On Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007, the Customer Service Team presented the second annual Customer Service Awareness Day at the Baca Center. We had a wonderful turnout of 150 people.

In the morning session, Councilmember Rufus Honeycutt spoke about the importance of customer service and the great experience he has had with City employees. Kristie O’Hara, Karin Holland and Malcolm Brown discussed the Customer Service Academy that is part of R2E2.

In the afternoon session, Randy Kubic, President of the Plantation Cove Home Owners Association and Round Rock resident, spoke about his experiences with customer service in the City. Battalion Chief Lewis King from the Fire Department spoke about some of their customer comments.

This year, the Customer Service Team added award recognition as part of the day. The Team arranged individual awards from each department and a department/division award voted on by all City employees.

Individual Awards
In the morning, David Kautz, assistant city manager and chief financial officer, presented individual awards to acknowledge great customer service from each department. Awards and recognition were one of the most common suggestions on the comment cards from last year. Each department picked an individual who exemplified great customer service in their area. Here are the winners for Outstanding Customer Service by an Individual from each of the participating departments.

Administration: Brooks Bennett
Brooks consistently provides wonderful internal customer service. He works with multiple departments on stories for City Focus, public service announcements and promotional videos and delivers award-winning products with a fast turnaround. He contributes hard work, long hours, and a positive attitude. He is responsive to special requests including the creation of the customer service logo. He is always willing to assist others and is very dependable.

His level of customer service demonstrates various principles from the customer service team including 1) cultivate an organizational commitment to working as a team and 2) treat customers with respect and courtesy.

Engineering and Development Service: Jim Hurley
I would like to nominate Jim Hurley in Const. Inspection. I have received many phone calls about Mr. Hurley regarding his commitment to customer service. Our customers are, but not limited to, the public, engineers, contractors, sub-contractors, dry utilities, and fellow employees. Jim Hurley is dedicated to his job and the people around him, the city should be proud to have him as a long time city employee.

Finance: Margie Howard
Margie doesn’t consciously alter her mood when the phone rings or someone comes through the door – it’s who she is. She always tries to be helpful, patient, without appearing condescending. She puts herself in the other persons place while she listens to their concerns. She extends herself beyond the general duties of her position. She greets everyone in the morning with a smile and is always willing to lend a helping hand. She is always sure to relay helpful information. Margie is a good person to be at the forefront of the second floor.

Human Resources: Mary Hernandez
Mary joined the Human Resources Team in August 2001.  Since that time she has been a valuable member of the team.  She is always willing to help and goes over and above to help citizens in their application process.  She greets everyone with a warm hello and smile.  She is always kind to people, not one has ever heard her be ugly to anyone.  Her laughter in the office makes the office sound cheerier.  She always helps out no matter what is going on.

Information Service: Gabriel Apodaca
While Gabriel has only been with us for a short while, he has demonstrated enthusiasm and energy in providing customer service to our users. As one of our first line of support Gabriel has the opportunity to influence how our users see our entire department and his positive attitude and efficiency is helping to make us look great!

Library:  Barbara Fondren
The entire library depends on Barbara to place their materials orders, keep accurate financial records, and manage their binding orders. She seeks out the best prices and most efficient ways to get hold of our materials, promptly and without any fuss. She is always available with advice and helpful suggestions. At the same time she has to deal with city purchasing on the one hand, and our many suppliers on the other, and always does so most professionally. She has always maintained her very high standards.  She is the keystone which supports a very large part of our effort to serve our customers.

Municipal Court: Diane Cuellar (not present)
Diane is really good when it comes to talking with the customers (especially on the phone). She seems to really be able to calm someone down if they are really upset about something. When she is on the phone….she stays very calm and tries to help in anyway she can.

Parks And Recreation Department: Yvonne Naylor
Yvonne is very helpful with customers and employees.  She is always smiling and upbeat.  When dealing with reservations she makes sure every detail is taken care of for the rental. She knows the people by name and cares that they have a positive experience with our department.

Clay Madsen Recreation Center: Kathy Misiti
Kathy provides excellent customer service to our patrons each day, knows many of them by their names, knows their interests, overall it is her genuine care for the person that places her above the rest …. a true model of what CMRC stands for – Kat demonstrates it each day with a smile, with dedication, with friendliness overall a great example of customer service.

Planning & Community Development: Amy Swaim
Amy has been an employee in the Planning Department for almost two years. During that time, Amy has taken every opportunity to improve her customer service skills. In doing so, she’s become a tremendous asset to both the Planning Department and the City as a whole.  Amy was a lead participant in the inaugural “customer service day” which drew a broad cross-section of city employees.  

Since that time, Amy’s been accepted into the “Customer Service Academy” in order to strengthen her customer service skills even more.  Amy’s skill set continually improves as she takes on bigger challenges in her efforts to take a lead role of the administrative functions of the Development Review Committee. As you probably already know, Amy is a kind hearted and energetic City employee. She is a pleasure to work with!  The Planning Dept is so proud of all her efforts and looks forward to her future contributions to the City. 

