My Personal History of Customer Service, All the Rest

When I'm not working in customer service on a heightened and concentrated basis, I tend to notice it more than I do if I'm just passing through a traditional workday.  As is the tendency with any passion, if you're sitting on the outside, or if you are dealt the consequences of something you could have done better, then you instantly shift into backseat driver or Monday morning quarterback.

What I have been trying to do to be optimistic is a) look for the instances where there was exceptional customer service (and write about it somewhere so there's recognition to be found); and b) treat customer service providers in a way that if I would want to be treated as a worker.  I get the second part of that outlook from working in customer service myself, and the first part from being a manager.

Recognition is important.  All too often, front-line employees and middle managers aren't recognized by anyone, regardless of the challenge and the outcome, with one exception:  they are blamed if something didn't work for the customer.  Imagine hearing what didn't work all day and never hearing back when you exceeded your customer's expectations.  Sounds like the world's most abusive co-dependent relationship, doesn't it?

Throughout my experience as a manager my recognition of my employees has come about in a variety of ways.  Bring in baked goods.  Utilize them as mentors for the next round of new employees that are hired.  Even something as small as announcement acknowledgment works.  When I worked for Grainger I had a habit of saying "Thank you" to any radio announcements that employees made to inform other employees of crucial information.  It sounds way too simple, but I established such an expectation that when I would come back from lunch and no one thought I was listening, employees were acknowledging each other.  People like to know that they've been heard, that what they are doing or saying matters.  (You want proof?  Look at Facebook and Twitter on any given day and tell me there's no thrill in someone "liking" your status or retweeting a line of yours.  Even if it's small, it's gratification.)

Acknowledgment works for people who provide me with customer service as well.  A simple "thanks," a good write-up on Yelp or on other social networks (if you use the employee's name you can really make someone's day for thinking of them as memorable in a good way), or even sending a note back to the place of business thanking them is helpful (I did that once with a dentist; if you were like me in the dentist's chair, you would too).

In regards to the second aspect of my outlook--treating customer service providers in a way that I would like to be treated if I were doing their job--well, that comes from what I've tried to establish with every student or employee of mine.  Evaluations started with, first and foremost, asking the employee if they would have liked to have that kind of service.  Then we explored a breaking down of what could have been done better.  Then we made a plan of how to improve the next customer experience.  I do the same thing now when I greet a customer service provider as a customer.  Who's my favorite customer?  What could I do to make this person's job easier?  How can I be a better customer next time?  Being the best customer doesn't always mean spending the most money (although that works as incentive, don't mistake me there), but in little things like establishing clear expectations, addressing the person by name, and offering up a smile, to name a few.  I do this with Muni bus drivers, and they never see money from me with the transit card I use.  I say thank you when I get on the bus, and thank you when I get off the bus.  (I'm a better bus patron than dental patient, but it still pays to be kind.)

I may be independently employed at the moment in unconventional ways, but that doesn't mean I can't still follow establish practices of what works in customer service.

More on my passion, my foundation, next week.  Have a great workweek and a warm holiday.

What I Have Been Doing Lately

There is a short story by Jamaica Kincaid by the title "What I Have Been Doing Lately," in which she dispels a dreamworld of what she has been doing in a variety of shadings to make herself look better with each telling.

This story sounds remarkably like what an unemployed person must do for each application in order to be hired.

Still, here is a list of what I have been doing lately.  There have been no utilization of bonbons or of soap operas to the process--just me, doing the following:

• From November 19th through November 29th, I visited my brother and sister-in-love (they will get married in October 2012) in Carlsbad, California.  While my brother was at work daily in San Diego and my sis-in-love would go to one of her volunteer organizations during the day, I would work on one of the following tasks that I had been working on before and after the vacation;
• Every day, first thing in the morning, I free-write three pages.  Sometimes it feels pointless, other times it grounds me, and still other times it helps me plan what's next;
• I went for morning runs while I was in Carlsbad--usually a two mile climb up a neighboring hill and down again;
• I worked on a long work of fiction that I began in August, for an hour each day;
• I combed through job listings for as long as it took to work my way through the daily entries.  I've been looking for coaching, training, or management jobs with Amazon, the San Francisco Giants, and anything in coaching, training, or management in job boards like craigslist and publishing listings like Mediabistro;
• I had phone interviews;
• I spoke with locals about opportunities in Carlsbad.

