Good customer service can be broken down into three Ps:

• Purpose
• People
• Performance

Purpose is simply the focus your business has for customer service. You may have as your customer service purpose to make each and every customer completely satisfied with his/her purchase. Or your purpose may be overarching: provide great customer service alwasy.

People are what makes customer service happen. The better your customer service staff is the better your customer service.  Selecting the right people for the job, and giving those people support and training will go a very long way in making customer service work well in your company.

Performance is the actual every-day practice of your customer service strategies, putting all the theories to work.  Without performance, your customer service is meaningless. If you say that you work hard to make customers happy, but you don’t actually do the work, there is no performance, and your customer service will pay the price.

Tying all 3 Ps together is one more P word: priority.  Making  customer service a priority within your organization will result in happy, satisfied (and returning) customers.