Spring 2004

Spotlight On: The Seattle Lighthouse Customer Service Department

“Customer service appeals to me because I like to help people,” says Sharon Strickland, customer service lead. “It’s challenging, interesting, and it’s a variety.” The Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind’s customer service team helps federal customers with purchase of quality Lighthouse products including business cards, rubber stamps, imprinted office supplies, and award recognition items.

The department originally started out as only one person assisting government customers with stamp orders, expanding to a staff of four shortly thereafter. “When I started, they hadn’t finished building the area we are in now,” recalls Dana Marmion, customer service representative. “We had one desk and two phones, and one of the phones sitting on a chair. So we would go over and sit on the floor and answer the phones.”

As the business product lines diversified and customer needs grew, the department expanded as well. Today the Lighthouse team consists of six customer service representatives handling four distinct product lines.

“I think we have a good team; we all work together and cooperate with each other,” Sharon points out. “We’re all mindful of what each other needs.”

Dana wholeheartedly agrees. “Different jobs are allocated to different people, but when the phones are not busy then other people will say, ‘Hey, I’ll help you with those.’ They’ll pitch in and get things done.”

All of the customer service representatives have fully accessible workstations designed to accommodate their individual needs. They use a variety of assistive technologies in their jobs, including closed-circuit televisions, or CCTVs, screen magnification software, refreshable Braille displays, and the screen-reading program Job Access with Speech, or JAWS. “We have Braille displays at our fingertips so we can feel what’s on the screen and JAWS so we can hear, line-by-line, what’s on the screen,” says Sharon, who is blind due to retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). “It’s nice to have different pieces of equipment because one can back up the other.”

Dana, who is legally blind due to cone-rod dystrophy, uses a CCTV and the Magic screen magnification program in conjunction with JAWS. “JAWS reads the screen to me and Magic enlarges the screen for me. I use my closed-circuit TV set to read catalogues.”

On any given day you will find customer service representatives using headphones with JAWS in one ear and a headset telephone with a customer in the other. “After you do it for awhile, it just becomes second nature,” Sharon reports. “I’m glad we have all these different pieces of equipment because it makes us able to do our jobs as independently as possible.”

“It fits a great deal into the Lighthouse mission because it enables a blind person to do a particular job that the Lighthouse would otherwise have a sighted person do,” says Walt Cone, who has worked as a customer service representative for almost five years. “It allows many, many more types of jobs to be done here at the Lighthouse by blind people.” He adds, “For a blind person that does work here it gives them great work to put on their résumé.”

Walt, who is blind due to retrolental fibroplasia (RLF), uses JAWS and a Braille display on the job. “Braille I believe is a little faster than having to hunt and peck around the screen. I can use that and use the computer screen to do the job the same way a sighted person would do it.”

Looking forward, the Customer Service Department sees significant changes ahead. “We’re going to be integrated into the sales and service department,” Sharon explains. “We’re a growing department. There are interesting times ahead.”

As more products are sold over the Internet, the department will be better able to meet customer needs. “I am looking forward to the time when we get the new e-commerce,” says Walt. “I think it’s going to be a much faster pace than what we are doing now.”

As part of this evolution, a brand new supervisor position is being created in 2004. Sharon Carmody joins the department as customer service supervisor.  She expresses every confidence in the customer service team. “We have a great bunch of people who are dedicated to customer satisfaction and willing to do whatever it takes,” she proclaims.

Previous Page | Horizons Main Page | Home