The Importance of Earnest Service

A recent American Express Global Customer Service Barometer inspired me to cover instances of great service again-it’s been a while. The Barometer reported that Americans will pay an average of nine percent more to receive quality customer service and that 61 percent noted that in this economic environment, service is more important to them.

The latter surprises me because I expect top quality service regardless of the economy, but I digress.

Happy Surprise

I was having guests on the roof of our NYC apartment and lined up some volunteers to help me install the chair cushions, stored elsewhere both to preserve them as well as to keep them from flying off and injuring someone. When I got home that day the super-and he is-told me that the cushions were already on the chairs and the tables all cleaned–a blessing on a sweltering day.

Four Star Credit Card Bill Resolution

My heart sank when I saw my credit card bill this month because it showed a finance charge and an unexpectedly large total. My habit is to pay the full amount so as to avoid both instances. I no longer get back my checks or even facsimiles, and I didn’t make a copy of the check mailed, so I figured I was up the creek. The issuer-USAA-which has never let me down, came through again. I asked the customer service rep to look at my payment history. He put me on hold and on his return didn’t question me and told me to delete the finance charge. It wasn’t  so much money, yet I was so relieved that I didn’t have to argue or speak with a thousand people.

Immaculate Delivery Follow-Up

The Wall Street Journal is delivered to the office. In the last month or so, it’s gone missing on three occasions when nobody in the building received a paper, according to the responsible man at reception. The third time it happened, I called the Journal and a copy came by messenger within an hour. I subsequently received emails from the paper and the newspaper delivery business as well as a phone call from the newspaper delivery concern’s customer service department. I was impressed at how much they wanted to keep the Journal’s and my business.

Exemplary Honesty

We totaled the car earlier this year and our trusty warhorse, with close to 135,000 miles on it, was sent to car heaven. Before it left, we visited it one last time at a garage a few towns away where someone representing the insurance company had seen it and determined that it wasn’t worth repairing. We were there to retrieve the stuff in it, though we could only open one door and the trunk. A week or so later, my husband got a letter with a $20 bill in it from what he thought was an employee of the car cemetery. The letter explained that the writer had found the bill in the car. So my husband wrote the chairman of the insurance company-USAA again-to let him know what a great supplier he had.  In return, he got two telephone calls from USAA until the rep found him in. He thanked my husband for the letter, and told him that the man who had returned his money actually worked for USAA and that he would be commended for what he’d done.

Friends Who Help

My last example is the service of friends. I was one train stop from where I get off on Friday night when my husband called to tell me he was stuck with a flat tire in a torrential storm. I reached the only car service in the vicinity and the woman explained that she couldn’t pick me up because of a fair going on in town so she couldn’t get near the station.

For years, I’d patted the cat of a couple who traveled on the same train and who got off a few stops north of mine. Their cat purred so loudly you’d hear him even if you were seated four or five rows away. People don’t generally speak with strangers on this train, but we began to chat. On hearing of my situation they immediately told me they’d drive me home. They live in the opposite direction, it was late, and their kitty gets carsick but they didn’t hesitate. I know it’s not service when friends do you a huge favor, but the feeling of gratitude is similar.

Do you have examples of great service to share?

Last week, I saw racial profiling in action. We were piling suitcases into the trunk of a cab on Lexington Avenue, a block north of Grand Central Station, when we heard yelling. As our heads emerged from the trunk, we saw who was doing it: A NYC policeman who had parked his motorcycle in front of the cab. He claimed that the cab was holding up traffic. [There is little to none on a summer morning at 10:46 a.m. and continued to be none until the cop held up the loading process.]

The driver was young, appeared to be Arab, clean-cut and clean shaven. He didn’t say a word. I jumped to his rescue telling the policeman that it was totally our fault; the driver helped us by stopping where he did so we didn’t have to lug our suitcases further. There was an illegally parked US Postal Service truck taking up one lane and a fat chunk of another one and the cab extended into the avenue a bit beyond it. The policeman didn’t bother the truck driver.

