Vivo Leonardo da Vinci
Last week I took my son and daughter to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, to view Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion. The Museum had a Holiday special of 1/2 off adult entrance and free for kids. We didn't partake, as there just wasn't time, but they had free Carousel rides and a free pasta dinner, if you were there after 5pm. They called it da Vinci di Notte. Pretty cute. Then as we were leaving they had 1/2 off parking too! I had only been to the Museum one time before but for a story telling event in a conference room that didn't allow me to go through the entire building. Needless to say I was completely impressed with the layout of the “new” building and how they laid out all the exhibits. Many of the exhibits were moved from the old museum I attended as a boy, but they'd been spruced up a little and even added to.
Da Vinci's exhibit was really cool for my 9 and 6 year olds. My son loves to engineer everything from launching devices to locking mechanisms and even various ways to climb or destroy things. In short, he's a normal boy. My daughter is very curious and likes to figure out how things operate and why they do it. We must have spent a full hour just in the da Vinci exhibit. It was way more than you normally consider an exhibit: it was full hands-on education through fun. Essentially, many artisans had created the machines da Vinci had designed on paper. I should really look up some more information about the artisans and how the exhibit was created, however this article isn't about them. It is about the wonderful customer service the GRPM Docents provided my family.There was laughter. There were humorous hand gestures. There were a lot of smiles. Genuine smiles, not those, “Thanks for coming, now step this way, and please keep moving” smiles. There were actual helpful comments and directives. Remember that free pasta dinner, I mentioned earlier? When discussing with my children that it was “time to get a move on so we could go get dinner”, a lady that overheard the conversation, walked up and mentioned politely that “there was a dinner upstairs and didn't we get our tickets?”. Holy Cow is that service! A 6'2” blonde that was running the Coffee and Hot Chocolate Cart initiated conversation with my children. It didn't seem like she was posing a sales pitch either.
Now I know it was the Christmas season full of giving and happiness, and it was a short week, but these employees were working after 5 on New Year's Eve. I don't know if the GRPM makes sure to hire very outgoing and kind Docents or if they have some form of Christmas Crack they feed them before they go on duty, but they seemed sincere. There is an extreme shortage of good customer support in today's business. Except at AT and T lately. They don't provide the best service in the market, but their Customer Service is exceptional. The CSRs are always very happy to talk to me and genuinely take as much time as is necessary to accommodate my needs when I call. I've had other phone providers that always seemed to just push me out the door. So, even though, I believe that I provide good service to my customers, I am making the New Years Resolution to be even better at Customer Service and followup. Give me some of your customer service and support stories, and have a Happy New Year.
Comments [0]