The auger in the ice maker in my refrigerator broke a while ago. I spoke with some people who know this business and they said I needed to purchase an ice bucket and auger assembly replacement, remove the old assembly and install the new one. I checked around and found that these assemblies are fairly expensive, so I proceeded to fish ice cubes from the bucket with my hand for the better part of a year which, I’m told, is somewhat unsanitary. Recently, I received an email from the manufacturer of the refrigerator announcing a major sale on replacement parts along with free shipping. This made the replacement assembly very affordable, so I ordered it. Well, even though I followed the ordering directions exactly, I managed to order the wrong assembly—it was two inches too narrow. As I read the directions on how to return this assembly, I learned that I had to pay the return postage which was going to be quite expensive. So, I called the phone number of the replacement parts organization. The woman who answered turned out to be quite friendly, so we visited and had a few laughs before we got down to business. She told me that the last digit of the part number was wrong and that she would send the correct assembly to me. Then I asked, “Am going to have to pay the shipping to return the wrong assembly?” She answered, “No, I’ll email you a prepaid label and I’ll expedite the shipping of the correct assembly so that you’ll have it tomorrow. How’s that?” All I could say was, “Thank you so much!” The lesson here is that if you treat people on the phone with kindness and respect, they will go out of their way to help you which, in turn, will make your life much easier.
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Recommended Reading
Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Transform Your Workplace!
Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality—that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they’re being treated—the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.
At the book’s center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees—low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO’s new management-by-the-numbers system, she’s charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination—a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it’s engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.
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