Mr. / Ms. Front-Line Employee: You Are Important To Us, Really, No Really You Are …

When you think about your personal good and poor service experiences, many times those experiences come down to the experience had with individual employees who work at the firm. Delivering an excellent client experience is most often dependent upon all the employees we hire; however, no employees are more important than those front-line employees who interact directly with external clients.

Although everyone agrees how important these employees are in providing great customer service experiences, I am consistently perplexed by the job title given to many of these ‘very important’ people: clerks, customer service reps (or the even more degrading acronym, CSR), and assistants are some of the more common terms assigned to front-line employees. All are terms that imply that your employees are commodities, and are people not empowered to make decisions. At the very least, their title doesn’t depict their worth, and does not help their credibility when working with clients.

If you agree your employees are critical to delivering a great experience, review their job title and make sure job titles depict how much you value your employees. Assigning the correct job titles can help your employees deliver better service, as it will remind them of how much you value them as an employee, their purpose and improve their credibility with your clients. The cost? Nothing. The benefit? Priceless.