Education Needed For American Customer People Services Providers

By: James Allen Homyak
April 29, 2023

How many of you grew up in the era of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s in America, where you were trained clearly and effectively that the Customer is always right? 

How many of you remember or still rely on the phrase "nothing happens until the sale is made" where this was or is your ultimate goal -- extensive preparation in sales and follow-through?

America has been in decline for some time. We all see this fact in the decreasing levels of service coming from all over all industries as workforces shrink, prices rise and expectations go unmet. 

I grew up in Customer Service, in small business, medium business and large business, while taking care of a lot of people every day between 1981 and 2008. I retired officially in 2008, but even since then I still have had the opportunity numerous times to take care of people who know me. However I have not been for hire anymore for over 14 years. That's given me years away from the noise to sit back as a casual observer.

This essay is here to hopefully shine some light of the tragic outcomes of poor customer service that has been experienced in this country for the better part of the last 22 years.... particularaly in communities where a high influx of foreign immigrants are starting service businesses in America, we are seeing way too many habits and traits coming from an apparent upbringing in total chaos. 

So many incoming settlers have no clue about what made our country flourish by way of the service economy. Growing up in a big country (large land mass) such as America with its 330 million people can be chaos, yes, however this historically has been nowhere near the chaos of living in a tiny jam-packed nation of over 1 billion people, all scrambling in unison for dwindling resources.

We all need to arrive at a consistent plateau of work ethic, increasing values, and morals and revived common sense. I am totally stunned almost every week how missing common sense has become.

Here are some key take-aways that you can use now:

1. If you are a ride service provider, please remember to contact your rider at least 20 minutes before arriving to give an accurate estimated arrive time, using your GPS, or knowledge of the travel times based on recent experience, etc.

2. If you happen to be taking someone to their appointment early in the morning, be sure to get  yourself awakened in time so that you make your ETA and confirmation calls and to then arrive on time.

3. If you are taking somebody in your automobile, be sure to quickly inspect your passenger areas to be sure the rider hasn't accidentally dropped any of their belongings inside your passenger areas.

4. When you take somebody to a location for an appointment, you need to have the conversation to confirm that the rider will also need to be taken from that location back to their point of origin or perhaps to another location -- so long as you don't leave the rider hanging with no clue how they will be taken back to their next location or home location, etc. This is purely common sense. Don't simply drive off without doing this service of confirming.

5. If you have some cause for having to change your arrival time, you should absolutely immediately contact your rider to inform them of the change. This will give your rider the optional time to invoke with their Plan B, if your Plan A should be seriously delayed (such as greater than 45 mins).

6. Americans with Customer Service experience, throughout the above era, are very much aware of when we experience unskilled and lazy people who are either not attentive to detail or are impacted by poor training; we see eastern nation ideals getting shoe-horned into the western nations, those who are obviously soft-quitting, those who continually exhibit the fastest method to barely get by with the utmost basic level of getting to done, forgetting any quality practices and having no attention to detail.  This makes us not want to depend on you.

7. If you are making podcasting videos, there is no point in making a version for English Speaking if your english is so broken that your viewer has to re-watch and review your content dozens of times to make out what you are saying. How about you actually go and get yourselves some English speaking dialect courses and do some role-playing to confirm that your viewers can follow your script? How many of you put slang words and jargon words (meaningless rhetoric) into your script, (um, ah, you know, like, etc.) which makes your speaking totally useless? You mean well, yes, but for Americans, you also need to speak well. Remember -- America has been suffering a total decline across the board in terms of English Language education. Our young people are not even graduating at grade level speech anymore. Of course that leads to the decline in customer service quality that Americans are providing to Americans too. This is not just isolated to foreign settlers and immigrants.

8. If you are involved in technology service, you must be absolutely certain that you are not running your words together in a jumbled slur of noise. Your careful enunciation and dialect will be necessary to properly and accurately convey meaning. You are wasting a lot of time for all sides when you are doing what sounds like mumbling, humming, chewing gum, slurring your speech, etc. These kinds of problems lead to your customers not even wanting to get your help because you cannot speak English properly. Yes, we know English is a difficult language. But welcome to America. English is our primary tongue.

9. Details to be sure you are all working with -

  a. holding accurate phone numbers printed out for you (in hand) ahead of time - in the event your online device goes offline

  b. arrive time plus travel time (do the math) tells you the time you must leave your current location to get to your pickup location on time to get your rider to their location on time

  c. writing down on paper is so much more effective than simply relying on electronic devices - know this, the globalists plan to increasingly interfere with your electronic communications - this matter will only intensify as larger world organizations continue to try to usurp un-elected and un-sanctioned powers outside their own national borders to seek to continually destroy American's sovereignty and autonomy.

  d. begin your day with a written travel plan, a written communications plan, an accessible listing in the event you have a technology breakdown

10. If you are in the service sector of any kind, you can increase your customer satisfaction by cycling these questions at the end of every interaction:

  a. Is there anything else I can do to assist you?

  b. Would you like a follow-up call / text / email?

  c. Do you have anyone that you can refer us to who could use our services?

  d. Is there anything I/we can do to improve?

  e. Are there any changes I should make our office aware of?

11. What kinds of extra credit reading are you doing to seek out the ways you can improve yourselves in terms of

  a. English language dialect

  b. Customer's Service Level Expectations -- in some industries the acronym is SLA, which stands for Service Level Agreement

  c. Truth, Freedom and the American way -- our country become a large economy through detailed communications and record keeping using pencils, printing presses, inks and papers

12. America is so well known for our nationally accepted freedom of religion. Your religious observations are likely to have impact on your Customer Service availability. It is unwise to not let your customers know and to fail to set expectation for when you will be unavailable. Many religions observe several forty-five minute prayer times every day. Islamic prayer times are similar to this:  

     a. Fajar Prayer Time 04:45 AM

     b. Dhuhur Prayer Time 12:20 PM

     c. Asr Prayer Time 03:40 PM

     d. Maghrib Prayer Time 06:45 PM

     e. Isha Prayer Time 07:50 PM

Now that I've got you thinking about this topic, of Good Customer Service, you too can customize this kind of discussion toward your exact type of services. The goal, the good old fashioned American goal, is to have the best communications possible within the given language set for your particular business and your particular culture.

The tragic outcome for failures or sub-par service providers in the above essay, are leading people to having growing health concerns, missed appointments, missed deadlines, added expense, wasted time, shuffling responsiblities and sweeping your accountabilities under the rug because some of you are too self-interested to admit that you're not taking Customer Service very seriously. Why is that?

You get paid, right? How much are you getting paid when your business is taking a downward turn due to your lack of learning the true and good old fashioned small town work ethic?

In closing, I encourage you to get to your favorite search engine. Enter in the term 'customer service work ethic' and find such organizations as hbr.org, natcom.org and salesforce.com where you can learn a significant amount of refresher content on the topics of The Customer Code of Ethics for a Great Service Attitude. Get over to helpscout.com and study 21 Key Customer Service Skills (and how to Develop Them). 

Now at the end of this all, it is time to replace that word "customer" with the word "people" whenever the ones you are serving are actually men, women and children. This is because "a customer" is civilly dead terminology, in commerce, such as selling to or providing services to a company that is going to resell or repackage your services to then, in turn, provide to another company. 

I'm always open to your comments, by sending a message to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to get me involved in your situation.

All the best,

James Allen Homyak