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The best businesses test themselves and their competitors to make sure they are in front of the pack.

The Keys to Great Customer Service

Customer service is every employee's job. Anyone in your company may come into contact with customers or potential customers, so everyone is part of the customer service team.

Make sure your employees know that "It's not my job" is always the wrong thing to say to customers. "Let me see if I can help you" is always the right thing to say, along with a smile and tone of voice that suggest you really mean it. Here are some other tips for creating a winning customer service environment:

Aim for service that's better than expected. A customer spoke to the manager of a business to complain about the service received. The manager gave one explanation after another for what had annoyed the customer. The customer remarked that the company would surely lose business if it continued to treat people that way. To that the manager responded, "We keep track of those statistics and as long as we are in line with everyone else, we'll keep doing things this way."

Such an attitude provides competitors with the opportunity of a lifetime. If your objective is to be no worse than the others, a smart competitor can take business away from you by being just that much better than you and all those others.

Give employees autonomy to deal with problems. The more limits you place on employees' ability to deal with problems themselves, the more it costs you in the long run.

Be proactive. No customer service plan should rely solely on reacting to complaints. The best businesses test themselves and their competitors to make sure they are in front of the pack. One way to do this is by hiring outside consultants to act as "mystery customers"—a practice widely used in the retail industry. You can do it yourself or use a trusted associate. Call your own company and pretend to be a potential customer, a confused customer or an irate customer—and see what happens.

Train, train and train. Don't take it for granted that your employees know how to provide good service or deal with customers. Even the nicest, most pleasant people can learn better ways to communicate with customers in person and over the phone. And everyone can use a refresher course from time to time on dealing with difficult people. The investment in time and money is small when you consider the payback.

Both business and retail consumers are savvier than ever. They know what good service is and they expect to get it. For that reason, creating a strong customer service environment at your firm is clearly a winning strategy.