The Case for Excellence

By Jeff Russell

 I love great customer service.  I don't understand bad customer service.  I was out with my family the other day, we were in a store and my wife asked one of the sales associates a question about a product, the sales associate smiled and said, "I don't know." Then he walked away.  I was frankly amazed.  My wife assures me that this kind of thing happens all of the time.  I couldn't let it go; I called the young gentleman back and asked him if there was anyone else he could ask, since he didn't know the answer to the question.  He thought about it for a minute and told me that anyone who might know the answer was at lunch. I suggested that we call over a manager.  From the sales associate's response you would have thought that I had suggested we drop a box of poisonous snakes in the middle of the store.  There were so many things wrong with this scenario that it literally made my head spin.  My biggest question is how do places like this stay in business when there has clearly been no attention paid to customer service?

In my business, customer service is everything.  All of the people in my office have been trained and received further education so they can answer any client question posed. On the rare occasion that they don't have an answer at the ready, they know they have an entire team who is ready, willing and able to back them up and provide support. I can't imagine being able to sleep at night if anyone in my employ were to treat a client so cavalierly as to walk away from a question.

In the end I think it's a value issue.  At American Trust Escrow we value our clients enough to provide them top-notch associates who are experts at what they do.  We value our employees enough to provide them with excellent training and the best resources, and we back them up in order to provide the best customer service available.  We value the job that we do and take pride in doing it to the best of our abilities.  I can't imagine doing business any other way.