I was thinking about customer service in our profession and considering recent conversations by some of our colleagues recently who reject the term. A bit of enlightenment came to me while listening to a reading to a segment of the radio program This I Believe.
The subject was Ruth Cranston, author of World Faith: The Story of the Religions of the United Nations. She spoke of achieving the insight that all of the world’s religions, despite their differences, were united in very similar tenets of how to live with our fellow man. Even when there is constant disagreement with how we go about our daily lives, she posited this about the commonalities of religious belief:
They [the world’s religions] taught the unity of all life; the interdependence of all men; love and service to fellow man; help, not exploitation, of the weak and backward. They taught nonviolence and non-injury. They all taught purity of life and of motive, simplicity of life too, and that true riches are within. They taught the worth of individual man and the ability of every man to rise to higher states of development than we are now experiencing. They taught the immortality of the soul and the building of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.
Her suggestion was that despite the worship or belief in which we practice, we experience several common denominators that should bring us closer together rather than farther apart. While a lot can be taken from that paragraph, it seems that like I say constantly in my forum here is that we as emergency service providers have more commonalities than differences. In fact, those of us who are true believers in what we do as a profession probably understand that the phrase “customer service” is just a name we put on a concept in order to define it.
Of course, the belief of a higher calling to serve is about those who are truly in this and believe in this as a profession of service and enjoying the benefits of the occasional adrenaline rush, in contrast to those who are in this for the adrenaline rush and enjoy the occasional effort to serve, and even then, if that subject comes up at all. I say that because it is my observation that a majority (if not all) of the problems we have in emergency service can be traced back to those who fail to see this career, whether you are paid or volunteer, as one in which we should serve rather than to be served. It is this entitled mindset, that we are automatically due respect because we wear the badge, which causes problems.
The term customer service is probably pretty cynical, when you think about it, because it might suggest to the casual reader that the ideal we seek is all about making sure our profession enjoys the financial benefit of such service. In fact, as emergency response personnel, the term “customer service” embraces the concept of all that is considered good in mankind, in that we realize the worth of others and we seek to serve those in need of help, despite their social status. While we can quantitatively point out that having a customer service attitude benefits us in public support, there should be a much more altruistic reason for our embracing that belief.
There are two schools of thought in the “anti-customer service” camp. One, of course, is that the public doesn’t have a choice, therefore they are not customers. The second goes along with my statement that what we do is so much more than a client relationship. I have argued that the public does have a choice, as Chief Alan Brunacini did much more so before I have here. But the latter discussion bears some serious consideration. Is the concept of customer service too simplistic? Customer service could be construed as providing a real effort only when we stand to gain from that interaction. It might be perceived that the service we provide is done only because we expect a return on investment.
While remembering conversations with Chief Brunacini as he advocated the benefits of customer service mentality as a method for obtaining taxpayer support, I also recall that he never said that the concept was exclusive to that expectation. If you remember, the overarching mission was to “Be Nice”. While that’s good for marketing, it’s not something you can force down people’s throats and expect it to happen magically. He advocated a cultural shift in his leadership that was summed up in two simple words, therefore easy to remember and easy to implement. The customer service mentality, likewise, was easy to relate to.
Our job as leaders is to communicate our mission. That communication requires not only our shouting it out there, but the return acknowledgment that understanding has been achieved. The mindset of “customer service” is palpable. We understand it and we know what is good customer service and what is bad. We can easily empathize with a customer who is frustrated with a certain way in which their matter is being handled or appreciate the sincere gratitude experienced by a customer who is receiving excellent service. For the purposes of defining an accepted approach to interaction with the community, it helps to be able to frame those interactions in a manner in which we are familiar. So while, yes, our delivery of service is much more than the interaction of a salesperson and a client, it provides us with concrete objectives by which we can measure our outputs. It is pretty easy to say, “Fire Went Out” and check the “Good” box. It is much more difficult to say, “Obtained Confidence of Taxpayer”.
Our job can be seen from a purely pragmatic standpoint, one in which we have been tasked to provide a service and we must efficiently produce results. Or we can say that our job is that of serving humankind with compassionate and ethical assistance when they are most vulnerable. In either case, the ultimate measurement is the same; as Cranston implied, reinforcing “the interdependence of all men”; loving and serving fellow man; and helping, not exploiting, the weak and needy. It is our charge to insure whichever path we choose, we do so with the understanding that we are there to serve.
If you haven’t figured out by now I’m kind of intrigued by all the technology that people use on a daily basis and how it could be incorporated into making our jobs easier in the fire service. I can’t get over all of the opportunities that are out there to try to improve things, and yet for some reason the fire service stays riveted on old technology. It could be that there’s not enough money in the fire service to help improve these technologies. You’d think that someone with the money might realize that better technology could be make us more efficient and also reduce pain and suffering and loss of property and all that other good stuff.
As usual, Dave Statter is hard at work getting us News from the Beltway, where there always seems like something is going on (it’s a happening place). In this case, crews were on scene preparing to 
I took some time to be with my family over the holiday so I have a little catching up to do. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and now we continue to ready ourselves for a New Year. Since this might be my last post for 2009, I thought I’d leave you with some thoughts toward something we all seem to do at the end of the year; that is, set goals for the upcoming year.
For some of the new readers here, not only is Firehouse Zen about enlightened leadership, it is about management issues and creative solutions to ongoing problems in the emergency service industry. If you are a long-time reader, you may recall our discussions in the past regarding 
For the most part, I consider myself a Libertarian in that I’d just as soon the government not tell me what to do. In some aspects, I guess, I’m pretty conservative in my values, so I’m a little Republican, and I like the idea of people on welfare getting off of it someday, especially since I had to eat a lot of PBJs and continue to drive a car with 100k+ miles on it to afford the house we live in (but that’s called choosing your priorities). And although I’m all for funding the arts, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to fund anything called “Piss Christ”. 
I woke up this morning with an idea for emergency services that is already a reality. It’s funny about technology in our business; innovation driven by the private sector and the military is implemented and has probably run through four or five revisions, then we look at it and say, “Wow, this is amazing technology!” while the others have likely moved on.
How many more times does disaster have to strike before responders finally learn the lesson of the need for unified command? How many times do agencies need to experience a tug-of-war over resources, slow response to needs due to poor inter-agency communication, and lousy coordination all because the “powers that be” refuse to put their egos aside and agree to play nicely together?
For some reason today I was reflecting on two of the worst teachers I had when I was in school (back around the Ice Age) and just why they were such terrible teachers. I suppose that other than their lousy personalities, it would have had to be their passive-aggressive nature when it came to the enforcement of rules. Since I know a few officers who run their crews with this same kind of behavior (passive-aggressive behavior, that is), I thought it might be a good issue to discuss.
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