A few years back a friend of mine ordered an Orbitrek-style exercise machine from QVC or a similar tv shopping channel. (At the time they ran around $300 or more.) It didn’t arrive and she called to ask about it. They said “No problem, well send out another.” It arrived and then a few weeks later so did the FIRST one which must’ve gotten mis-shipped someplace else. She called again and said “Oh well now there’s two and I only paid for one…could you arrange for someone to pick up the extra?” They told her “ahhh, just keep it.” Her brother got a hell of a nice Xmas gift that year!
Two instances, which happened recently.
I was out on the road, on my way home, and decided to stop for a few dinner items. I knew there was a supermarket nearby, but I had never been there, but I found my half-dozen items and began checking out.
The cashier asked me (plainly, clearly, and pleasantly, not mumbled as though it were merely an obligation or a pre-programmed message) if I had found everything I wanted.
I said I had. She smiled pleasantly and made chatty remarks as she rang my purchases up in a brisk and efficient manner. And she placed the change in my hand (as opposed to just holding it out) and she handed me the bag of groceries while thanking me for shopping there. I really felt as though my trade was appreciated.
Now the second one.
I work in a service industry, specifically pest control. One of my clients told me yesterday how pleased they were that I was servicing their home. They were on the verge of cancelling their service and finding another company, because of my predecessors. But they said my service-oriented attitude convinced them to stick with us.
Simple things, like informing them that I will service the outside of the house after the inside, so I don’t risk tracking dirt or water in their house, made all the difference to them.
A couple years back, I complained to EA Sports about one of their hockey games. They wrote me back and offered to send me a different game of my choice for free as long as I mailed them the game I complained about.
Also a couple years ago, (this is sadly but understandably not their policy anymore), Electronics Boutique gave me a cash refund on an opened PC game that for the life of me I couldn’t get to run on my computer even though I met the system requirements.
And quite recently, I got a bum DVD from Blockbuster. It wouldn’t play on 3 different players, but didn’t really even look all that scratched. I offered to swap it for the same title at the store (to show that I wasn’t trying to scam a free rental), but they didn’t have another copy, so the lady let me pick whatever I wanted, and started the rental period on that day, rather than the day I originally rented the other movie.
Oh, and a food story–Waffle House. Real friendly waitress, fast service, good stuff. I felt bad that the check for two of us to have breakfast wasn’t even $5 (you’d never pay that little at McDonalds), so I just left a $10 bill.
Great stories – I wish more companies realized the amount of good will and return business they get with attitudes like this.
At the same time, someone way back mentioned the customer’s way of approaching the issue as being important. At one company I worked for a while back, we needed to call another business about some business-to-business type customer service. Let XX handle it, someone said; he can get stuff that nobody else can. Well, turns out Mr. XX had been raised in the southern U.S., which is where the company we were calling was based. He knew how to talk “southern” instead of “Yankee.” So instead of demanding a solution right away, as we Yankees might have done, he spoke slowly, politely, and respectfully, saying things like, “Yes, Ma’am we sure do have this problem, and I don’t know what to do about it. What would you suggest?” In less time than a rude and pushy attitude would have taken, we got what we needed.
Another one from an airline, believe it or not:
I was on my way to, as it happens, a Dopefest. I had a friend of mine drop me off so that I wouldn’t have to pay for extended parking. I walk up to the counter to check in. “Ticket, please?” Oops. I was so used to flying ticketless, I’d completely forgotten that I even had a ticket.
The guy behind the counter ran and got his car, gave me a ride back to my apartment, and helped me search for the ticket. Unfortunately, by the time we found it and returned to the airport, the flight had already left, so I had to fly standby on the next plane, but still.
Our e-commerce provider rocks when it comes to customer service. But they’ve also gone above and beyond the call of duty a couple of times.
We had a big CD launch event for charity last year, and they purchased a block of tickets. They are in Boston and we’re in Toronto, so we e-mailed them to ask if they were going to be in town for a convention or something…
Nope. They were surfing some of their clients sites (like ours) to see what everyone was up to and they saw info about the big event. They just bought the tickets as a nice show of support. They told us to “give them to some starving artists who would otherwise not be able to attend.”
Truly a class act.
Yet another airline story, believe it or not. This time, Northwest Airlines. That’s right, Northwest, the airline that held hundreds of passengers hostage on the tarmac at Detroit in a snowstorm several years ago.
On a flight from Tokyo to Detroit, we were diverted to Anchorage because a passenger was having chest pains. The passenger didn’t seem to be seriously ill, and I gather everything turned out OK for her, but obviously the airline couldn’t take a chance. It took a couple of hours extra, since the plane needed to be refueled, and a new flight crew had to be tracked down (the added flight time would have put the existing crew over their legal limits). Certainly not Northwest’s fault, but it did mean that a lot of us would miss our connecting flights in Detroit.
