How May I Help You? | Fast Company. This is simply the best article on customer service I have read. Lucy McCauley provides 15 short descriptions of how different companies provide outstanding customer service. For example, Mark Wallace , president and CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, talked how to help children and their families feel better includes providing children with an opportunity to play (and be distracted from their illness) and having easy access to their parents. Texas Children’s Hospital takes children to a playground with swings and sandboxes that are accessible to wheelchairs, they operate a hospital radio station and have children come and play their favorite CDs and jokes on the air. They also created a sleeping area where families can stay for free so that sick children can maintain close contact with parents and families.
My personal favorite is the story of USAA customer service representative Stephanie Valadez in response to a call from an elderly woman during heavy ice storms. The elderly woman was sick, without her medicine and she was freezing in her home. She to Ms. Valadez that ” ‘My husband told me that if I ever had a problem and didn’t know where else to turn, I should call USAA. He said you would take care of me,’ ” Ms. Valadez contacted the Red Cross and someone took care of the woman that afternoon. The exceptional part of the story is that the elderly women was not a customer of USAA and that no active policy had been in place since her husband’s death. USAA was committed to providing service because customer service is a relationship not a transaction.
Lucy McCauley’s article provides numerous examples from variety of settings of great examples of customer service.
