Good customer service can make mediocre food taste great. Great food with bad customer service always leaves a foul taste in your mouth.

It’s the smiles, willingness to help and proper etiquette that set not only restaurants apart from each other but shops and businesses as well.

That includes behavior in our city and county offices, too.

Sometimes the employee lacking that smile and helping hand merely needs some training though.

Copiah-Lincoln Community College provides just that training, Supervisor Mike Lazarus pointed out Monday. And it’s time the county, and city, take advantage of it.

Lazarus and County Administrator Cathy Walker told the rest of the board that they’d like to send county employees to business training seminars at the community college.

The classes would teach employees how to use proper etiquette on the phone and what proper customer service is.

The supervisors will have to decide the logistics of the training, but they need to make it happen, even if it means reworking schedules to cover office needs while another employee attends the class.

Customer service must be the No. 1 priority of our government offices. After all, the taxpaying customer keeps the government running in the first place.

Lazarus is right on track with his idea and we hope the county will sign up and the city will follow suit soon after.