By the time I’d said my bit, my husband, who was going home with the luggage, was in the cab and ready to leave but because the policeman was still reprimanding the driver, traffic began to pile up. Yet the policeman continued to rant and the driver remained silent. I left the scene so as not to exacerbate the situation as I thought the policeman might have been trying to impress a like-minded citizen. My husband told me that in the end, the driver did not get a ticket. The cabbie admitted that he was used to such instances.

Profiling is in the news this summer between Arizona’s immigration law, Shirley Sherrod’s edited-to-be misinterpreted address to the NAACP and the Cordoba House and mosque under consideration for construction in the vicinity of Ground Zero.

Racial profiling makes us collectively jumpy. It polarizes us and distracts us from other issues that in the list of current crises, such as the economy and war, seem to top it. Yet it has become a tempting distraction that politicians and talk show hosts, desperate to remain in the headlines, relish whipping up.

Our nervous, knee-jerk reactions made in seconds remind me of the card game slapjack. A dealer turns up card after card in a deck and he/she and one or more other players watch for the jack.  The idea is to be the first one to slap it and not some other card.  Today, some are ready to slap anything that resembles a jack, and they don’t much care if it turns out to be the king or queen.

There are times when profiling is appropriate. Taking an example from hours watching “Law & Order” and its spin-offs, it makes sense that when a witness identifies a perpetrator, say a teen with black spiky hair, brown eyes and olive skin, that police officers at airports and bus stations won’t be questioning curly blond, blue-eyed 40 year olds and will stop teens with olive skin.

Not all profiling is racial. Haven’t most people at one time been subject to it? Whether you are a recent high school or college graduate who needs experience before you can get a job in a field you want to join, are middle aged with too much experience so seem too expensive, are over 65 and considered too old to function, belong to a religion that is out of favor, are single and want to buy a condo or are divorced, gay, bankrupt, bald, fat, ugly, have white hair or whatever is the you-don’t-want-to-be-that du jour–you’ve been singled out in a negative way by assumptions made about you by some decision-maker who is in your way.

Have you felt the sting? Do you see use for profiling in any instances or not at all? Do you think that there’s hope that profiling can be defined or implemented so that people who look on either its pro or con ramifications will ever agree?

Jealousy serves to do at least one thing: Eliminate viable candidates to make it easier for decision makers to pick people.

I just heard of a high school senior with a 4.0 grade point average, good SAT scores, the appropriate participation in student government, athletics as well as impressive internships, who didn’t get into a single one of her first choices of college.

After looking into it for her, her guidance counselor broke protocol and shared with her that the teacher she’d asked to recommend her had written “________[Name] used her looks to get where she is.”

According to the person telling me about this–the competition, a fellow student–nothing could be further from the truth. The young woman is stunning. Can she help that she’s 5′8″, has a stupendous figure, incredible skin and hair and a beautiful face? Regardless, she works hard and earns her grades and awards. My conjecture: The teacher was jealous.

Another instance is job-related. A friend reported to an Air Force lieutenant colonel who, after flying through college in three years earning high honors, shot up through the ranks making each promotion faster than most. The man was smart and respected.

Suddenly, his career screeched to a stop. He almost had to leave the Air Force before retirement age because of a bad report that squelched his next promotion. [If you were passed over for promotion three times, you were forced out of the Air Force.] We all thought:  The superior who gave him the negative review was jealous.

In no way do I resemble either of these people and yet I’ve experienced similar disappointments. In retrospect, I see what happened, although I was flummoxed at the time. I thought you were supposed to do outstanding work.

I don’t think that there is a thing you can do about it but move on.

The young woman did. She’s excelling at her safety college, gets top flight internships and has learned early that life isn’t fair and to keep on trucking. The lieutenant colonel squeaked into the bird colonel slot with cheers from all who knew and worked with him. He never acted bitter nor did he take out his plight on his squadron or family during the career-teetering years.

