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Betsey Nash Business Matters

Some Things Change; Others Don’t

Betsey Nash bubble portraitOnly Human
By Betsey Nash, SPHR

How cool is this? I just found out that my mom was the February, 1978, Employee of the Month at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.
I came across a copy of the hospital newsletter, “Chatter,” when going through some boxes in the garage last week. If I once knew, I forgot, so it was a thrill to read through the list of attributes in the article about her; they are a laundry list of customer service best practices.
As a “referral center specialist,” who helped parents get their sick children to the vast network of services in the hospital, she spent all day on the phone.
She was apparently able to “dispense ample doses of compassion, concern, friendliness, helpfulness, knowledge and understanding,” the newsletter said.” She, “pleasantly [gave] assurance and confidence” to the 100th caller, as she did to the first, and had a “knack for straightening out problems, staying on the trail until the last detail has been cleared up.”
I mention this not only for nostalgia’s sake but to wonder if customer service isn’t in our DNA?
I never talked about serving customers to my mom, yet I am proud to have been recognized for the same traits listed in The Chatter.
I was The Home Depot’s Employee of the Year in the Simi Valley store — a million years ago.
Funny thing is, I don’t recall my mom telling me about her award when I boasted about mine.
And that’s Dory Nash in a nutshell — quietly doing exceptional things, whether it was serving the weary parents at Children’s Hospital, or the Jack House, People’s Kitchen and Friends of the Library, here in SLO.
Reading her praises made me wonder if my long-held belief should be re-thought. I have never understood why managers continue to hire shy, soft-spoken young women for customer service positions, especially in the retail industry.
But maybe you don’t have to hire only outgoing people to interact with your customers. Maybe the better characteristics to look for are compassion, concern, friendliness, helpfulness, knowledge and understanding. (To that, however, I would add, a strong speaking voice.)
Asking a job candidate to describe a bad customer service experience would provide insight into what they deem important. Following up with “How would you have handled it?” informs us their attitude and problem solving skills. Do they show compassion? What did their parents do for a living?
My mom was still smoking in 1978, and the newsletter has several articles about smoking in the hospital. A parent waiting in the psych waiting room complained that it was hard to breathe and she didn’t want to feed her baby in there.
The hospital responded that there is only just so much room and it is hard to have both smoking and non-smoking areas.
Someone else complained that the cafeteria needed to empty the table ashtrays more often. The hospital’s policy forbade smoking in elevators, near flammable liquids, in the Intensive Care Unit, patient corridors, and labs where patient specimens were being tested.
And, patients confined to bed should be discouraged from smoking, too.
Mom stopped smoking in 1980, when my sister asked her to. Amazing woman.

Betsey Nash, SPHR, SHRM-SCP always loved her customer service jobs; until her feet hurt. She can be reached at: . Only Human is a regular feature of the Tolosa Press.

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