Transportation: Raymond Herrera
Todd Keltgen spoke warmly about Raymond’s committment to customer service when presenting his award.

Water/Wastewater Utility: James Earl
James has demonstrated in his 14 years with the City of R.R. that he is exactly the kind of employee you would want dealing with the City’s water or wastewater issues. There are so many examples of James going over and beyond in making sure that our citizens are happy and receive the finest service possible. I will give just a couple of examples of how he is a valuable asset to the City.  Just the other day James receive a water leak at a meter and there was no way to shut it down and no one could tell him who the meter belonged to. But we did know for sure that it did not belong to Round Rock, James could have washed his hands of the whole mess and the leaving the responsibility to the customer. But, instead James conducted great customer service by contacting the local mall and communicating the problem to the irrigation supervisor. The two worked very hard on this water issue and finally James was able to figure out the problem and come up with a solution to benefit the customer and the City with the problem. James spent two days back and forth between calls and never gave up on this problem.

Another example of James giving great customer service would be when he recently found water constantly running in the drainage area of Eagles Nest subdivision. After it was all said and done James found that we had two main breaks that had not surfaced yet. By James finding this out and bringing it to our attention, we were able to save on water loss which in turn saves our customers money.

James has had hundreds of customer survey cards regarding his outstanding duties as a City employee. I have had numerous calls from customers about the excellent customer service they have received from him. James has a gift in that he is always able to please our customers, all of which is a blessing for the City of Round Rock.

Department/Division Award
All City employees had the opportunity to vote on the Outstanding Customer Service by a Department or Division Award during the week of Sept. 17. Employees could vote online or use paper ballots available at strategic locations. Cindy Demers, finance director, presented the award in the afternoon session.

Outstanding Customer Service by a Department or Division: City Manager’s Office
Any time I need answers, documentation or even just a phone number for a HOA in the City I receive professional prompt courteous service. Monique Adams is awesome!!!! In every aspect!

Other survey comments
The survey produced some very nice compliments to our departments and city employees. Below is a sample of a few of them.

The training CMRC staff offer to employees is dynamic, interactive, and motivational.  The emphasis of being a team player is throughout the facility. No member of the staff ever gets turned down.  The staff is friendly, helpful, and provides an inviting environment at CMRC. 

[Utility—Water/Wastewater Line Maintenance] This dept has always gone beyond the call of duty. They have helped streets and Parks and are active in construction inspection. Water is very proactive and deserves to be recognized.

[Finance] Randy and Ric do a great job of providing timely help. They are real pros who are a pleasure to work with! Carolyn Brooks in Purchasing is always a big help.

The Library Admin & Technical Services is such a friendly happy area.  They are quickly responsive to emails.  And go above and beyond in answering questions.  I have been pleasantly surprised to find that my one question results in my learning something to help my library experience.  This last time I was told about Elf which helps me to keep up with my due dates!  I love the RR Library!!

The Communications team always strives to be timely and is willing to help. They do a great job with internal and external communication, something that is often lacking in large organizations.
 
[Utility — Administration and Engineering Services] They are keeping ahead of the growth problems before they become an issue.

Fire station 2’s crew has gone above and beyond their duties to try and give the whole dept. a better knowledge of swift water rescues. They steadily pursue new training opportunities to better their education.

[Parks and Rec—Administration] It starts off with Administration and it filters down through PARD with the initial phone call. The whole department goes out of their way to assist with our needs.
 
[Engineering and Development Services] Personnel in this division have always respond in a pleasantly and timely, with accurate information, documents, and help. This quality of supporting aid has been there even when the requested assistance is on the fringe of their service responsibilities.
[IS-IT] Without these guys nothing would work.
 
[Transportation — Streets] In the Street department, the Line Locators have done an outstanding job with locating storm sewer line for the departments in the city as well as the public. They also do a great job with preventive maintenance of the storm sewers. There prompt response in emergency situations is top notch.
 
I would like to nominate the ladies from Facility Maintenance that come to clean our building every Friday morning.   They always do an outstanding job to make our building look better for us and the general public.   They are also always friendly and have a great attitude.   I would also like them to know that their hard word does not go unnoticed by our division.
 
[Planning — Code Enforcement] Smoothing ruffled feathers isn’t easy when you’re dealing with citizens who have just been issued a citation for violating some code ordinance. Margie Lopez has a knack for calming upset citizens and taking the time to explain things in layman’s terms. She’s a great asset to the Code team.
 
[Transportation — City Shop] With such a small support staff, they do a great job in maintaining our vehicles and monitoring all the parts for machinery throughout the City.

Let us know what you thought about the day! Post your comments to the blog.