Warning: I am once again blogging my way ‘cross country. This series of blogs will still cover customer service, marketing, fun business tidbits, but it will also be heavy on all those joys associated with moving someone else 3,000 miles away.

Part 1

For those of you who follow my Twitter feed, you know I live in Oregon. My grandmother? She lives about 3,000 miles away in Tennessee. But, thankfully, not for much longer. I’m hitting the road for a 6,000 mile road trip full of business meetings, a memorial, a lot of packing and then loading and moving my grandmother and her 86 years worth of stuff. The short story? I’m overwhelmed.

As the only family member, here’s just a bit of what I’ve been juggling.

*Scheduling multiple modes of transportation for friend to transverse East Coast to West Coast to take care of my high-needs pets. (I have a knack for adopting furry beings with health conditions.)

*Finding Grandma-ma a new place, complete all paperwork, procure necessary documents, etc.

*Finding volunteers to travel 300 miles from a little town where I used to teach high school to help pack and load in Tennessee.

*Finding funds, housing and food for over three weeks on the road.

*Scheduling unloading in Oregon and find volunteers (as her furniture is heavy and brute strength is not my forte’).

*Trying to balance all of my regular 8-5 work at pit stops with Wi-Fi and on road.

*Dealing with unexpected nuicences such as having my bank card frozen because some crooks rigged the Michael’s Craft Store card swipe machine.

I’m in a delicate place right now, doing my very best to keep it together, to survive if not shine while fulfilling my current seemingly 1,001 obligations. So, I’ve been merely writing my priority lists and putting one foot in front of the other trusting that everything will work out.

Customer service is important to me, but it’s extremely important to me in my current overwhelmed state. So when I called an airport shuttle service to get Brian from Michigan to the Chicago O’Hare airport, I needed help. Help with directions, planning and spanning three time zones. After being shuffled around on the phone a bit, I explained what I needed. Without a response to anything I said, the representative did the following:

*Asked for credit card information (without informing me about the price, schedule or availability).

*Scheduled the shuttle FROM the airport instead of TO the airport

*Clearly illustrated his lack of interest.

What I took from this is that for a “luxury” shuttle, their customer service lacked. While on the phone with the shuttle representative, waiting for my card to process, (this is where I learned that something was now wrong with my card – later learning it was due to the Michael’s magnetic strip scam), I caught myself thinking about my recent experience with ABF U-Pack Moving. My liaison, Autumnn listens. She’s business oriented, desiring efficiency while getting the job done, but with obvious care about her customers and ABF U-Pack Moving in general. With so many  aspects needing attending to in order to make this move successful, the people with U-Pack have kept me calm and taken care of a string of details.  AND, after my friends and I pack and load my grandmother’s treasured belongings, an ABF U-Pack driver will transfer it cross country. Thank goodness. I can’t imagine being so frazzled from the details, worn out from the packing and loading only to have to drive a truck entirely too big for me 3,000 miles through city traffic, winding mountains and in and out of hotel parking lots.