Have you ever bought a product or service only to end up suffering an experience so ridiculous and frustrating that you couldn’t believe it was happening to you?
Did you say something like, “I hope I get to deal with someone else the next time I spend my time and money with this company. That employee named John Doe really upset me”? Of course you didn’t. You wanted to scream at the top of your lungs and tell the universe that there was no way in the world you would ever do business with that horrible company again. Didn’t you?
Conversely, have you ever bought a product or service from a company and experienced outstanding efficiency, accuracy, and friendliness? That was a great company wasn’t it?
Here’s my point. To you, the customer, the unmotivated, unreliable, unfriendly, and incompetent employee WAS the company you were buying from.
Consider this. If a customer has a good experience, they are likely to buy again and maybe even refer a friend or two. I want to emphasize the word “maybe” when talking about earning referrals. When people are busy with their own lives, it’s hard to expect them to go out of their way to persuade their friends and family to buy from a particular company.
Alternatively, when a customer is irate, frustrated, embarrassed, humiliated, or enraged, they WILL make a point to go out of their way and “get revenge” by telling everyone they know NOT to buy from a particular company.
In addition to losing future business from the mistreated customer, the company who made the hiring mistake is almost certain to lose the potential future business of all the people within the mistreated customer’s sphere of influence.
With all that’s at stake, let me encourage you to gather all the relevant job related information you can about potential applicants before you make an offer. Pre-employment testing, background checks, reference checks, and drug testing should help identify many high-risk applicants that might otherwise slip through the cracks.
Investing a little extra time and money to initially determine if an applicant is a good fit for a job is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways there is to improve sales, customer service, and client retention. It also maximizes the return on investments made in employee training. Training dollars are far too valuable to be wasted developing skills in individuals who lack the attitude, personality, and work ethic to implement them.
To your customers, the person you hire IS your company. The rewards and punishments associated with hiring decisions are not proportional. Choose wisely.
Copyright 2004 by Mason Duchatschek. Mason is President of AMO-Employer Services, in St. Louis, MO. He co-wrote the book "Sales Utopia: How to Get the Right People, Doing the Right Things, Enough Times."
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