Service Is Child's Play
by Charles Bernard
When I was running sales at my systems integration company, NETLAN, we went through a period of friction between sales and engineering. We got into the email wars where someone in one department would blast someone in the other department and make sure that plenty of other people were copied on the emails, including the respective department heads. The problem got out of control, and eventually we called a meeting.
The tension in this particular case did not get resolved through a simple meeting, so we had to come up with something else. I remember brainstorming ideas and still nothing seemed to work. Then one evening I went home and explained the story to my eight-year old daughter, Sophia. “Some guys at the office are being a little bit mean to each other, what would you do?” She promptly replied, “Send them a Valentine’s Day card!” February 14th was quickly approaching.
What a fabulous idea!
With that, I went to the nearest Hallmark store and bought the largest Valentine’s Day card I could find. Two days later, after my team had signed it, we called a meeting for both sales and engineering in the conference room.
We surprised everyone with the card, and what followed was unexpected, but also a welcome surprise. I have never seen grown men display such emotion. Hugging, crying and basically discovering how foolish and self-centered we had all become.
What really got us afterwards was the discussion about putting aside our differences and creating a process that focused our attention on providing better service to our customers. To put our solution into action, we invented a process called CFS, which later became my current company’s name sake.
Sometimes, we need to take a step back and realize how our internal service affects our coworkers. And from time to time the best way to do that is through the eyes of a child. Amazing how a simple kid’s mindset can solve the toughest of problems. Go Soph!

Those of you in the Northeast know we’ve been having a heat wave for the past few weeks. Last week was the worst yet in New York – it topped 100° three days in a row. On the hottest day of the week, Charles was visiting a friend. His air conditioner had stopped working, and he had placed a call the previous day to schedule a repair. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, the technician was scheduled to arrive the following day between 2 and 8.



