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Halloween is just around the corner, and people all over the world are scrambling to plan costumes, hang decorations, buy candy, and RSVP to Halloween parties (and, those who have kids are rushing to plan for them as well!).
Out of the office, your hardworking customer service agents may be caught up in the Halloween scramble. But in the office, they are working tirelessly to bring satisfaction and happiness to your valued customers.
As much as you might want to avoid Halloween distractions in the office (or not!), Halloween season is just one of those times where people won’t be as focused. And that’s understandable – Halloween is a fun day! The following Halloween party games will help you redirect that energy back into the workplace.
Reader beware: these office Halloween ideas will improve productivity, team cohesion, and boost employee morale, while also bringing a bit of seasonal fun to your customer service team!
(Note that although these tips were written with customer service agents in mind, you can tweak them to bring Halloween fun to any department or office! Each idea has been marked with a recommended time of use: before or on Halloween.)
This activity is adapted from Customer Experience Insight.
When to play: The Friday before Halloween
What you’ll need:
Start by picking a day of the week before Halloween (we recommend Friday – a day closer to Halloween and where agents are most likely to need an engagement boost!). Ask your agents to come in that day dressed up as a superhero. For this Halloween office activity, any superhero works! Encourage your agents to dress up as a Marvel or DC superhero, invent their own superhero, or even just come in with a sheet tied around their neck and a fun mask on. If you want to up the stakes, consider offering a prize incentive to the best dressed and/or most creative agents.
That same day, have your agents engage in some superhero-themed activities. Send your agents a link to an online quiz that’ll tell which superhero they are most like. Have everyone share their results (or turn it into a guessing game, and have everyone guess what each other got before the big reveal).
Another idea is to consider grabbing a couple of superhero-themed coloring books, and have a stress-relieving coloring session. Alternately, you can print out coloring pages online. This is a great activity because it can be done while agents are at their desks helping customers. Sharing art supplies also means that your agents will have to be comfortable asking one another for help – which is necessary in the customer service business. At the end of the day, you can gather pages that each agent has colored, and hang them around the office.
If you want to do something a bit more involved than coloring, you can print out blank comic book strips and pass them out to your agents, along with colored pencils, crayons, or collage materials (such as old comic books, scissors, and glue). Have your agents invent – via drawing or collage – their own superhero comic strip, in which a superhero saves an innocent customer from a deadly customer service disaster! At the end of the day, you can hang and share these too.
This is a day-long activity – don’t forget to provide snacks (or catering) for your hungry heroes!
When to play: Before or on Halloween
Who plays: Everyone! This game requires the participation of all supervisors and managers!
What you’ll need: Several rolls of toilet paper.
Divide your customer service agents into groups of no more than 6. Assign a manager or supervisor to each group (If you don’t have enough on-duty supervisors or managers, choose your most senior agents to volunteer to be mummified as well).
Choose one agent to be the judge and keep time. Distribute toilet paper rolls to your teams, and have each team mummify their manager. Make sure that there’s at least one toilet paper roll per agent so that no one gets left out.
Set the timer for 5 minutes, and watch your teams get to work! When the time runs out, have the judge decide which mummy is the most well-wrapped, which manager had the best before and after, which team was the speediest, etc. Encourage the judge (beforehand!) to give each team a superlative.
And don’t forget to take pictures of your groups with their mummies!
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need:
Gather your agents together and as a group, play an interactive adventure, such as this one, where you have to help characters Chad, Matt, and Rob escape secret agents and get to their meeting on time.
Next, divide your staff into two or three groups, and challenge each group to write out their own unique choose-your-adventure game. Rather than have the objective be “get to a meeting on time”, use a customer service-based end goal, such as “help the customer.” Since it’s Halloween, encourage your groups to make their stories as fantastical and spooky as they’d like (so that the player might encounter zombies, monsters, and furious customers along the way)!
Give each team between 45 minutes to an hour to create their own choose-your-adventure games. Then, as one group is presenting, have the remaining participants play!
This activity is adapted from our blog post, 20 Customer Service Training Ideas and Activities for Busy Teams.
