What is Great Customer Service--and Why do you give it?

Why do you give such GREAT Customer Service?

.

Back in the day, when I worked in the Training Department at Mrs. Field's Cookies corporate office, I happened on a project left over from a previous staff member called, "What is GREAT Customer Service?" My boss, Monnie Hughes and I decided to make a sequel that asked the next question:  WHY do you give GREAT Customer Service..

The original was a quick little 8 minute training presentation store managers could run for their teams before they started their shifts entitled, "What is Great Customer Service?"  It was a home brew theatrical production that featured all the bad ham acting you cold cram into 8 minutes featuring the "cool" dudes and dudettes at headquarters.  It showed a real life situation with simulated customers, how it is often handled (with appropriate comic effect) and how it should be handled.  It was a bit more than skits in front of the fire place, but it got the message across.

My idea was to take advantage of a national swing to take pictures of some botique stores for the annual meeting--and video tape clerks, waitresses and others serving us as we traveled, two questions:

1.  "What do you think is Great Customer Service?", and

2.  "Why do you give Great Customer Service?

We never found a convenient, legal way to do what I'd envisoned without stopping some great servers, desk clerks and car rental agents in their appointed rounds.  During that trip, Monnie and I asked three or four dozen people those two questions.  I could bore you with the text book answers we got--and the dumfounded stares we encountered in a few folks without a clue.  

The upshot of this quest came in Atlanta, Georgia down the street from the Great American Cookie headquarters--a subsidiary of Mrs. Fields.  Monnie and I went to an venerable tea room for lunch with the Vice President of Marketing, a short Jewish woman with a heart of gold.   Our waitress was a delightful African American grandmother named Effie who was in her early eighties if she was a day.  Monnie winked at me and I asked the two questions: 

"What do you think is GREAT customer service?"  

"That's where you take your broken toaster, isn't it?" she responded.  

I gently explained, "Thanks, Effie!  But I was hoping for something about how you serve your patrons...but let's try this question,'  WHY do you GIVE such great customer service?'"

"That's easy" she grinned, "Its cuz ah LUVES mah peeple!!!"

I never had a better answer!

With all this extra attention, she shyly told us about her two sons, a doctor and a lawyer--and dragged me over to see an article in the Atlanta Constitution Sunday Magazine about her long service, preserved under glass in a dignified frame.   But she didn't take much time.  She was in charge of twenty tables in the big tea room and she had some water glasses to fill!

The AFTER STORY:  We never produced that project.  The company decided to level the budget deficit by letting one HQ staff member per department go back on the job market.  Reduction in force is what it sayes on the official paperwork.  As valuable as I thought I was, the company decided otherwise. Monnie and I had hired a great college student who was familiar with all the desk top publishing and video production software.

(My great friend, Monnie, invited me back to shoot and edit the training film when Mrs. Fields partnered with Sesame Street for the inevitable Cookie Monster and Elmo cookie projects---and in retrospect it was time to move on!)

JRH

Memories of my Dad, Milo

by Donald Eugene Howe

(on the 93rd anniversary of his birth, February 2, 2011 -- Ground Hog Day)

As an elementary school kid, in Laramie, it was pretty ubiquitous phenomenon to pick up on the fact that Football was a big deal in our town, both in High School and Division 1 NCAA Football ranks, way before anybody had ever heard of the BCS.  Dad had been a High School football player, in Kearney, Nebraska.  And when I voiced an interest to Dad to take me to local Laramie Senior High School Football games coached by local legend John Deti, my lasting memory of him is those on chilly Laramie Friday nights, when Dad was in town and available to take me, we would partake of the excitement of watching Laramie Plainsman Football.  What great memories.  I guess I not only went to the home games when Dad could take me, we also lived next door to the Laramie play-by-play radio voice for a short time when McGrannahans either moved away, or went on sabbatical, and our neighbor Mr. Ken Keating and his family lived next door to us on Ashley Street.  I enjoyed following the Plainsman either at home, or away by listening to LHS Football broadcasts by Ken Keating, or going with Dad to watch them firsthand. The Keatings had a daughter who was a school classmate in later years at Thayer Elementary, and at Laramie Jr. High School.  When at LJHS, another of my classmates was Scott Shurmur, son of UW Cowboy Football Head Coach Fritz Shurmur.  His Dad’s specialty was Defense, and he went on to work until the day he passed away just a year or so after he coached the Green Bay Packers to a Super Bowl win in the late 1990’s, as Defensive Coordinator for Packers’ Head Coach (and former Assistant Coach to Lavell Edwards at BYU), Mike Holmgren.  Fritz had been invited to go with Holmgren to Seattle to coach the Seahawks defense, but cancer cut short his opportunity to go to Seattle.  Today, he is buried in Wisconsin.

Some of my lasting, endearing first memories of our Father, Milo Howe, was how he would bundle me up on those cold late September and October Friday evenings, and when I couldn’t generate enough heat to keep warm while watching the game, he’d open up his herring bone tan and brown herring bone wool overcoat and sit me on his lap, and wrap me up, and just being on my Daddy’s lap, witnessing all the excitement, pageantry and traditions of High School Football - - the crisp air, the occasional wafting smell of popcorn, pipe tobacco, and listening to the music of a marching band, and witnessing a winning football tradition on my Father’s lap, all was right and good and kind with me, and my Dad.  My Sister Carolyn played French horn in the Plainsman marching band, and if I recall correctly, she, too, played “Powderpuff Football” for the girls’ annual Jr’s vs. Sr’s tackle football grudge match.  What lingers in memory the smell of that old wool overcoat, a hint of Aqua Velva, or Old Spice aftershave, and a gentle, reassuring, loving voice replete with explanatory inside-football descriptions by someone who had played the game, and loved to share it with his ‘Little Feller,’ son.  When I played tackle football some years later in 7th and 8th grades, I recall Dad showing up to practice one day with his Argus C-3 rangefinder camera and snapping a few pictures of his aspiring right halfback / linebacker son.  Oh what fun memories!  Happy Birthday, Dad.  Thanks for taking me to the football games and taking an interest in me, and keeping me warm and sharing something that was dear to you, and is a tradition that is now dear to me, too.

Thinking about Jon’s memories riding bikes to Cheyenne with Dad, he and I also used to ride our bicycles on nice weather days on Sunday mornings down to the Thomes Chapel, in Cheyenne, to attend Priesthood meeting early in the morning when Dad was in, and the weather was nice.  I can’t watch a bike rider pedal by, to this day, but what I don’t have the primal urge to want to jump on a bike and ride, too, and feel the breeze on my face, and the joy of human powered mobility.  Walk into any bicycle shop, to this day, and the smell of new bike tires, and an open container of white grease bring back the Schwinn bicycle shop, to me.  “MILO! . . . DONALD!   dinnertime, wash your hands! . . .”