The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series!  What a great a day for Philadelphia.  Many of you do not realize how important this is to all of us in Philadelphia.  You may have heard that we are a little passionate about our sports teams.  Yes we have thrown snowballs at Santa and batteries at JD Drew.  I remember the cheering when Cowboys star Michael Irvin was injured.  All true, and many other stories that you may not have heard of.  But Philly fans are really just passionate for their team.  It is this passion that drives us.  If you did not notice, that passion also helped the Phillies go undefeated during the playoffs at home.

This is the first major sports championship in this City since 1983 when the Sixers won the NBA championship (the Soul won the Arena Bowl this year too).  We have been in desperate need to have a parade to celebrate our beloved teams.   As I think about this, and the news of the fans in the streets is playing in the background, this is all about passion.  I have a passion for Philly sports.  I also have a passion for Customer Service.  Unlike many people, I believe service by many companies has been improving over the past couple of years.  That is because companies have drifted away from bad measurements such as sales and handle time and went to concentrating on first contact resolution and Customer satisfaction.  I think that is a good start.

But what we really need is a few Philly sports fans, or at least individuals that have a similar passion for Customers.  When people are doing what they are passionate about they have more fun at work and have much better results.  Wouldn’t you love your job if it was something you were passionate about?  How many sports fans would love the opportunity to work for their favorite team?

Does this mean the wrong people are hired for Customer Service?  Maybe, but not in my opinion.  I think the trouble is managers have coached toward numbers.  Gen y’ers, which make up a number of Customer Service positions, do not care about the numbers.  They may not even care about the Customer or the company.  I will talk about Gen y’ers at times because I think they can be the greatest employees.  In many cases they have a passion, it is just trying to show them how they can direct that toward Customers.  They just want to know why it is important to them.  That is not hard to show.  Once companies do more of that, we will see service improve to new levels.  Passion is good in many things in life!

Now back to the Phillies.  Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  This is so exciting to have a World Champion in Philly.  I think they partially won because of the fans, and maybe because of Comcast (hehehehe).  For those that have not heard, the Curse of Billy Penn is now broken.  In 1983 the first skyscraper was built higher than a statue of William Penn on top of city hall.  Rumor has it there was a gentlemen’s agreement to never build higher than William Penn.  Well no major Philly team has won a championship since.  This is how the curse became known.  Well when the Comcast Center was built to be the highest building in Philadelphia, a small statue of William Penn was placed at the top!

That is my first ever blog post!  Have a great day.