Customer Service

About a week and a half ago, I started a new job. I am with the same company that employed me for six years, but at a different location (I am actually at the original location where I started six and a half years ago. Why yes, it is a little awkward and strange, but sort of wonderful at the same time).

I have realized in the last week or so that I apparently have different standards for things than others do. I am working at the store's customer service desk, and I adore it. I adore that I get to be the one to fix peoples' problems, and make them happy, and change whatever bad experience they had into a good one. I just didn't realize when I signed up for this that I am apparently unique in this philosophy.

No one else seems to give a damn whether our customers leave happy or not, and seem contented to argue with people over the most absurd things, for absolutely no reason at all. Me? I am easygoing, always friendly with customers (even moreso than I was in my last store), and always genuinely looking for a way to help them. Several times I have used my own cell phone (since we don't have a working phone at our desk) to call around to other stores for a customer to see if they have the item they are looking for. I have helped a guy pick out a TV that he would enjoy, even though we didn't have the one he REALLY wanted, and he left happy. I have searched every seasonal aisle in the store, looking for the one character that a customer told me her daughter loved, trying to make her Christmas a happy one.

I don't do this stuff because it's my job (though, it IS), but because I actually enjoy it. I love how thankful the woman was when I told her I'd searched everywhere for the reindeer her little girl wanted - and when I told her what store I thought might give her better luck. I love how taken aback the woman was when I walked her to the As Seen On TV aisle looking for the item she wanted for her dad for Christmas. Customers at my store seem genuinely shocked when you do something nice for them. It's nice and all, how grateful they are, but isn't this the service that they should be used to? I mean, don't get me wrong - I love that my customers like me, and that they seem genuinely please with the treatment that they get from me - and selfishly I am hoping a few of them call my store to tell my store manager that "hey, that new girl you've got up there? She was great!" But their good encounters shouldn't shock them so much, right?

The last week or so has made me realize how grateful I am for the people who taught me to be damn good at customer service. No one ever sat me down and said "hey, here's how you do it..." But watching certain people interact with customers definitely taught me how things ought to be done, and I am ridiculously grateful for them. Particularly Glenn, Rosa, Cal, Beth (probably the best person I have ever seen deal with customers. No joke), Donnie (who could somehow always make people happy, even if they weren't really getting anything out of him, lol). I don't think any of these people ever realized they were teaching me anything, but they were. And for that, I am grateful.