WHEN you think of the three P's you probably think about the guy selling life insurance for senior citizens.  For the next three weeks I'm going to talk about the three P's of providing excellent customer service. Today we'll start with the first P which stands for “people”.

You can have great products.  You can have great prices.  But the people you hire to directly deal with your customers can make or break your business with one interaction with a customer.  Sadly, I believe that most people have come to accept a lower standard of treatment in today’s market.  Many people tend to be somewhat forgiving to begin with as long as the treatment they receive does not cross a certain line.  If you or your employee display disrespect or ignores a customer that customer will probably be lost to your business.  Worse than that, the collateral damage caused by that customer telling everyone they know about their experience may be hard to overcome.

Years ago, when I owned a mail & parcel center in California, a customer service expert that had spoken at a convention I attended told us that if a customer has a good experience with your business, they might tell one or two people about it.  But if they have a negative experience, they will tell at least ten people how badly they were treated.  Today you can multiply those numbers ten-fold if not more thanks to social media.

In today’s HR world businesses are limited to their questioning of an applicant’s past work history with a previous employer.  The one question you can ask a previous employer is “Would you hire this person back again?”  I would go a step further.  If I were interviewing a candidate for a job, especially one where they will be dealing directly with customers, I would create a few questions around specific customer service examples and ask that candidate how they would handle each situation.

Not everyone is geared to deal with the public, especially in a retail setting.  My wife was very good at dealing with customers but there were certain customers that drove her bananas.  You want to hire people who preferably are people persons, and who have a desire to serve the customers.  Ask questions of the candidate that are not easily answered with a canned response that they think you want to hear.

Of course, when you hire someone you need to provide complete and proper training as to how you want the person to follow in serving your customers.  Even a good employee needs to know what you expect of them and how you want situations handled.  Do not leave it to the employee to guess, even if they seem to be a top-notch employee.  It is not fair to them, and you may not get the results you were hoping to achieve.

Next week I will discuss the second of my three P’s of excellent customer service.