As a university professor, I study service management and quality, and whenever I receive a service, I analyze it and ask myself how to improve it. Normally, the material details, processes, environment, etc., are well-designed and pleasing. However, mistakes and successes depend on people. To achieve quality service that excites the customer, employees must have a constant attitude of service. The quality of a service largely depends on the quality of the people who provide it.

Serving is helping someone spontaneously; it is a permanent attitude of collaboration with others. A helpful person is helpful at work, with their family, with their friends, neighbors, etc., but also on the street, helping other people with seemingly insignificant things that make life more pleasant.

Helpful people are constantly attentive, observing and looking for the right moment to help someone, and suddenly appearing with a smile at the precise moment to satisfy a need or a desire. To acquire this attitude, we must strive to discover small details of service in everyday life: helping to clear the dishes after a meal, keeping personal belongings in order (whether at home or at work), giving way or a seat to someone, carrying documents or objects instead of waiting for someone to fetch them…

We must serve with elegance, without expecting recognition. It is important to develop the spirit of service as an attitude in education or in training activities at universities and companies. Serving involves exercising generosity and considering the needs and desires of others.

Recency of intention will always be the foundation of service. There are people who act out of self-interest or convenience, going so far as to overdo their attention and become a real nuisance. This unpleasant attitude is not called service, but rather “servility.”

To serve effectively requires initiative, observation skills, generosity, and solidarity with others, doing everything we would like them to do for us. We all experience that when we provide service, we feel happier, more joyful, and improve as people. As the poet said: I dreamed that life was joy. I woke up and saw that life is service. I served and saw that service brings joy.

This article was published in the Diario de Almería