Mackie Monday | The Extra Mile
Welcome to the October edition of Mackie Monday! This Mackie Monday I want to highlight an example of excellent customer service and thank our entire team for the tremendous amount of work you all do to ensure we take care of our customers needs even in the most challenging times.
Just this last month I received the letter below from a customer praising a member of our team, Van Britt, for the exemplary service he gave during the challenging times surrounding Hurricane Matthew. We always aim to deliver industry-leading service, but letters like this one from Keith prove we are in fact delivering it. I am thankful to Keith for taking the time to reach out and share this story with us and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
“Hurricane Matthew blew through North Carolina last Saturday leaving many unprepared families scrambling. One of those families was my parents. Oh, they owned a brand new 10Kw generator, but had never bothered to have it wired up. I happened to have everything they needed to do the job except for one (1) male 50 amp plug. Living 30 miles outside Raleigh and within driving distance of no less than 12 Lowes’ and Home Depot stores, my dad thought we could just go pick up what we needed. Reality struck Sunday when we found those home improvement stores’ electrical sections ransacked. There wasn’t a male 50 amp plug within 150 miles.
On Monday I returned to work. Early that morning I called one of your competitors who was located close by. Immediately I felt the salesperson was either new or very unfamiliar with their stock. Eventually I was told they had a 50 amp plug in stock and would hold it for me. Just hearing that news was a huge relief! When my day calmed down I went to pick up the plug only to find it had the correct 50 amp contact prongs, but it had a (protected) specialty plug housing which would prohibit it from mating with the standard 50 amp plug on the generator. Even if I could modify the housing, the cost was $80! It’s now 4:50 PM and my stress level just went through the roof because it’s the close of business day and the salesperson tells me they sold every other male 50 amp plug they had in stock. The one they were holding for me was the last of them. Not a good sign!
I went out to my car, pulled up Google and entered the one name on my mind, City Electric Supply (CES). Of course, I was saying to myself I knew I should have called CES originally. At 4:55 PM I called the closest CES location. After a half dozen rings the answering machine picked up and at that moment I was defeated. As I went to terminate the call I noticed I had an incoming call from the same exact number I was dialing. How could this be? I wasn’t able to connect with the caller so I hung up and dialed the number again. By the grace of God, a real live person answered and began to apologize profusely for not being able to get to the phone quick enough. I’m listening – in shock! No one answers their business phone 3 minutes before closing time, right? Even more astounding who goes out of their way to check the caller ID and then return a call at that time of day? Knowing the situation well, Hurricane Mathew has inconvenienced everyone and it would seem to me folks want to close their shop as soon as possible to go attend to their own affairs. Your employee tells me he has 1 last male 50 amp plug and he will stay late to wait for me. He asked for my location and not knowing I have over 30 years with the city’s fire department he proceeds to tell me the “back way” to avoid rush hour traffic.
I arrive and introduce myself to your employee, Vann Britt. I told him staying late for a customer is going above and beyond, but returning a phone call at closing time is unheard of. Vann told me he knew that under the circumstances lots of folks were searching for electrical parts and he felt obligated to help. And that’s why he called me back.
As a manager of 40 firefighters in my Battalion and an (off-duty) organizational president managing 22 employees I would like to think I am a fairly seasoned manager. Although that is not unique, I am certain my skil lset is what helped me identify this as a unique experience. Therefore, I felt it necessary to share this story with you in hopes you might use it (and Vann Britt) as a model for other CES employees.
Vann Britt changed my parent’s unfortunate circumstances because he cared and went the extra two miles! I cannot praise him enough, but I hope you can by getting a lot of mileage out of this story.
Best regards,
Keith
When I reached out to Vann to thank him for taking care of Keith, his response was a perfect example of the CES culture: “I didn’t think I was doing anything special, that is what we do everyday.”
I could not be more proud on a daily basis to have the great privilege of leading the City Electric Supply team!