How easy is it to do business with your business? How easy is it to get help? …resolve a problem? …answer a question? The answer to those questions is probably that you don’t know because you’ve never tried to do any of those things.

Want a real report card on how your staff is doing? Try being your own customer.

Here are some things you can do over the phone to see what your customers are experiencing. I would suggest that you do these monthly. You can’t expect what you don’t inspect.

1. Call 30 minutes or even 15 minutes before you officially open. Is there anyone there? Will they answer the phone? How dumb or rude is your voice mail message or is it memorable?

2. Call 15 minutes or even 5 minutes after you officially close. Is there anyone still there or do they run for the door at closing time?

3. Call 5 minutes before you officially close. You may have to have someone do this for you if your voice is easily recognizable. Do your employees help the caller for however long is necessary or do they cut them off so they can leave on time?

4. Try to place an after hours order or service call. Can it be done? How easy is it to do and/or how frustrating is it for your customers?

5. Call during lunch. Is service better, worse or the same? Do you get sent to voice mail without asking?

6. Call with a complaint. How many times to you get passed on to someone else? Was your complaint handled in a friendly, helpful manner or were your employees defensive or rude? Was the problem resolved?

7. Call up angry and/or rude. Did your employees handle the call properly or make things worse? Did it end up good or bad?

8. Call for yourself. Do you get dumped into voice mail? How easy or hard is it for your customers to reach you? Ask to leave a message and see if you can actually get anyone to take one and how accurate it is after you return.

Was anything so memorable that you would want to tell someone how great it was? Did ANYTHING memorable happen? If not, you need to work on your customer handling.