With Rick's encouragement I'm sharing my WSJ column of last Friday,
devoted to the extraordinay customer-service culture of the Phoenix Fire
Department. I've had a number of inquiries about the book cited in the
piece, Alan Brunacini's "Essentials of Fire Department Customer Service."
The publisher is Fire Protection Publications, Oklahoma State University,
Stillwater, OK, ISBN 0897939127-8.
As always I relish anyone's comments. The column follows.
Cheers,
Tom Petzinger
WSJ
THE FRONT LINES
Brunacini's Crew
Puts Out Flames, Then
Puts Out Food for Fido
----
By Thomas Petzinger Jr.
09/12/97
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 1997, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
PHOENIX -- ALAN BRUNACINI, the fire chief in this hot, dry tinderbox
of a town, remembers many a lumber-yard blaze. The flames leapt high,
the firefighters attacked bravely and expertly -- and as the crews
pulled away, the dejected business owner gazed blankly at the ashes. "We
treated the burning lumber like it was the customer," he recalls.
No longer. When a place of business blazes today, firefighters often
help the owner arrange alternate phone service and emergency office
space before the embers have cooled. When a house burns, a terrified
child may be handed a teddy bear. When cars collide, paramedics round up
relatives, secure the homes of the victims and put out food for Fido.
Every citizen deserves such "value-added service," the chief says,
even if he is "soaking wet, nude and locked inside a bathroom hiding
from aliens."
Under the most vexing conditions -- including 110-degree summer
weather and a municipal territory growing by an acre every hour -- Chief
Brunacini has created a customer-service culture that few private
companies (let alone government agencies) could match. His department's
five-word mission: "Prevent harm. Survive. Be nice."
Nice? Why bother training elite lifesavers to "be a sweetheart?" For
one, Chief Brunacini says, "It's the right thing to do." For another,
emotionally sensitive firefighters and paramedics are more engaged, more
alert and more fulfilled. Most to the point, a popular public agency is
better paid and better equipped. "When it comes time to dealing with
City Hall, we're in a much stronger position," says Pat Cantelme,
president of the local firefighters' union.
WITH A BARRACKS vocabulary and the nickname "Bruno," Chief Brunacini
is not quite the softie his philosophy might suggest. He has been
fighting fires for nearly 40 of his 60 years. He is a widely published
authority on fire command, and supervises more than 1,000 people with
the power to swing axes or administer injections.
How does Chief Brunacini foster such service? His methods are many,
but four principles stand out.
1. Hire proven givers.
Each year Phoenix receives about 5,000 applications; it hires about
45. "I don't give a #@&! how much you can bench press," the chief tells
applicants. "That only gets your foot in the door." No one is hired
without a track record of proving they care about customers. Newly hired
Russ Haedt, outfitted in 70 pounds of gear and saturated with sweat
after a morning of firefighting practice, worked as a customer-service
training manager for Discover Card to help qualify here. "I spent six
years trying to get in," he says. A panel of rank-and-file firefighters
plays a role in every hire, perpetuating the customer-service culture.
"When you're confused, beat up and hurting, nothing feels as good as
some calm, capable, credible, concerned person paying attention," the
chief says. Any applicant incapable of delivering that, he says, "should
take up smoke-jumping into wilderness areas where they can commune with
bears and spotted owls."
2. Foster family feeling.
Customer service comes from attitude, which begins inside a group.
"Taking care of the customer starts with taking care of each other,"
says Capt. Tod Harms. As the chief says, "Follow a mean kid home and
you'll find mean parents."
The culture of the bunkhouse is critical. "We spend 24 hours
together," says Bev DeViney, a firetruck engineer. "We know each other's
sleeping habits, eating habits, hygiene habits and family situations."
What keeps familiarity from breeding contempt? The chief, a notorious
practical joker, sets the example for frivolity -- but draws the line at
meanness, teasing and harassment. "When we injure each other, that
damage lasts virtually forever," he tells people.
SUPERVISORS MUST set the example by stifling harsh words.
Firefighters can turn into wrecking crews "when they see their boss's
scowling face in every piece of plate glass," Mr. Brunacini says.
3. Adopt the customer's point of view.
The chief tells people: "Don't impose your values on the customer;
ask what is important." Only the business owner can say whether rescuing
a hard drive is a higher priority than a filing cabinet. Good
samaritans, often pushed aside when the authorities arrive, are
customers too, the chief says, and deserve respect. "The way we `take
over' the event can either hurt their feelings or positively connect
them to us," he says.
Firefighters and paramedics are also trained to imagine how their
actions look to others. "We're in a fishbowl; everything is magnified,"
says firefighter Tim Stanley.
4. Write on cave walls.
Customer-service training occurs alongside firefighting and medical
sessions. Staff members study a 131-page text written by the chief
himself, "Essentials of Fire Department Customer Service" -- one of the
most readable guidebooks I've read on any subject, thanks partly to the
hilarious cartoons by one of the crew members. But informal
communication is equally vital. "We tell stories, identify values, talk
about our mission and celebrate our people who fulfill that," he says.
"This is writing on the side of a cave.
"I've got firefighters in 50 locations," he goes on. "I'm not
watching them. You give them good values. I tell them I love them and
they're trusted. And you give them what they need to do the job."
--"thomas petzinger" <tompetz@classic.msn.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>