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October 6, 2008
Lessons from the past Though I was too young to realize it at the time, my first experience with customer service came at age seven when I delivered groceries to an elderly lady who lived near my house. Once a week she would phone an order to the neighborhood store. I would pull my wagon the three blocks to the store and take the groceries to her house. She always got a six-pack of coke and would give me the empty bottles as payment. Immediately I would return to the store, cash-in my bottles and spend the 15 cents on ice cream, candy bars, or whatever looked good at the moment. This was customer service in its simplest form. Not to mention the direct path to cavity city! In 1968 I joined the U.S. Navy and was trained as a dental technician: a mix of assistant, hygienist, receptionist, and medic. I graduated from dental hygiene school in 1975 and practiced hygiene in a variety of settings. Throughout my career I have been learning what it means to deliver quality care. Providing the best care can not always be outlined as a list of actions A-B-C and D. Great customer care is organic and changes with each patient. Much of what I have learned comes from seeing how not to do things. There has been no mentor or model of excellence for me to emulate. During my four years in the Navy I observed that quality of service was directly related to rank. Important people were treated better than the not-so-important, and this mindset is not limited to the military. We’ve all seen it. Most of us have participated in this behavior, if only on a subconscious level. Maybe a person’s status should impact the type of service he or she receives, but I tend to think not. knowing your patients The business aspect of knowing your patient can be applied on two levels. The broad aspect involves knowing who will have an interest in your product or service and what will prompt them to choose you over the competition. On a personal level it is to know the individual so as to meet specific needs. This can only be done through research and feedback. Some of this feedback will be positive and easy to take while other feedback will fall into the category that experts sometimes call “constructive criticism.” Of course you and I know this is just a nice term for customer complaints and negative feedback. Who wants that? You do – or at least you should. perspective is important The first time I realized that I did not fully understand my customer was when I worked as a freelance photographer. When taking a portrait I would often shoot the subject with an artistic approach rather than a traditional one. I enjoyed the way this let me express my creativity, like the time I took a portrait of a father standing between his twin daughters. I intentionally cut dad off at the waist to focus on the girls. It was a great photograph that I considered to be among my best work. At the time I could no understand why the mother of the twins did not want a copy of my masterpiece. It wasn’t until years later that I figured out the mother did not see the great composition and lighting in this creative work of art. She saw a family photo with her husband cut in half, end of story. Why buy a photo of your daughters and husband when you can’t see his face? I now see this was case of mistaken identity. What I judged to be important to my customer was actually only important to me.
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