The fifth annual Customer Service Celebration aimed to recognize the importance of customer service took place last week.

Consisting of workshops and award ceremonies, the celebration was intended to both sharpen customer service skills among employees on campus and honor those who have shown exceptional dedication to serving the community.

“The purpose of the celebration is to reaffirm our commitment to providing exceptional service throughout the year, to celebrate the efforts put forth toward increasing service levels and to acknowledge those staff members and departments who provide exceptional service to students, faculty, staff, parents and other internal and external customers,” Jennifer Seile, a Customer Service Celebration coordinator and Management Analyst for the University, wrote in an e-mail.

Events ranged from social gatherings encouraging employees to discuss customer service, to workshops aimed at improving service skills. More than 300 staff members from various departments on campus participated.

“We offer customer service training sessions for staff and coordinate activities that allow staff to get to know one another better in the spirit of developing more collaborative relationships across departmental and divisional boundaries.” Seile said. “We (also) offer an opportunity to recognize those who are nominated for going above and beyond their job descriptions.”

At Wednesday’s Brown Bag Lunch lecture on stress management held at the Marvin Center, Diane DePalma, director of the University Counseling Center, emphasized techniques for dealing with stress in the workplace and in general settings.

“If you are less stressed, you have more energy to give to the student (or customer) coming in,” DePalma said.

The week’s events culminated in an awards ceremony on Thursday morning. Two departmental winners and five individual winners were selected from over 200 nominations made by members of the GW community in October. Departmental honors went to the Office of the Registrar, which received the Departmental Service Award, and to the Office of Admissions along with ISS Technology Services, which together won the Partnership Award.

The department and partnership awards were decided via the portal by popular vote with more than 400 individuals voting for their favorites online, Andrew Sonn, director of Customer Service Initiatives at GW, wrote in an e-mail.