BONUS BLOG: Service at its best.

This blog was very unplanned, which, you will see why very shortly. This blog will be a break in the current series of building performance teams, but that will resume next blog. I also apologize in advance for the long pause in blog content lately. Two major events occurred, one that was sort of planned, and the other that was completely unplanned, that kept me from being able to write and post lately. They both, however, resulted in me having hope for the future of remarkable customer service, as it is often easy in today's world to find an example of someone unwilling to be of service in their work. In both of these cases though, I was able to experience young people in newer roles fully embodying the characteristics of great service.

** Note: This blog is extremely long as the first story required a great amount of detail to be effective for the sake of this blog. **

Two weeks ago now, my brother, my friend Noah, and I went on a backpacking trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan to backpack. We had a 5-day hike planned. It was 28 miles, so our plan was originally to cover 6-7 miles each day. That would give us some wiggle room in our schedule and enough time to hang out at the cool spots we were sure to come across. (So we thought.)

Now, if you know my brother, you know that he loves to be outdoors, specifically where there aren’t a bunch of other people. And, there is no doubt that we were in the right place for that, which you’ll understand by the end of this story.

We set out on the first day around 1pm, and planned to get our 6-7 miles in. Around 3pm we came across our first, and unfortunately really only, cool spot to hang out. It was at the very back of the lake that the trailhead started at, and a small bridge went across the water. There was enough room to set our stuff down and hang out by the water for a bit. A small waterfall ran under the bridge, and the scenery was very picturesque, pretty much the exact type of thing we went all the way up to the UP for. We hung out for a few hours, but unfortunately, only being 3 miles in on the first day and not having anywhere at this spot to pitch a tent or hang a hammock, we had to keep trucking.

Our next stop was a small river between the next lake we would pass, and the one we had just been at. It was roughly a 4 mile hike to that river, which would put us at 7 miles for the day. Needless to say, what appeared as a notable sized river, or possibly a large creek on the topo map, ended up being a super small stream surrounded with trees. Again, no place to pitch a tent, and only 2 of us brought hammocks. So, we pushed on to the next lake, Lake Elinor. We thought for sure we would find a cool spot to camp there. It was 3 more miles away, but it was our next best option.

When we arrived, come to find out the whole stinking lake is surrounded by private cabins and land. Camping there was a no-go. The next lake we would pass was roughly 4 more miles away and it was getting dark, so that wasn’t really an option. Especially considering we had already done 10 miles in 6 hours with 50+lb packs on. We found a spot off the road that goes to Lake Elinor and camped there, and in the morning, we hiked 4 miles to a river which made for a neat campsite. We spent the day and camped there since we were still okay on our 7 mile a day average after the 10 mile day prior.

Day 3, we were miserable. We were now halfway done with this trail in two days and had yet to see hardly anything that we had planned to see. No wildlife, one good spot, one sub-par spot, and a whole lot of hiking trails that looked basically like Midwest woods with the addition of big rocks and unnecessary hills. Not to mention the mosquitoes. Wearing long sleeves, pants and a bug net in the 80-degree weather to attempt to not get eaten alive was not ideal. Then, each time we would stop to rest and eat a snack, it just turned into a bug bite fest. We were miserable. We hiked 7 miles on day 3, and the second half of this trail having a lot more hills than the first half, it took us most all of the day to hike those 7 miles. We finally suggested calling for someone to come get us.

This was supposed to be vacation: fun, relaxing, and enjoyable. But we were far from any of those emotions. We were exhausted, annoyed, and itchy, to say the least. We found one spot with service and Noah made a call to the Michigan DNR to request a rescue. We were honest about the situation. We knew where we were, knew where we were going, had the resources and were in good enough health to get there, but we were just miserable. The DNR explained that because it wasn’t an emergency, it would depend on if an officer was able and willing to come get us. The Ranger’s reaction when we gave him our coordinates were, “Oh s***, you guys are WAY out there.” (Yup, that’s us. Tyler did his job of getting us out away from people well, really well.)

About 25 minutes later, we got a call back that they found an officer who would come get us and to just hang tight where we were. We thought it would be about an hour. It was 3:00, so we figured around 4 someone would be pulling up. 4…4:15…4:30…4:45…5… still no officer. As the time ticked by, we all kind of started to wonder if anyone was even coming. About 5:10 a truck comes pulling up. He explained the difficulty of getting to us, lots of unmapped roads, mapped roads that ended up not being there, and mapped roads that were there, but went through private property which the owners had gated. He then said he could only take one of us. Great. We said there were three. Tyler went with the officer, Jack, to get his truck, and he was then going to come back to get Noah and I.

