Spotlight on Customer Service: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
In the U Services Payroll Department, Mike Marotteck, Jan Krippner and Bike Okusanya believe their best work is done when they go unnoticed.
“If we’re doing our jobs as best we can, then people won’t even notice that we’re there,” said Marotteck. “They’ll get their paychecks on time and won’t have any problems with them. That’s our goal.”
Payroll is primarily responsible for making sure we all get paid on time. Doing so takes precedence over all other departmental tasks. Making that happen requires tracking a lot of employee information.
New employee processing, correcting mistakes and following-up with customer inquiries make up the bulk of Payroll’s workload, but the department also executes job change documents, monitors time cards, ensures timely progression increases and maintains accurate employee information.
With over 2,500 employees in U Services there is a great deal of employee information collected, and a lot of opportunity for error. If a single letter is entered incorrectly for a person’s name or an extra zero is included on a time card, it can lead to many phone calls and e-mails from employees, supervisors, accounting, bargaining units or other interested parties. The department does its best to identify these issues early and correct them as soon as possible.
Helping fix mistakes is a big part of Payroll’s customer service. When people’s paychecks are involved, there is a lot of urgency to resolve the problem. Whether it’s an employee’s underpayment or a report showing an overpayment, Payroll informs all parties and identifies a solution.
The U Services Payroll Department serves a unique customer base -- mostly co-workers and internal departments. They get lots of questions that they are not in the position to answer. Knowing how to help customers get the needed information, even if it isn’t Payroll’s focus area, is a valuable service.
“A lot of what we do is based on institutional knowledge,” comments Marotteck. “The first thing we have to do is determine if an issue is one we are capable of handling.”
Whether they are helping people get paid or directing them to the right answers, Payroll strives to help their customers get answers, which is a great example of the Customer Focus element of FM’s three C’s – Customer Focus, Culture of Accountability and Cost Effective.
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