For many of us, the term "good customer service" is an oxymoron. We have become so accustomed to poor service that we automatically expect it. It doesn't matter where you go; doctor's office, supermarket, gas station, bank, department store, auto repair shop or movie theater; you have probably waited while someone finished a personal conversation, took a phone call from home, failed to acknowledge your presence, gave you an "I-don't know" answer, sent you all over creation or, my personal favorite, "I'm not allowed to do that".

With competition driving businesses to develop new strategies to attract and retain customers, we should be seeing service improvements everywhere we go. But we aren't. There are many reasons for this. With all the regulatory, expense management, profit maximization and human performance improvement issues being addressed, there is no one making sure the customer doesn't get caught in the cross fire.

Even businesses that claim to be customer-focused lose site of how some of their initiatives impact the customer. Identifying customer impact and customer service initiatives typically falls under the responsibility of marketing or retail storefront management. While knowing your customer's needs and preferences is a critical role for each of these groups, they may be blind to risk management objectives, human resource performance guidelines, sales contests and even training that overlooks some impact to customer service.

By implementing practices that try to create consistency in employee behavior, we may be handcuffing our employees and creating robotic behavior that doesn't consider all the peculiarities of customers. One of the biggest detriments to providing good customer service is an employee who is not empowered to do anything outside of his job description.

Job descriptions may consist of a number of things including the skills and responsibilities of the employee, the policies and procedures of the organization, the operations manual, timesheets, decision approval limits and any number of things that help define and put a box around what an employee can and cannot do.

Employees are hired to fill particular roles in a business or organization, e.g. department store cashier, bank teller, receptionist, customer service representative, supervisor, director, programmer or some other role depending on the business. They will be hired based on the primary job description for the role they will fill.

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