Do you see The Power of One?

A guy named Scott Lewis made my day yesterday. Scott and I have never met, and in one telephone call he solved an issue that’s been plaguing me for THREE WEEKS.

The short story goes like this:

My phone (landline - there is no cell service where I live) stopped working three weeks ago. Not a problem, I called it in; then dutifully stayed home the day the repairman was supposed to show up. He didn’t.

I called it in again, was given another repair date; stayed home again…

Numerous calls (and I do mean NUMEROUS; ie more than six) to the Telus call centre probably wasted two hours of my time in total. In exasperation one time, I asked the agent to read back to me the notes I had dictated during the first call detailing the directions to my house. He couldn’t find them…

When asked to tell me which depot was handling the problem he told me “The Interior”. That’s when I hung up.
“The Interior” refers to pretty much the whole of British Columbia outside of the Lower Mainland (Vancouver and surrounds) or Northern BC (Anywhere north of highway one).

If this is starting to sound like a rant, that’s because it is; but here is my point:

Lessons One:
If you’re going to centralise; do it properly. Empower your people to make “real” decisions, and have the courtesy to give them tools that work and access to the information they need to make those decisions. Doing otherwise just wastes all of our time.

Lesson Two:
Never underestimate the difference one person can make; including you. Scott Lewis was on his way home when he got the service call to fix my phone. Scott Lewis has been a telephone technician for 30 years, and takes pride in making sure we all stay connected. One person. One person within a billion dollar organisation. One person who cared.

Are you that one person?
How valuable is that one person in your organization?

Please highlight one person who made a difference in your life in the comments below so we can all see who they are.