According to the Wikipedia community Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. Seems simple enough. The basis of the phrase is serve. The act of serving is laced in the very fibers of our human history. From great servants come great leaders says the old adage. But what has happened to our society so that the term serve has taken on a negative connotation? Since when did serving someone become something bad? Sure, we can point to times in our world history where servanthood was forced on a people and great sacrifice was made to battle such injustice. But when the servant is paid well and is hired specifically for that job then the proverbial playing field should be leveled to the point where serving is as important as what is being served. That brings me to MinuteFix.

Since Diego, MinuteFix CEO, has been in Savannah we have had many conversations about the importance of customer service. In fact, I even said last night that I would rather teach computer tech skills to a top-notch customer service technician than try and teach basic etiquette to the next Bill Gates. You simply cannot put a price on good customer service. Case in point:

My good buddy Eric goes to install a new operating system on his computer two days ago. The install crashes midway. He decides to try again. This time it installs but only after wiping his hard drive completely clean. He calls the tech support and, without ever speaking with a human being, is put on hold. He is informed he is in Tier 1 of the holding network and that his wait could be up to thirty minutes. Well, an hour later he had advanced to Tier 2 and 3 but been bumped back down to Tier 1. At this point he has still NOT hear a human voice on the other end. Almost two hours into his cell phone usage time he was connected only to have the customer service person tell him there wasn’t much he could do over the phone. The agent suggested he visit the local retail store and have them take a look. Because of the product type the local retail outlet was a two hour drive. Eric did it though all the while maintaining a positive outlook. Long story short…………multiple phone calls, a day trip plus gas and several reinstalls later the computer is pretty much working. Here is the problem. All Eric can think about is the fact that he spent all that time on the phone, all those cell phone minutes and a whole day of work to get this computer serviced. He has long forgotten about the actual issue; the install failure.

Quality customer service has the ability to transform a customers experience with or without ever truly fixing the issue. We are all aware that as human beings we can’t do everything and that sometimes computers just get the best of us. However, there is never an excuse to not act with civility and courtesy to see that each experience for each customer is as fresh and as pleasant as can be.