Is "Doing Your Job" Giving Good Customer Service?

Wow, it's been far too long between the first post and this one and it certainly wasn't intentional.  For you blog readers, that wasn't good customer service was it, to start a blog, throw out a post promising more in the near future and then disappear?  But I've had good reasons for the delay in posting, which I'll cover here and promise to update this little thingy once a week.  Happy?

Customer service....ahhh, how many times in the last few weeks have I had the opportunity to experience it and didn't? Too many to count. I will have to say that there were a few times I had exceptional service and I will cover those in the next post (see, already setting expectations for next week.) But this one will be a gripe session, if you don't mind, because there were great chances for the customer reps to have gone above and beyond; no, forget that, to just do their stinking jobs, and that would have provided customer service.  If the employee chose to go above and beyond, wahoo, that would have left an impression.

I've got one specific incident I want to talk about while drawing the parallel to the above title....if an employee is doing their job, are they then providing good customer service?

See the picture here, the one with the dashingly handsome man and the effervescent young lady?  Well, that is yours truly and my then fiancé the day we went to the Cobb county court clerk's office in the great state of Georgia to get our marriage license. Just an aside, and I found this odd;  you can get a marriage license AND/OR a gun permit at the same counter and yes, I am serious.  Anyway, we saunter in, all sappy happy, smiling and probably looking sickeningly in love and say to the clerk who looked to be bored outta her skull, "we are here to get a marriage license."  Now at that point, in my humble opinion, it would have been awesome if she had A) acted a like she cared, B) was enthused or C) made us feel that we were not an interruption to her game of hearts she had going on her cell phone. She just said ok with no smile, no congratulations, no nothing.  She just did her job.  How much better could she have made the experience by just appearing to care.  She didn't even make eye contact;  just said here's the form, fill it out and include your driver's license. We did as instructed and still nothing.  I had to ask her to take the  photo and she did so begrudgingly but there was no zing, no zest.

Back to the question at hand; she did her job; we got a marriage licensee and as far as I can tell are legally married. But what if when she saw us walking in she had said "you two must be here for a marriage license?"  What if the office had a little dinger they rang for the newlyweds who proceed through there each day?  Or if she had offered to take our picture?  Instead, I was left with yet another bad impression of an employee who was just "doing their job."

So, what about you?  If you as an employee, manager, Realtor, teacher, sales person, whatever, are doing just your job, are you giving good customer service?  If we told our kids go to school and do the work would we want them to do the work or be involved in the work? Because as a employee or business owner, you have to be out there working it, wowing the crowds and keeping them coming back for more. Doing your job, going through the motions...these are synonymous with customer service today unfortunately.  The businesses or sales people who want to stand out, earn more, be more, receive more referrals, they are the ones who do their job but do it with passion, excitement, attention to the customer and what's going on with them and making them feel like they are the ONLY one who is there right now.

Doing your job is not good customer service and you're cheating yourself if that's all you're doing.  And most certainly, you're robbing your customer of the experience they deserve.

Customers and clients can always go elsewhere. Are you doing all you can in your business to ensure that they don't?