This happens to be National Customer Service Week and here’s a local that happened this week to get you thinking.

On Monday, a shipping company which promotes itself as the “premier provider of shipping and information services worldwide” dropped off a package at a building in a multi-acre office park near Golden.

Jason, the young man who ended up with the package, saw it was delivered to the wrong address. The correct location was within the office park, but a few streets away. Jason tried to return it on Tuesday when the delivery company brought in another package.

She told him, “I can’t take it – it’s not my division. Someone in the ‘ground’ division needs to pick it up.”

On Wednesday, the ground division person showed up and again, “not my problem.” He said the package belonged to the “express” division and he, too, refused to take the package.

At this point, Jason who had been trying to return the package for two days started to feel sorry for the woman who was still waiting on her package from Amazon. Was it a present for someone’s birthday, shoes she needed for a special occasion or a textbook she needed for a class? By this time, the tracking information would show the package had been delivered when the reality was, it had not been.

He decided he would take care of this poor customer if no one else would. He went outside for some fresh air and walked the box over to the right address.

When he arrived in that office building, he saw many people who were obviously employees in the lobby area. He could see several people in a meeting behind a glass wall. He waited for more than 10 minutes before anyone acknowledged he was there.

Finally, one woman asked if she could help him and he told her he had a package for Renee Johnson that was delivered by mistake two days ago to his building. Ironically, Renee’s desk was within 10 feet of this conversation and when she heard her name, she came right over to get her package.

Jason was Renee’s hero and that of everyone else who overheard what was going on. Jason also made a point of telling them who he worked for and why he decided to bring her the package.

His employer trusts him to do the right thing and build good will for the company in any way he can. That package really wasn’t his problem, it wasn’t the responsibility of any division in his company and no one would ever know if they let it sit and gather dust for another couple days ‘til the right guy from the right division of the “premier provider of shipping and information services worldwide” finally showed up.

In this scenario there were 3 missed opportunities to deliver simply adequate customer service. Two times reps from the “premier provider of shipping and information services worldwide” failed to solve a problem. The third time came when the hero with the package had to wait more than 10 minutes to be noticed as a guest in the lobby. All these people thought they were doing their jobs, but were they? Something to think about during National Customer Service Week.

Also remember, ALCC’s new awards program has a Customer Service Award category. Do you have customers who would like to nominate your company?

Read more in this issue of Colorado Green NOW: