Sometimes things get a little contentious in my customer service job and I act in ways that I later question. In the heat of the moment I am tested again and again, it is my laboratory. Somehow I must have volunteered for this because I am there, there is no doubt about that.
The customers I face daily are most likely new ones, though I do run into old ones occasionally. Amazing it is how many different people there are in the world and how they react to the same situation. Their encounter with me and what I do is a constant.
A constant is a lab standard against which variables are measured. Scientific method tests variables against constants to find out if theories they postulate can be proven. A proven theory is one where test results produced from an experiment can be reproduced over time, every time.
I have used the scientific method in my job to measure human behavior against a constant. My workspace is that constant. I, in that workspace, am quite constant as well, though, being human with emotions and different states of mind, I tend to vary in my degree of focus on and perfect replication of my duties from day to day. For example, today is my 'Aloha Friday', so I tend to be in a lighter mood. Actual Fridays, as stated before, are my Mondays, so I am more shut down in order to preserve energy for the upcoming week but do try to be there, and the days in the middle of the week I could either be up or down but, in customer service, I have learned that the customer always wants some sort of 'up'. Being 'up' provides the best and easiest interaction.
That necessary bit of background said, now come the variables, and those are the customers who walk into my environment and cause all sorts of interactional situations, which I may or may not respond to with aplomb. Over the span of a workday I measure my sucess rate in dealing with the gamut of customers I have faced and usually rank myself pretty good, but on some days I feel I have, due to circumstances that have thrown me off-kilter, tiredness on my part, or ultra rude and condescending customers demanding a extreme level of service, I find that I have reacted to those stimuli in a way that I regret.
While these sorts of interactions are rather ugly they hardly faze me, for I use all situations to learn from, but with regret there is some sort of energetic residue that doesn't go away with a 'just forget about it' thought. Regret calls for introspection and processing. This I do. I examine the situation that has caused me grief, clean it up in my mind, and proceed. Thus the path to tomorrow is made clear, and I proceed again into the breach, better armed. Always honing the process, always striving for as close to perfect interactions that I can generate, as close to perfect responses to customers as I can muster, and no residue taken home afterward.