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need: Fake white spider web
Have everyone stand in a circle, facing inward (that means managers and supervisors, too!). Have the person who is holding the fake spider web start by sharing something that they are afraid of. Everyone who relates to or agrees with that fear raises their hand, and grabs a bit of the spider web bundle. Then, the turn goes to the person to the right. At the end of the activity, you’ll find that the web is spread out amongst your whole team.
When you are done, hang the web up in your office as a Halloween decoration! Don’t forget to throw a plastic spider or two on it.
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need: One handheld camera or several cellphone cameras
In the week or two leading up to Halloween, have your agents take turns filming a quick one-minute video of themselves confessing their customer service sins – preferably in a dark room with a bright light shining on their face. If they haven’t seen it yet or need some inspiration as far as camera angles go, show them the video of the infamous apology scene from the Blair Witch Project, which this office Halloween idea is based on!
You can either have agents film this on their own time, using their cellphone cameras, or provide a video camera for them to use in the office (perhaps alone in a dark conference room).
Compile the short videos, and play the compilation for your team the day of your Halloween party.
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need:
If your customer service team dynamic mirrors the lovable dysfunction of hit TV show, The Office, then you might want to take a leaf out of their book and tackle a murder mystery game this Halloween.
Murder mystery games are relatively easy to play and are great for engaging large groups. The premise is simple: someone (in this case, one of your agents) was murdered, and the rest of your agents have to guess who did it.
This game is especially effective if you have new team members or a lot of agents, since players have to mingle in order to solve the mystery.
In case you want to avoid paying for the party kit, you can find several free murder mystery games online. If you are already familiar with the format of this game (and have the time and creative energy to do so) you can write your own murder mystery game. Hey, maybe your team can help, too!
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need: Your willing and creative agents
Volunteer work can be a big employee motivator, and your customer service agents are no different. Many companies have found that giving employees paid time off to volunteer helps boost motivation, engagement, and gives them a sense of meaning.
During these next few weeks of October, encourage your agent to find some Halloween-themed (or season-specific) volunteer opportunities. Maybe that means volunteering at a pumpkin patch, or a corn maze. Perhaps it means helping out at the Halloween party at your child’s school, or at the shelter for National Adopt a Shelter Dog Month. Regardless of what they choose, volunteering is a great way to mix up your agents’ normal office routine and help bring them a greater sense of fulfillment.
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need: Pumpkin cut-outs
In the weeks leading up to Halloween, hide several cut-out pumpkins throughout the office. This can be a simple cut-out on a sheet of orange construction paper, or it can be mini decorative pumpkins from a craft store.
Encourage your customer service agents to collect the pumpkins that they find, and redeem them in for a prize at the end of the month. To keep your pumpkin supply fresh, hide new ones every morning! How many different hiding places can you think of?
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need: Smiling participants
This body-swapping exercise could work several ways. Pick a few days where you have a handful of interested customer service agents “swap bodies” with willing employees from a different department. Your agents can trade desks with someone from marketing, finance, etc. to learn how things work on the other side. The benefit of this exercise is that it helps customer service agents envision broader career opportunities within your company, which can result in them staying with your company for longer. It also fosters inter-departmental communication, and gives other departments a better of understanding of how customer service works.
Another spin on this office Halloween idea that agents “swap bodies” with customers, by pairing agents up and assigning one agent from each pair to act as the customer who needs a problem solved. This can help teach empathy and for agents to see things from the customers’ perspective.
The final direction you could take this body-swapping activity is to have managers swap position with the reps, and vice versa. Agents usually love when a manager takes the time to try out their job for a day – it helps incentivize them to work at the manager’s pace, and it fosters a greater sense of team spirit.
When: Before Halloween
What you’ll need:
Have your reps create tombstones or even chalk outlines for themselves at the office (in this case, substitute the chalk for white tape, so that the outline doesn’t get erased so easily).
Encourage your agents to site the reason of death as a funny customer service situation. For even catchier tombstones, have them try and see if they can make a fun rhyme to put on it. If your agents would rather not use their own names, you can have them come up with tombstones for fictional past representatives who met a grizzly end (Ex. “Here lies darling Mary Bly, whose customers left a little too unsatisfied.”).
Put the tombstones on display, and use them as Halloween decorations. Regardless of which way you decide to do this activity, you and your agents will love seeing what everyone came up with!
