The future survival of all businesses, but service businesses in particular, will be dependent on the quality of the service they provide for their customers.

Writing his Nicomachean Ethics over two thousand three hundred years ago the Greek philosopher Aristotle gave us, in the twenty first century, a very clear pointer how this can be achieved in the often misquoted phrase, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.”

Employees, especially customer facing employees, are amongst every business’s most valuable assets and they need to be looked after.  A piece of machinery will have a regular maintenance schedule and routine upgrade programme but employees are often neglected with development programme or progress reviews by the management. They are, in short, left to get on with it.

Small businesses should take a leaf out of the better run businesses’ book and arrange a least an annual review of all their employees by their managers.  This can establish any problem areas where procedures can be improved, grumbles about the business and training needed to keep up with the changing world. Owners of small businesses should also take a long hard look at themselves, perhaps try to see themselves as others see them. Are they keeping up to date or have they become stuck in the rut they created when they started the business.

It’s often a good idea to carry out a ‘mystery shopper’ exercise by getting someone to approach your business as a customer and provide feedback on the experience. Write to your own firm with a query and check on how that is dealt with, telephone and observe how the phones are answered, make a complaint to see the response, make a purchase and then follow your own procedure through to make sure everything has been done correctly.

The customer is the lifeblood of the business, no customer – no business! It is vital that everyone dealing with customers has access to information about them, credit levels, previous orders, problems that may have occurred in the past, transactions in progress, etc.  These are vital pieces of information that should be readily available, instantly, to anyone dealing with customers. I have written in previous blogs that customer relationship management has become the marketing buzz word and without doubt the almost universal available of computers has brought this within reach of every business.  To be able to link information normally considered the preserve of the accounts department with that from the sales team is vital to enable everybody to be able function providing satisfaction, or better ‘delight’, to the customer and profit to the business.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.” Both employees and employers have been trained to provide service at the highest possible level and routine procedures are both effective and followed habitually.