The Employee: Robert Stokes

Location: Tyler

The Fans: UT Health East Texas

Prior to taking on the role as a service technician at Datamax earlier this year, Robert Stokes spent more than 20 years in the restaurant business. He knows better than anyone that more often than not, a person leaves a survey response when they’re upset about something – rarely vice versa.

Not on this occasion.

Robert went above and beyond on a service call to help prevent downtime inside an office at UT Health East Texas recently. His swift actions (and considerable drive time) drove a customer to leave a voicemail praising his actions… even after she was unable to fill out the survey response online.

The Organization's Need

It started out as a service call for a paper jam, but quickly escalated. “When the customer was trying to pull out a toner cartridge to perhaps fix the jam, toner went everywhere,” Robert said.

Unaware of what had happened until he arrived onside, Robert’s vacuum was more than a mile away inside his vehicle. Instead, he got a “yellow” cloth and canned air and spent an hour or more cleaning up the toner spill. (Anyone who’s witnessed this knows it’s no small task!)

Robert realized then that the spilled cartridge was broken, so he promised to bring one before the end of the day.

About that time, he received another call for a print shop in Canton that was down. So he hit the road.

The Team’s Approach

’It was pouring down rain when Robert drove from Tyler to Canton to drop off toner for the downed customer. The day was winding down by the time he made his way back to the office, but he’d also made a promise.

“When I arrived at the (UT Health) site, I apologized for taking so long to get back to UT Health,” he says. “She was really nice about it and, more importantly, they were back up and running before the end of the day (on a Friday).”

Early the next week, the customer was unable to open up the Datamax service survey to express how pleased she was with her experience with Robert. So, she went through the entire directory, found VP of Service Steve Kennemer, and left this voicemail: Click Here to Listen!

What Made Them a Raving Fan?

“Working in the service industry since I was 16, I can talk to anybody about anything. I try to add that personal touch with customers all the time. You can read people pretty easily and see what type of interaction they’d prefer. Sometimes, it’s just about quietly getting the job done,” Robert said. “I also like to show the customer easy things they can do without having to call a technician, if they’re interested in learning…. Either way, employees at hospitals are always busy, there’s a lot going on. It’s nice when someone was so appreciative. It was really a nice surprise.”