|
|
Back in the 1980s, in the Colinas de Monte Carlo neighborhood on the outskirts of San Juan, Puerto Rico, you would've seen Samuel Mejía (pronounced meh-HEE-ah) riding his bike on any given day, often doing long wheelies from his house to the end of his block and through the next. He loved drawing characters from his imagination and listening to Van Halen on cassette or movie soundtracks on vinyl records. At the age of 16, his family moved to Georgia and settled in North Decatur. Despite the culture shock for the shy kid, he stuck with school, graduated from Shamrock High School (presently Druid Hills Middle School) and studied mechanical drafting at DeKalb Technical Institute (presently GA Piedmont Technical College). In 1992 he moved to upstate New York and worked as a volunteer for a nonprofit educational organization, spending 3 years learning the value of service and hard work. Afterwards, he settled in northern New Jersey, got married and soon became a father to a cute baby girl. While supporting his family he learned more about the meaning of service from two very different lines of business, each providing valuable lessons that would be formative to Home Clean Home's service to its clients.
|
|
Early in 1996, Sam's service to people expanded as a delivery driver for Coffee Associates, Inc., a long-established coffee roaster for restaurants in New York City and the tri-state area. He even delivered coffee to the original Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken, NJ, featured in TLC's Cake Boss. Sam acknowledges, "I quickly learned that timely response and building rapport with customers were key to building customer satisfaction." With parking nearly impossible in Manhattan, he recalls double-parking his van, unloading anywhere between 50 to 200 pounds of coffee and taking it to the restaurant basement. After exchanging pleasantries with the manager and collecting payment he'd run back to his van before NYPD could pin a ticket on the windshield. Remembering those days, Sam says, "New Yorkers love their coffee. Restaurants, diners and pastry shops depended on the company's deliveries to keep customers coming through their doors and ordering from their menus. So when a diner called the company and said they needed more coffee ASAP, you were hoping that they didn't run out before you arrived, or the restaurant manager would eagerly meet you in the kitchen with a few choice words—loud and clear!" Honing diplomacy skills while working against the clock proved a superb way for Sam to polish his customer service skills. After two and a half years, he was promoted to Assistant Plant Manager.
In summer of 2000, Sam shifted gears when he was hired by Bell Atlantic, the telecommunications company for the Mid-Atlantic region at the time. Weeks after joining the company, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE and changed its name to Verizon Communications Inc. Interestingly, Sam had been hired by the company's landline division which would reinvent itself in the years to follow. As part of the sales and service department, he engaged with customers across several states. As landlines continued disappearing through the early and mid-2000s, Sam's job entailed closing sales of Verizon's fiber-optic service (or FiOS) which provided ultra-high speed data and crystal-clear TV picture across the New York metropolitan area. This major push for fiber-to-the-premises greatly expanded the fiber-optic network by connecting fiber directly to individual households and businesses, eventually making it the largest end-to-end fiber region in the nation.
Although enjoying these transformative developments, Sam noticed how corporate's preoccupation with spearheading the business actually isolated it from customers, which resulted in obliviousness to some customer needs and a slow response to feedback. Despite the high-pressure demands of the job, Sam faced the challenge by being keen on customers' concerns, listening to them and doing everything he could to make people feel valued. He endeavored to serve customers the smart way and went on to gain valuable experience at Verizon for 14 years. Looking back at his experience there, Sam says, "An important lesson I took away was how the intimacy of a small business is better suited to serve a community. I firmly realized that a business strengthens the connection to its customers when the leadership engages in handling people's concerns in a perceptive and friendly way, as opposed to solely assigning that responsibility to its workers."
Some time after widowing, however, Sam realized the need to focus on his daughter, seek support, rediscover his daughter as well as himself. Eventually, he returned to Decatur with his daughter in 2014.
He decided to start a low-tech business that busy people could need and ultimately chose to dive into the residential cleaning business. Besides managing the business, he chooses to participate in the cleaning work. This leading style helps him to better understand the workers' perspective and provide knowledgeable guidance that they can appreciate. Having spent over 20 years serving people in non-profit and companies small and large, Sam is happy to serve Atlanta's communities, bringing satisfaction to clients with the help of the Home Clean Home team. His years of customer service experience helps to provide Atlantans with the kind of service they have been waiting for: A quality home cleaning service with good value provided by a hard-working team of friends. Atlanta's homes now radiate bliss with Home Clean Home.
In summer of 2000, Sam shifted gears when he was hired by Bell Atlantic, the telecommunications company for the Mid-Atlantic region at the time. Weeks after joining the company, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE and changed its name to Verizon Communications Inc. Interestingly, Sam had been hired by the company's landline division which would reinvent itself in the years to follow. As part of the sales and service department, he engaged with customers across several states. As landlines continued disappearing through the early and mid-2000s, Sam's job entailed closing sales of Verizon's fiber-optic service (or FiOS) which provided ultra-high speed data and crystal-clear TV picture across the New York metropolitan area. This major push for fiber-to-the-premises greatly expanded the fiber-optic network by connecting fiber directly to individual households and businesses, eventually making it the largest end-to-end fiber region in the nation.
Although enjoying these transformative developments, Sam noticed how corporate's preoccupation with spearheading the business actually isolated it from customers, which resulted in obliviousness to some customer needs and a slow response to feedback. Despite the high-pressure demands of the job, Sam faced the challenge by being keen on customers' concerns, listening to them and doing everything he could to make people feel valued. He endeavored to serve customers the smart way and went on to gain valuable experience at Verizon for 14 years. Looking back at his experience there, Sam says, "An important lesson I took away was how the intimacy of a small business is better suited to serve a community. I firmly realized that a business strengthens the connection to its customers when the leadership engages in handling people's concerns in a perceptive and friendly way, as opposed to solely assigning that responsibility to its workers."
Some time after widowing, however, Sam realized the need to focus on his daughter, seek support, rediscover his daughter as well as himself. Eventually, he returned to Decatur with his daughter in 2014.
He decided to start a low-tech business that busy people could need and ultimately chose to dive into the residential cleaning business. Besides managing the business, he chooses to participate in the cleaning work. This leading style helps him to better understand the workers' perspective and provide knowledgeable guidance that they can appreciate. Having spent over 20 years serving people in non-profit and companies small and large, Sam is happy to serve Atlanta's communities, bringing satisfaction to clients with the help of the Home Clean Home team. His years of customer service experience helps to provide Atlantans with the kind of service they have been waiting for: A quality home cleaning service with good value provided by a hard-working team of friends. Atlanta's homes now radiate bliss with Home Clean Home.
|
|
|
|
|