Countless times when Ive consulted to companies, Ive heard customer service people take swipes at the sales team, because they believe theyre pampered, overpaid, and under-worked.

CSRs say their jobs are just as important. While salespeople bring in new business, CSRs keep these clients happy and on the books. Salespeople sell, and service folks re-sell, so to speak.

I couldnt agree more!

Each function contributes significantly to the bottom line, but there are certain reasons service contributions are invisible to senior management and undervalued:

(1) Service is not designed, in most companies to be results-oriented, but rather, process oriented. The question that is more likely to be asked is this: Did the CSR sound polite? and not Did the customer recommit to doing business with us, because Jennifer induced him to do so?

(2) There are no objective and meaningful measures of performance in place. A salesperson can say, I outsold everyone else this quarter, so I deserve a big bonus! What can the typical CSR point to, as rock solid evidence of her relative effectiveness?

(3) A sale is defined, but customer satisfaction is not. It would be unacceptable to say Megan is a great salesperson without looking to her buyers to support that claim through purchases. But we call someone good at performing service without measuring her impacts on customer retention.

You get the point.

There is one thing we can do that will change this situation.

Compel managers to rate and to compensate their CSRs, accordingly. If there are ten reps, then there will be numbers 1-10, in the ratings.

This will compel service providers to objectively define results, and it will spawn competition, where currently, there is none.

Healthy competition will help everyone, in the long run, but especially customers who will get the treatment theyre looking for, and receive it from folks who are committed to continuously improve!