G-S is for
Good Service
What kind of experience have you had speaking over the phone to a "customer service representative"? You needed help from that unknown person sitting in some cubicle, located in which one of these 50 united states you would not try to guess, whose unseen face is framed by earphones and illumined by the computer monitor. Was it a good experience? If the telephone's computer sent your call into the earphones of Carey Mackesy, it may even have been memorable.
Carey answers questions and solves problems for policy holders of the insurance company that employs her--no, that is only her job description. What she does, is, Carey cares. (How presciently her parents christened her!) The first work story she told me was about an angry caller who, running head-on into Carey's patience and respect for him, and her own dignity and self-control, ended up not only with his problem solved, but a happier person. (How true to the Bible life in a cubicle can be: "Turn the other check," "when reviled do not revile but return good for evil," "a soft answer turns away wrath.") Upon hearing that story, I immediately was eager to share a slice of her life with you Crossings Readers. For Carey exemplifies one of Crossings' accents: faith in the workplace.
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TM: Are some callers in a bad mood?
CM: You don't call unless you have a problem. Sometimes a caller's first words are: "Get me a supervisor." I take the difficult calls as a personal challenge. So I say, "I would be happy to. May I get some preliminary information first?" I talk the person through some things, help them to calm down a level. Usually I can help without their needing a supervisor. You have to set challenges for yourself or you become a monkey.
My challenge is to engage with each call. Sometimes I wonder, of the 6,000 calls that came in today, why did I get that one? It really gets you when the insured person calls, like when someone wants to know about insurance coverage for testing for a brain tumor. Your heart goes out to them. That's what I mean by engaging: yes, he is just asking about his insurance coverage, but as a human being I can't just answer his question like it was not about his brain tumor.
But I have to be careful of boundaries, too. I remember a woman who called to ask about coverage for her 19 year old daughter, who was pregnant. I could hear that it was very hard for her to ask. I managed to convey peace to her: it was OK; she wasn't the only one, and it was not the end of the world. I give emotional encouragement and reassurance, but of course I cannot witness from my faith. At the end of the conversation, she thanked me for my caring. Another time was-- We cover Colorado, too. After Littleton, we had a lot of inquiries about mental nervousness, and if kids qualify for counseling. You really want to care for these people; life is so short, if you don't take the opportunity.
Clearly, Carey regards her work as more than the technical details of purveying correct information and efficiently clearing up confusions (though that competence is very important). She is there to help people. Of course I wondered whether her approach to work had to do with her Christianity.
TM: You have a very caring approach to your Monday-Friday job. Is your approach rooted in your faith?
CM: (pause) My faith makes me who I am. Can you be a caring person without faith?
Her answer was as holistic as the care she gives to callers. At first I was disappointed by her answer. I had hoped to hear a specific way in which Christianity influences her working. But her answer was better than my hopes. For the Bible does not tell us that faith is an add-on, such that one could tell where Carey's motivation by faith began or ended. Rather, faith is a new heart, a new orientation. Carey is a new creation, and her caring about a faceless person at the other end of a phone call concerning coverage and co-payments does not come from the faithful part of her, but just from her, believer that she is.
CM: I am an Easter girl. Holy Week and Lent are hard times for me, depressing. But my husband Jim reminds me, You have to go to those services; that's why Easter works.
I was also interested in her workplace, the corporate culture in which she was able--or encouraged?--to take her approach to callers. She had told me that her company's motto was "To enrich the lives of people we touch." That sounded enough like "love is the fulfilling of the law" to make me wonder if the very management were not followers of Jesus Christ. I asked Carey. Of course, she could not know anything that specific.
CM: But I think we are a caring company. For example, in our policies there is the normal clause that casualties of "an act of war" are not covered. When the World Trade Center was attacked, some of our insured were involved. The big boss said, "We will not invoke that [act of war] clause;" we were going to help. It was nice to know that we care.
TM: Of course companies are image conscious. Is the motto for real, or just from the PR department?
CM: The company motto enables me to do my job the way I want. Some workers say, "Yeah, right. We take complaints." But the motto is an internal one. It is promoted inside the company, not in advertising.
TM: And you have been honored by your supervisors, which suggests that the motto, by which you work, is authentic. For if we look at whom an organization blesses we will quickly see the organization's real goals.
CM: We had some small-group work once on handling stress. There was an older woman in my group who said that one resource she had was to "Trust Jesus." But because of the separation of work and church, we cannot talk that way on the phone.
I asked again, to find out if the motto came from some desire to bless other people. Carey's response made me think.
TM: What makes your company the way it is?
CM: Look, anyone can offer an insurance plan. But to give quality wages, which we do, requires higher premiums. They are always saying to us, We are not cheap. We demand top dollar, which means our service has to be exceptionally good.
Again, I was initially disappointed. I had wanted to hear that there was some explicit altruistic agenda: that the stockholders or board of directors had a goal for the company which was not only to make profit, but to help. I wanted to hear that the corporation was laying up for itself treasure in heaven. But Carey's response made it sound like this company's strategy was only a particular market niche: a Cadillac insurance plan instead of a Ford. But then I thought, maybe not. Maybe offering caring, that is, good service, really is a kind of altruism, undiminished even by having to charge higher premiums for it.
Good Service--how believers like Carey express that Christ is risen.
tbcm