Kevin's Watch

I am nearly done with a Service Excellence Training program at work. One of the last things I need to do is to come up with five ways to provide "wow!" service to people I work with (co-workers, IOW, not paying clients). Suggestions? The floor is open.

Also: if you have any stories about exemplary customer service that you've experienced personally, lay 'em on me.

And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping me with my homework.

If you haven't already, read "The Fred Factor." It's a great book about customer service. Can't remember author's name off of the top of my head, but should be easy to find.

I once worked at a company where the sales dept (3 people) complained about their computers all the time ie: slow.
So we gave each of them a UPS (battery) and told them they were "Pentium Accelerators".

They couldn't thank us enough after that and 2 said their computers were running better!

Is that good customer service?

How does your office feel about non-business email, ali?
Is there an office newletter that is sent out around holiday time with recipes, bargain shopping hints, hot gift ideas, etc.? Would such an idea fly?

If you have any down time at work, and putting a brief email newsletter of that sort together would interest you, I think you would be the perfect person to launch the idea, if not be the editor...

High Lord Tolkien wrote:I once worked at a company where the sales dept (3 people) complained about their computers all the time ie: slow.
So we gave each of them a UPS (battery) and told them they were "Pentium Accelerators".

They couldn't thank us enough after that and 2 said their computers were running better!

Is that good customer service?

I think there's another name for that....

Menolly, the newsletter is a cool idea, but these are supposed to be things we can do to help each other do our jobs better. Y'know, boring stuff like: if someone asks you a question, don't just say "I don't know" or even "I think Murgatroyd knows, ask him," but walking with the person to Murgatroyd's desk and making sure the person gets the answer they need. Oh, and then chasing after them to give them back the mug they left on your desk -- something like that gets you a "Make My Day!" e-mail because it's outside your job description.

I'll have to look for "The Fred Factor", dlb -- thanks for the tip!

Compliment someone else's work.
Do you know all your coworkers? Do they know you?

I just reread the topic and realized this is written "homework."

Knowing your job duties would help me answer this question better.

I work as a legal secretary in a big law firm. I forget how many people we have in our office, but it's upwards of 1,000. (Our building is a block long.) I support two partners directly. I'm also on a team with two other secretaries; when they're not in the office, I help to support their attorneys (between them, they have six -- three partners and three associates). Duties include booking travel, creating and submitting expense vouchers, answering the phone, billing, filing -- lots of administrative stuff, in short -- as well as proofreading and editing legal documents, doing rudimentary legal research ("here's the citation, please pull it up on Westlaw for me"), and so on.

Does that help?

Wow. That is a BS assignment. What are you supposed to do: put smiley faces on things? Geez.

I would probably say that I was extremely competent at my position and that while I realize I'm not the quarterback, I am an MVP when it comes to supporting the other team members. I'll make sure to smile at everyone twice as much on Fridays.

Good luck on this one!

Menolly wrote:How does your office feel about non-business email, ali?
Is there an office newletter that is sent out around holiday time with recipes, bargain shopping hints, hot gift ideas, etc.? Would such an idea fly?

People hate e-mail newsletters, trust me. A 20-30% open rate is considered fair. And that's for ones that they've asked for.

--A

Since you guys have been no help at all , I've been forced to do my own homework.

Here are the five things I came up with to wow the two other women on my secretarial team:
* Train them (and other secretaries) to deal with the client travel agency that is the bane of my existence. (*Every*body should feel my pain!)
* Create some sort of shared calendar for vacations and attorney trips/vacations. As it is now, we send each other e-mails with the schedules, and I tend to read them, comment on them, and then immediately forget the contents....
* Offer to make a regular run to the supply room in the basement.
* Develop a cheat sheet for the common non-billable codes. (Each general ledger code is 23 digits long -- I defy you to memorize them all! -- and sometimes we have to use a "soft costs" number instead.)
* Periodic brown-bag lunches/breaks/hall socials, just to foster the teamwork concept. We've already talked about doing a holiday cookie exchange sometime next month, so this is sort of piggybacking onto that idea.

