When I was actively involved in sports, I never lost the drive to always to try to excel and to never give up. I also never lost sight of being humble and showing class at the end of a contest; whether in winning or losing. There were a lot of athletes who drove me to be better, much better. In the end, I was more interested in the battle than the results. Is that some weakness in my personality that doesn't see myself as some self-important jerk like so many sports people today? Exactly when and where did we lose our ability to be a class person?
Unfortunately these athletes are led by classless leaders like Bill Belichick and others who value success over anything else. In the scheme of things, who really cares about a final score? If losing a lousy game bothers you so much, then you need to devote more time to developing and improving your own values. I love sports and I love to win, but in the end, I would rather expend any disappointment of a loss in a more positive way. Watching a favorite team lose does bother me, but only for about five minutes.
The friendships and respect for others that developed from participating in sports far outweighs any win or a loss.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Where or Where Has Customer Service Gone?
New Service Levels:
In this day and age of unavailable, useless or just plain terrible customer service, we now need a new set of service level measures. Forget excellent, very good, good, fair and poor. Let's just start from poor and work down! Poor, terrible, horrible, horrendous and finally WIMP (where is my pistol). Using the point system, (1 to 5), let's start with "0" (zero) and work back to -4 with 1 being the best of the worst or poor. So -4 would be WIMP in a numerical sense.
In Person:
Many of us have experienced walking into Home Depot or some other large store that seemingly run themselves! If you are lucky enough to get someones attention, you will soon be disappointed because they will inevitably say, "I don't work in that department but I'll try to help you." This may be your only opportunity to run away so use it! If you're too slow, whatever you ask them, they will look at you with that blank stare and then they will read the bin labels to you as if it were some kind of reading test. It gets worse because once they read the labels out loud, they become more confused then when they first came over.
More complications arise when the labels either don't match the product on the shelf or the product is out of stock. They may look up in the air for additional stock, but don't count on a thorough search. Best thing to do at this point is to use the excuse that you need to use the bathroom. You already wasted too much time and sometimes no help is better than some help. By the way, you may not want to ask a roving associate at the store to mix paint for you unless you like surprises!
Phone Assistance:
What is more ridiculous than when we have a battle with the person on the phone and they ask us at the end of the call if we are satisfied with the service we received today? That, my genius friend, would be a resounding NO, but thanks for being so detached from reality to ask. You would think that management would instruct these people to say something else, like, "I'm sorry that I disappointed you today, but why should you feel different than all of our other customers?"
My second favorite is when the person asks you in every way possible if they have solved your problem, been helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, blah, blah, blah and then, "would you please hold on for a quick survey on our service today." I guess it wasn't enough that I said a million times that I was happy so I have to take a survey too! What I need is to get off the phone so I can get some real work done. I'll pretty much say anything at that point to get off the phone -like sorry I cannot take your survey because there was a death in my family a few minutes ago.
In this day and age of unavailable, useless or just plain terrible customer service, we now need a new set of service level measures. Forget excellent, very good, good, fair and poor. Let's just start from poor and work down! Poor, terrible, horrible, horrendous and finally WIMP (where is my pistol). Using the point system, (1 to 5), let's start with "0" (zero) and work back to -4 with 1 being the best of the worst or poor. So -4 would be WIMP in a numerical sense.
In Person:
Many of us have experienced walking into Home Depot or some other large store that seemingly run themselves! If you are lucky enough to get someones attention, you will soon be disappointed because they will inevitably say, "I don't work in that department but I'll try to help you." This may be your only opportunity to run away so use it! If you're too slow, whatever you ask them, they will look at you with that blank stare and then they will read the bin labels to you as if it were some kind of reading test. It gets worse because once they read the labels out loud, they become more confused then when they first came over.
More complications arise when the labels either don't match the product on the shelf or the product is out of stock. They may look up in the air for additional stock, but don't count on a thorough search. Best thing to do at this point is to use the excuse that you need to use the bathroom. You already wasted too much time and sometimes no help is better than some help. By the way, you may not want to ask a roving associate at the store to mix paint for you unless you like surprises!
Phone Assistance:
What is more ridiculous than when we have a battle with the person on the phone and they ask us at the end of the call if we are satisfied with the service we received today? That, my genius friend, would be a resounding NO, but thanks for being so detached from reality to ask. You would think that management would instruct these people to say something else, like, "I'm sorry that I disappointed you today, but why should you feel different than all of our other customers?"
My second favorite is when the person asks you in every way possible if they have solved your problem, been helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, blah, blah, blah and then, "would you please hold on for a quick survey on our service today." I guess it wasn't enough that I said a million times that I was happy so I have to take a survey too! What I need is to get off the phone so I can get some real work done. I'll pretty much say anything at that point to get off the phone -like sorry I cannot take your survey because there was a death in my family a few minutes ago.
Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)