There is no better way to measure the customer service strength of a company than by the quality of the choices its employees make every day.

Several of my blog entries have echoed the chorus of people who emphasize that great service and an endearing experience is all about people. My first blog entry on this topic was bluntly called: It's about people, stupid...

No surprise then that I felt compelled to quote below a section of an eloquent article by the excellent and insightful author Lior Arussy, published on MyCustomer.com . The emphasis is on the numerous interactions taking place with customers and front line employees such as call center reps, tellers, (inside) sales people, order desk people, etc. Each Moment of Truth provides an opportunity for influencing the perception of the company or the brand. Each interaction will require the front line person to make choices and it is in the final analysis the quality of choices made by employees that matters in winning from the competition.

Quoting Arussy: "Daily choices take place in front of external and internal customers every day. They are dominant in interactions with other people, including staff meetings, email exchanges, phone conversations and in any situation where an individual is in a position to help someone else. Any time there is a recipient on the other end of the action, there’s a daily choice involved.

The real power of organisations is their ability to create excellence, to differentiate themselves and, as a result, to build strong customer loyalty, earn repeat business, and charge a premium for their goods and services.

This power (or lack of it) is directly linked to the quality of millions of daily choices made by employees. The bottom line is that a company’s overall excellence is equal to the sum of the total excellence-seeking daily choices delivered by its people.

There is no better way to measure the strength of a company than by the quality of the choices its employees make every day.

The more excellence delivered, the stronger the customer’s commitment and the greater the amount of business and profits generated. The weaker its employees’ commitment to excellence, the weaker its overall performance.

This is a new way to view the power and strength of organisations, and it requires a different way of leading and motivating people in order to generate daily choices for excellence and exceeding customer expectations.

This bottom-up organisational definition runs contrary to the way most organisations define themselves today. A top-down organisation views its power, strength and brand as an abstract entity, loosely connected to its people. The employees are subservient to the larger organisational definition. According to this line of thinking, even if all the employees leave the organisation, the brand will remain strong; the brand makes the people and not the other way around. In a bottom-up organisation, the organisation is defined by the character and performance of its employees.

The people in the company make the organisation what it is. They are the one creating the assets of the organisation. Although some management and marketing theories claim to have an organisation based on assets other than employees such as brand strength and reputation, those assets are dependent on employees and their choices for excellence. Missing one excellence-oriented employee will make the company weaker. Poor performance by just one employee will make the company weaker. The company does not exist without the people who, through their daily choices, breathe life into the company’s mission statement, values, objectives, strategy and overall definition.

One employee at a time, one daily choice at a time, a company’s strength is actually created. This company’s definition is not an event or a milestone that, once achieved, always remains valid. It is, rather, an ongoing process that can reach new heights (or lows) depending on the daily choices made by employees. The company’s success is not measured by some annual study of corporate brand strength, but by the daily performances of the individuals who are the company. Most companies declare their total commitment to their employees and tout their initiatives to promote employee welfare on the pages of their glossy annual report, while relatively few companies truly understand what it means to treat employees as your most important asset."