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"You've ruined Christmas!"

I've lost count how many times angry customers yelled that at me when I was working in retail, first in a clothing store and later in a call center. You've probably heard customers say the same thing if you've worked during the holiday season.

Getting yelled at is hard enough. It's extra painful when a self-righteous customer is using you as a human punching bag because some tchotchke they wanted to buy as a gift wasn't available.

Frankly, it's exhausting.

Three bad things happen to customer service employees when they're exhausted:

They can't think clearly.
It's harder to be friendly.
They struggle to even care.

Even during normal times of the year, service quality decreases after lunch, when employees are more fatigued.

Let's take a closer look at why your employees need extra rest during the holidays.

Exhausted customer service employees struggle to concentrate.

Exhaustion hurts clear thinking

Customer service employees must think on their feet. They need to be quick and resourceful problem solvers to keep customers happy.

Clear thinking gets difficult when we're tired.

A study of British office workers published in 2009 found that people who worked more than 55 hours per week showed decreased memory, vocabulary, and cognitive reasoning skills compared to those who worked 40 hours or less.

Memory, vocabulary, and cognitive skills are all critical to service.

This is especially true today, when customers are increasingly using self-service to handle simple transactions. This means our employees have to handle complicated issues more often.

That's hard to do when you're tired.

Fatigue makes it hard to be friendly

Shopping or dining out during the holiday season is supposed to be festive and fun. Part of that customer experience includes friendly and outgoing employees who help spread cheer.

It's tough to act warm and friendly when you're exhausted.

Putting a smile on your face when you don't feel like smiling is called surface acting. You can see a great example from this 1979 commercial from Pacific Southwest Airlines.

Arlie Hochschild first coined the term, "emotional labor," in the book The Managed Heart. It refers to the effort required to act happy when you don't feel that way. The bigger the gap between how we actually feel and the friendly emotions we’re trying to display, the more emotional labor we have to exert.

Like any type of labor, exerting too much wears you down and makes things even worse.

Weary employees struggle to care

Customer service employees are expected to empathize with customers. Listen to their problems, offer a few words of encouragement, and act like they truly care.

This gets a lot harder when you're tired.

Empathy fatigue, or compassion fatigue, is physical and mental exhaustion that comes from caring for others over a long period of time. I explored the concept more in-depth in this post, but here are a few symptoms:

Difficulty concentrating
Blaming others (i.e. customers) for their problems
Feeling hopeless

None of those exactly scream "happy holidays!"

How to overcome holiday exhaustion

There are several ways to help keep employees fresh, focused, and happy during the busy holiday season.

The first is to offer more breaks.

Supervisors often discourage employees from taking rest or lunch breaks during busy times. Legal issues aside, this can backfire and reduce productivity and service quality. Try giving employees more breaks instead, and you’ll likely see employees work fast while making fewer errors.

Micro-breaks are another solution.

In his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, author Daniel Pink suggests taking short breaks to regroup from difficult situations. It could be a quick trip to the water cooler, a short walk around the office, or just standing up from your desk to stretch for a moment.

Varying work assignments can also help.

When I managed a contact center, a lot of off-the phone work would pile up while we were deluged with customer calls. When call volumes died down, this work became a nice change of pace for agents who needed a break from upset customers.

I have one more suggestion for you: hold your holiday party in January.

I've done this myself, and there are several important benefits to moving the traditional holiday party out of December.

Cost. Event space is cheaper in January.
Attendance. There will be fewer scheduling conflicts with other holiday events.
Morale. January holiday parties are more fun because we’re not worn down!

The holiday season should be fun. Give yourself, and your employees, a few extra breaks and you'll keep that holiday spirit alive!

Many customer service employees view the holidays with dread.

It is supposed to be a joyous, festive time. The reality for many of us is our already busy days are filled with holiday activities such as baking, writing holiday cards, getting our Christmas shopping done, and attending a multitude of holiday parties.

Some customer service employees experience all that coupled with their absolute busiest time of year. They log countless hours of overtime. Each workday is a never-ending line of customers.

It's exhausting.

There are three types of fatigue in particular that are dangerous this time of year. Here is an overview of each one and how it may harm your customer service.

Lack of Sleep

Health care professionals generally recommend adults get seven to nine hours of sleep per night. A 2013 Gallup poll found that 40 percent of us get less than that.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists concentration and memory as the two highest-reported effects of insufficient sleep. We see this in customer service when employees have difficulty concentrating on your needs or remembering to call you back as promised.

Many of us overdose on coffee to compensate for a lack of sleep. Studies show too much caffeine can lead to difficulty sleeping, which makes the problem even worse.

How much employees sleep is largely outside of our control, though there are a few things we can do.

Share this blog post with employees and discuss it.
Try to keep employee schedules as predictable as possible.
Schedule holiday parties in January. (I've done this several times and they are often so much more fun!)

Directed Attention Fatigue

Customer service employees are besieged by distractions.

We're asked to multitask. The average contact center agent juggles five to seven computer programs using two monitors. Our daily world is filled with buzzes, beeps, screen flashes, and other signals that constantly capture and redirect our attention.

Over time, those distractions cause fatigue in the parts of of our brain that focus attention and block out external stimuli. This is known as Directed Attention Fatigue, or DAF. Some psychiatrists refer to it as Attention Deficit Trait (ADT) and suggest the symptoms are very similar to ADD.

Here are a few signs from DAF from Bernadine Cimprich:

Distractibility
Irritability
Impatience
Indecisiveness
Difficult starting and finishing tasks

All of these can be detrimental to outstanding customer service. This makes it essential for customer service leaders to help employees avoid or recover from DAF.

There are only a few things that are known to work:

Promote a workplace free of unnecessary distractions.
Reconsider whether using two computer monitors is a good solution.
Encourage employees to take breaks outside, since nature is known for its restorative qualities.
Set up a quiet room at work to give employees a place to unwind.

Empathy Fatigue

Customer service employees are supposed to care about customers.

We're expected to listen intently, try to understand customers' feelings and emotions, and take action to show we really understand.

Demonstrating too much empathy can be exhausting. The resulting fatigue is referred to as empathy fatigue, compassion fatigue, or even burnout. Here are just a few symptoms from Psychology Today:

Feeling burdened by the suffering of others
Blaming others for their suffering
Isolating yourself
Loss of pleasure in life
Difficulty concentrating

This is another list that clearly isn't conducive to outstanding service.

My study on contact center agent burnout revealed a few factors that can lessen the risk. It is likely these same factors are applicable in other customer service environments, too:

Customer Focus. Burnout risk goes down when employees believe their company is customer-focused.
Empowerment. Employees are less likely to face burnout when they feel empowered to help their customers.
Quality. Better products and services mean fewer upset customers, which means less empathy is needed. Elite companies are relentless about avoiding angry customers in the first place.

Conclusions

In his article, The Dopamine Economy, Umair Haque explains how many of our habits are unhealthy for our mental well-being. A lack of sleep, constant distractions, and an inability to truly focus result.

These habits become ingrained because they trigger dopamine releases in our brain. This makes these unhealthy habits incredibly addictive.

One way to break the cycle and recover is to schedule an unplug event. You can try this on your next two-day weekend.

Here's how it works:

Avoid all digital media. That means your smart phone, your computer, and even the television.
Spend time outdoors. Try going for a walk or a hike where you can get some fresh air and observe natural beauty.
Engage with friends. Have a game night, invite some friends over for dinner, or do something else that allows you to spend quality time with other people.

The first day won't be easy, but it gets better. By the end of the weekend, you'll likely feel more refreshed and focused than you have in a long time.