Lessons Learned at the Ballpark

Tim Fulton

I often times receive my best training in customer service in the most
unlikely situations.

My 6-year-old son, Taylor, had been pressuring me for weeks to take him to a
baseball game. At the time, I was still on strike as a major league baseball
fan. Hence, I decided to take him to see the local team play in the College
Baseball Regional Championships.

The game was terrific. It had all the elements that has made baseball our
national pastime: great hitting, exciting fielding, and a late-inning
comeback by the home team.
In fact, the home team won the game.

Taylor thoroughly enjoyed the game except for one aspect. He had brought his
glove to the game just in case a foul ball happened to drift in our
direction. With each pitch, he leaned forward in anticipation of snagging a
souvenir ball.

Unfortunately, not a single ball was hit our way.

After the final out, we weaved our way out of the bleachers toward our car
in the parking lot. As we reached the stadium exit, we passed an elderly
stadium attendant. He appeared to be either a university alumnus or maybe
just a fan of the game who worked to gate to earn a free ticket. As the
crowd pushed out onto the street, the old gent stood by the exit gate
minding his own business.

As we walked by, the attendant abruptly reached down and grabbed TaylorÆs
glove hand as if my son was concealing contraband in his mitt.

"Son, have you got a baseball in that glove?" he asked suspiciously.

Taylor was startled by the stranger and replied, "No," in a soft whisper.

At that moment, the attendant reached into his pocket, and pulled out a
baseball and dropped it into TaylorÆs empty glove.

"Now you do", said the man, smiling broadly, "Come back and see us again."

For a moment, Taylor stood like a statue staring down into his glove in
disbelief at his prize. He than looked up at me with a smile that would have
melted any fatherÆs heart and brought moisture to my eyes.

I was numb.

Taylor grabbed my arm and tugged me out of the pedestrian traffic to the
car. The ball, upon closer examination was an official game ball that had
probably been fouled out of the park and retrieved by the man.

Now, my son knows as much about customer service as I do about the
"RugRats". But he made it perfectly clear that we were going to be regular
visitors to that baseball stadium for years to come.

In fact, itÆs safe to say that he is a baseball fan for life.

In retrospect, I believe that that gesture was one of the greatest examples
of "knock your socks off" customer service that IÆve ever witnessed in my
life. As a result of a rather inexpensive, but sincere gesture by a stadium
attendant, baseball has a lifetime customer. This guy went into my Customer
Service Hall of Fame.

So whatÆs the moral to this story?

Consider your business or organization. What are your front-line people
doing to create lifetime customers? Are they empowered to make marketing
decisions, such as the one that stadium attendant made, on the spot?

As much money as we spend on marketing our product or service, we sometimes
forget that customers are won and lost on the front-line.

Do you have a Hall of Famer working for you? Or are your customer service
representatives shackled by company policies and procedures to the degree
that they are unable to capitalize on such "moments of truth".

See æya at the ballpark.



Tim Fulton is a nationally recognized small business consultant and
management trainer. He is also a very popular public speaker. Tim can be
reached at timfulton@....

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