Today a good friend of mine (Jeff) told me about an experience he had with Pacific Gas & Electric, our mega utility out here on the left coast. He was remodeling a house and  had a procedural question about how to get the utility company to move the gas meter. Apparently you can request this service via the utility website but it is not easy navigating to the appropriate place on the website. On top of that, Jeff doesn’t have internet access at the construction site and doesn’t really like computers anyway. He telephoned the utility but they told him to request the service via the website. Never one to give up, he actually flagged down a utility guy that was working on top of a nearby utility pole!

Now comes the part that I love. The utility worker climbed down the pole, made several calls and provided Jeff with a specific contact at the utility that could better help him. It turns out that the service was requested via the website after all but the point of this story is about personal accountability and customer service. The gentleman on the utility pole could have easily blown off this request from a stranger on the street and continued his task. But instead, he stopped what he was doing and took personal responsibility for helping a customer even though it was not convenient.  It is precisely this kind of action that can transform the way companies provide service to their customers. One worker, one attitude, one customer at a time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Service Stories, Great Service, Service Tips, Service Extras, Accountability in Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.