Do you feel that often the wrong people rise to the top? Do you think that jealousy is one of the reasons, if not directly, then because nobody is threatened by mediocrity and the less outspoken and safe politicians dodge all bullets? Have you observed or experienced a situation where a colleague, boss, client or instructor became a spoiler for someone else out of jealousy?

I improve what I’ve written every time I reread the copy but there’s a limit to how much time I can spend on a project as nobody will pay for unlimited hours to edit and rewrite. Under ideal circumstances, I like an hour to pass before picking up and reviewing copy–overnight is even better. If in a severe time crunch and the copy is more than a memo, I ask another writer/editor to review it.  Being clear and error-free matters.

[I digress, but have you read books by some well regarded contemporary authors lately? It appears that nobody, not even their Aunt Sadie, an editor or even the author has read the book cover to cover before it goes to press looking, at the least, for facts repeated a few pages apart.]

I don’t bash brands on this blog, but the instances to which I refer are so widely known that I am making an exception.

I wonder what was going through Steve Jobs and the Apple tech team’s minds to put a flawed phone on the market when someone had to know the antenna would give trouble. Just as poor copy won’t kill anyone, [unless you are writing dosage and side effect information for potentially lethal meds or assembly instructions for parachutes or bombs], an imperfect phone won’t either [except if the caller is dialing 911 for help and touches the antenna on the rim, which causes a dropped call.]

This lack of double checking [or ignoring the results of someone who has] seems to be communicable. Where was it going on at BP before crews sank a pipe in water far deeper than standard? And now that the horse is out of the barn-or rather, the Lockerbie bomber is out of jail and back home in the lap of luxury–we find out that he isn’t as sick as the judge thought/was told and he may live another 10+ years. [Apart from nobody checking the doctor's prognosis, since when should we care so much about the final days of a killer like this? But that's another subject.]

At the same time as some think of serious double-checking as a waste of time, we have reporters postulating where Chelsea Clinton’s wedding will be. TV reporters are stalking passersby in Rhinebeck, New York to gauge whether locals think the wedding will take place there or, as Erica Orden in The Wall Street Journal wrote on Friday in “Rhinebeck Conspiracy Theory,” when she quoted a resident police officer, “My wife thinks this is a decoy location….” On Sunday, in the Style section, The New York Times had its own, slightly different version of guessing the where and when.

Do you think that we should apply the sharp brains being wasted on this fluff to double check what’s going on in so many crucial areas such as finance and the war, or do we need the frivolity to survive the consequences caused by the rampant lack of double checking, even by some in the media, our traditional watchdogs?

In his column, The Ethicist, Randy Cohen wrote recently in The New York Times, “Your wife should err on the side of caution and not take anything of value from a supplier.” The woman supervised travel for a company and she’d won the grand raffle prize of two roundtrip tickets to Japan at an event sponsored by several airlines. There were some 1,000 guests.

In my first job out of college I worked at Dun & Bradstreet writing credit reports. We were told that if a company we visited manufactured matchbooks not to take a single match, even to light a cigarette. That has been my guideline ever since.

Yet I think that Cohen is being harsh in this instance. He softens at the end of the column, noting to the husband who sent in the query, “At the least, she must disclose her winnings to her supervisors and get their green light before she packs her bags.” I’m comfortable with that.

Some in the media won’t let a PR person buy them so much as a cup of coffee. Others gather enough loot over years to fill a strip mall. Reporters and editors don’t have a lot of time to schmooze over lunch these days, nevertheless, just as business is done by some on a golf course, I can’t imagine how, for the price of a lunch or a coffee, anyone would sell their soul and run photos of horrible looking, poorly made or faulty goods in a new product column or run positive coverage of a lackluster ad campaign or sleazy business.

