Everything around me is a teachable moment. If you ask my kids, they can recount tales of me explaining how things really work to them. One of the things that we talk about a lot is the idea of customer service. The opening story of the book QBQ! is often my jumping off point. The short version is that John Miller was at a restaurant to grab a quick lunch, he was sitting at the bar waiting to place his order, and a busboy stopped and asked if he’d been helped. John said no and requested a salad and a Diet Coke. The busboy replied that they had Pepsi products, so John ordered a salad and a water. A few minutes later, the salad and an ice cold Diet Coke appeared. It turns out that the busboy sent his manager around the corner to buy a Diet Coke at a convenience store to ensure a happy customer. That’s the kind of customer service we talk about. The kind of service that not only stands out, but makes you go back and think about the entire story over and over.

A Customer Service Horror Story

Everybody has their horror stories regarding awful customer service. In fact, they’re pretty easy to come by. DishNetwork is my example that falls into that category. We’ve been a customer of DishNetwork for 11 years, four months, and 29 days as of today. This was repeated to me nine times today in my call to them. I was calling to cancel our service because we found something better. It’s not really relevant as to who we switched to, the reality is that we were switching from DishNetwork. For 11 years we’ve had OK service, not great, but acceptable. On a fairly regular basis, our monthly subscription has increased every so slightly. Not enough to make me switch, but enough to irritate me. You know, that funny kind of itch that you can’t quite resolve and you learn to live with. Yeah, that kind.

At no point during the 11 years did my costs ever go down for the same level of programming. When we lost our HD channels for four months, a technician told us it was due to a tree growing into the pathway of the satellite dish. When I inquired about moving the satellite dish, I was quoted a cost that was simply too high. We attempted to drop our HD programming (since we couldn’t view it), but that would have raised our overall cost…so we spent four months without HD. Then a storm damaged the tree that was supposedly the culprit and our problem persisted. DishNetwork almost lost me as a customer during that phase. They sent a technician who made a small adjustment to the satellite dish and our HD programming began working again. When I asked him if that was the problem all along he said he was 95% certain that it was.

In reality, DishNetwork met me expectations. They provided satellite service to our house, and the receivers worked almost all the time. We seldom lost programs that had been recorded, and we were seldom without service. But we did have channels go out for days at a time. We lost our HD programming. We had to replace each of the two receivers in our house three times during the 11 years, four months, and 29 days. At no time were we ever told that our receivers were out-of-date. At not point was a credit offered for unusable service. DishNetwork really only met my expectations for service because they had helped me lower the bar on those expectations.

Today’s call definitely opened my eyes. During the 49 minutes and 30 seconds that I was on the phone, the rep offered to reduce our monthly bill by 5%, 18%, 22%, 27%, 34%, and 42%. She offered to drop the cost of service by these amounts for one, two, or three years. She offered to remove our extra fees for HD programming. She offered to replace our leased DVR receivers for new, current, modern models. She explained that the newer units had greater capacity, enhanced features, and were demonstrably faster. If I’d taken the bait, I could have gotten the same hardware as any new, unproven customer for 42% less than what I’d been paying for years.

11 years, four months, and 29 days…to be exact.

Quite honestly, by the time the call was done and our service was canceled I’m not sure I would’ve kept it if the service and hardware had been free! Eleven years, four months, and twenty-nine days worth of frustration was all released during that call. I would probably still be a DishNetwork customer today if they had simply offered to either enhance my equipment or dropped my costs at a couple junctures during my tenure with them. I had actually called once before, intending to cancel, but was talked out of it when I got a 5% reduction in fees for six months (the remainder of that calendar year). Obviously I wasn’t committed enough to leaving them and didn’t hold out long enough.

So at the end of the day, the lesson I learned is that DishNetwork was perfectly happy to have me as a customer, and I played the sucker for 11 years, four months, and 29 days. Tomorrow that journey will end.

A Customer Service Hero

Unlike customer service horror stories, hero stories are harder to come by. Fortunately, I encountered a customer service hero in the most unlikely place a couple weeks ago: The Department of Motor Vehicles.

In different parts of the US, the Department of Motor vehicles has different responsibilities. When I lived in Illinois and Texas, the DMV was responsible for the licensure and taxation on vehicles and the licensure of individuals. You went there to get license plates as well as your driver’s license. In Kansas we have two different State level departments that perform these functions, and apparently they are vying for who provides the absolute worst customer service in the State, and possibly in the Nation!

On average, a DMV office was designed and decorated in the 1970’s and the plastic chairs haven’t been updated since. The typical linoleum floor has a waxy buildup that is only modified by the accumulated grit and grime of decades of shoes. To complement the 1970’s decor, the staff at a typical DMV office is usually surly, unhelpful, and apparently bored with all the stupid, repetitive questions they receive on a daily basis. Of course, those questions are based on the materials available to the public that are written in a combination of legalese and gobbledygook. Patrons, as those of use forced to use these services are now called in a misplaced form of political correctness, are apparently viewed as the enemy in the average DMV. I’m sure the phrase “if it wasn’t for the patrons, I could get my work done” is oft-repeated at the DMV by the staff. I would say workers, but that would errantly imply they were working.

