Are you a duck or an eagle?

Excerpt from: The Simple Truths of Service,
by Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz
Great Service is a Choice
No one can make you serve customers well. That’s because great service is a choice. Years ago, my friend, Harvey Mackay, told me a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this point. He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey. He handed my friend a laminated card and said:
“I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags in the trunk, I’d like you to read my mission statement.”
Taken aback, Harvey read the card. It said:
Wally’s Mission Statement:
To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment
This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean!
As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, “Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.”
My friend said jokingly, “No, I’d prefer a soft drink.”
Wally smiled and said, “No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice.”
Almost stuttering, Harvey said, “I’ll take a Diet Coke.”
Handing him his drink, Wally said, “If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustratedand USA Today.”
As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card. “These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you’d like to listen to the radio.”
As if that weren’t enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him. Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of the day. He also let him know that he’d be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights, or, if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.
“Tell me, Wally,” my amazed friend asked the driver, “have you always served customers like this?”
Wally smiled into the rear view mirror. “No, not always. In fact, it’s only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer, on the radio one day. He had just written a book called You’ll See It When You Believe It. Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, ‘Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd.’
“That hit me right between the eyes,” said Wally. “Dyer was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.”
“I take it this has paid off for you,” Harvey said.
“It sure has,” Wally replied. “My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I’ll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I don’t sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.”
Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I’ve probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two took the idea and ran with it. Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn’t do any of what I was suggesting.
Johnny the Bagger and Wally the Cab Driver made a different choice. They decided to stop quacking like ducks and start soaring like eagles. How about you?

10 Things that guarantee success

10 THINGS THAT WILL GUARANTEE SUCCESS IN PROCESS SERVICE

• 1. Always, always answer the phone. No voicemail, no answering machines, a real person!
• 2. Always acknowledge your receipt of paperwork.
• 3. Make your first attempt within 24 hours of receiving it!
• 4. Let your client know status reports immediately.
• 5. Fax a copy of completed return to your client same day.
• 6. Immediately mail your returns back to your client.
• 7. Look at the big picture. What is this client worth in dollars per year?
• 8. Be professional, get rid of the beat-box music on your cell phone.
• 9. Let your client know they can count on you and your honestly.
• 10. Remember it is your own business, so take care of your clients.
• 11. Never say “NO”. Always say “We can get it done!”

Remember we wrote the book on Skip Tracing, If you need help let me know. Billy Wells
210-226-7192

If You Need Someone Found

You can offer a skip trace service to your clients. If you need someone found, send me an email. I will charge you $35 and you can charge $50 to your client! It is win win. Let me know if you need any help on Skip Tracing or Service of Process in any hard to reach areas. Billy Wells prontoprocess@gmail.com

Check out a fellow process server blogger

http://maddog-theserve.blogspot.com/

New to blogging

Thomas has sent you a link to a blog:

Hello, just wanted to say hi. I am new to this blogging thing. Any word of advise and how to start sending info to other people or people to find me.

Blog: Process Servers
Post: Process Servers
Link: http://tricountycivilprocess.blogspot.com/2010/01/process-servers.html

IRS and mileage

IRS disallows commute miles to and from your work...so go figure...ha! Since all of our work is driving...I count it all. BW


On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 6:27 PM, wrote:

Hello! Billy and a Happy New Years to you and yours. Just a question for you about how to calculate mileage when serving papers. I serve process for several local attorneys. I keep record of my starting mileage to the addresses on the citation and keep a runnning total from one location to the other, but Iam unsure if I need to count the mileage coming back to my home after the last stop?? Thanks for your help and advise. Lupe R. Cruz #SCH3758

Subpoena to get Info

Raymond :

I am an attorney who got his start as a process server. I am actually still authorized to serve in the State of Texas and do serve papers for other attorneys - on rare occasions - when I need extra cash. There may be privacy issues with electric and utility companies, but there is a little known provision in the rules of civil procedure which states that the discovery period in a case - including third party discovery - begins the moment that a case is filed. This means that the attorney who hired you can use his subpoena power to get information about where the subject can be served. I routinely do this in my practice, and I do pay my process servers extra to serve the subpoena (although the servers I have a working relationship generally "comp" me those serves)

I try to give my servers as much info as possible. On the address, check the appraisal district to see if the last name of the owner of record for the property matches the address. An process server may also send requests to the US Postal Service under 39 C.F.R. 265.6(d)(5)(ii) to obtain forwarding address information if one address comes back bad. If I only have a telephone number, I use www.whitepages.com to get a free "reverse look-up" search.

A process server does not have subpoena power; but the hiring attorney does. Documents pertaining to the address of a subject can be subpoenaed from a number of different sources.

As for public record searches, ask your hiring attorney to run an "AccurInt" on subjects and provide it to you. If you see a car in front of a house, pull a VIN and/or a tag and run that through PublicData.com. PublicData will also give you Driver's License information if you have a good name and date of birth.

I hope this helps.

Jason L. Van Dyke
Attorney & Counselor at Law