Service

I’m glad you’re not dead.” At a chance encounter, those were the exact words the surprised lawyer jokingly said to me when she realized she forgot to follow up with me on the edits to my will. Whether it’s a law or medical practice or the more common service businesses like restaurants, or other retail establishments, care for good service is at a low in our country. Why follow up with a client when you can wait for them to call you back? That seems to be more of the norm than the exception. If you’re reading this, you are interested in the service your team gives and you actually care about improving it. That’s a good thing. Because most services don’t care. In 2021, the service sector was the largest part of the US economy, accounting for 77.6% of GDP. This means that the majority of economic activity in the United States is based on the provision of services, rather than the production of goods. And it’s rapidly growing. I think you’ll agree, today, most service experiences you have are pretty poor. Whether it’s trying to get a live person to talk to you on the phone or simply being served at a local restaurant, service has declined to a point where you are surprised when you get good service - for which, the standards have been lowered to such a minimum that even a smile would be considered good service. The show Seinfeld, which became famous for its satire on everyday life for the average American, has a classic episode where Jerry and Elaine are at a car rental. It’s such a good example of bad service that it’s funny. Jerry: I made a reservation for a midsize. Employee: Yes. I see that. (clicking on the computer keyboard) Employee: I’m sorry. We have no mid sizes available. Jerry: I don’t understand. I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation? Employee: Yes we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars. Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. Employee: I know why we have reservations. Jerry: I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. You see, you know how to ‘take’ the reservation, you don’t know how to ‘keep’ the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation. (After more delay, the employee goes to her manager) Employee: We have a compact car for you Mr. Seinfeld. Would you like insurance? Jerry: Yes. You better give me insurance because I’m going to beat the hell out of this car! If you are a person responsible for customer service in your organization, I think you’ll agree, training on service is difficult as employees have different schedules and it is difficult to find time and resources to build an ongoing program. Perhaps, like us, you have tried to teach your team on what to do when this happens or when that happens. This is what you say to a new client…this is what you say when you have this problem… etc., etc. We developed a training manual on how to handle different service issues for employees to read and get tested on. None of these efforts seemed to work. However, I was reminded of the importance of good service every time I experienced bad service at restaurants, hotels, with doctors, lawyers or whomever. I would often wonder, is my staff doing the same? The content for most of this book came from the blog I wrote for my staff over the course of five years. I simply wrote from my experiences when I had a good, bad, or interesting customer experience. Or, if there was something in our business that I thought was worth writing about I would unpack it and try to find a concept from which we can learn. The simple solution to not having time or the resources to train was to make it “virtual.” The writing helped me think through and get to the heart of service issues and then allow for us to better train on the concepts we learned. Some of these concepts are tried and true from service legends and some we learned through our own experiences. And we did learn a lot. For example, most businesses have two basic functions- quality and service. We learned that, like most businesses, we couldn’t always control the quality, but we could always control the service. This is important as it’s best to focus on what you can control. A large part of the inspiration for writing this book came from the changes I noticed in our organization and witnessed in our culture when we, I, started focusing on service. Things do change when you focus on them. Instead of looking at customer issues as annoying, we were looking at them as opportunities. Reasons to connect instead of just providing a transaction. Staff started thinking on their own and solving customer issues in ways that a training manual could never accomplish. A more positive atmosphere began to emerge and for the first time in our business, we had purpose. The energy was tangible. In our production facility, where we are not set up for retail, one of the few customers who goes there to pick up her sheets actually said, “I love it here!” She is so appreciative she regularly bakes cookies and brownies for the employees and delivers them when she picks up her linens. Keep in mind, this is not a nice retail facility but just a production space where the work gets done. It’s hot with steam billowing out of the pressing stations, different cultures of music blaring, the loud sound of washers and dryers humming, accompanied by the employees talking in various native languages. “I love it here!”