Greg Hokum doesn’t just deliver the mail each day.
The Tacoma, WA, letter carrier takes pride in delivering excellent service, too.
“I’ve always believed that a job worth doing is worth doing right,” he says.
Hokum joined the Postal Service 13 years ago as a seasonal casual worker. He eventually became a letter carrier, and has been on his current route with the Tacoma Downtown Station since 2011.
He walks several miles each day and delivers mostly to residential customers. He pays special attention to older customers who live alone.
“I like to put myself in my customer’s perspective. I try to treat them the way I want to be treated in a business relationship,” Houkum says.
The Postal Service encourages employees to take this kind of approach to their work. By making excellent customer experiences a core business strategy, the organization wants to boost satisfaction, drive loyalty and grow revenue.
Acting Station Manager Leslie Green said Hokum is “always polite, always willing to help others, and he frequently goes above and beyond what is expected of him.”
Hokum hopes his any-job-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-right philosophy sets a good example for his 11-year-old daughter.
“I don’t think she wants to be a letter carrier when she grows up,” he says. “But, it doesn’t matter. I think that motto can be applied to any task we take on, whether it’s a career job or a short-term project.”
“Best practices,” a series on employees who demonstrate on-the-job excellence, appears regularly in Link.