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NEWS | Jan. 3, 2018

Customer service is all about family

By Chief Master Sgt. Steve Lester 11th Medical Group

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. -- When you take the time to ask people what’s the most important thing to them, many will say it’s their family. However, we don’t always understand what it is to be a family or what it should be. We don’t understand how to maximize the importance of family in our day to day interactions.

Customer service is simply taking care of your family members. Regardless of your title, position, or rank, everyone has customers. Everyone should strive to excel at providing superior customer service regardless of your mission. 

What if we shift focus and not look at customers as an adversary making us do more work, but instead as a family member? What if you look at them like your mother, brother, father, sister, or someone you really care about, and not like the cousin that you can’t stand to be around and hope you never run into at the family reunion? What if you looked at the person on the other side of the desk or envision them on the other end of the phone call as the family member you wanted to be like or always wanted to spend time around?

What will that do to the dynamics of your customer service? How will it help get the best out of every member of the organization?  

If you are a member that works in finance and a customer shows up to ask for help to determine why they are not getting paid and you look at them like a family member then it is easy to go the extra mile to help them out and assist in their situation. 

If you work in the Military Personnel Flight, and your brother or sister comes in because they are missing a vital part of their records that could adversely affect their career, you sit down and take care of them. At the end of the visit, you both leave happy because you took care of a family member, and they are relieved because they were assisted by one of their family members. 

If you are a medic and your child was sick, would you turn them away and hope they feel better? You wouldn’t. You would see what you could do to help them right there. You would work to help your family member feel their best without adding additional strain to the situation.

In any situation, if you take a second to step back and help your family, any task becomes simple. It is just too easy to stop looking at everyone that comes to your duty section as the enemy and start taking care of your family. 

Take care of your customer brothers or sisters and they will take care of you.