Customer Service and Storytelling-The Fragile Fedora's

The other day I visited the post office to mail three fedora hats. I wear fedoras and occasionally run into some that are not my size. I sold them and was mailing them to the buyer. The day before, I went to the post office to buy three boxes to mail them in. Did I mention that I bought the boxes at the post office?

These were vintage hats and they were still in their original hat boxes. So, I put the hats in their hat boxes, into the post office boxes, encased the inner boxes in bubble packing wrap and headed out to the post office. Here is my recollection of my conversation with the postal employee:

Me: Hi, I need to mail these boxes.

P.E.:Is there anything perishable,combustible, flammable, breakable?

Me: No, they are fedora hats.

P.E.: Are there any liquids?

Me: No, they are fedora hats.

P.E.: Is there anything fragile?

Me: Well, they are fedora hats and I don't want them to be crushed. So, yes, they are kinda fragile.

P.E.: Will they withstand a weight of 70 pounds? Because we stack up to 70 pounds on top of boxes?

Me: I don't know, they are your boxes.

P.E.: Will we be able to put 70 pounds on top of them? Did you pack them well?

Me:Well, I think so, but if you drop 70 pounds on them, they could be crushed. I mean, if you drop a smaller box on them that weighs 70 pounds, it will go right through the box.

P.E.: Do you want to repack them?

Me: Well, no,(it was my lunch hour and I didn't want to open them up again) but could you stamp them as fragile?

P.E.: We usually only do that with glass. Is there any glass in the boxes?

Me:No, there are only fedora hats in the boxes. Aren't your boxes able to withstand the shipping?

P.E.:(Beginning to get irritated with me) If they are packed properly.

Me:(Now, second guessing my packing job)They are packed properly, well, I think they are, but who knew about the 70 pounds?

P.E.: We can only ship them if they will support 70 pounds.

Me:Well, they are your boxes. If they are packed properly, will they support 70 pounds?

P.E.: They should.....maybe... we should stamp them as fragile.

This conversation took about 10 minutes. It is a good example of someone who gives rote answers and does not, or is not allowed to vary from a script. My apologies to the employee if I did not get the language right. However, it was not service, it was simply an emotionless transaction laden with verbal requirements.

Good customer service is an art and it requires that you care about the customer in a genuine way. Put another way, ....without the customer, there is no sale. No sale, no company, no job. When you look at it this way, all of a sudden, the customer becomes important. Especially in this economy. Every person who walks out the door without having a good experience, is a marketing loss, a sales loss and a public relations loss.

So what's this have to do with storytelling?

One of the seminars I offer is a facilitated discussion using traditional story as a focus for discussion. The topic of the seminar is "The Value of Being Genuine" and it can be used for customer service and sales people. It is a facilitated discussion as opposed to a "talk at you" seminar in which the participants come up with their own solutions for providing better customer service or becoming a better sales person. I am a firm believer that we all have the answers we need to become better at what we want to do, we simply need to examine it in a different way. Story provides the framework for the discussion.

An example is using the story, "The Tigers Whisker" as a jumping off point for a discussion about patience and how it relates to customer service or sales. It is very easy to make the focus of a sales attempt all about closing the sale. However, that short circuits the most important part of a sale and that is the relationship. The story "The Tigers Whisker" teaches that patience is more successful than trying to force an issue. That doesn't mean that closing a sale is not an important part of the process, it is. But closing a sale is not the whole of selling, it is just one part. Selling is about the relationship. It is about taking the time to be genuine and to care about the customer. And that means having the patience to build the relationship first.

I mailed my boxes, stamped fragile. I paid for a little extra insurance in case a 70 pound paperweight was dropped onto my hats. That was a month ago. I never heard if they arrived.

Most Embarrassing Moment

I attended a small catholic high school in Massachusetts. The Sisters of St. Joseph were in charge of the school. At that time, lay teachers were coming in as well, but there were still a number of nuns present and teaching when I attended. There was only one though, who wore the traditional black and white habit of the order and her name was Sister Denisita. Sister Denisita was about five feet tall, but she had the presence of someone much larger.
One of the things that Sister Denisita did was find jobs for the students. She was very familiar with many of the business owners in the area and was always on the lookout for jobs the students. The first job she got for me was at Bethany Hospital, which was a retirement home for the Order of the Sisters of St. Joseph. I worked in the kitchen washing dishes. I used to arrive at 7 a.m. on a Saturday and Sister Denisita was already there making muffins for the nuns in residence. She baked from scratch, in her habit, and I never could figure out how she kept the flour off her black garments.
In any event, I tell you all this so you will understand that Sister Denisita held a special place in my heart...and still does. She was one of those people who walked the walk and lead by example.
And I was not alone in my fondness for her. I will bet you that anyone reading this who attended my high school and knew her is smiling right now.

