About two months ago my life changed a bit. So did my family's. Nothing all that drastic nor dramatic, just a little accident. I fell off a skateboard on downhill. I've fell down before, when I was around 16 years old and it's not very surprising that I was of a bit sturdier material back then.
As a result, my left elbow shattered to pieces. Two bigger, many little ones, and on top of it the joint got relocated to somewhere that in this scale means from Bahamas to North Pole. I was pretty pissed off at the time. Still am, but what happened, happened. There have been worse fates for people. But that's not the subject now.
There's service, and then there's service.
I used to work for an IT service company. The company contracted on projects led by clients mostly. I did programming, testing, that sort of stuff. Curiously, while it now so clearly seems a service business, it didn't all that much feel like one. Mainly, since the service like interactions happen in upper levels of the organization than the executing one. Fingers of a hand don't know a handshake from ass scratching.
Basically the work we did was not meaningful in terms of service customership. That was something happening way upper on organization hierarchy, and the terms of customership were dictated not by quality of work, but most likely straight outward cost related thingies. Or completely absurd stuff, like outsourcing potential.
But I'd take those were a tad bit more special cases than most, at least it didn't turn out to be very good for then customer.
Good service
Let's go back to hospital and my broken arm. I tried to minimize my time at the ward. Simply because we have a daughter, who's really a handful.
The first part of good service was that I was allowed to go back home for days before the surgery, and I got some good medication with me. I'm not sure how big such decision is, to let patient go home in such condition, but the people I was interacting with were nurses. I take it that they had to check things up with doctor, but the initial assessment was always the same: "sure, you can go, just wait a minute". It was a fast, reliable assessment. I felt they trusted me when I said "I'll be fine", and I trusted them to know if I'd speak against my better knowing. And these were the persons I were mostly in contact with for following days.
That was good service.
And if you're not living in complete twisted and fucked up variant of IT world, like I was, then the people who tend your needs are the persons responsible for the delivery. Programmers, testing personnel, project managers maybe. It's the attitude of these persons that bubbles up. It's not the attitude towards the certain customer however, it's the attitude towards the business, which is the service, which is the work.
Quality of service
After the surgery was over and I got to my senses, I started to think about the experience a bit. I ended up rating quality of service by following method: "How does this person react to my inquiries about my recovery?". Recovery in this case means: Will my arm work ever again?
Not surprisingly, the persons I mostly were in contact with: nurses, were the most positive. I first thought that it's some kind of complimentary thing; it's not very nice to play down people in recovery. But it wasn't so really. On some patients they really expressed genuine worry (I shared room with a young guy who had a hole in his side, shattered leg and shattered elbow.).
The thing was that they knew.
I'm not sure how many patients a nurse tends for in a year. I expect it to be many.
I also stalked a meeting they had at the ward, and seemingly it looked somewhat like a retrospect combined with general news. At some point they grouped up to do something that at least looked and sounded like sharing experiences, but I did not have the energy left to ask any specifics. That would prolly been a bit out of line anyway.
Good service was also provided by the surgeon who operated my arm. He wasn't so positive, not all that negative either. The thing he did was to soothe my biggest fears with the knowledge he had. And he sounded very professional and trustworthy.
Bad service
After the surgery I had some problems with swelling and I got a bit ill with fewer. At some point my feeling got so low that I dragged my ass to a doctor, this time to occupational healthcare run by private business. It was a complete disaster.
First thing I heard was the doctor saying "Your arm will never be good again, hopefully it will work somehow". I was a bit baffled. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't really prepare myself to cope with such news since I came just to check with the fewer and swelling.
I also managed to feel somewhat an show-caged animal, after the doctor called in few nurses to check my wounds, because apparently they hadn't seen so neatly cut and stapled openings ever.
On top of that, I got scolded about not wearing a helmet when I fell. The most insightful of you have noticed that I broke my elbow.
I'm still rather surprised about this variance in service experience. Was it because of the lack of prior contact? That's somewhat the solution I could buy, but more I think of our inner attitude towards the act of service.
Now don't get me wrong, when I go to doctor's, I usually expect the worst (long time asthma kid with joint problems, thank you very much). But I don't expect to be bashed. When I go to doctor's, I'm usually there to get a relief of some kind. This time I got out with some pretty depressing thoughts.
At that time they were very real, very depressive, very harmful thoughts.
Conclusion
It's been a while now. I'm past first check after the surgery. The arm is healing fine! Much better than expected. It most likely will not ever be as good as it used to, it might not even get to be fully straight anymore, but it will be a fine arm. With pretty much added steel.
Nurses at the ward were right. From the start. The people who took care of me the first knew best, and in the end this was the most meaningful service experience to me. I'd buy that again.
They were in business of removing fear, which is pretty darn good business to be in a place where most people have gone through a life changing (even so little as me) trauma. The core business of people working at that ward was to remove fear and that might be most meaningful thing in my recovery.