In any consumer business where there is contact between customers and employees, there is both an opportunity to impress the customer and a risk of losing the customer's business. From restaurants to retail stores, selling in-person to customer service over the phone, businesses must consider their relationships with customers an important piece of equity.

Regardless of the products or services a company provides, it is extremely important to be conscientious of customer expectations and needs. Retail stores should be sure to have sales clerks readily available to answer questions and help customers locate products. I hate shopping at most department stores because of the lack of salespeople around to provide help (along with the sheer overwhelming size of some of these stores. This problem could be minimized, however, by employing enough people to help direct customers who can't find certain departments or items.)

Another critical thing for retail stores is having employees who (at least appear to) genuinely care about helping out customers and making them feel comfortable in the store's environment. A real-life example of how a lack of customer service can reflect negatively on a store is the FedEx Kinkos near my office. I spend a good deal of time shipping packages for my clients from FedEx each week, so I've had plenty of time to observe the lack of dedication the employees at FedEx Kinkos have to customer service. I continually observe their overall apathy for their jobs; most of the time they don't bother to greet customers or ask if they need help. If the employees are working on something behind the counter when a customer enters the store and approaches them, they don't stop what they're doing or even tell the customer "I'll be with you in just a minute," as I would think is the very minimal courtesy required in such a circumstance. Instead they IGNORE the customer - avoiding all eye contact - until they've finished whatever else they're doing. I find this unacceptable and often wonder if the store loses customers because of this lack of customer service.

Another example of the role customer service can play in a business is of a restaurant where I was a waitress one summer during college. The restaurant - a popular East Coast Italian chain - was generally regarded fairly highly as having good food and as being a pleasant place to enjoy a meal. Until I worked there, I had always enjoyed eating there for both those reasons. After becoming an employee and witnessing all the behind-the-scenes work and management of the restaurant, I quickly became appalled by the poor management, lazy wait staff, and the inefficient nature of the business. I realized that the reason patrons of the restaurant weren't aware of these things was because of the attention that was given to customer service by the wait staff. Even those waiters and waitresses who were lazy behind the scenes and made no efforts to prepare food correctly or do their assigned "side work" to help each other out behaved quite differently while in front of the customers. The incentive for this? TIPS! Of course workers are willing to pay attention to customer service when they're receiving the vast majority of their payment directly from the customers and not from the restaurant. It frustrated me to no end that ultimately I received similar tips to those members of the wait staff who took no pride in doing their jobs right but instead focused only on being friendly and helpful to customers, insuring that they still received good tips. However, it did show me that even in a poorly-run business that doesn't always do quality work, the IMPRESSIONS the customer receives about the business can be the most important thing, which leads right back to the importance of customer service.

Every day at Dittoe PR, we act as representatives of the companies we work with. This makes it very important that we project a positive image for our clients, to ensure that the public sees them in a positive light!