What do you pay your receptionist or the person who answers the phones in your business? Don’t bother answering, I know.  She’s (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, so…I calls ’em like I sees ’em) the lowest or one of the lowest paid people in your company.  Many times she’s also the least experienced, and least tenured, and possibly the least educated.  That’s the gig no one wants to do there.  It’s the one you place the least amount of emphasis on.  It’s the “starting point” for advancement in your company.  It’s the “S@$! Test” 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 (that’s, of course, if the CEO can’t 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 daughter’s 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, “white people’s problems” 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 “All Valley Karate Championship” 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 Walgreen’s refused to fill, as, it was explained to me, “it would kill a child.”  Something about a pesky decimal point being missing.  Apparently the doc wrote the script for 5%, when a child’s dose should be .5%…

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 didn’t leave that practice until another doctor in the practice, during a phone call with me about my child’s, uh, er, irregularity, gave me the name of a laxative and said she wanted me to give it to my daughter for the “next year” 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 lovin’ 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, I’ve 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.  “You are more than 10 minutes LATE. You may not be seen today,” she scowled.

“Uh, 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?”  I replied.  I was taken aback by this young woman.

She disappeared and then returned a minute later. “Ok, the doctor can see you, but patients who are ON TIME are seen first.  You’ll have to wait.”

My wife pointed out that there were no other cars in the parking lot. That was a mistake. I don’t know why she takes such chances in life like tangling with such people.

“Trust me. There ARE patients back there, and they receive top priority because they were ON TIME,” 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.  It’s people like us that can derail a whole day in a doctor’s 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 couldn’t believe the way this person was treating us.  I never say, or even allow myself to think, “Do you know WHO you are talking to?”  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.  I’m quite sure she wasn’t 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 wasn’t thinking about preserving this doctor’s business, and making sure we continued to drive an hour round trip to see him every 2 months or so.

The terms “Lifetime Value” and “Customer Acquisition Costs” were probably never explained to her. She probably wouldn’t 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 don’t even know they’re doing themselves such harm.  I wimped out and didn’t tell my doc about the experience.  For one thing, I didn’t 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 couldn’t spit them out.  I resolved to let him know if I ever had any other issues.  To date, I haven’t.

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 “people” person as the first point-of-contact for your company.  But don’t stop there.  Mystery shop them often. Actually call as a customer and put them to the test.  Verify that they’re not only knowledgeable about you and your business, but they care about it beyond merely going through the motions to keep their job.  You’ve 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 isn’t.  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?  I’m quite sure.  How many referrals will we make over that span? I’m guessing a dozen.  Am I driving $1 Million Dollars to that business, lifetime?

Why risk losing that over one “affordably”-paid employee’s bad day?