What about a book or movie reviewer who is sent/given a galley or invited to preview the flick? I don’t recall reading in their reviews that they didn’t pay for the book or seat at the theatre and it doesn’t bother me. What about a beauty editor sent samples that aren’t samples but entire bottles and jars? No problem in my mind. Making up samples would cost a fortune and wouldn’t provide the same experience. Packaging–how the beauty product looks and how the dispenser works–is part of the evaluation.

Full disclosure: I send promo codes to reviewers who ask for them so they can try a client’s smartphone application and have given hundreds of yards of fabric and countless rolls of wallpaper and dinnerware and flooring to be used for newspaper or magazine new product pages or to decorate a home that a magazine photographs.

Obviously, if a company pays any of the reviewers for their assessments, they must disclose this relevant piece of information, whether they write for a blog, web site, an online or print newspaper or magazine. Special sections or advertorials are paid for by the participants and are clearly identified by publishers, usually at the top of the page.

Because attitude and service are more than half of the experience, I think that a restaurant, hotel or travel reviewer should be anonymous and pay for all his/her expenses, no exceptions. 

What about stock brokers? Should they tell you that they’ve been told to push an investment by the boss?

Where do you stand on full disclosure? Do you care?

We drove by a remarkable orange and magenta sunset backing a mountain view. A man had pulled off the road to take some photos and at first I was annoyed with myself for driving in the country with neither my camera nor my phone.

To console myself I remembered how I tend to best recall missed incredible photos more distinctly than most of the thousands I’ve taken and put away in albums or boxes. The mother and daughter on horseback early in the morning in either Upper or Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds is another example. I had no film–it was that long ago–but I see the two of them emerging from the fog, dressed for the hunt.

We have selective memories. If a doctor or nurse asks me details of some disease I’ve had I have to think long and hard to remember the year or details. I know folks who can relate every gruesome detail. I may recall a childhood event neither friends nor relatives do. Conversely, they reminisce about a party or conversation that seems new to me, yet they assure me I was there.

Can you imagine being a politician, being held accountable for details you really can’t remember? “You said this in 12^th grade when you ran for treasurer and stood for that at overnight camp! You belonged to the such and such club as a college freshman and your first job out of college was at XYZ, tisk, tisk, and didn’t you once baby-sit for the so-and so’s?” [Actually, I remember all of that...but I shudder to think what I've forgotten.]

I’m amazed at some of the insignificant details I do recall–a psychiatrist would either have a heyday or fall asleep. [I'm of average size now, went through a few too-thin periods and was a blimpette until I was 14. I vividly see myself sitting in assembly hall in school looking down at the fattest thighs in America--through senior year.]

I tend to try to remember happy events or interactions and on occasion test unhappy ones-as you might touch a black and blue mark to see if it still hurts or has healed. What a fabulous feeling of relief–as when Advil erases a headache–when something that had me swiveted to the Nth degree no longer bothers: That boss or friend who lied or took advantage, for example.

I’ve heard that it’s bad for your health to masticate past upsets and forever grind them around inside, keeping them alive for years. Resulting anger makes you grumpy. It’s probably best to be grouchy sometimes to protect you from the fate described in the saying “Only the good die young,” but best not overdo.

Do you tend to brood endlessly over the negative or select the happier moments from your memory bank? What seemingly insignificant details do you remember from the past? Why? Are you shocked when an old friend or long lost cousin recounts hilarious tales that your memory has dismissed?

Thank goodness for early adopters. A friend’s husband was always the first to own the latest gadget and I admire adventurers like him, although I’ve rarely been one.

The most obvious reason is related to cost. The frugal shopper in me remembers paying a fortune for a calculator, which became a promo giveaway a few years later.

And then I experienced another reason to hold back: To let others iron out the kinks so when I buy the gizmo, gadget or new-fangled whatever, it’s flawless.

I helped launch an innovative home furnishings product that interior designers scrambled to be the first to install. We were thrilled to take photos of this innovative window shade in the wonderful settings they created. They loved the look.

And then the complaints began when the ground-breaking cord mechanism stuck and decorators and homeowners alike found that they couldn’t clean the shades as instructed.

So I remembered not to be first when I considered an electric car and then wondered where I’d find plugs to feed it during my travels [or even where I live]. If I hear of a new medication, I don’t want to be the one to exhibit side effects that didn’t come out in drug trials. 

The iPhone 4 brought this topic to mind. The New York Post headline, “Apple Slapped with ‘Death Grip’ Suits Calling Out the iPhone,” reflected some of the drama surrounding the sensitive antenna that frames the phone [on the left-hand corner] and causes dropped calls on the device that ranges in price from $700-$200. Some of the first adapters are suing Apple and AT&T, according to Emily Ngo and Michael Blaustein, who wrote the article, for “negligence, breach of implied warranty, knowingly selling a defective product and a slew of other charges.”

One of the phone owners Ngo and Blaustein quoted said he “felt like a guinea pig.” In my mind, that’s what early adopters are and have always been and that’s the service they provide us all. They often pay a lot of money to satisfy their adventurous and inquisitive natures so that the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of their support.

What has been your experience when you’ve been an early adopter and are you driven to be one?

In an anonymous comment on my last post, “Service of Independence Day,” [July 1], an articulate writer noted: “As my pediatrician is fond of quoting, ‘Without failure there can be no success.’” I’ve been planning to write about failure for a while. With social network ESP at work, now’s the time.

As I approached the topic, the first thing I thought of was that we can’t have weaknesses. Note a typical job interview where the interviewer asks, “What are your weaknesses?” The applicant replies:  “I’m a workaholic; I am too organized; I love working 13 hours a day when I know I shouldn’t and I hate vacations.”

The next thing that came to mind was the culture in some workplaces where no matter what you do, never, ever admit to failure. Sell one widget in a year when projections were for 1,000 and somehow you twist your report to show that have met your goal. Politicians always meet theirs, don’t they?

I’m from the school of “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again and again and again,” and then, if it isn’t working, I realize that I’ve done everything possible and the project or relationship or concept isn’t working or didn’t work. Giving it my all allows me to sleep at night once I’m over the disappointment/devastation/dust-off period.

[One exception is failure associated with anything electronic. I don't know about you but when something goes wrong with my computer, smartphone or other device, I sound like my mother asking myself, "What did you do?" More than half the time I did nothing and it's not my malfunction.]

More about failure: I set up and staffed a client’s booth at an industry trade show. The client was a trade association and the marketing committee wanted me to entice attendees to participate in an industry-wide initiative. Trouble is the attendees were at the show to find and buy product, meet with vendors and maybe look for a job. They weren’t the slightest bit interested in any program this or any other association was peddling. I became emboldened after day one which generated little traffic and less interest so the second day, I stood out in the middle of the floor in front of the booth with a big smile and spoke with anyone who came down the aisle. Very not me, but I was desperate. The results were appalling.  

Not long after, when another trade association-client, representing a different industry, had the bright idea to do the same, without naming names, I told them of my previous experience and the reasons for failure. The marketing committee ignored me and went ahead. Fortunately, I wasn’t asked to staff this booth. In spite of my warning, the committee members who staffed the booth were shocked when they reported dismal results. [I didn't say boo.]

You hope to turn a negative into a positive and label a glitch like this under “experience.”  That’s the success part? I also learned that like some children who must test what a hot stove feels like no matter how effectively an adult warns them that touching it will hurt, some people won’t listen to and/or learn from other people’s failures. 

A friend from third grade’s father used to say, “It’s what you don’t think of that will trip you up,” which has challenged me all my life to try to think of everything possible before a project or event so that I clear all decks leaving time to address unexpected bombshells. Still, sometimes, things fail.

These days, it happens a lot. You try to invest prudently and intelligently and surprise! Someone at the company–a household name with solid credentials and reputation–has cheated, lied or exaggerated. You get burned, lose your money and are told that “Investing is high risk–just like gambling, don’t you know,” in the same patronizing tone of voice you hear when a person who has insulted you tells you that they were “just joking.”

Do you agree with the pediatrician who says that without failure, there can be no success? In a society that doesn’t acknowledge failure, has it ever played into your success?

The Sunday before I left to live in the Middle East for two years, the final song at church was “God Bless America.” Prone to tear up while watching Hallmark Card Mother’s Day commercials, I burst into tears that morning.

Being chauvinistic implies fanaticism. Being patriotic is considered inappropriate by many, or vulgar, but I am, even when unconditional love is hard to maintain.

I feel about this country quite like how I feel when someone I love does something I object to or makes me roll my eyes in disbelief. I may wince and speak up with voice and/or vote yet I cringe when the US is accused of doing something wrong even if I agree that it shouldn’t. [You know, the old I-can-say-something-negative-about-my-child, sister, brother or parent-but-God-help-you-if-you-do syndrome]. I also mourn when I notice how America has lost its luster in areas in which it used to shine.

I have friends whose pedigrees affiliate them to this country well over a century closer to the signing of the Declaration of Independence 234 years ago than any one of my fattest American bloodlines. They don’t feel the slightest excitement when they see the flag snapping smartly in the wind on top of a building or bridge or watch a small town dressed in flags and families following the town fire engine down Main Street to celebrate the 4^th of July. I do. In fact, many don’t “get” me.

Where do you stand on patriotism?

Flag on Mid-Hudson Bridge, shot from the car

Every job has guidelines. People often ignore, forget or question them but a few procedures are infallible and dangerous to disregard because of potential consequences.

Employees casually shrug off 1) good manners in communicating with office colleagues 2) a pleasant demeanor when speaking with patients and their family members in a hospital or nursing home or 3) gracious service at a spa or restaurant. You’ve heard the perpetrators claim: “Wasting time on such frills is so yesterday and I’m not paid for that, anyway.” I’m convinced that those sentiments manipulate insecure associates who don’t want to appear old fashioned–the opposite of hip–so they follow.

Nobody gets really hurt when people ignore some guidelines. Ignore others and the outcome can range from costly to horrific. A friend had to inspect every pill each nurse handed her husband while he was in the hospital because a careless one had given him a medication to which he was allergic. The warning about his allergy was clearly noted on his chart, but who looks?

Then there’s Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s downfall. For anyone dealing with the press, there is one guideline for which there are no exceptions: There is no off the record. Translation: Unless you don’t care or want it to leak out, when dealing with the media, keep your mouth shut about proprietary information or your opinion, if it doesn’t match the mission. That means not a word to your cousin, sister-in-law or some freelance writer for a publication that has nothing to do with your business–period. Why? Because the press’s guideline is the opposite: To get you to say something news, gossip or gotcha-worthy.

Some guidelines seem obvious and yet need to be spelled out: When planning a fieldtrip for children, spec out where you are going and every detail about the outing. Last week a 12 year old drowned at a beach that had no lifeguard. Two teachers from a NYC school and an intern watching 24 children by the ocean did not take the place of a lifeguard and a hidden rip current didn’t help. I’m dumbfounded that before finalizing the trip nobody called the town hall or local authorities to confirm that there was a lifeguard on duty or looked up the beach’s summer schedule on line.

Public school children aren’t the only victims. I knew a family who lost a child during an overnight at an expensive summer camp. The counselor pitched camp near a ravine and the child woke up in the middle of the night, became disoriented and fell into the canyon.

I admire the adults who take children on class trips especially in the NYC subway. I’ve seen teachers herd hoards of kids into a subway car and out at the right stop. It’s important to show the children points of interest where they live, but guidelines are essential in these instances.

What other guidelines are meant to be followed, no exception?