Acing the ACE

I attended a 2-day workshop organized by our company called the
Achieving
Customer service
Excellence,
which was held at our head office.

Of course, I won't come back empty handed (or rather, empty headed), things I learned in these 2 days are:

• If I were assigned to the head office forever, I will not survive! I had to wake up very early. One option is that I take two trains, the LRT1 and the MRT. The first day I tried that, I ended up sweating so much that I could almost wring out my handkerchief. Good thing I don't use make-up or else it will be all smudged and smeared, then I'll look like a depressed clown. The next day, I rode the bus. It was a nice bus, but the aisle was quite narrow and I had a hard time navigating my wide hips through it. That's not the end of the story! Going home was rather difficult, especially with the sun not shining anymore, it spells danger in my book. My taxi experience almost got a repeat performance on the first day. On the second day, it rained and walking to the MRT station was so not a blast! I felt drained when I arrived home.
• I lack enthusiasm. It seems like nothing gets me quite excited. I could say that I am a boring person. The trainer and one of my group mates gave me that assessment and I wanted to squeeze myself under one of the small desks. That's what I need to improve on at work, an enthusiasm for serving our clients. Though it is not part of my personality to be bubbly and spontaneous, I need to give life to my voice.
• Though I am a boring person, I am not entirely anti-social as I was part of a group of 4 at the workshop. For these 2 days I had lunch with them, and we talked about many things, too.
• It's challenging to be positive, but rewarding (with all the negativity in the world). The trainer said she is on her journey to being positive - through prayer and meditation. Words play an important role in this attitude improvement. With words, feelings follow, then actions. Can you replace the following words with those that give a positive energy?

Problem
Frustrated
Weakness

• Empathy is a great gift to everyone, especially to clients who come to me for help in satisfying their needs - information, products, services. It also improves relationships, and is one of the tools I could use to show others of Christ's love. I need to put myself in their shoes, as I have experienced being a customer myself.
• It's weird, but I have a hard time saying, "How may I help you?" It's a tongue-twister for me. I hope I'll be forgiven for not using it in answering the company's calls as per the telephone-answering policy.

Lessons are not really learned unless they are applied and are put into practice. After all, "practice makes permanent".