Not talking about things you were advised to do by a superior, but ways you personally stepped up above and beyond.
When I worked in the credit card industry as an escalated customer service supervisor (we were the last line of customer support before you wrote a letter to the executive office–and during overflow, we would sometimes take some of their load and respond, as well), two calls stand out. One was from a young woman who called up and ended up in a skeevy downtown area (it was late Friday evening, you do the math). She said she had no cash on her, her card was maxed out, and needed to catch a cab to get back home. Generic sob story at first, but her breathing became heavier and heavier over the course of a minute or two, and I asked her if she was alright. She said a group of men had been eyeing her for a few minutes and were making cat calls towards her. I asked if she wanted me to call the police, but she just wanted to catch a cab and get home – at this point, I could hear the men in the background.
Anyway, I suppose emotion took over instead of logic, and I gave her a temporary credit limit increase of $15 and stayed on the phone while she hailed a cab, which took about ten seconds. She thanked me and that was that. I don’t know if her story was true or not, but I followed up a few days later on her account and she actually had charged $13.00 for a taxi service a short while after her call.
The second was from a woman who was rather upset, at first. She had just gone into a grocery store to purchase groceries and was told her card was declined. She called up to find out why, after she had paid with another card. Her account was 7 years old, $30,000 limit at 8.9% interest (ie- one that was pretty “retainable”). $14,000 balance, paid up on time, looked fine. I checked, and sure enough, a $213.00 charged was just declined at a grocery store for an “UNKNOWN” reason code. Perplexed, I wasn’t sure what to tell her. I tried a test authorization for the same amount, and it was accepted. Company policy in this type of situation was to offer some kind of courtesy credit-- anywhere from $20 to $50.
She wasn’t irate or cursing at me, and I tried to explain that I had no idea what had gone wrong. She went on to tell me how embarassing it was for her, etc. – standard spiel. I just gave her a $50.00 courtesy credit, and a $213.00 goodwill credit. She was quite pleased. We actually talked for a while longer, she asked where our call center was, etc. while I worked on the account. As it turned out, she had a daughter my age in the same city, and jokingly suggested that we meet up because I was clearly a “thoughtful, bright young man.” She ended up writing a letter to corporate about how awesome I was. I wrote one back thanking her. 
At the airline I work for now, when I started, I worked in customer service at the airport. One evening, an airport police officer brought a young man up to our counter and asked if we knew anyone who could speak Spanish. As luck would have it, two of us did. We found out that this kid had been dropped off at the airport by his “employer,” having been in the US for three weeks. He came up from Puerto Rico with about five other guys and hadn’t seen them since arriving here. He had been working on a farm, and his “employer” told him they were taking him to his next job. They dropped him at the airport. He had one bag, and was wandering around in the parking lot when police found him. They brought him to us because the only thing he could say was the name of our airline.
He said he hadn’t eaten that day, so we gave him a $20 meal voucher to go get dinner while we tried to get more information. Turns out, he HAD arrived on our airline into the US from Puerto Rico three weeks prior, on the same reservation as four other men. We called the number on the reservation, and got a recording for “Shannon’s Labor Services.” :dubious: We asked him if he knew how to contact anyone in Puerto Rico, and he called his father, who sounded more relieved than anyone I had ever heard when he answered the phone. We told him the fare for a one way flight back to Puerto Rico on our last flight out that evening, departing in a little under 2 hours. His father had no credit card, but offered to go wire transfer money. The only place that this kid could accept the wire transfer was about a 10 minute drive from the airport.
My co-worker offered to drive him there, and off they went. They came back about half an hour later, and said that they were told they couldn’t accept the transfer (which had been done, apparently) because the kid didn’t have “the right form,” and with no form, they had no control number (despite telling him they knew the transfer had completed, so… wtf?). Anyway, they returned to the airport to call his father again. By now, the flight was about an hour from departure, and the transfer location had closed at 7:00. We tried to ask our operations department for an override in fare; they told us that was a local decision our management would have to make. As luck would have it, I was management that night as we were short staffed, and two of our supervisors were gone on vacation. I didn’t have the technical permissions to override a fare, so I ended up just giving the kid one of my buddy passes to travel standby for $15 bucks. The flights were about half full, and he’d make it just fine. Between the three of us working, we came up with the $15 and off he went back to Puerto Rico.
I figured it was either that, or shack him up at my place until the next day and take him to pick up a money transfer.
Anyway, what awesome customer service stories do you have – from the company side of things?