What does a 5 year old know about Service Management

More than a week has passed since we arrived here in Torrevieja, Spain. I have spent every hour with my family and foremost my 5 year old daughter. She has a wonderful way of looking at her surrounding which is not influenced by anything else than her own needs. What can she teach me about Service Management regarding that she only sees the world from her own needs and nobody else's. well, it turns out that it is a lot. One would think that everything she does is based on that the supplier, thats me, facilitates it for her. Nothing could be more wrong. It turns out that I am the customer and her needs are connected to mine. Let me clarify. If we are playing in the pool and it is lunchtime I would say that we need to go and eat. Her reply is, of course dad, then we can play some more afterwards. She projects our need to eat, to gain more energy to play. This way I get exactly what I want. Her getting out of the pool without any fuzz and kindly accompany me to the meal. She gets a dad that can't say no to some more pool time due to her excellent behavior. 

Later on that evening we all go to a big shopping mall in the area. She knows that there are carousels there and tags along, again by acting excellent. Once there, the wife wants to enter and browse every shop in the mall and here she amazes me again. My daughter pulls my hand and says. Mom can look in the stores while we have ice cream over there and points with her finger. My wife thinks it is a great idea and off we go to buy ice cream. Just next to the ice cream shop there is a carousel. In the line she looks at me and says. You can have an ice cream and you can sit right there on the bench while I take a ride on the carousel. How do you say no to that? She is the happiest kid in the world when her hair waves in the air while riding a big bunny. I feel like a king just looking at her and knowing that my wife is in shopping heaven. 

It turns out that my daughter is the supplier that fulfills my needs but she makes sure she gets paid. The days continue like this where she identifies my needs, justifies them with something she needs and, BOOM, she has a sale. You might say that c'mon, this is what kids do. They manipulate you this way and you as a parent think it is amazing and falls for it. All I can say is that you are so right. But I prefer it this way. We agree and get along. Well there are days where things do not ..... Lets just say that there are days :) 

If I could identify the needs of my customer, make sure they where fulfilled and made sure I got what I wanted for it I would say that I had a pretty good Service Management day. Wouldn't you? Kids can teach us to see things in a simpler way. In their world nothing is complex and anything is achievable.