When: On or before Halloween
What you’ll need:
This game can be played as a part of your Halloween party, or as a quick and easy way to get into the Halloween spirit any time of the month.
Compile a list of horror movie quotes, and have your agents try and guess what movies they’re from. Give out candy rewards to participants, and/or a small prize to whoever guesses the most right!
When: On or before Halloween
What you’ll need:
Customers may not always seem right, but it is always your job to make them smile! Blindfold your customer service reps, and have them take turns pinning the smile on the customer. If you want to make this a little harder, gently spin your agents around before letting them take a jab at it!
Your agents will get a laugh out of seeing that goofy jack-o-lantern smile on your upset customer’s face – and everywhere else they might have pinned it by mistake! This team building game could either be used as a fun addition to your office Halloween party, or as a fun way to boost engagement any time during the season.
When: Day of Halloween
What you’ll need:
Trick-or-treating isn’t just for kids. This Halloween, hand out some treat bags, and have your customer service reps go trick-or-treating through the building. Encourage as many other departments as you can to participate, and to bring in sweets to share (hey, you may even get them to go trick-or-treating too)!
This Halloween office activity is not only a great way for your agents to get candy – it will also help them meet people from different departments that they may never have met before, and will put staff from other departments in contact with customer service agents. During this activity, your agents may even venture into sections of the building that they have never been to, giving them greater familiarity and comfort within their own workplace.
Consider adding healthy options to the trick-or-treat routine as well. One way you can do this is by having the break room be the designated healthy treat stop. There, you can have some simple DIY treats such as banana ghosts and tangerine pumpkins waiting to be eaten. Adding fruit to this sugar-loaded holiday is a great way to help encourage balanced diets, and is especially important for your agents who can’t or don’t want to eat sugar.
You can stagger trick-or-treating throughout the morning, or schedule one or two timeslots. If you have agents with small children, consider inviting them along for the fun.
When: Day of Halloween
What you’ll need: Smiling participants
What fun would Halloween be without a costume contest? Encourage your customer service agents to come to the office the day of Halloween in costume.
For an extra twist, have your agents come up with a fun backstory for their character. How did Iron Man, the werewolf, a witch, or whatever else your agents may be dressed up as end up in customer service?
Judge the winner of the costume contest by their costume, and their backstory (or, hand out a separate award for each!).
When: Day of Halloween
What you’ll need:
Now that your agents are all costumed-out, why not seize the moment and take some fun Halloween pictures?
Set up a photo booth in your office, with a backdrop and professional lighting (there are a lot of companies, particularly on the local level, that provide and rent out photo booths – one example is We Love Photobooths). Choose from either a Halloween backdrop or a backdrop with your company’s logo on it (more points to you if you can get both!).
Include fun Halloween props like pom-poms, mustaches and more, that agents can use when posing for the camera. Be sure to add some custom-made customer service props, too! You can create fun signs like “#1 Customer Service Rep,” “We Love Our Customers,” “Customer Service Superstar,” “Off Duty,” and anything else you can come up with! Encourage your customer service agents to use the photo booth throughout the day, such as during break times, lunch, and while your Halloween party is popping.
The beauty of modern photo booths is that you get a physical and a digital copy of each photo. Hang some of the physical photos on a wall in your office, and let your reps take the rest home with them. Don’t forget to post your favorite photos to your company’s social media page! If the pictures come out great, your agents will probably be posting them, too!
Your customer service agents won’t forget it’s Halloween just because they’ve walked into the office, and neither should you! By taking advantage of this spooky and festive time of year, you can show off your corporate sense of humor, bring your customer service team closer together, and boost employee morale one game at a time.
We hope that you use these Halloween office ideas and party games to bring some energizing seasonal fun to your customer service team (don’t forget the snacks for some extra motivation)!
What’re your team’s favorite Halloween office activities? Let us know in the comments below!
For more reading, check out our blog post 20 Customer Service Training Ideas and Activities for Busy Teams.
Isabella is a freelance editor, writer, and blogger with Comm100. She is passionate about helping people, teams, and organizations grow into their full potential, and excel in their service. In her spare time, you can find her traveling, painting, or drinking copious amounts of coconut water. Connect with Isabella on LinkedIn.
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