After I returned home I usually take a short period (a couple of days), and re-assess; I review what works, what doesn't.  I have been trying to break into freelancing, offering my experience and skills up for consulting and any other related opportunities, but I hadn't been doing that well.  That's what I am working on now--the list above and offering my expertise on a short-term basis for improvement in our customer service-based world.  There will be more to come on my opinions in upcoming posts.

For now, I'm working hard to learn:  to learn how to change my approaches to the business world; to learn how to improve my communication skills; and to learn how to be a better leader.  When I flew back on November 29th, I had something to look forward to--joining with a group of writers at our weekly writing group, where all of us are trying to be better at fiction and prose.

There will be more to come on that, too.

Have a great workweek.

What One Does With Her Time

When I'm speaking with prospective employers the number one question that I am asked, since I'm the one who discontinued my employment with my last company, is "What have you been doing since you left Grainger?"

This break has been a monumental opportunity to assess what I could have done differently with my past opportunities, how I can learn from them, and what I want to do next. My activities have focused mainly on that last point--I wanted to put into practice skills that would benefit my next employer and that would contribute to my own job satisfaction. Based on that reasoning, here's what I've been doing:

• Volunteering - Through this aspect keeping a continuum with my love of community involvement
• Writing - I write four blogs a week, and write short stories of an average of a rough draft finished once every two weeks. My foremost passion is communications, and my favorite aspect of this passion is written communication--opening me up to all kinds of virtual and networking possibilities
• Leadership - Three nights a week I lead a writing group in various parts of San Francisco. This is also on a volunteer basis, but allows me to flex my coaching, leadership, and teaching muscles

These activities, along with daily approaches to job searches, have filled my days and allowed me to experience more of contract/consulting nature of employment. They've allowed me to constantly learn and continuously learn change.

Resume Parts & Pieces, Work Experience: Jarden Consumer Solutions

Jarden Consumer Solutions, or, as I commonly knew them when I worked there, Tilia and VillaWare, was my first employer in California. Technically the temp agency that hired me to work at Tilia was my first employer in California, but Tilia was my first job with them.

I was first hired with Tilia to work with the retail services representatives to answer their phones for them. There were between seven and nine representatives at that time, and the bulk of the phone calls were from retailers wanting to order Tilia (FoodSaver) or VillaWare products, or they wanted to speak with their representative in sales or operations. In other words, when I started in September of 2004 I was a receptionist, and by January of the following year I had been offered a job with the company to be a retail services representative myself, specializing in RMAs and certain retailers, such as Kohl's. About one month after I was hired at Tilia the entire company was given word that the operation was moving to Neosho, Missouri for shipping and warehousing, and to Hattiesburg, Mississippi for administrative. We would be assisting in the transition not only in our approach to customer contact, but in the systems that we used to process orders and ship supplies, going from an SAP system to an AS400 system. Most, if not all of us, would be staying through the transition that would be scheduled for completion in August of 2005.

The skills that I honed with Jarden were minimal compared with my past jobs prior to that point, but I did significantly branch out in one specific area: satisfying customers at a corporate level as opposed to a retail situation. Many of the customer service aspects of retail carry over to a business-to-business type of situation, but some do not--my biggest challenge was in taking care of customers who had multiple representatives for their corporations. Mastering this challenge was a simple process of determining the customer's needs AND the representative's needs so that I could equal the two out, not unlike my developed focus of strengthening a business through customer service while improving employee retention. The contacts that I made within our customer base often became friends in the sense that I could offer them solutions to make their ordering process progress more smoothly or that they would have to maintain it less often by trusting me with the replenishment details. And, while I've mentioned that it was a challenging skill to master, it was a pure joy to discover that next level of customer service in myself and my performance.

In the next post, I'll talk about how my last job in Missouri with Alltel Communications helped prepare me for the jobs I was to enter in California.