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Decatur,
IL |
May 18 |
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Owensboro, KY |
May 19 |
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Muncie, IN |
May 20 |
Call Rebecca at 1-800-538-4595 for
any location. |
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“Carelessness
isn’t a matter of the complexity
of a task. It’s a matter of attention to detail.”
— Glenn Shepard |
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Dear Glenn,
We have an
outside janitorial service that is doing a less than
satisfactory job in cleaning our office.
Some of the office staff have expressed that they could
use some extra money and are willing to clean the
office, but I'm reluctant
What's your opinion is on having office staff serve as
janitorial staff?
Maid Melissa in Georgia
Dear
Melissa,
The unstated
assumption here is that janitorial duties are not in
your office staff’s job description. While that may be
the case in your company, it is not like that in all.
The office complex my company was housed in from 1994
through 1999 provided janitorial service as part of the
rent. The complex we moved to in 2000 does not, so I gave
my staff the choice of me hiring an outside agency, or
them doing the cleaning themselves.
They chose the latter, because they get an annual bonus
based on the company’s overall profitability, and their
individual contribution to our profitability.
And just for the record, I personally clean the men’s
urinal, because I’m the only man in the company.
Thanks for your question.
Glenn in Nashville, TN
P.S. On a
related note, country music star Martina McBride doesn’t
have a housekeeper, because she thinks it’s unnecessary.
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Glenn's Personal Blog
Click on the gold
pen to see what Glenn's on a
rant about now |
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On
April 13th, my beautiful bride contacted the cable
company to schedule installation of service at our new house, on
the scheduled closing date of April 15th.
She
made it clear that we did NOT want to cancel service at our
existing house (because we don’t intend to put it on the market
until after we’re all moved in to the new one), and was assured
it would remain unchanged.
Late on the afternoon of April 14th, Bank of America
informed the seller they changed their mind about accepting the
terms of the short sale, putting our new house on hold.
We
contacted the cable company and canceled installation at the new
address, and confirmed that service at our existing address
would remain intact. The customer service rep (CSR) assured us
nothing would change with our existing service.
Contrary to her assurances, that night we discovered service had
been cancelled at our existing address.
This would not have been such an issue if it were just cable TV,
but we also use them as our telephone and Internet provider.
They reinstated service the next day.
Last Friday, April 30th, we tried to reschedule
installation at the new house, on the new closing date of May 7.
But
we were informed they could not do that, because the account at
our old address was past due.
This was bizarre, because I’ve had that account on automatic
draft for nearly 25 years. I even received the statement from
the cable company that confirmed the account would do an
autodraft on April 20th.
It
turned out that the CSR had also cancelled the automatic draft.
We
had to give them a credit card number to bring our old our
account current, before they would accept the work order for
service at our new address.
We
asked the CSR three times to confirm that after doing this, they
would not also draft the same amount out of the checking account
anyway.
While we still haven’t received our April bank statement, I’ll
bet dollars to doughnuts they will.
Here’s the irony of all of this. Every CSR we spoke to has been
extremely polite, professional and patient.
Each one ended the call by saying “You may receive a call
evaluating the service I gave you today”.
The
problem is that all the customer service skills in the world are
useless if employees are not properly trained on how the system
works, are outright incompetent, or if the right hand doesn’t
know what the left hand is doing.
And
each of these factors is all the responsibility of management.
Dedicated To Your Success,
P.S. This ordeal was eerily similar to what we went through in
winter 2008 with the gas company, nearly leaving us without heat
on the day before Christmas. I find it interesting that both of
these massive blunders happened in industries where there is
little or no competition.
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