Customer service is foundation on which businesses are created. Unless you understand your customers and treat them with respect, you will go out of business. That is a well-known fact. However, too often leaders fail to see that creating high quality products, or delivering excellent services is dependant on people, not corporations. Individuals within your firm must be treated well and managers must be instilled with a caring attitude toward others in order for your business to function at its maximum potential. How can we expect our people to give customers good service if they are not given that from us – their leaders?

Superior internal customer service has a far-reaching arm. It extends to morale, productivity, profitability, external customer service, and every other area of your business. Those who receive excellent internal customer service exhibit pride, are quick to voluntarily offer assistance to others, and to identify and head of problems.

I have seen this phenomenon work every type of business imaginable. Companies that create a collaborative environment have a drastic reduction in employee and external customer service issues. Companies that suffer in internal customer service usually face more challenges.

Consider this real-life tale. A friend’s husband works for a corporation that recently merged with a former competitor. The previous organization continually took a proactive role in internal customer service; offering bonuses, recognition, surprises, support and a variety of other “perks” to employees. Sick days were taken only when needed, employees were pleased to wear clothing adorned with company’s logo, they constantly volunteered to assist co-workers and proudly offered external customers their full attention when problem solving.

However, shortly after merger, new organization abruptly ended all of these internal customer service programs. Employee attitudes have drastically changed for worse. Sick days are taken whenever employees would like to have an additional day off. The overall outlook of team members now is that there is no team. They have reverted back to stone-age viewpoint of company vs. employee.

Poor employees are unsuited for position they fill. They might lack skills needed to do work. Or, their work habits and personalities are incompatible with your business environment. They could be excellent employees at a different workplace -- but not at yours.

The best time to weed out unsuitable employees is before you've hired them. After they're on job, dealing with problem will be time-consuming, stressful, unpleasant and expensive. HR experts say that supervisors typically spend 80% of their time with 20% of their employees.

When you're recruiting, you want to know two things: 1. Can this person do job? 2. Will he or she be a problem to manage in this workplace?

The first question is simple to answer. Skills are easy to assess and to test. Look to samples of work, educational criteria, licenses, accreditations, skill tests, etc.

The second question is hard one. You want to discover whether applicant will fit into your workplace.

Before conducting job interview, be sure you know what questions are illegal to ask in your country. Make an error here, and you could be faced with legal proceedings.

Once you know what's legal and what isn't, create interview questions designed to discover applicant's "soft skills."

Examples:

1. Tell me about your favorite supervisor in past, and why you liked working for this person. Then, your least favorite supervisor, and why? Identifying information is not necessary.

This will elicit information about how applicant responds to supervision and how he prefers to be supervised.

2. Describe a difficult workplace situation that you faced, and that you think you handled well. Then, tell me about a workplace situation that you don't think you handled very well and what you could do differently next time.

You are looking for clues about how applicant deals with conflict and difficult situations. In situation that was handled poorly, try to determine if person has learned from mistake.

3. Describe a situation that is likely to occur, or has occurred, in your workplace. Ask applicant how he or she would handle it.