Thus, it was with great trepidation that I made my third trip to the DMV with Hectic 15. Our first trip was a two-hour affair, not long after his 14th birthday. We went to the DMV to get his initial instructional permit. We actually felt quite fortunate that we were in and out in just 2 hours. Heck, they processed 11 people through in that time. We were joking throughout that there must have been some month-end quota that they had to meet because they were working so fast. Imagine going to a fast food restaurant and having 11 orders taken and completed in two hours. That’s about the level of complexity that the DMV driver’s licensing is, yet it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get through the process!

Our second trip was 11 months later on his 15th birthday. We arrived at 9AM and we were number 43. They were servicing number 13, so we had 30 folks ahead of us in line. This trip was to procure his restricted drivers license. Upon taking our number, we were warned by aDMV employee that “anyone not at the counter being helped at 5:00pm would be required to leave and would have to come back on another day”. The announcement of this warning was the sole job of this DMV employee. It probably never dawned on anyone in the DMV hierarchy that this employee is a waste of tax-payer dollars. It’s apparently also escaped them that it’s ridiculous to close the office while people are still waiting. That would imply customer service. We again were very lucky and were at the counter at 4:45. it had only taken 7:45 for them to process the requests of 30 people! Unfortunately, a recent change in the driving laws required that he had completed drivers education before he was able to get his restricted drivers license.  We’d wasted 7:45 of our time waiting to get a license that he couldn’t get for four weeks…when drivers education would be concluded.

So my third trip after the completion of his drivers education class was not something I was looking forward to. We planned to make the trip each day of Spring Break, but other tasks got in the way. It was Friday of Spring Break and our last chance until the start of summer. Unfortunately, he over-slept, so our estimated time of arrival was 9:00AM. My plan was to take our number, calculate how many people were in the office, and then I would leave him waiting. He was then to call me when there were 5 people left in front of him and I would rejoin him.

I’m not sure why, but one of us got the idea that it might be possible to get his restricted drivers license at another facility. While we live in Hutchinson, we had heard that you could go to McPherson, 20 minutes up the road, and they might be a bit faster. Since we anticipated almost 8 hours of waiting, I was pretty much willing to try anything. Hectic 15 called to confirm that it was true…and indeed it was. Not only that, he said the lady he talked to was really nice. Quite honestly I said something to the effect that she wouldn’t last long in the DMV.

We hopped in the van and drove to McPherson. We had an address for the DMV, but had some difficulty finding it. We tentatively opened the door to a tiny room with three arm chairs and a service desk. Country music was wafting through the air and there was a faint smell of cinnamon and vanilla. Much to our surprise, one of the ladies behind the service counter cheerily said “Good morning gentlemen, how can I assist you today?”.

I quickly realized we had to be in the wrong place. I sheepishly apologized for bothering them and asked if they could tell me where we were supposed to go to obtain a restricted drivers license. The lady gleefully replied “I can do that right here for you, let me see what you’ve got!”.

Holy Smokes! We’d found a Customer Service Hero! She had already exceeded every expectation that I’d every had for customer service, let alone customer service at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But man, she wasn’t done yet.

We had brought every piece of paperwork we could imagine. We had his instructional permit. We had his drivers education completion form. We had his birth certificate. We had a piece of mail that affirmed his home address. We had a check to pay for the fees (you didn’t think we’d get to make a visit to the DMV without fees, did you?). We had his social security card. We had his school ID with picture. We had a form that confirmed his blood type.

It turned out this hero’s name was Amy, and she cheerfully took our potpourri of paperwork and quickly scanned it into her computer. She deftly typed in all the information for the drivers license. She gave Hectic 15 his vision test and even made fun of the way he said the numbers (“You sound like Mr. Roboto when you shoot them off”). The entire time she was smiling and joking with us.

In 6 minutes, 20 seconds we were done. I’d started my stopwatch on my wrist when we went in, because it’s one of the things I do to pass the time getting driver’s licenses and vehicle tags/plates. When you’re there for up to 8 hours you have to find a lot of things to pass the time.

6 minutes, 20 seconds! Wow! Just Wow.

There was nobody else waiting, so I heartily thanked Amy for her service and complimented her on her attitude. She said that she’d noticed we were from Hutchinson, so she assumed we’d had experience with the DMV office there. I recounted our last two visits. She said that she’d never had to go substitute in that office, and she prayed every day that she wouldn’t have to. She said there was no way she could work in an environment like that. When I mentioned that she seemed pretty happy in her job, she admitted that it was a j-o-b to her, but also said that she saw no reason to be a jerk about it. She said that her opinion was that if you were nice to people, they’d be nice back to you. She went on to say that if somebody was surly with her, she figured they were having a bad day and probably needed to be cheered up. She then showed us a copy of a comic she slips into the packet of somebody who was unfriendly or surly. She anticipated they’d see it later and they might get a smile from it.

Another patron walked in, and she greeted her with the same enthusiasm she’d used to greet us. We concluded our conversation and left. Our entire DMV trip, including the 40 minutes of driving, had taken 46:20. That was just under 7 hours less than our prior trip.

Conclusion

So in the past couple of weeks I’ve encountered the less-than-stellar long term customer service failure of DishNetwork and a surprising customer service hero of Amy at the McPherson DMV. It’s nice to know that there are people out there who really do take their jobs seriously and realize that they’re providing a service to people.

The next time you’re out and about and you run across a customer service hero, think about thanking them. Let them know that they’re positive approach is appreciated. You never know, it might just make their day!