Ready, aim, hire!(customer service)

• Author: Sablosky, Tanja Lian

When the target is customer-service improvement, most banks offer employees either training or financial incentives. Metropolitan National Bank in Little Rock, Ark., does neither.

Yet, the financial institution has been repeatedly ranked by local consumers as either the best or friendliest bank in the state.

What gives here?

"The customer always comes first."

The words sound nice. But how do you ensure that your employees live, breathe and cheerfully carry out this dictum? A customer-service training program? A tiered incentive program with ever increasing awards for better levels of service? A change in corporate culture?

"We don't do any of those things," says Lunsford W. Bridges, president and CEO of Metropolitan National Bank in Little Rock, Ark. And yet readers of the Arkansas Times newspaper have rated it the best bank in Arkansas four years in a row. This year, the bank also was voted the "best and friendliest bank" in the state by readers of Arkansas's Active Years and Little Rock Monthly magazines.

What's the institution's customer service secret?

It may be as simple and straightforward as whom they hire. "It all begins with our selection process," says John Brower, human resources director. "If we have two candidates applying for a position and one has a terrific personality and shows a real ability to work well with others but has little experience in banking, and another candidate has had loads of experience but does not have the same winning personality, we'll hire the candidate with the terrific personality. We can teach someone how to balance a drawer or run a computer. We can't teach people to be nice or smile like they really mean it."

Hiring employees with the personality that fits the bank's culture is more than half the battle, says Brower. "From orientation onwards, we always talk about the bank's commitment to high level customer service," says Kimberly Sutton, senior vice president of marketing The bank reiterates its "customer first" rues sage throughout its training and development programs, but does not have specific programs on teaching customer service. Even the classes for employees who have very little customer contact constantly reiterate the bank's mission to be relationship-oriented and "nearby and neighborly."

Brower says, "We have several maxims we go by, like: "The customer is not an interruption to our work but is the purpose of our work,' and 'The customer does us a favor coming to us for service, we do...