What do you pay your receptionist or the person who answers the phones in your business? Donât bother answering, I know. Sheâs (not being sexist, but the first face who I see or speak to in 90% of the businesses I enter or call is a woman, soâŚI calls âem like I sees âem) the lowest or one of the lowest paid people in your company. Many times sheâs also the least experienced, and least tenured, and possibly the least educated. Thatâs the gig no one wants to do there. Itâs the one you place the least amount of emphasis on. Itâs the âstarting pointâ for advancement in your company. Itâs the âS@$! Testâ to see if that person has the wits to proceed through the ranks there.
And that is a major mistake.
I offer up this story as proof that you should rethink that stance and, instead, pay your receptionist six figures or more and train them to be the living, breathing proxy of yourself (thatâs, of course, if the CEO canât sit up front, which I recommend). Radical? Bah. Check this out:
My wife and I took our 4 month old son for his checkup recently. We love our doctor: He was our first daughterâs pediatrician and we have religiously taken the other three to him. In fact, we have followed him around the area and drive about 25-30 minutes one way to see him, passing dozens of other, closer doctors no doubt. Before the birth of our first child, we went around and interviewed pediatricians. Surely this is not only a hard-for-some-to-fathom first world, âwhite peopleâs problemsâ endeavor, but one unique to the nouveau riche wanna-be set we have lived among (and aspired to be like?) for the past decade. Our doc emerged from the pediatric âAll Valley Karate Championshipâ victorious and has worn the belt well.
He took good care of my first-born and then, sadly, he left the practice for parts unknown. We had a second child but had become lax in our standards by then; so we stayed with the practice and bid him adieu.
After a few months of that, we were dissatisfied with the new set of doctors we encountered and left for another medical group nearby. These doctors were deplorable. One wrote a prescription for my daughter that the pharmacist at Walgreenâs refused to fill, as, it was explained to me, âit would kill a child.â Something about a pesky decimal point being missing. Apparently the doc wrote the script for 5%, when a childâs dose should be .5%âŚ
Amazingly, the guy who once took the extraordinary step of interviewing doctors while his first child was still in utero now tolerated doctors who wrote potentially fatal prescriptions!  I didnât leave that practice until another doctor in the practice, during a phone call with me about my childâs, uh, er, irregularity, gave me the name of a laxative and said she wanted me to give it to my daughter for the ânext yearâ and that they would re-evaluate her at that time. A laxative, for a year, for a 3 year old! Sight unseen. Over the phone. Oddly THAT was the final straw and I stopped taking my chilluns to see these kooks. Once again I set out to find our third doctor in 2 years.
I decided to put my fingers to work and researched the whereabouts of our original doctor. Turns out he had set up his own practice in a town about 20 miles from our house.  A bit of hike, but this guy was the only dude I trusted with my kids, and the rest of the pack was clearly not making the grade. We returned to his lovinâ arms and he helped us with our first two kids, plus my third and, recently, my fourth child.
On the day I brought my 4 month in for measurements and a round of shots, we got on the road a bit late. Four month-olds and their 3 year-old brothers can be like herding cats, Iâve found. We rolled into the office at 9:15 am for our 9:00 am appointment. The 22-year-old receptionist was not too keen by our lateness. âYou are more than 10 minutes LATE. You may not be seen today,â she scowled.
âUh, sorry. Yeah, we got on the road a bit late. Maybe you can pop back and talk to the doctor and let him know The Noonans are here?â I replied. I was taken aback by this young woman.
She disappeared and then returned a minute later. âOk, the doctor can see you, but patients who are ON TIME are seen first. Youâll have to wait.â
My wife pointed out that there were no other cars in the parking lot. That was a mistake. I donât know why she takes such chances in life like tangling with such people.
âTrust me. There ARE patients back there, and they receive top priority because they were ON TIME,â she retorted. They must have been airlifted into the facility.
No one was asking to leapfrog anyone else. I honestly did feel badly for showing up late. Itâs people like us that can derail a whole day in a doctorâs office. If the 9:00 is late, the effect can ripple and all of a sudden the 5:00 pm appointment happens at 6:00. I can dig it.
At the same time, I couldnât believe the way this person was treating us. I never say, or even allow myself to think, âDo you know WHO you are talking to?â But in this case, I did allow myself to mull over our value to this doctor. 10 years (with an 18 month hiatus in there, admittedly) of visits. 3 kids. Now a fourth has joined the crew. What were the Noonans worth to this doctor in annual visits? $2k a year? $5,000?
I honesty had no idea, but one thing was for certain: Neither did this girl who was sass talking us. Iâm quite sure she wasnât thinking about much more than the fight she had with with her boyfriend the night before. Or the car payment that was looming. Or that thing on Facebook that pissed her off. Whatever it was, she certainly wasnât thinking about preserving this doctorâs business, and making sure we continued to drive an hour round trip to see him every 2 months or so.
The terms âLifetime Valueâ and âCustomer Acquisition Costsâ were probably never explained to her. She probably wouldnât know an LTV from an MTV.
This is not to put her down, but to illustrate how ludicrous it is to put your least experienced foot forward. Why put your business at risk? Why in the world would you have the first person your customers meet, greet, or speak to be someone who is inexperienced about the product or services you sell, or inexperienced in the proper way to handle customer service situations?
Truth is, most businesses donât even know theyâre doing themselves such harm. I wimped out and didnât tell my doc about the experience. For one thing, I didnât want this woman to lose her gig. I know its ridiculous to not help him and let him know this person could be doing his practice, his livelihood, irreparable harm. When the words formed in my brain, my mouth just couldnât spit them out. I resolved to let him know if I ever had any other issues. To date, I havenât.
This is the best I can do: Tell the tale as a cautionary one for others. I encourage you to put a highly-trained person and skilled âpeopleâ person as the first point-of-contact for your company. But donât stop there. Mystery shop them often. Actually call as a customer and put them to the test. Verify that theyâre not only knowledgeable about you and your business, but they care about it beyond merely going through the motions to keep their job. Youâve worked so hard to build your business; Now protect it.
Maybe paying him or her $100,000 a year is a bit of stretch. Or maybe it isnât. You tell me: How much does it cost to acquire your customers? To retain them? From birth to age 18, are my four Noonan kids worth $100k to that doctor? Iâm quite sure. How many referrals will we make over that span? Iâm guessing a dozen. Am I driving $1 Million Dollars to that business, lifetime?
Why risk losing that over one âaffordablyâ-paid employeeâs bad day?