Tom Feltenstein

Your Front Line is Your Bottom Line

Overlook your front line employees at your own peril.  They’re the face of your business.  After all they are the men and women who interact directly with your customers, either in person or on the phone.  Your customers will remember the individuals who serve them long after they forget your latest advertising campaign.  It’s your job to make sure that the face of your business has a big smile on it.  Following are some simple, inexpensive tactics you can use to help keep your internal customers happy, so they’ll pass those smiles onto your customers.

Give every employee that works for you his or her own personal business cards. Now all the bosses seem to have them, but why, why doesn’t the person making an hourly wage have his or her own personal business cards?  I never understood that.  If you have a product that you would like for your internal customers to promote, put a stamp on the back so that the employees can give away one of the product. Let them give away, say, five free products a month to whomever they want. It builds their self-esteem, and it makes them part of the organization.  It’s little stuff like that that is so huge, more powerful than a TV spot when we can do that.

Make the first day on the job or the first paycheck really special. What about sending them out for dinner that first day with their family?  What about making it special so they’ll always remember?  Or what about a paycheck, that first paycheck that says, “Congratulations, Joanne, you did it,” and you put a Payday candy bar in there with it.  Why wouldn’t we do that?  Or the second paycheck: “Congratulations Joanne, two more weeks until the next one.”  Market to our internal customers.

Celebrating retention. After they’re with you for 90 days, give employees some type of really cool celebration and send the family out for dinner.  Or give them some little gift.  And do that over a period of time.  If you own a restaurant chain or you have a mom and pop coffee shop or a similar business model, let them bring in their entire family.  We need to start rewarding our folks more.  Or, if you happen to be in the retail business where you’re meeting customers all the time, one of my favorite tactics is to have a button that says, “I’m in training; thanks for understanding.”  Put it on your most experienced people. I love it when customers say, “My God, you’re in training and you’re really this great?  How did that happen?”  It’s a lot of fun, and it really works.

A few simple, inexpensive rewards will let your employees know that you care about them.  You’ll be amazed at how quickly they’ll show their appreciation by treating your customers like gold.  It’s a win-win situation for everyone!