Early Lessons from the Farm
I learned about customer service from an early age. While growing up on a dairy-apple farm in western New York outside a small town of about 2,000 residents, I learned tons of valuable lessons. There were the obvious moral lessons of honesty, obedience and a giant work ethic as well as good manners taught by Mom and Dad. There were hours spent in Church and school, with self-sacrificing adults who labored in classrooms, Sunday School, youth groups, choirs and 4-H camps trying to make decent, maybe even responsible, human beings out of us big and little rascals.
Life Values
But beyond those lessons, my parents did something much more important than to lecture and try to shape me through verbal instructions, although it took me years to fully recognize it. They modeled self-sacrificing, loving behavior, putting God first, then each other and their children before themselves. Sometimes Mom would quietly point out what Dad (who did not brag or try to instill guilt) was doing to support his family: sacrificing his body, sleep, time, finances and many opportunities for fun, to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Of course, she did that too, but Mom wouldn’t ‘toot her own horn’ and Dad didn’t talk a whole lot.
A Road Less Travelled
Anyway, one day as Dad approached 40, he looked at the life price he was paying with little change likely for his old age. He was milking cows twice a day, often seven days a week (with sporadic hired help), competing with destructive deer for his new orchard trees, spraying nasty pesticides to grow beautiful ‘grade A’ apples, in those pre-organic food days and said – “I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life”. I remember he had about 3 or 4 lines of work he considered. Ultimately, he ran for NY State Assemblyman to replace a retiring and respected older neighbor. He overcame bouts with hives over door-to-door campaigning, beat a field of 10 candidates in the primary and went on to win the Fall election in 1967. He eventually found himself rubbing elbows with Governor Rockefeller. He and Mom got to know the Governor and other politicians personally (Mom sang for some of Happy’s parties including several times for the Governor’s Ball. Dad played tennis with them and others at Pocantico Hills ). Later, he served as an Executive Director of Ag and Soil Conservation under Reagan for the state of New York.
Staying Close to Good Roots While Taking Wing
I thought all this might change them – appearances, a little fame, socializing with bigwigs (well, they sure were to a farm girl) and while in my mid-teens, I found myself observing my parents more closely. Dad was that rarest of people, an honest politician with a servant’s heart. His own grandmother shocked him when she told him she could not vote for him “because politics changes people”. His private remark to Mom was, “I thought she would give me more credit [and understand that] my character would not change.”
Service, Honesty and Integrity
When elected, he truly demonstrated how to be a public servant. That is, performing customer service for a very large “customer” base. He took and returned phone calls during meals and until bedtime, day in and day out, helped students find education grants and loans, helped people find needed contacts, assisted people struggling with bureaucratic red tape, tolerated opinions differing from his own and patiently explained his positions, sometimes many times, and kept his cool when facing heated language and opponents.
Later, as NY Commissioner of Agriculture he had to oversee a controversial case involving a farm Co-op. He wrestled with both the responsibility to exact a large enough fine to be a reprimand and punishment to the Co-op and its administration, yet also not to place an undue burden on the farmers participating in the Co-op who were innocent of wrong-doing. He was vilified by an article in a NY City newspaper that had found a source suggesting a conflict of interest on his part – he carefully corrected the source’s information, citing the correct (and differing) organization’s name, dates of his association with them and showed the reporters’ accusations as well as the source were false. I think they may have published a small correction though not a full retraction. Dad’s greatest “shortcoming” was that he thought everyone was as honest and direct as he was.
Real Integrity
My brother Lincoln likes to tell this story about Dad when his friends are raging over “all the scumbag politicians and how they never met a single honest one!” He said our Dad was one – his example covered a bill coming before the Assembly that would grant even a one-term (two years) assemblyman a significant pension. Although he argued against it with his fellow Assemblymen and then voted against it, it still passed. Later, the opportunity came for him to sign up for that same pension which he had “earned”. He declined to and when questioned why, he said he thought it was morally wrong to “feather the politician’s own nest” in that way and just because he could now legally take advantage of it, he still felt it was immoral and so would not participate.
Customer service – bottom line?
What does this have to do with customer service? Everything – my parents taught me to be straight-forward and honest with people, to deal with customers, vendors and employees with integrity and to keep service to others at the top. Am I perfect? Of course not! While I’m on the topic of honesty, I must confess that Dad wasn’t perfect either, but man…he and Mom sure set the standard high! Bruce and I strive every day to meet that standard ourselves and encourage our employees to do the same.