customer service – Jeanne Hewell-Chambers

Phone

Here’s the situation: a friend is going to court tomorrow morning. She’s innocent, and while I don’t know that I have anything that can be used to help her, I’m certainly willing to help in any way I can. I offer to talk to her attorney if she (the friend) wants me to. She does and calls her attorney to relay my name and number. I am on the phone when the attorney calls, but I return the call as soon as I am off the phone. It’s about 3 minutes after noon – lunchtime – so I leave a voice mail that goes like this:

“This is Jeanne Hewell-Chambers returning [insert attorney’s name]’s call. I can be reached at [insert my phone number, area code first of course]. I should be here most, if not all of the day. I look forward to talking with you soon.” All said with a smile because you can hear smiles on the phone. It’s inexplicable but true.

Three, almost four hours pass and I hear nothing. Now I know that if the attorney and I are to talk, it has to be today, so I pick up the phone and call back because she and/or her assistant (I don’t know if she has an assistant) may not have thought to check for messages after lunch. Or maybe she’s in court this afternoon. Or maybe the sticky note with my number got covered up on her desk. Or maybe she had a heart attack, God forbid. The maybe’s stretch out into oblivion, so the only sensible thing for me to do it call back, to return the call a second time.

“Law offices of [insert name(s)]” is the greeting. She also says her name, but it’s blurred because she says it so fast.

“This is Jeanne Hewell-Chambers. I’m returning [insert attorney’s name] again. Is she available?”

“She’s booked in meetings all afternoon.” A brief pause then, with a much nicer tone of voice: “Oh wait. Jeanne Hewell-Chambers. I know she wants to talk to you, but she’s in meetings all afternoon. It’ll be after 4 before she can call you.”

Notice anything?

I’m gonna’ help you out. In no particular order, here’s what would have catapulted this attorney’s assistant into the gold star realm of customer service, making both the attorney and the assistant hugely credible and desirable:

1. She could have (and should have, in my opinion, because I used to teach exceptional gold star customer service) (I am a girl raised in the South, customer service is what we do every day of our lives). Anyway, the assistant could have/should have taken the initiative to issue me a courtesy call to let me know that she got my message, that the attorney is in meetings all afternoon and will call me when the meetings end.
2. All of the above PLUS: When she tells me when the attorney will be able to call me, she asks if that time will be convenient for me. Let me rephrase: She asks if that time will be convenient FOR ME.
3. She confirms my phone number.

Little things are huge. Why is it so hard for people to think of things like this? It doesn’t increase the overhead by a penny while the return on investment of the extra minute is priceless.

Flowers

Today I am tired – tired to the molecular level, I tell you – and that’s why it could have gone either way: I could’ve gone ballistic, or in the interest of energy conservation, I could’ve said nothing . . .

Today is my brother’s wedding anniversary, you see, and last night he called from Afghanistan asking me to send flowers to his lovely wife, Robin – something I wasn’t able to do until around 2:30 this afternoon. I went online, googled florists in her city and state, then scrolled down to find the magic words “same day delivery.” The one I decided on promised to deliver the same day provided the order was placed by 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time Zone and you paid an additional fee. Having an hour to spare and the $2.95 in additional fees, I finished placing my order with 20 minutes to spare then turned my attention back to wrestling the to do list.

Thank goodness the email was up in the background, so I saw the confirmation email followed minutes later by the dreaded there’s-a-problem-with-your-order-call-us-at-your-earliest-convenience email. Well, things immediately shifted and right then became my earliest convenience so I called, and after 7 minutes on hold, Dianne answered and explained that there were no florists in the area willing to deliver today, but they’d all be happy to deliver the flowers sometime tomorrow.

Dianne said something about florists sometimes not being able to get their drivers back in time – to which I said quietly and calmly that I’d met the deadline and their web site was pretty definitive about same day delivery provided orders were placed by 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, which I had done. Dianne then said she’d call Robin and explain that it was their fault and promise her that they would deliver the flowers tomorrow – to which I (still using my best calmly and quietly tone of voice) said that I thought the element of surprise was part of the charm of receiving flowers, didn’t she, then I explained about the anniversary, and being the hopeless romantic she must assuredly be, Dianne then sat up straight (I could hear it in her voice) and said she wasn’t making any promises, but she’d call around and see if she couldn’t explain the situation and find somebody willing to delivery the flowers on their way home or something.

In less than 5 minutes, Dianne called to say that she’d found a florist who, after hearing the story, was willing to drop the flowers off on her way home.

AND they were going to upgrade the order, add a few flowers and a bigger bow or something.

AND they were covering all upcharges on same day delivery.

So you see, sometimes moving a mountain is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1) Lead with friendly.
2) Be patient.
3) Tell the story.

and TA-DA – everybody goes home smiling.