A Call with Feedback and a Note on Service

Yesterday morning I was working at my desk when I got a call from one of our customer service representatives that there was a patient on the phone who wanted to talk to me. This happens with some regularity and I always encourage folks to get the calls to me so I can hear the feedback being offered – my direct line is published on our website for just this reason.

This particular caller started by introducing herself and explaining that her husband was a patient of ours and had recently received a hospital bed and home oxygen from us. He was in very poor health and she was very happy to have him at home, even though he required extensive nursing care. She continued that we had sent many folks to her home over the course of the last several weeks to address on thing or another. She then transitioned to one of our delivery technicians in particular to commend him for his patience, caring attitude, and genuine interest in helping her and her family get what they needed done and get them comfortable with the equipment and items they had in their home.

“Your service is like nothing I have ever experienced in my life, from any company,” she commented. I was floored. We aspire to great things and great service and we tend to enter the lives of our customers at a very delicate time, but it was the way she said it that really caught me. She was filled with emotion and sincerity and it was a deeply touching call.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am to hear that,” I said, “we are very fortunate to have a great team of people in place and we work very hard to make people feel just that way.”

“I hope you get a lot of calls like this,” she answered. “Too many people just complain and never go out of their way to commend a job well done…and with the lousy service you get everywhere these days it’s so refreshing to be treated this way.”

We do get a fair amount of positive calls, notes and letters and for it we are so appreciative. We also get some suggestions on areas we could improve, which is tremendously helpful. If we are ever not living up to our promise I want to know about it so I can fix what went wrong and make sure it never happens again.

It was a very moving call and I would encourage you to try to do the same when you get excellent service. Far too often the only feedback we give is negative; try to find someone who provides great service to you and congratulate them, call their boss, their owner, and tell them what a great job they did. It’s such a small act and requires virtually no effort, but you provide positive reinforcement for an excellent individual and support a business that clearly works hard to help.

I thank the caller for taking the time, she made my month and our delivery technician was “Caught in the Act of Excellence” for his great work and the way he made this customer feel. Because that’s what service is at the end of the day; it’s not a tangible thing, it’s a way you make someone feel. When you make your company mission all about service the hope is you can make a lot of someone’s feel very good!