Brighten someone's day today!

As I’m sitting here with the power having just went off in my house…no TV, no sound at all really, no A/C (in Texas, ugh), I’m thinking back to the conversation I just had with the customer service rep at the power company.  I wanted to report the outage of course, so I gave them a call.  The rep proceeded to tell me she was sorry for the inconvenience and they are working on the problem.  She also said it was due to the severe storms we had last night in our area and it would be several hours until the power is back on.  Well uh, I had to break the news to her that we had no storms whatsoever in my area last night and in fact it hasn’t rained an inch since early June.  She kinda started stumbling on her words, got nervous, and a little shake voice if you know what I mean.  She then apologized and said that’s what it said she was supposed to tell me.  Wrong script I would guess.  Anyway, it’s no biggie to me.  I just told her it was no problem and I just wanted to report the outage.  I didn’t really care what caused it or if they even knew.  That’s why I called.  I then told her I appreciated her help and I hope she has a really good day.  She seemed quite surprised at my reaction and her shake voice quickly went away and she cheerfully thanked me for calling.

My point…I love giving someone the opposite reaction of what they expect.  If someone screws up or their company screws up and they expect a hostile reaction from a customer, I take great joy in being the total opposite.  The reaction and relief you get from people is priceless so many times.  You can more or less notice a sigh of relief.

When I’m in the convenience store and the customer in front of me at the register is pretty cold and doesn’t even hand the money to the clerk, they just throw it on the counter even though the clerk extends their hand, I like to then strike up a conversation with the clerk and ask how their day has been and wish them a great remainder of their day.  I know it’s corny, but I love being the nice guy that puts a little joy into someone’s day, if not actually turn it around altogether.  Customer Service can be such a stressful and straining job.  I challenge everyone to brighten a CS Reps day at least once in your day.