Where has all the customer service gone?

Customer service is a dying art. Or is it a science? I get the two confused these days. Anyhow… the one thing I’m not confused about is what makes good customer service. Some of the simple phrases… like “please” and “thank you” and “how may I help you” and “please visit us again” are not phraseology commonly heard much these days.

Go to a moderately priced sit-down restaurant these days (like TGI Fridays, or Ruby Tuesdays, or Applebee’s… you know the kind) and place your order and the response you’ll get is “sounds good” or ask for an extra napkin and you’ll get a “no problem.”

I was at a restaurant and there was a piece of machinery in my soup (honestly folks, I can’t make this stuff up). I set it out on a napkin and when I told the waiter about it, he shrugged his shoulders and said “I wonder how that happened” and then he walked away! No “I’m really sorry about that” or “Let me ask the manager to cover over and talk to you about this.” I didn’t even get an offer for a replacement bowl of soup.

Of course I didn’t eat it. And when my bill came, the soup was still on the bill. When I asked the waiter to remove the soup from the bill, he said I’d have to talk to the manager. My reply was “gladly, please ask the manager to pay me a visit.” The manager took the cost of the soup off the bill but wasn’t much better at offering an apology for the hardware discovery.

I shared this story with some friends over dinner recently in Baltimore. My story opened up a litany of stories from everyone around the table about similar experiences. We concluded that customer service has, for the most part, become an extinct art (or science). What hasn’t befell the same fate is the expectation of a 15 or 20% tip.

When you're on the street serving your customer... remember to say please and thank you... even if it is your 10th EMS call in the shift... it is your first time serving that customer.

Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO
http://www.richgasaway.com/

Ego eats the brain

Ego eats the brain. I had heard this saying some years ago from a wise sage in the fire service. He was talking about how some people become consumed with the power that comes with their formal authority. When this happens, they lost touch with reality and start to believe they are the smartest person in the organization and their way of doing this is THE way to do things. It’s sad to see because everyone around the egocentric leader can see what is happening. However, the ego-driven leader, by definition that world revolves around their perceived self-importance, cannot see it.

In the end, the egocentric leader is no longer a leader. Because, by definition, a leader must have followers and those followers must be willing to follow the vision of the leader. This essential quality is eroded with egocentric leaders… and every follower of the egocentric leader lives a miserable existence. They are often reduced to be “yes” people to the boss for fear of reprisal. This gives the boss yet another stroke to that mammoth ego: “I must be right because everyone agrees with me.”

If you were to slip a copy of this blog under the door of your egocentric boss, they'd surely believe it was intended for someone else... because their ego has eaten their brain.