We figured it would take them about 3 hours. Now that Jack knew where to go, 1.5 hrs back to Tyler’s truck, and 1.5 hrs after Tyler knew the way for him to come get us. 5:15 turned to 6:15, to 7:15, to 8:15, and still no Tyler. About 9pm we still hadn’t seen him and it was getting dark. Noah and I could only think that Tyler, not having all of the navigation equipment that Jack had on the DNR truck, likely got lost. We started prepping to camp out another night. About 9:20, Jack’s truck comes pulling up, and Tyler was behind him. Jack got out and explained that the roads were just so windy and again how unmapped it was, and he didn’t feel right sending Tyler out to us by himself. After some small talk and friendly, curious questioning, I learned that Jack’s shift was supposed to end at 3pm. Remind you, it is now 9:20pm, and the ranger made it clear to us over the phone that this “rescue mission” was going to be a totally optional one for the officers to take. AND, he was only required to come to us once, not twice. Despite having a family at home and a shift to work the next day, Jack stepped into the role of a servant. He went above and beyond to make sure we made it out safely, even when there was no imminent threat to us staying out there and finishing the trail. He then recommended us a town to go to that would have some things to do to finish out our vacation, a couple hotels that would be vacation worthy, and told us we could follow him all the way back into town, where these hotels were.

It's not often that people in service truly take on the role of a servant, but Jack did, and my sensitivity to people allowed me to see it. He could have said no, he could have taken it, and after coming across the first unmapped road, decided, “Nope, there is no way I’m doing all of this when I was supposed to be off of work already.”, he could have come to get Tyler and then said, “Goodluck getting back!”, and, he could have even, on the map, just tried to show Tyler which turns he needed to take. But he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he did more. He turned his normal workday into an almost 9-hour overtime day (We didn’t get into Marquette, the town he suggested we follow him to, until about 11:30pm) just to make sure we made it out of our nothing but less than enjoyable trip, safely. And that’s what great customer service, and really, service in general, is. When you set aside what works best or is most appealing to you, to make what works best for someone else, or is most appealing to them, your priority.

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The next story is much shorter, and I have to say in advance that I feel guilty because I cannot for the life of me remember this woman’s name, but thankfully I did remember it long enough to make her efforts known to the manager before leaving the store.

When I got home after the backpacking trip, I knew I needed to get my next blog going, so I grabbed my things the next morning and came to where I have been working on my computer a lot lately, Veritas Church Cafe. To be frank, I order my coffee, sit down, take out my computer, and it has a massive crack in it and the screen won’t turn on. This was a brand-new computer. Like, a month old. We purchased it from Best Buy, and I remembered we purchased the warranty with it. So, I did what any frustrated customer would do, packed up my busted computer, grabbed the receipt, and drove to Best Buy, ready to brawl out my warranty rights with the service desk at the store.

To be clear, I had no idea how my computer had cracked – I used it before the trip, it was in my backpack in the condo the whole week I was gone, and then I came back, took it out, and it was cracked. And, to the best of my knowledge, it had to have been something I did, because I was the only one that had touched my backpack and things don’t just crack out of nowhere.

When I got to Best Buy, I was met by this woman (whose name I can’t remember for the life of me). I explained my situation, how the computer was new, and I had no idea how this could have happened, ready for her to say something like, “Well, unfortunately since it was a user misuse/error, we can’t replace it, but I can get you a quote for what it will cost to fix.” And then, again, like any frustrated customer, I already had the rest of the conversation planned out in my head, “Okay, well I bought the warranty, which says you guys have to replace it.” “Well, not necessarily.” “Yes you do…” blah blah blah, so on and so forth, you get the idea. BUT, what does she respond with? “Okay, are you looking to replace it or return it?” Thankfully I was listening instead of just running with my script or I probably would have lost her helpful attitude fast. Without paraphrasing this whole conversation, she was helpful in one, addressing the issue, two, providing a solution that benefitted the customer, (in this case me) and three, answering questions with the correct information to solve the issue. Although all I had was a busted computer without the card or account information linked to the purchase, she bent over backwards to find a way to make it go through the system. And sure enough, within about an hour of calling my dad to get account, card, and personal information to make the process go through (he was the one that bought me the computer, thanks Dad), I walked out of that store with a new computer and a full refund of the old one. All thanks to her.

She could have fought me on the warranty, pointed me to someone else, or said it wasn’t possible after she knew I didn’t have any of the cards or information readily available to make the return happen, but she didn’t. She persisted to find a way to be of service; and coming from someone who previously received lots of recognition for customer service in the retail world, she gets a 10.

So, while this has been a long, story filled blog, I think these are two great reminders that serving well is not only the right thing to do, but also the admirable thing to do. Wherever we are, we should seek to serve. Because that’s what I started this whole Servantude blog about, and that’s what we are called to do - serve.