"Are your front line employees selling you out?"
By Ron Morrison

A few months ago I was in my local, but nationally known, home improvement store.  All I needed was a whirlygig to fix my what-cha-ma-call it; one small and simple item in a vast sea of home improvement products!

I wandered around aimlessly, row to row and aisle to aisle, desperately in need of some good old fashioned customer service!  Put simply, I needed someone to point me in the right direction and provide a little friendly help.

As I marveled at the employees' total unawareness of my presence, I wanted to scream to the employee on his cell phone, "Hey you in the vest...get off the cell phone and help me."  Or to the employee on the ladder, "You up there, stop counting those boxes and help me find what I need!"  Or to the employee chatting it up with his friends, "Stop talking to your friends and get over here!"

Then I noticed the little red button!  As I pushed the little red button the overhead speakers clearly announced "Special assistance needed on the whirlygig aisle!"  Immediately I realized that I was calling store wide attention to myself.  I waited and waited, and finally help (if you can call it that) arrived!  From this person's tone of voice, their body language, and their overall demeanor I learned that I was not a valued customer, but rather an interruption!  I was a burden!  I had caused them to stop counting boxes, stop talking on the phone, and to stop "chatting it up" with their friends.  I had caused them to pay attention to me, and this was (albeit unintentional on my part) bothersome to them!!

During my visit it became apparent that my local home improvement store has forgotten why they are in business!  They are not in business to count boxes, talk on the phone, or to chat it up with their friends.  They are in business to meet a need!  They are in business to provide unparalleled service and quality products.  However, they, through their front line employees, are losing points on the customer service scoreboard.

Why? Because their front line employees are selling them out!

For the executive that truly understands the importance of delivering quality customer service, this is the most challenging issue he or she faces today!  Regardless of individual business disciplines, most every business on the planet is in the customer service industry.  Businesses attempting to capture discretionary dollars are in a customer service war!  Their competitors may not even be in the same industry and they may not even realize who their competitors are!  For instance, consider patrons of Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.  Universal Studios prides itself on stellar, above average, frontline employee to customer interactions.  Thus, patrons who receive that stellar Universal Studio's service will have an experience of true customer satisfaction.  Further, they may begin to expect such service at the local grocery store, hardware store, or perhaps even at the dentist office! 

Quality services, once received, create a shifting paradigm for what is expected from various other businesses and their employees.  The competition is not always product to product as much as it may be service to service!  Your company's greatest competitor may be a company that provides superior service to yours!  As a result, when consumers spend their discretionary dollars, you may not get them!

Too often, front line employees have no idea they are "selling you out." In fact, they are often painfully unaware that their behaviors may create the appearance that your company does not value your customers.  Further, they may not be able to make the connection between your company's profitability and their delivery of service.  Typically, when a front line employee interacts with a consumer he calls on his life experiences and by nature follows a set of behaviors that are the norm in his personal life.  Many times, the result is a miserable experience for the consumer who is paying his wages by purchasing your product!

In response to the national trend of declining customer service, many companies are going to great lengths to close the customer service gap.  Chances are, your company has identified how and where you "touch" the customer.  These "touch points" may be tangible, and noticeably impact your customer's experience.  A few examples might be clean restrooms, clean tables, or a fresh smelling facility. 

Other "touch points" are emotional in nature. These occur at the points in time when there is direct interaction between front line employees and your customers.  These may be both positive and negative connections that will create a memory with your customer. 

Touch points and employee behaviors combine to create the overall customer experience.  It is management of the customer's experience that will set you apart from your competitors. Let that slide, and you will quickly lock yourself into world of customer service mediocrity. By ignoring the customer's experience, companies create the starting point of customer departure.

As you read this article consider this: to effectively maximize the customer experience, an organization must move beyond the mere identification of touch points and expected behaviors.  Creating a quality emotional connection with your customer through interaction at the front line is one of, if not the most difficult challenge companies face today!

So, how do you do it? How do you advance an employee's customer service mindset to the point it is positively embodied by behaviors focused on creating a positive emotional connection in employee to customer interactions?

I believe the answer lies in the development of your human capital.  Notice I did not say training.  While I believe that development can come through training, development is more substantial and it can be measured.  Here are the key ingredients:

• A leadership team properly developed so that they can communicate and articulate their vision in a convincing, compelling, and confident manner. This team should also be developed to hold itself accountable to a set of behaviors that align to the vision through mission and core values! There is no substitute for a leadership team heading in a unified direction with a clear vision in front of them. 
• Experiential learning processes that foster both intellectual growth and behavioral development. These processes should be ones in which employees define their personal mission toward company vision. These learning experiences need to be engineered so that employees truly practice the behaviors you desire! Customer interactions, conflict resolution, self leadership, case studies, proper verbiage, interaction etiquette, and role play are a few of the concepts that should be present within this type of development. These processes should be designed to shape the behaviors you want in the employee to customer interaction! These processes should also address behaviors that are inherent to employees and may appear to contradict your company's vision. This is "training" at the emotional level. These experiences should not be mere orientation classes.
• Management teams developed to coach and mentor front line employees because they are personally committed to company vision, mission, and values and understand both their behavior and a front line employee's behavior is your company's brand! This team should understand that your brand in how you behave! 
• Accountability developed to clearly defined and acceptable behaviors in both the public eye and behind the scenes operations that support what has been developed in the learning processes. Accountability should be effective, clean, and safe.
• A process for behavior measurement with feedback. This should be metric based entirely on behavior. Unlike a mystery shopper program, this metric should provide immediate feedback on performance that is tied to set of company defined behaviors and standards, not one's opinion.
• A system of reward and timely recognition for appropriate and acceptable behaviors. This system should move beyond a bonus plan, to create an understanding of how to develop commitment, and a practical knowledge of "the why."

As you near the conclusion of the article you may think, "We have that covered, there are no problems here!!"  I would challenge you to take a deeper look.  My experience has taught me that things are not always what they seem. You may fool yourself, but you will not fool your customers!

Customer service starts at the top of the company, not with the front line!  It starts with a leadership team that understands what it takes to win a customer, or a team that is willing to learn what it takes to win a customer!  If the top of your company is struggling to define their vision, missions, and core values, then your front line employees will never be able to do what the executives themselves are not doing!  Worse yet, if the top of your company is failing to behave according to what is already defined, then the front line does not stand a chance to be successful!

As I was facilitating a recent seminar, the CEO of a rather large and highly successful international company raised his hand to say, "I get it!  What you are teaching us is that we can have the best engineers in the world, we can have the best facilities in the world, we can have the best tangible product in the world, but our delivery drivers can sell us out by not providing the service we promise!  By selling our customer short, they are eroding the value of our brand!"

I simply said, "You've got it!" 

Customers determine your level of commitment to them based on their experiences with frontline staff members.  Needless to say, those interactions are critical in maintaining your brand!  Further, those interactions may give cause for your customer to pull the dollar out of their pocket and spend it on your product or it may give them cause to walk right out of your front door!

As you consider where you are as a company, remember the opening of this article!  I was at a nationally recognized home improvement center.  Posted on the wall was the company vision and mission statement, but not one of the front line employees I encountered that day could articulate it through their actions or behavior!  I sold my stock!

Ron Morrison is the CEO of SASI Consulting.  For more information, email Ron directly at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .