Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 20, 2009
Chattanooga Executive Center practices golden rule of service
Samara Litvack
When Jenny Kiser graduated from college “the first time,” she did so with a major in sociology and a minor in education from Middle Tennessee State University. Once she realized how few available jobs there were teaching sociology, she went back to school and completed the requirements for elementary education.
Kiser got her first teaching job in South Pittsburgh, where she taught 6th grade. She then moved from a small, Middle Tennessee town to Chattanooga. After joining Red Bank Baptist Church, she met and fell in love with Albert Kiser, a Red Bank native. After they married, she landed a job at Red Bank Elementary teaching 5th grade.
“I loved teaching but I knew that when we had kids, I would want to stay at home,” she says. Albert was an accountant and, after helping him with tasks here and there, she realized she might enjoy the field herself. And, she thought, she could work from home as an accountant (something she could not do as a school teacher).
Although she had no business background, Kiser began taking accounting classes at UTC, and eventually quit teaching to go back to school full-time. In less than two years, she had earned a degree in accounting and was hired at Deloitte, Huskins & Sells – then a top-tier national accounting firm.
After gaining some experience, Kiser’s plan was put into action. She and Albert had been working closely with adoption agency Bethany Christian Services and their first child, daughter Ansley, came into their family at one month old. Four years later, son Graham joined the family.
As planned, Kiser did accounting from home and worked full-time raising her two children. Then, she says, the Lord blessed her family with an opportunity too good to pass up. A tax client of theirs was moving out of state and selling a business — Chattanooga Executive Center, an office suite in the Riverfront District of downtown.
Kiser and her husband entered the company originally as investors but, when their children were both in school, she started managing it full time. From the first floor of the University Tower on 4th Street, Kiser learned the ropes of her family’s new business.
As an office suite, Chattanooga Executive Center offers an a la carte selection of services to its clients, including a prestigious business address; completely furnished private offices; sophisticated digital phone systems; a professional receptionist and office support staff; a conference room; high-speed fiber optic internet access, domain name availability and e-mail capabilities; technical support for computer hardware, software and networking; and office equipment, including high-speed copiers, fax machine, scanner and color printer.
While much of these services have adapted and grown in the time Kiser has been in charge, she says the bottom line of her philosophy of business has always remained the same.
“We hope to be progressive and change as the technology changes,” she says. “But, you know, service is service. The technology allows you to better serve your tenants and your clientele but it really boils down to working hard.
“Our goal is to give each one of them individual service to meet the needs that they have and to be able to facilitate their working environment every day so they can do what they need to do within that business, to grow that business.”
When she took the reins in 2004, Chattanooga Executive Center included only a handful of offices on the first floor of the University Tower. Today, it encompasses physical space throughout the entire first floor and a large portion of the third. But even with one physical office and an endless amount of virtual office space currently available, Kiser defers credit for her success. Rather, she credits her and her husband’s faith in God.
“I just believe the Lord blessed us,” she says. “That’s how I feel. It was a good fit for my personality and the way I believe. You give people good service and you grow. And that’s basically what’s happened.”
And thanks to the shared philosophy of her office manager, Susan Lemon, Kiser has been able to tailor Chattanooga Executive Center’s office services to meet the needs of each client.
“Susan is marvelous,” says Kiser. “She is a strong Christian and we both believe that God just put each other in our lives. There’s no doubt in my mind. She’s got some things that she and I share in common and it’s just a blessing for her to be here.”
Together, Kiser and Lemon deliver top-notch service to more than 25 businesses, from in-house to virtual, from those with short-term needs to long-term.
“It’s a very hands-on type of business,” Kiser says. “It’s certainly a niche, especially for offices that want to be set up in Chattanooga, where their home office may be elsewhere and they just need a satellite office here. They don’t need much space, but they certainly need, a lot of times, that bridge between the public and what they do and the office that they have.”
Chattanooga Executive Center has sophisticated enough phone systems that Kiser and Lemon can even intercept calls for each of their virtual clients and patch them through to their clients on their cell or home phones. This allows businesses without the need for a physical downtown office to still have a presence there.
“We don’t answer the phones for everybody, if that’s not something they need,” she says. “We try to listen to what they need and see if it sounds like a good fit on both sides. We hope to achieve individually what each one of those offices needs.”
And those needs could not be met without the quality service provided by Kiser and Lemon. The two have several
things in common that result in an impeccable availability of client services at Chattanooga Executive Center. They both believe in offering quality service to each of their clients, in whatever capacity needed. They both greet each task with a friendly smile and a can-do attitude, for which their clients are consistently appreciative. And, most importantly, they both have strong roots in their faith, which Kiser says is the root of all their other shared qualities.
“I really believe that you treat people the way you want to be treated,” Kiser says. “It’s more than cliché because it’s scriptural… When it’s all said and done, I hope the Lord’s pleased.”
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