WEDNESDAY WOMAN – St Pierre puts customer first

KATRINA ST PIERRE is a poster girl for good manners. This Shell Bank Hall gas attendant believes that no matter what your career is or how much money you have, once you have basic manners you have it all.During an interview with the MIDWEEK NATION, St Pierre, who is praised for her excellent customer service everyday from her customers, said that she was aware that “some people class up gas attendants as low-graded”. But, according to her, “each day I prove people with that mentality wrong”.St Pierre’s friendly and mannerly nature leaves some customers shocked. She said: “All the time they tell me ‘you don’t have to tell me yes please all the time so’, but I still continue because ‘yes please’ is a part of who I am.”“I am friendly to not only all of my customers but everybody I come into contact with. If a customer drives into the gas station and I see that they are upset, I tell them a pleasant good morning and start a conversation that would cheer them up. I ask them if they want their oil checked, their windows wiped . . .“I know that people have gas station workers class up as the worst people out and that is not true. So my colleagues and I try to prove those people wrong; we try to lift our standards as high as possible.“People don’t complain to the boss for us because we were unmannerly to them or we treat them bad or carry them ’long scruffy . . . people always say good things about us,” said the Garden Land, Country Road, St Michael resident, who often used the words ‘yes please’ during the interview.The 32-year-old mother of five admitted that there are those difficult customers who try to provoke her to anger. When asked if she dealt with them in the same way they dealt with her, she quickly replied “no please”. She preferred to use St Pierre’s remedy.“Sometimes customers may say that they want $15 in gas but you didn’t hear them properly, so you say ‘excuse me, sir, did you say $50 or $15?’ That customer would say ‘wait, you can’t hear?’ But I would say ‘I can hear, sir, but I just want to be sure that we don’t have any mistakes at the end of the day’. And I would ask them again and when they answer me I would give them the gas and before they drive off I would tell them to have a blessed day.“When I do that they will leave happy and come back to the gas station again. It makes no sense the customer comes in grouchy and the attendant approaches them grouchy,” said the customer service representative of four years.“You can ask my boss. Every single day somebody brings a sweet potato for me, a bottle of mauby syrup, breadfruit, plantain, meat . . . anything. Around Christmas time, the majority of the customers come and give me $100, $50 and then I don’t have to spend my week’s pay. People treat me good and I treat people good.”This Wednesday Woman, who would someday like to be a nurse attendant, had a message for those who treat gas attendants “as less of a person”.“We are doing a job just like the people in the bank or a receptionist . . . we are all working for money. People would go in the bank and the teller might be a bit grouchy but they won’t say anything.“But I want people to know that it’s a job that somebody has to do. And some of these same people who try to treat gas attendants as less of a person because we are pumping gas, when they leave they say ‘I have never met a young lady so mannerly’. A lot of people tell me that I am the best customer service representative islandwide.” On November 13, 2007, a customer publicly complimented St Pierre for the excellent work she has exhibited. She said that while she was praised everyday, she would like to take the opportunity to praise her co-workers because “it is all about teamwork”.“If you see your co-worker in conflict with a customer, just go over and tell them to ‘hush, you go and deal with another customer and let me finish dealing with this one’. “Because at the end of the day if they stop coming the gas station won’t get any money so that we can get paid. We treat our customers like how we would treat our family at home.“Here is like our home; we spend the majority of our time at work. We look at our customers as family – we don’t look at them as people who come to build the organisation.”St Pierre said that all the gas station attendants across the island should do what she does and “people will look at us differently”.