So...that being said, I will also tell you that when Sister Denisita got you a job, you went to great lengths to do it well. Not just out of a sense of responsibility, heck, I was a teenager after all, but because if you screwed up, the employer called Sister Denisita and she called you. There was nooooo way, I wanted to be on the receiving end of that kind of a call.

After the job at Bethany Hospital, Sister Denisita got me a job at a new hotel and conference center called the Sheraton Tara. It was a big deal at the time and was built in the shape of a castle. Back then it was THE place to have a wedding or function. It had very large function rooms and a chef who was famous for his ice sculptures.

My job was as a houseman which meant that I helped set up dance floors and tables for weddings, proms and other social events. We all had little walkie talkies and spent our time tearing down one function and preparing for others. The housemen were also the gophers for little things that were forgotten for a function. So, it was not uncommon to get a call and have to dash off for something and bring it back...on the double.

So, on one particular day, I was working at a really big, really expensive wedding. Everything was in place, the wedding party had been introduced and all the guests were eating dinner and my walkie talkie beeped. Someone had forgotten to bring the champagne to the bridal suite and they needed it up there right away. So, off I went, got the champagne and the grecian vase it went in, filled it with ice and headed up to the top floor and the bridal suite.

I opened the door with my pass key and hunted around for an appropriate place for the champagne. I set it next to the bed and turned to leave.

Have you ever taken a step and been seized by the need to go to the bathroom? I mean grabbed and twisted such that you can measure how far you might make it in single steps? I figured I had maybe six or so steps and they had a bathroom..... so I used it.

I got in the bathroom, closed the door, sat down and nature took over. However, I had only momentary relief because at that moment, just when I thought the crisis was over, I heard the whisp of the suite door opening and the voice of a woman saying, "Honey, I thought we would never get out of there, now GET THOSE CLOTHES OFF!"

{Pause} Please take a moment and enjoy that excruciating moment with me......................................................................................................................Thank you. {End Pause}

There was a part of me, that would have , if it were possible, flushed myself down the toilet and into the hotel sewer system, never to be heard from again. But what worried me most was not the newlyweds several feet away, about to disrobe and.....well , you know. What worried me most was Sister Denisita.

I could see her standing in front of me, in my compromising position, telling me that life was about choices. "Some people make good choices and some people, like you John, make choices that aren't so good." "But, Sister, it wasn't really a choice, "I said...but she's already gone.

I got up verrrry quietly, flushed the toilet and turned the faucets on and off and came out of the room with a spray bottle in one hand and a rag in the other. "Oh, er, sorry..I was just cleaning up", I said as I reached for the door, opened it and got the heck out of that room. I didn't look up to see their faces, I just wanted out of there. I closed the door and ran down the hallway back to the wedding party. I waited for the rest of my shift for my walkie talkie to go off, summoning me to the main office. It never did. That night at home, I waited for a phone call from Sister Denisita. But it never came.
And I never heard anything about it again.
But I never forgot it either.

Me Too

There was once a man. A father, a husband, a homeowner, a payer of bills and a watcher of televised sports. He was a handy man who could fix things and rarely complained about much...it wasn't in his nature. 

His son was my friend and he told me this story. 

His father grew up in the big city, he had a few brothers and a few sisters, a mother and a father. He was the oldest and could do nothing right in the eyes of his father. He did try to please his father, but every attempt met with criticism and scorn. Their home was a cold place, not in the BTU sense, but in an emotional way. At the end of the day, seeing each other at home was nothing more than a registration, a noting of the presence of others in the same space. There were few smiles, they were not encouraged and in fact, cultivated an angry response. Needless to say, there were no expressions of love.

One day, it was no different than any other, his father did not come home for dinner. Their mother made no mention of it and served their meal and they made ready for bed and went to bed.

Their mother made their meal every night for several years. They went to bed every night and their lives passed the time, in the way that lives do.

One day, it was no different than any other, his father arrived home and sat down for dinner. Their mother served them dinner and what conversation there was, did not include any discussion of the several year absence. They got ready for bed and went to bed. 

The years passed and no one ever spoke of the unaccounted absence of the man at the head of the table, their father. Little changed and little would.

