Back in the early nineties Perfect Limo had an office located in Hillsdale, NJ. This is really irrelavant to the story, but I need to fill space. We had a young man working for us, and we'll call him Will. His main job was to dispatch and answer the phone. He was related to some one else in the company, and I some times wondered why we kept him.
 
Anyway, he was there. He received a call from a Japanese fellow who worked for Panasonic. At the time they were a very large account of ours. We had a good relationship with most of people at the company.
Will was not great on patience and customer service, so when he had a rough time understanding the caller, he was short and curt with him. After he was done with the conversation I asked him what happened? He was short and curt with me too.
 
The next day I got a call from Mr Caller. At first I thought he was going to rip into me about Will. But quite the opposite happened. He explained that after he was treated rudely, he went to his staff to see how they treated their customers. He was alarmed to find out that his people were not much better. So he figured before he could get on us about our lack of customer service, he first had to stop his boat from rocking. His call to me was one of courtesy to let me know I had a problem.
 
Since then I make it a point to observe how I am treated as a customer, and what can I take away from from a bad experience, as well as a good one and indoctrinate it to my staff.