Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Service or service?

A service is an action taken by one person to ease the life of others. That’s the way I look at it. Some services are good and others are not so good. I think the difference between the good and the not so good is the quality of the service we receive.

The other day I was at the gas station filling up the car. At this particular station they serve the customer meaning they pump the gas for you. As I sat in the car waiting for the pump to finish, the attendant picked up the squeegee and proceeded to clean the windshield. He got the window wet and began to scrape it off with the rubber blade. As he went lower and lower he moved very quickly. When he got the bottom h just grazed past the wiper blades, leaving dirty water at the bottom of the glass. He then walked around the car to the other side and just wet the six inches or so where he could not reach during his first attempt. Then he scraped the water off again, but this time in a downward motion. Again, he left dirty water at the bottom of the windshield.

I had streaks on the windshield going across the majority of the glass and streaks going down about six inches from the edge on the passenger side. I also had a concentration of dirt and smudge right against the wiper blades. I think I would have been better off without the windshield cleaning that particular day.

The attendant was providing a service by cleaning the windshield. What he was lacking was the quality of the service. Sure it is nice to have the windshield clean, but if the job can’t be done with a sense of quality, there really is no point in even trying.

When we are providing a service, no matter what that service may be, it is highly important that we have a sense of quality with the service. Without quality the job will be noticed more than if we add quality. Think about it. If the gas station attendant had cleaned the windshield properly, do you think I would have written about it here?

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