Posted on 03/09/2006 10:21:03 AM PST by vwunpimsmyride
Love the Big Apple, but Where’s Their Customer Service?
© Rabbi Daniel Lapin
New York, I am convinced, is the nation’s capital for appalling customer service. New Yorkers will tell you with pride that this is the famous New York attitude. Well I have just returned from another trip to New York and I don’t like the famous New York attitude.
Make no mistake, I enjoy visiting New York. While there I inevitably encounter many stimulating minds and meet many charming people. For the most part, though, being a customer in New York is to be subjected to surliness. This is not true for all cities. People in places like Nashville simply ooze friendliness and radiate a desire to please.
You will notice that customer service thrives in communities with healthy marriage statistics. Coincidence? I think not. One reason is that successful spouses are better equipped to provide exemplary customer service; they do it all the time at home. Furthermore, young people raised by parents in a happy marriage will have learned how uplifting serving others can be. Such youngsters are more likely to serve customers with smiling enthusiasm.
Most of us have experienced truly horrid customer service. You might have been ignored by the only two sales girls on the floor who are too busy giggling with one another to attend to you. It might be an arrogant public servant in the form of a police officer, a postal employee, a bus driver, or a government bureaucrat making you feel insignificant. It might be downright rudeness that would horrify the proprietor of the business.
In whatever form, vile customer service extracts a cost both in economic terms and human terms. Courteous customer service lubricates the wheels of commerce and fights the friction that is natural in human interaction. If paying a plumber to repair my faucet was a pleasant experience, I am more likely to hire him again rather than try to fix it myself. That way I can spend that time on what I do best instead of struggling with leaking pipes. The secret of specialization is everyone doing what each does best. This contributes greatly to a society’s prosperity.
In human terms, whether one returns home at the end of a day beaten or elated depends to a great extent on whether one feels uplifted by respectful human interaction. Winning the deal, but from an overbearing, pompous bully (male or female) leaves the sales professional feeling oppressed. Imagine what your life would be like if every person with whom you came into contact made you feel valued. Imagine what you could do for others if you sought ways to make everyone with whom you interact, feel appreciated. Instead of just complaining about how we are served by others, we could try focusing on how well we do the serving ourselves. The customer can also find ways to serve the vendor—a kind word of gratitude does just that.
The key to both marriage and customer service is one and the same. Taking a spouse for granted and expecting only to be served is surely a recipe for marital disaster. Service should go both ways and expressing deeply sincere appreciation is one profound form of service. Those who see serving as degrading and subservient will be less successful with both spouses and customers.
One would have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia not to have noticed that Jews have been disproportionately successful in business. That must mean they understood the importance of customer service. Early in our history in America, we Jews became small merchants. From the barrows of the Lower East Side of New York to the main streets of nearly every small town across America, people felt comfortable purchasing from the Jewish storekeeper. One of my Southern Baptist friends, now a pioneering medical industries investor, recalls growing up in the South, in the town of Natchez. His anecdotes highlight the warm relationships between local Jewish merchants and their Christian customers. Where did Jews learn customer service?
Judaism calls the process of praying to God---a prayer service. Christianity has of course adopted this nomenclature too; we all serve God and we attend services. Serving God helped Jews understand the inherent Godliness of serving His children, other people. Serving God and serving customers are closely related.
If they only had the opportunity, most devotees of People Magazine would do almost any favor imaginable for their preferred celebrity. They would even change diapers for Angelina’s tot or baby-sit Britney’s child. Serving someone’s children is a way of getting close to that someone.
Praying is not just about asking God for various favors. It is expressing profound appreciation to Him; serving Him. Serving is a God-given process of expressing the deepest yearnings of our souls. After all, no animal consciously serves another. Serving is a uniquely human gift and serving God makes us feel closer to Him. Serving other people does the same.
Furthermore, service to others is an element of life’s essence. Indeed doing things for another person is surely part of creating life. For humans, the act of marital intimacy with all its life creating potential, remains a union in which each individual is preoccupied with enhancing pleasure for the other. God’s marital message for future parents is that there is no pleasure that exceeds providing for another. What a perfect preparation for the arrival of new life that will be the beneficiary of its parents’ desire to provide for its every need. This is why the Hebrew word for love—ahav, when broken down to its component parts, means—I give.
These ancient ideas helped dispel the notion that there was something shameful or degrading about serving someone else. Some cities still cherish these eternal values while others have rejected them. It cannot be a coincidence that New York, a triumph of secular liberalism with a high proportion of its inhabitants single, also offers such dreadful customer service. Learning that serving others is one of life’s ultimate thrills could be the key to repairing both customer service and marriage.
--oooOooo--
Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen.
Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
ROBERT HEINLEIN
Customer service seems to be better in states with CCW. Coincidence?
The absolute friendliest customer service I've ever gotten in a hotel was at the Marriott East Side on Lexington Ave. in New York City.
It really depends on what you are purchasing.
If you go to one of those luxury places where they sell exquisite merchandise at incredible prices, of course you will get good service.
If, however, you go somewhere where maddened bargain-hunters are fighting over the merchandise, while the sales staff cowers behind the registers, well, what did you expect?
As for small-time stuff, like a coffee and danish from a hole-in-the-wall stand, they usually get to be pretty friendly once you become a regular.
Yeah, buddy? I got ya customer service right heah. </ newyawker>
Like anything else, you get the service you pay for. New York City or anywhere else.
I should have added that your service level frequently mirrors your own attitude toward the service person.
Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
ROBERT HEINLEIN
This Robert Heinlein is apparently an idiot......He should have quoted......Home sapiens ARE the only animalS that voluntarily do this to themselVES?????? DUH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinlein
He looks like the retarded genreal from the Star trek 6 movie
We will miss you Rabbi. Enjoy Nashville.
If you have never read a book by Robert Heinlein, I feel sorry for you.
"Homo sapiens" is the scholarly name for humans. It's singular.
Not wishing to appear pendantic - the phrase "homo sapiens" is singular - not plural, so Mr. Heinlein was correct. According to Webster's dictionary "homo sapiens" means "human being" - not human beingS.
The best customer service I have ever experienced was at a small diner in New York.
I went in to get something to eat and found that I had left my cell phone back at the hotel. I had to call my folks in Connecticut and asked the waitress if there was a pay phone in the diner.
She told me that there was one in the waiting area. I went to make the call and found that the phone was not working. I came back to the table and she asked me if I had found the phone okay. I told her yes but that it was not working.
She must have told her boss, because a man came over to our table and handed me his cell phone to make the call. I told him that the call was long distance and he said not to worry about it.
Above poster is correct, you really need to read Heinlein.
Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen.
Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
ROBERT HEINLEIN>>>>>>>>>
And a hearty AMEN to that!!!
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