Behind the customer service desk – Page 3

Valuing your time as a patient

I had an 8 am doctor’s appointment the other week, the office called to confirm and requested that I arrive at 7:45. I have been a patient of this doctor for more than 20 years, in those 20 years my appointment has never been on time, I love this doctor and he usually runs late as he takes time with each patient and really listens so I don’t mind usually but as I am aware that he runs late I try to be his first appointment of the day, hence my 8am appointment. But even me being his first appointment I know he will be late as usual, this time he saw me at 8.25am.

I did not arrive at 7:45 as I am very aware he takes his time, I arrived at 7:58am and with me all the medical staff arrived as well. I was even there before the nurse arrived and felt like I should turn on all the lights in the office as well. I was not called in until 8:10am.

So why do these schedulers not value our time? If I had actually been there early, that would have meant almost 40 minutes of just waiting there. Shouldn’t there be an appreciation for the patient’s valuable time as well as the doctor’s time?
Sadly, this doctor’s appointment was actually one of the most efficient ones. I had another appointment with a different doctor lately that had me waiting for 30 minutes in the waiting room and another 45 in the exam room, when I asked his medical assistant if he was running late today, she looked at me in wonder and goes no, he is on time, to which my reply was really, I have been waiting for an hour and half already. I have canceled all future appointments with this practioner as this was the second time in a row that I was left waiting for hours and will be shopping around for another doctor. It seems like some medical practitioners overbook and value their own time but not their patient’s time. Yes, if the doctor has had some emergency this is expected, but most cases this is not the reason for leaving us in a waiting room in a paper robe cold.

So who’s time is more valuable? CVS just announced that their pharmacies will have less hours and will close earlier in the day. Those who need to pick up their prescriptions will have to go get them in the middle of the day or during lunches or wait for the weekend and delay taking them,again the focus is not on the patient. When did the medical field change from being patient focused to being corporate focused.

Every one’s time is valuable, us waiting in a doctors office to be seen for hours or running to the pharmacy instead of eating lunch as well as the service providers, there must be some middle ground and respect between everyone’s needs.

Finding time for taking time off

It is very easy to delay time off and vacations, telling yourself you are very busy right now and postpone fun activities. God knows I have found many excuses before – I have deadlines at work, this is not the right time, it’s the end of the quarter or year and many more excuses. But when is the right time really? It seems like when we become adults with full time jobs there is never really a right time to take a vacation or sometimes even just a day or two off.

I know some people with unlimited PTO and from what I hear these unlimited PTO people take the least time off. I have a limited amount of time off, it is not small at all but still limited and I get to transfer only a small amount of vacation days to the next calendar year.

Time off is important, we all need it. We need time to refresh, clear our heads and do things outside of our professional life for ourselves and our families. Weekend breaks are really not enough, at least not for me.

Although my time off is limited to specific times during the year, times that are not flexible and do not always allow me to get the best rates for travel, I still choose to take my vacation days and have some fun. I even stopped taking my laptop with me as I learned to let go and trust my team to cover for me (this was a big issue for me as a recovering workaholic).

Something happened in the last couple of years that made clear what my priorities should be: family, friends , health and time off for fun. Health I can’t really control but everything else I can.

I can not only make sure I take care of myself but take care of my work team as well.

And since no time off makes employees burn out, it is very important for us as not only to take care of ourselves but as leaders and managers to make sure our team gets time off as well.

I read somewhere that employees don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. Not sure how true that is for everyone who quits, but having managers that truly care about their employees’ life balance , happiness and yes, their time off is, should be part of managing a great team.

Keeping meetings on track

Today is what I call meeting Thursday day, our first monthly all staff meeting of the new year. I hate meetings.It’s not that I don’t like meeting, I really dislike big all hand meetings. They usually drag on forever or what seems like forever. There is always someone who likes to hear their voice more than actually listen and collaborate and quite frankly they are usually boring after the first 5 minutes. If we are home on zoom at least we can do something when we lose focus but what can you do when forced to sit in an actual meeting where we can’t hide. Maybe there is something positive for zoom meetings after all.

Thankfully the meeting was on zoom, however I had to present and lead part of it which meant I actually had to pay attention. So when we planned this meeting to avoid all the issues I hate about meetings we decided on parameters- we limited the meeting time to a max of one hour. This forced us to focus on the most important issues and not to wander off. We also decided on the topics ahead of time and put everything in clear bullet points on a shared screen so everyone can see and for us not to lose focus and if we did then one of the meeting leaders would steer everything back on the right track. And the most important for the meeting leaders, we did it just before lunch and made sure to be hungry so we will finish in a timely manner and we were conscious of other people’s lunch time. I know this might seem weird when planning meetings, but we found that this helps us with keeping meetings on point. I am not advocating for anyone to go to meetings hungry, I love food, but this is a method that works for us and I am sure everyone has their own guidelines for keeping meetings effective, that is unless they love meetings or the sound of their own voice.

Being Rude to Customer Service People

There is an expression that goes something along the lines of – you get more flies with honey than vinegar. I am in the customer service business and about a quarter of my time I am customer facing. I am always very surprised when people start yelling or are rude to us in the customer service industry.

It seems that it even got worse after the stay at home orders were lifted. People come in and immediately are rude and disrespectful. Yelling, raising their tones and thinking that will get them a better deal, a discount or just better service. Truthfully, I never understood that point of view.

You are supposed to treat people nicely, from my own experience, if you are nice you will be treated nicely back. And from my point of view, if you are nasty to me there is no way on earth I will go above and beyond to help you no matter how big a bully you are. I had a customer come in yesterday and they requested something that does not exist anymore, we tried to explain that it does not exist anymore and we got yelled at, her tone was raised and she became more and more loud. Other customers in the office were looking at her as she continued to yell .

What this customer forgot besides that being an ass hole does not really make people want to help you was that some of us live in the same community we work at, that means you will see me at Target, Costco and Pilates class. There is also a chance that you or your spouse work in something related to what my spouse is doing or to one of my many connections.

People think that just because some of us work in customer service we are uneducated, not connected and not worth being treated politely and thus show their true color. Those who I work with all have masters degrees and chose our industry for various reasons, they are all very smart and educated but even if they were not being rude to them is still no excuse.

Now, when I encounter these ass holes around town, I always look at them directly and smile. It is nice to see how uncomfortable they are once they realize who I am , but it would have been better if they actually behaved like nice human beings in the first place.