The customer is God! The customer comes first! The customer is number 1! How many times have you and I heard people use these phrases? How many times have you and I used them ourselves? The fact is, they are WRONG! Shocking!? Maybe, but let's reason on this a little.

First, the customer is not God! God doesn't need what you and I are selling. We don't talk to god on the phone to take his order for product or handle his complaints about our service. In short, I don't use the "customer is God" cliché because I don't worship any of my customers. That settled, let's move on.

"The customer comes first," and "the customer is number 1," or similar clichés, although well-intentioned, are WRONG! I know you customer service experts are thinking to yourselves, "this guy's a crackpot! He knows nothing about customer service. He's way out there!" I'm sorry to tell you that you're all WRONG! And here's why you're all wrong. It's because such thinking shifts our focus away from where it should be first.

An analogy will help. Imagine it's 7:00am on any Monday morning and you're all prepared for a great day at work engaging your customers. You're really pumped up for a great day of providing excellent customer service. In fact, you've got a breakfast meeting at 8:30am with your No. 1 customer. You couldn't be feeling more positive and enthusiastic about the day ahead. Everything's going to go super smooth, you've got it all planned out.

However, fifteen minutes before you leave the house, you and your wife get into a huge argument. It doesn't matter what it's over, you can use your imagination, but it's a verbal slugfest. Both of you are extremely angry with each other and after fifteen minutes of getting nowhere, you pick up your briefcase, leave the house - slamming the door as hard as you can on the way out - get into your car and drive like a maniac all the way to your breakfast meeting. You're heart is racing because you're so worked up and you're almost shaking as you park your car in the restaurant parking lot. As you walk into the restaurant, you see your No. 1 customer already seated at the table and you are trying to force yourself to calm down and act in a civil manner as you approach the table.

Now, you may be able to completely cover up your bad mood as you engage your customer at the breakfast table...or you may not. The point here is that you are not in the optimum frame of mind, or the very best mood to be dealing with a customer at this very moment. Right? Any why not? It has nothing to do with the client, does it? It's because of what happened prior to your engaging the customer, while you were still miles away from the restaurant, that you are not in the best frame of mind to be providing the best level of customer service at this particular moment. The confrontation you had at home is going to affect your ability to provide great customer service.

Now, I hope you can see where I'm going with this. Here's the point! If you're a customer service manager, or a sales manager, or the owner of your own company, or the leader of any type of team within your organization, how you treat and deal with your staff is going to have a huge impact on the quality and level of customer service that either they or you are going to provide for your clients.

In short, your employees are number one! Your employees should come first! Your employees are MORE IMPORTANT than your customers! If you really want to provide the very highest level of service for your customers, without whom you will have no business in the first place, then you MUST take care of the needs of your staff first.

When your employees, whom I assume are dealing with your customers on a daily basis, are happy, feel appreciated, are motivated, receive commendation for a job well done, feel trusted by you and are treated with all of the dignity and respect that they deserve, how do you think they're going to interact with your customers? You know the answer to that!

On the other hand, if your employees are unhappy, feel unappreciated by you, are not motivated because you never commend them or say thanks for their efforts, are often scolded or criticized by you, are not empowered by you to use their own initiative in handling customer complaints or problems, how do you think they're going to interact with your customers? You know the answer to that, also!

Your employees have enough of their own pressures and problems to deal with on a daily basis without you as a manager adding to these. Of course, staff need to receive the right training in order to develop and maintain their customer service skills and mindset. This is something that should be ongoing within any organization. That's part of putting your staff first. And when we all realize that our staff members are MORE IMPORTANT than our customers, the quality of our customer service will soar!

Remember: Happy employees = happy customers! Put your employees needs first and great customer service will follow. I guarantee it!