Customer Service

I mentioned in a recent post that it is often helpful to use analogies to help explain and understand business practices. A technical term for this is benchmarking. I ran across a great example of customer service this morning. The following letter was placed inside my morning paper by the delivery person.

"Dear Friends,
Thank you so much for your kindness during this Christmas season. I am overwhelmed by your tips and kind words every year at this time. I must have finally learned to miss the flowers. Seriously, I know some of you wonder why I throw the papers like I do. Please understand that since I took this job three years ago, till this day our bosses instruct us to throw the papers on the grass and not on cement because it will get wet on the cement much quicker than the grass. It took me a while to figure it out but the closer I can get to the house, the less complaints I got. If anyone has a problem with the placement of the paper, please feel free to drop me a line or give me a call and leave a message (he gave us his address and phone number). I will be more than glad to throw it to a more suitable area. These days with high gas prices, it is customers like you that make this job worthwhile."