by Lin Barrett

Created on: June 04, 2009   Last Updated: June 22, 2009

Today's intense competition in the marketplace has revived a practice many businesses delegate to automation: customer service.

Good customer service, while expensive, is the best single investment a business can make in advertising. Didn't think of it that way? Most business owners don't.

Good customer service at the point of sale, whether by telephone or over the counter, delivers repeat business. Customers who had a good experience (or better, several) buying from you will tell their friends and co-workers about your company. Your customer base will grow without effort or further expenditure on your part. And people believe other people over an ad - word of mouth is the most effective advertising there is.

The good customer service that delivers this is not an accident.

Selection of the "right" person for customer service is a complex equation. A naturally gregarious individual will simply do better at this job, as well as outperform and outlast, a person who is shy, reserved, or overly intellectual. A degree of professionalism comes in too, as good customer service representatives project an air of calm competence and dedicated helpfulness whatever chaos their personal lives may endure.

Every business owner in the world has hired the wrong person for customer service at least once. Help is available from a surprising source: free on-line psychological tests. Try http://similarminds.com/personality_tests.html. The first test listed is the "Global Big Three" short test, consisting of 30 questions. This test will tell you how extroverted, stable, and organized a candidate is. If you need more information, go down to the next section and choose the Big 45 test. While it is 225 questions in length, its greater detail will give you a great road map to hiring the best candidate.

The best staff in the world still require support. They will need training to supply information on your products, and on correctly entering all possible transactions into your database. They may need training in other areas as well.

You in your turn need to think through the possible ways a sale could go wrong, and to have strategies in place for all of them. Good customer service does not mean being supine in the face of unreasonable demands by a customer; it means being able to reach a compromise leaving both business and customer minimally unhappy. Lay out clearly the paths your customer support staff can follow to achieve these goals, leaving no opportunity for them to be confused or bullied. Be very clear about the chain of command a customer is to follow if they are unsatisfied.

If you have made thoughtful decisions about the processes which support customer service, and carefully chosen your customer service staff to provide good customer service, your business will grow. It will grow both quickly and cheaply, because your customers will send each other in droves to your place of business. Good customer service can provide any business with a real leg-up on the competition, and continued growth even in bad economical times. It's the key to real, lasting business success.

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