If your service business employs a customer-service staff, even a small one, you’ve probably emphasized to them more than once that the customer is the most important person to your operation. And from their perspective, that’s definitely in your best interest.

But from your strategic standpoint as owner or manager – and contrary to countless customer-service books – your customers are actually only the second most important group in your business.* Here’s why:

Think for a moment: how much time do you actually spend face-to-face with each of your customers? And how much time does each of your customer-service employees spend face-to-face with them? If your business is at least moderately successful, the answers are probably, in order, something like, “Not much” or “As much as I can,” and, “A lot more than I do.”

In any service business where there is a level of employees between the customer and you, the manager or owner – a sales team, a server staff, cashiers, telephone operators – those employees are going to amass a whole lot more “face time” with your customers than you will. Why? It’s what you’re paying them to do. You pay them to provide consistently excellent service to your customers, guests, clients, patrons, or whatever you want to label them. You pay them to do it because, unless your business is very, very slow, you don’t have time to deal with every customer yourself.

Your service staff is absolutely indispensable to the success of your business. Do you treat them accordingly?

Do you make hiring decisions with their importance to your operation in mind? Do you devote enough time and energy to training them to take care of your customers just as you would? Do you monitor them to ensure that they are working at your (and your customers’) standards? Do you show them the respect they deserve and that will make them want to continue to perform well for you? Do you accept, and even solicit, your employees’ insight and input into your operation?

Do you offer your customer service staff all of the tools they need to provide your customers with the superb service you would give them yourself?

* Now, lest you get the uppity notion that just because you’re Top Dog, you are the most important person to the business’s success, try this little exercise (and be honest with yourself): if your customer service staff somehow vanished suddenly, how long could your business keep running? Would your customers continue to, or be able to, do business with you? Now, how long would your business be able to run if you suddenly vanished (after you opened the front door)? Would customers still be able to do business with your operation? The answer is probably yes. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll probably see that your service staff actually is the most important component in your customer-service operation. (Now, don’t feel bad. Your job is executive and administrative – crucial, to be sure, and you’d be missed as soon as your cashier needed change, or the new employee schedule was due, or a delivery person needed a check. But it might be quite a while before one of your customers asked where you were.)

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