Thanks, Customer Service

by Larry Meyer
MRA Chairman and CEO

In the final columns before my retirement, I want to publicly thank the various departments here at MRA. Without a doubt, the people are what make this Association successful.

I don’t have to tell you how critical customer service is. Excellent customer service is often the difference between a thriving business and a merely adequate one—and in this economy, merely adequate businesses have a particularly bleak future.

In working on the agreement with the Florida Retail Federation, I became even more aware of how crucial this “back office” work is—it’s our excellence in this area that allowed us to take on Florida’s merchant processing.

Merchant processing and group insurance are brutally competitive these days, so every problem cheerfully solved is potentially a member retained. Just as you know you have to turn one-time customers into loyal customers, we must keep members satisfied and loyal.

Our customer service team, led by Sue Stroup, is a great source of pride to me and everyone at MRA.

So let me thank each of our customer service reps: Sue Stroup, Ginger Stratton, Tamara Baker, LaShonnda Hardrick, Lori Foreback and Dora Serna. I appreciate your brains, good nature, humor, problem-solving skills and patience.

One more thing: members, please take me up on my offer to buy you breakfast. When I come to your area on my “Member Appreciation Tour,” I would love to meet you and hear your thoughts on retail, Michigan and MRA. If you haven’t received an invitation yet, watch for it in the mail.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out my Breakfast Blog. I’m giving a brief rundown of each event immediately afterward.

Back in 1982 we evaluated the company we were using to provide health insurance, Inter-Ocean, and decided to change to Equitable as our new insurance provider. Inter-Ocean, understandably, was not happy.

When their people realized the change was going to happen, they decided they had a right to the records of our business with them, stored on our premises. They sought an injunction to come to our office and seize these records, something we obviously didn’t want.

This was to happen on a Friday. We sought the advice of our legal counsel, who suggested that we send all our employees home early, lock up and go home early that day.

We would then have the weekend to come back in and photocopy all the records that might have been seized, if needed. As it turned out, the injunction was not granted, but the employees liked the surprise half-day vacation!