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| Crusading for Customer Service |
When I was a
wee lad of 23, I earned my first opportunity as a frontline manager at a 90
bus, 110 employee Ryder System, Inc. school bus operation in Erie,
Pennsylvania. My manager and mentor, Greg Walter, and I talked daily on the
telephone and met monthly in-person during which times he reinforced the importance of
taking care of my internal customers, the people who reported to me, and my
external customers, the folks who write the checks. I carried those lessons
with me through my days at Ryder, to Ferrellgas, Suburban Propane, and now,
Durham School Services. At each stop, I’ve had a great deal of professional
success primarily, I know, as a result of that focus on customer service.
It’s that perspective
that makes patience a scarce commodity when it comes to the times that I
experience substandard customer service, and, unfortunately, today appears to
be Bad Customer Service Day in Orange County. (It might be a national thing,
but I didn’t leave the county today to find out.)
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| "Der, I make the donuts." |
The bad
service started after I promised The Favorite Son a stop at the Dunkin Donuts
in Florida, New York before his Taekwondo class at Northeaster Martial Arts
Academy. There was a line of cars around the building, so we decided to go inside
to order. At the head of the line, there was a large, rather high-maintenance
group, perhaps eight people trying to order. I counted six employees behind
the counter. Rather than one DD employee working with that large group on one
register, at least five were trying to take care of the group while the line of
customers, on which I was fourth, stretched out the door. It took more than
fifteen minutes to get two ‘nuts and a cranberry juice.
From there,
it was Lowe’s where, for the sake of convenience, I decided to pick up some lawn and garden supplies. (My bad.) I had only a few minutes to grab what I needed and get
back to the gym to retrieve The Favorite Son, so I purposely went directly and
only to the “outside” garden center to save time. After my quick pick of
supplies, I was second in the only cashier’s lane only to learn that the
cashier was talking, seemingly without end, to another department about whether
the window treatments for the customer at the front of the line were on sale.
(Window
treatments? In the garden center? Seriously?) As the line of lawn and garden
buyers lengthened, I asked a nearby Lowe’s employee if she’d mind opening a
second lane. The first response was complete indifference. When I asked again,
she sighed grudgingly, rolled her eyes, opened the lane, and checked me out.
When I thanked her, she said, and I quote, “.“ (Nothing.)
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| Customer Service Desk? |
Next, my
visit to ShopRite to pick up my shop-from-home groceries was greeted with
several mischarged items in spite of the fact that I’d spoken on the phone with
my shopper to clarify the substitutes and the prices.
Still, with
all of this going wrong for me today, I thought I’d brave the lines at Masker’s
Orchard, do another quick pick of my all-time favorite apples, Jonagolds, and
call it a day. It all went pretty smoothly: there was no line of cars to access
the orchard, I knew right where the Jonagold trees were, and the trees were full
and largely unpicked. After ten minutes, I had my one, count it, one $27 bag of apples, and I
headed down hill in my car to pay.
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| Maskers Orchard's Jonagolds are pretty darned good. Their customer service? Not so much. |
The sixteen
year old boy who was supposed to give me a pay ticket had no chance when he
said, “Would you open your trunk so I can check to see if you have any apples
back there.” When I said, “No,” he was a little confused. So he got on his
radio and summoned a seventeen year old who instructed me to open my trunk and
proceeded to explain that he had the “right” to search my car. Then, it was an
eighteen year old who arrived in time to lecture me on private property rights
and suggested that the bag of apples in my front seat was “too full.”
Finally, the
orchard owner, with whom I’m casually acquainted, showed up and said, “Hey, I
know you. Aren’t you . . . You’re fine."
Well, I’m
home now with my garden supplies, groceries, Jonagolds, and some of my sanity.
I’m pretty sure that I’m just going to stay home tonight and let the rest of
the world deal with Bad Customer Service Day.
As I lay
here in my bed, getting ready to nap just after I finish this blog post on this
early autumn Saturday in New York, I’m reminded of a famous movie line, which I’ve
modified in my head and which sort of metaphorically summarizes my day:
“They can
take our apples, but they can’t take our . . . FREEDOM!”