My friends father went to college, got a degree and left home. He got married and had several children of his own.

He built a house and raised his family. His son, my friend, noticed that his dad never said, "I love you." Not to their mom or any of his siblings. In fact, as they sat watching "Happy Days" one night, my friend realized that his dad was like "Fonzi", who also could not say "I love you". There was an episode where Ritchie Cunningham tries to get Fonzi to say it, but every time Fonzi tries, his face got twisted up and his lips didn't work and what came out was "I luuuuu...". and that was it.

My friends father didn't try to say it, but every time one of the kids would say, "I love you Dad", he would just say, "Me too". When his wife would say "I love you, honey", he would say, "Me too." They all knew he loved them, he just couldn't say it. For whatever reason, that simple phrase would not, could not get out of his mouth. 

My friends dad passed away a few years ago from an enlarged heart and the complications it brought. My friend visited him in the hospice where he was in his last few days. They had a long talk and at the end, my friend told him, "I love you dad" and his dad tried, he tried to say the words. And even though he had tears coming down his face, he could not say them, but said instead, "Me too."

After he passed, he asked his mother if he ever said it to her. She told him, "No, but he never needed to, we all knew"

My friend told me that he disagreed, that his dad did need to say it, wanted to say it. He could see it in his eyes the last time he saw him. He just couldn't overcome the emotion that came with the words and so, the words never were borne from his mouth. 

"He built a house with a hammer and nails and a handsaw, but those three words", said my friend , "defeated him." 

I haven't seen my friend in awhile and I never did learn where his grandfather disappeared to for a couple of years. Maybe nobody knows. It was a different generation, with a different set of rules, when sometimes "me too" was enough.

Why Storytelling?

Not that long ago, a friend that I have haven't seen for many years asked, "What's up with the storytelling?" I put it in italics because there was a special, mildly sarcastic emphasis on the word "storytelling". Like, Geez, you managed to reach 48 years of age and THAT is  your big discovery?

Telling nursery stories to little kids?

Well, yes...that was and is my big personal discovery and I'll tell you why.

I have spent the last 25 years negotiating deals and studying interpersonal conflict via books and direct observation. Most interpersonal conflict is not unlike a medieval battle. One side wants something and the other side won't provide it, so each side lines up, shoots their arrows, charges their mounted knights and hit each other with sharp objects. The goal is some form of submission. And the correlation between the two is that at some point both sides have decided to sideline the discussion and proceed to beat each other senseless, undoing years of good orthodontics and attention to flossing.

Part of the problem is that we get very defensive, very quickly, stop listening and let a sense of entitlement take over. We fear honest debate and the give and take it involves.

Before this gets too touchy feely for some of you, let me also say this. I do not believe anyone should be a doormat and there are times when molars need to be relocated, however it is the  exception not the rule.

So...how do you get through to people in a way that prevents the barriers from going up? 

A number of years ago, I was doing a seminar for some medical professionals. It took place at a resort and so, I lugged all my chart papers and  my easel down there. I was excited about this seminar because I put a lot of time into trying to make a boring topic exciting. Well, about half way through the seminar, I looked up to see all the excited people looking back at me, heck I was excited and of course they were excited too??

Uh, no. They were not.. excited. As I looked out into the audience, I saw feet up on the table, side conversations going on, one guy was doodling a war scene and a couple people were nodding off. Ugh. For those of you who don't know, that is when you get this really unique cold chill and you realize that you might be alone in the walk-in freezer.

One of the new things I had planned for this seminar was the telling of a story, to illustrate a point. So, from my place in the walk-in freezer, I began to tell the story. I was looking down as I told it and at some point in the story, I looked up and into the audience. They were listening, they were focused and listening. No doodling, no side conversations. They were connected ...to the story.

I finished the story and thought to myself, "AHA!, Now I have them and I can finish the program strong." Nope. As soon as I finished the story and went back to my material, I went back into the freezer. But I learned a lesson.

People connect through story. My biggest and ongoing realization is that adults connect with stories as much or more than kids do. When I began to use story exclusively as a vehicle for learning, I used to worry when I saw someone coming into the room talking on a blackberry, eagerly pursuing the business of their day. I assumed that I would not be able to reach them with story. What I have found is that once reminded that our imaginations are still there, that they still work, adults enjoy story perhaps on a deeper level than younger listeners, maybe because they have a lifetime of experiences to color the story in their minds eye.

This blog is about story. The uses of story, how we are connected by our stories and the value of knowing your own story.

Until the next Once Upon A Time...