The danger is that you can't do this stuff every day or people will begin to think it's part of your job. It reminded me of a cartoon from a Ziggy calendar I used to have. In the cartoon, Ziggy is visiting the sage who lives at the top of the mountain. The old man tells him, "Do a little more each day than everyone expects of you...and soon everyone expects a little more."

A few things...
-always always ALWAYS phone someone back if you've said you will, even just to say 'i'm still working on it' or 'sorry, I tried but couldn't do it'.
- introduce your team to Edge in time for organising Christmas pressies.
- make up a song for each of those long numbers you need to know
- make surprise cups of tea (this might be an English one!)/get the coffee when it's not your turn/it's not expected of you

Stonemaybe wrote:- make surprise cups of tea (this might be an English one!)/get the coffee when it's not your turn/it's not expected of you

Hold on...
People take turns doing this?

When I was working and I saw the coffee pot was low, I always poured out the dregs, washed (OK, so I admit I may have been the only one who actually washed the parts. That thing was nasty whenever I did it) the coffee maker, and put on a fresh pot to brew.

I also would make sure to turn off, empty and wash the pot if I was in the office after hours and no one else had remembered.

But, doesn't everyone take such things on if they see they need doing?

What has always helped me was an easy motto to go by. "Under promice and over deliver." Sometimes it goes unnoticed but sometimes you get an extremely surprised and thankful responce.

Sheol: It always worked for Scotty on Star Trek, didn't it?

Menolly wrote:But, doesn't everyone take such things on if they see they need doing?

Lord, honey, no! But anyway, we have Keurig one-cup coffee machines in all the pantries. And people who keep the boxes of K-cups stocked. *And* those same folks also clean out the fridges every Friday afternoon. Oh, *and* we have staff who walk around the building all day with rags and Windex, wiping fingerprints off the glass doors. This is a high-class joint.

But I have certainly worked at places where the coffeepot didn't ever get turned off until the dregs started to smoke. Eww.

Stone: I like your ideas. Especially the one about Edge. And in all seriousness, I agree with you that doing what you say you're going to do is key.

Menolly wrote:

Stonemaybe wrote:- make surprise cups of tea (this might be an English one!)/get the coffee when it's not your turn/it's not expected of you

Hold on...
People take turns doing this?

When I was working and I saw the coffee pot was low, I always poured out the dregs, washed (OK, so I admit I may have been the only one who actually washed the parts. That thing was nasty whenever I did it) the coffee maker, and put on a fresh pot to brew.

I also would make sure to turn off, empty and wash the pot if I was in the office after hours and no one else had remembered.

But, doesn't everyone take such things on if they see they need doing?

Yeah, people take turns. There's substantial friction between the vast majority of my coworkers and I (vindictive ex-wives play hell on office politics and friendships), but there's no question about coffee etiquette. You're in first, you make it. You finish the pot, you ask if anyone wants more and make it if so, clean it if not. We rotate through who buys the coffee. When the pot broke earlier this year, we nearly got into an argument over who was buying the replacement (3 people offered).

You do not ever tamper with office coffee.

I am so glad I no longer even try to manipulate corporate politics and etiquette (much to Hyperception's dismay). It is so totally beyond my comprehension.

Stonemaybe wrote:-always always ALWAYS phone someone back if you've said you will, even just to say 'i'm still working on it' or 'sorry, I tried but couldn't do it'.

Absolutely. I lived by this when I had office jobs, and while some people didn't mention it, many did. It's such a simple thing. People like to be kept informed; they like to know you're actually working on the task; and they like to know you can be relied upon to keep your word.

...and if they sent their request by e-mail, they like to know that you at least read it.

I'm so glad I don't drink coffee.

Just an update: We had our final class session today. Little did I know that there would be prizes for the most bonus points earned. I ended up in first place and won a $25 gift card.

So anyway, if anybody here needs excellent service...um...feel free to step to the next window.