"I deal in dreamers, and telephone screamers.

Lately, I wonder what I do it for, if I had my way,

I'd just walk through those doors "

-Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell's 1974 song "Free Man In Paris" was about record company president David Geffen and the pressures he faced.

Geffen is now a billionaire and partner in the successful DreamWorks company. I wonder if he deals with telephone screamers now. I can't imagine that Geffen is sitting around taking customer service calls.

In fact, I wonder how many people take customer service calls. Many companies have written it off. Their phone systems start with a recording that tells you to listen to 20 different options. Once you get through the options, you are directed to go a web site where nothing pertains to your problem. If you insist on staying on the phone, after a three hour wait, you are routed to someone in a foreign country who does not speak English. That person mumbles and transfers you back to where you started so you can start the whole process again.

Every time you hear of a corporate merger or downsizing, look for job cuts in customer service. It is a way to show quick profits. Managers think they can get away with bad service and customers won't notice.

There are companies that still believe in customer service. I work hard to find them.

My customer service key is to have a main contact at places where I do business. No matter what my problem is, I want to deal with one person.

I have one banker, one doctor, one accountant and one dry cleaner. When I told my dry cleaner I wanted to switch to a company that did deliveries, he started a delivery service just for me. That is the kind of customer service I would love to get from everyone.

In my mind, I am not doing business with a company; I am doing business with my contact person. Companies that let me choose my contact person get lots of business from me. Companies that try to make me fit into their bureaucratic structure do not.

One of my favorite companies is Safeco Life Insurance Company in Seattle . I served on their agents advisory board and know everyone in that company from the president on down. They have many great people at Safeco but my special contact started as our customer service representative. Our office went to her for every little problem and she solved it every time. To us, Safeco Life was not a billion dollar corporation, it was our friend Sheila.

She was promoted to a management position in a different department but Safeco arranged for her to remain our contact person. It worked for us and worked for Safeco too.

Safeco understood their customer. It wreaked havoc on some manager's flow chart but it was a smart business decision. Safeco Life recently was sold to a company partially owned by Warren Buffet. It will have a different name but if they keep that same focus on customer service, they will keep getting our business.

There is a good book called "What they Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School" by the late Mark McCormick. McCormick started his career as the business manager for Arnold Palmer. If Palmer needed a new golf club, McCormick got it for him. Even after McCormick's business became the biggest sports management company in the world, he would still give Palmer personal attention.

Safeco and McCormick understood that successful businesses really know their customer and pay attention to what they want. It is a simple concept but too many businesses try to ignore it.

One of the reasons that David Geffen became successful was that he took care of the small needs of his clients. When Linda Ronstadt or Elton John called him, he did not make them listen to recordings and transfer the call to someone in India . Geffen took the calls and made sure his clients were happy.

He is a good model for other business people to follow. Joni Mitchell's song focused on the pressures Geffen felt in 1974, but now that he is a billionaire, Geffen can be a "Free Man in Paris " or anywhere else he chooses.

Don McNay is President of McNay Settlement Group where they sometimes deal with dreamers and telephone screamers. You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text70880 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com