doing everything you can to help.”
Why it matters: A fast answer to the wrong question doesn’t resolve anything. It usually means the customer has to reach out again. Listening helps agents find the real issue, including what the customer didn’t say out loud.
What it means for your program: Pay attention to how a partner’s leaders talk about service. If understanding comes before speed in their own words, it’s more likely to show up in how you treat customers.
3. Trust is what turns a transaction into a relationship
“The best service comes from listening more than talking. Whether it’s a customer on the line or a client we’re building a program for, people want to feel heard and understood. When you get that right, trust follows, and trust is what turns a transaction into a relationship.”
— Ben Alpert, Vice President of Strategic Development
Why it matters: Ben’s lesson applies in two directions. The same habit that earns a customer’s trust on a call earns a client’s trust when you’re designing a program.
What it means for your program: A partner that listens first will ask more questions before proposing a solution. That early discovery is a good sign: it means the program is being built around your customers, not a template.
4. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, especially when things go wrong
“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to always put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Things will go wrong. Great customer service isn’t about pretending they won’t. It’s about how you respond: being transparent, taking ownership, and showing genuine empathy. Customers don’t want fillers or scripted responses; they want to know that you understand their problem and genuinely care about solving it.”
— Mark Lyndsell, Executive Vice President of Global Operations
Stephanie Walsh, Senior Director of Client Solutions, points to the same idea: “My most valuable lesson has been the power of empathy. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, listen closely, and remember that even something as simple as a smile can go a long way toward creating a positive experience.”
Why it matters: One of the most common customer service mistakes is treating a problem as something to deflect rather than own. Customers forgive issues far more easily than they forgive feeling dismissed.
What it means for your program: Ask a potential partner how they handle things when they go wrong, both with your customers and with you. Transparency and ownership should apply at every level of the relationship.
5. Customer service is humans helping humans
“Customer service isn’t humans dealing with problems. It’s humans helping humans. Listen, understand, and then find the solution.”
— Eduardo Parker, Global Director of Workforce Management
Why it matters: How a team frames the work changes how it gets done. When the job is “handling tickets,” customers become problems in a queue. When the job is helping people, agents slow down enough to understand what’s actually needed.
What it means for your program: Tools and workflows matter, but they work best when they support the person on the line rather than replace their judgment. Look for a partner whose processes are built around that person.
6. Treat every interaction as brand new
“One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is to treat every interaction as brand new. It sounds simple, but it’s incredibly hard. We naturally carry the last conversation, frustration, or challenge into the next. Great customer service requires us to reset, stay fully present, and give each person the experience they deserve, no matter what came before.”
— Jaimie Bell, Vice President of Client Experience
Why it matters: The customer on the next call doesn’t know what happened on the last one, and they shouldn’t feel it. Staying present across a full shift is one of the hardest skills in customer service.
What it means for your program: Consistency across every interaction depends on agents who are supported enough to reset. That’s where the first lesson comes full circle.
The Thread That Connects Every Lesson
Read these lessons together and one idea runs through all of them: the frontline agent’s experience shapes the customer’s experience.
Listening, empathy, ownership, and staying present aren’t techniques you can add to a script. They’re habits people build when they feel supported, trained, and valued. Agents who are stretched thin, undertrained, or constantly rotating can’t consistently deliver any of them.
That’s why our leaders’ lessons sound less like customer service tips and more like a philosophy of contact center leadership. Take care of the people, and the people take care of the customers.
Why the Lessons That Stuck Were About People
None of our leaders named a tool or a metric as their most valuable lesson. Every answer came back to people, and that’s not a coincidence. That’s why people-powered performance sits at the center of how we work.
Those lessons depend on keeping experienced, engaged agents on your account. Listening well, handling problems with empathy, and resetting between interactions all get stronger with time on the job. When agents leave, that experience leaves with them.
For a CX or operations leader choosing a partner, this is the practical takeaway: the culture behind the account matters as much as the metrics in the contract. Retention is where the two meet.
Hear More on Why People Are the Product
This month we are celebrating Customer Service Week, and the agents who put these lessons into practice every day. If you want to go deeper on the people side of service, this episode of The Guru Way podcast picks up where this post leaves off.
THE GURU WAY PODCAST · EPISODE 4
Want to go deeper on the people side of service? This episode picks up where this post leaves off.
Want to meet the people behind these lessons? Talk with our team about what your customers need and how we’d support the agents who serve them.
