If you want your business to be successful, tell every employee this one thing:
“Your number one job description is to provide outstanding service to the customer.”
How many times have you been in a grocery store where you are obstructed from pulling an item from the shelf because an employee is busy restocking the shelves and in the way? Or perhaps you have had a cashier that doesn’t look you in the eye, say “thank you” or smile and/or shoves your packages back to you hastily.
Or maybe you have been greeted in a small shop by an employee on their cell phone (a personal favorite of mine) or walked into a spa, doctor’s office or accountant’s office where the receptionist was abrupt and rude. These situations happen daily in businesses all across the country.
Employees get very caught up in their functional duties. The stock-boy thinks that his primary job is to stock shelves. The cashier thinks that his job is to ring up purchases and take payments. But that completely undermines two critical business facts:
- Customers are the most valuable asset of a company – no customers, no business; and
- Every employee is an ambassador for the business.
No matter what an employee’s function is, their very first priority should be taking care of the customer. That attitude creates a culture of caring that is reflected to and felt by the customer.
That means that a stock-boy should prioritize customer service first, which means offering to help customers if they see them and/or getting out of their way to make the shopping experience a pleasant one. The cashier should be an ambassador to make sure that the customer had a great shopping experience – and solve any problems that may have come up, from a question about a specific item to an item being out of stock.
The receptionist should provide a fantastic greeting before turning to their functional duty of check-in. And if the service provider is running late, the receptionist should be proactive on that front and not have the client or customer checking back to see why there’s a delay.
The old adage that people may not remember what you say or do, but definitely remember how you make them feel remains strong and alive today. That amazing feeling will be generated by your employees who interact with customers, so make sure that they know that’s the most important job that they have to do.
