Remembering the Positive

One of my personal growth projects for the year is to remember to point out good things. What I mean by this is that while I will write an email of complaint when something irks me, I rarely do the opposite--write an email thanking someone for great service.

This past weekend I had to go grocery shopping--one of my least favorite chores. I started out early and hit my first grocery store. People were polite there, but no one was particularly friendly. Usually they are at this store, but not that day. I drove over to grocery store number 2. This one has nicer produce and I prefer the deli meats they carry over store 1.

I was looking for low-fat hamburger already in patties over in the meat department when one of the employees said hello. He asked me how I was and listened when I said good. I asked how he was and he said he was blessed and that it was a beautiful day. He asked if could help me and I asked about the hamburger.

Not earthshaking by any means, but his energy, his obvious pleasure in the day, his joy was just beautiful and it made my day brighter. It stood in stark contrast to the girl who was at the register and the kids who bagged my groceries. They could barely say hello.

Next was the credit union--the teller was pleasant enough--and then the post office. Not very friendly there. It made my encounter with the man working the grocery's meat department all that more awesome.

I started thinking about how I wish I could tell the store how great this one employee was. When someone is that friendly and helpful and just such a pleasure to interact with, it should be pointed out. Then I realized I had an app on my iPad for the store. Sure enough, they had a feedback button. It was for the app. Hmmm. I tried the customer service section and there it was--the form to send them a note. I realized I hadn't gotten the man's name--my bad. But I talked about how awesome he was anyway and gave them the day and time I was there.

I doubt there were two people working Saturday morning that are upbeat and joyful like this man was, so hopefully they'll know who it was.

We, as a society, seem to be so quick to find fault and complain about the service we receive. I'm the same way. I'll fire off an email of complaint when I'm unhappy, but I rarely even think about doing it when I have a good encounter. I decided this needs to change. The people out there who are positive and making an effort to be helpful need to get notes with feedback, too. Their bosses need to know how awesome that person is. That person should know somehow that their good service was appreciated with more than a thank you at the end of the interaction.

This was my first opportunity to put my resolution into practice. It felt good not only to point out the excellent service, but to remember how my entire day changed because of one upbeat encounter. I hope to do this many more times this year.

A Tale of Two Companies

Or a journey through customer service.

I do some Subscribe and Save items on Amazon and I had a shipment due recently. It was supposed to be here last Friday, but there was a shipping delay. Still, no big deal, it would arrive on Monday. Only on Monday instead of two boxes outside my door, there was only one.

I checked around the front of the house, went online and read what Amazon had to say about it. They suggested 1. waiting an extra day because sometimes a shipper will say delivered a bit prematurely and 2. contact the shipper.

Since I've never had a premature delivery notice, I sent a tweet to UPS. The person who responded was friendly and gave me an email address where I needed to send the information. So I did that and waited.

The response came on Tuesday. It was terse. The gist of it was: if there were two boxes, they'd each have their own tracking number. You only have one tracking number, you'll have to contact Amazon. Okay, then. Fine.

I did the Contact Us form on the bottom of my account page. I had a response from Amazon within an hour even though they give themselves 12 hours to respond. The Customer Service specialist had replacement items on the way already, and she was sorry, but one item was out of stock. Would I like a refund?

Wow. How awesome is that? I rarely, as in almost never, have a problem with Amazon, and when I did, they immediately took care of me, their customer. This was a far different feeling than I had at the end of the UPS exchange.

At the end of this, I'm left with a real meh feeling about UPS, but I'm like, Amazon rocks! Might be a lesson for other companies and their customer service employees.