Flash forward to Detroit, as we all trudge off the plane, fully expecting to have to line up at ticket counters and struggle to find space on another flight to our destinations. Instead, a Northwest gate agent met the flight and said, “If you were on the flight from Tokyo, and have missed your connecting flight, please look at the departure board for the next flight to your destination. You’ve already been booked on it!”
I found the next flight to Dulles, showed up at the gate, and, sure enough, my name was on the list. Late getting home, but with minimal hassle!
A few days ago I realized I had forgotten to cancel my Earthlink (well, it was Mindspring when I started) service, and since I’m now on the family cable, there was no need for me to pay twenty bucks a month for NOTHING, which I had been doing since January. Oops.
So I called to cancel. I had to wait on hold for a good while, but it gave me a chance to read the board. When I got through, the woman asked me what I wanted, and I told her I wanted to cancel my service. She asked me why, and I said I had moved and was now on broadband, and while I had been very happy with their service I didn’t need it anymore. So she confirmed I was who I said I was and put me on hold and came back a few minutes later and it was done. This is how it SHOULD be.
(This is rather unlike a few years ago when I cancelled AOL and had to sit for 45 minutes on hold, then spent ten minutes telling the person at the other end that NO, I didn’t want to reconsider, NO I didn’t want any free service, NO I didn’t want their $8.95 economy plan, and YES I WANTED TO CANCEL SO SHUT UP AND JUST DO IT ALREADY. Then they kept billing me for another two months before my mom called and finally got them to stop it!)
Mine is another airline, and the much maligned AT&T.
First the airline. After much hassle with United, where they screwed me over two ways to Sunday on New Years eve, I requested to be switched to another airline, so the moved me to American. The story is long and convoluted, but suffice it to say, when I talked to the American counter person, they told that despite the fact that United had not bothered to confirm my seat with them, that I would be getting on the plane. So while waiting on in the United line while the counter people showed up late, and getting antsy, the American counter woman told me "Mame, do not be worried, you will be on that plane if we have to hold it for an hour for United to get this straightened out. Suffice it to say I could not be happier with American and I will fly with them over United if it cost me hundreds.
Now AT&T. First, when my sister was in college her suitemates stole her calling card number from her room. Not the card, mind you, just the number. My mom (who’s card it was) was contacted by AT&T and asked if there was a reason that her calling habits had risen so dramatically. She told them no there wasn’t. So they canceled the car, and instructed her to highlight the calls that were hers on the next bill, and send back. When we got the bill, it was over $800!. Apparently the thieves had distributed the number to all of their friend and they wren making calls about very two minutes (not an exaggeration). In fact, they’d called both New Zealand and China!. My mom was only charge for abut $50. Now recently I needed to get a new cell phone for my husband who has been activated with the Marine Corps and is currently serving in CA. I went to AT&T and because he’s in the military they gave me a free $100 phone, a 25% discount on all accessories, and 15% extra free minutes. In addition, they made no attempt to up-sell me, and told what the cheapest service plan was.
One more kind of odd one. When I was in college, I got a flat tire. Of course I had a crummy spare and no money. So I went to a gas station to make a phone call, and the guy there happened to have some used tires. So he removed the old one, mounted and balanced a new one and sent me on my way. I wish I knew what the name of it was, but alas I was too ecstatic to notice.
There was a little private bookshop called Ahradsen’s that I used to go to. I kept going back to it, at first, because they had a computer, out where anyone could use it, with complete current publishers’ catalogues loaded on it, so that customers could look up books for themselves.
(Don’t you just hate asking about a book, and then waiting for someone else to look it up for you? If you can look it up for youself, you don’t just find the book you’re after; you can potentially find dozens of others that you’ve never heard of, but suddenly realise you need to buy as well. That computer was marketing genius.)
(Nowadays, of course, I can just look them up on Amazon instead. Somehow it’s not the same.)
Anyway … so I became a regular customer. And of course the shop had my phone number, because they had to be able to call me when a book I’d ordered came in.
Then one day I got a different kind of call from them. They’d just gotten in a new book by an author who I’d been buying plenty of previously. They had one copy left. Did I want them to hold it for me? Why, as a matter of fact, yes I did.
Or, on a couple of occasions: they had publishers’ galleys of new books, sent around so that the bookshops could decide how many copies they wanted to order. Did I want to borrow the galleys over the weekend? Well, damn, yes. (One of those galleys was for a new Terry Pratchett hardcover.)
After a little while, you couldn’t keep me away from that bookshop.
…
An unhappy footnote: Ahradsen’s closed a couple of years ago. I was devastated. For quite a while after, I didn’t know what to do with myself after work on Friday afternoon.
This is a story of several wonderful people…it was ONE day with soooo many great people, I still remember it as one of the best days of my life (5 years later)
I was on my way to work very early in the morning (it was still dark) I was in my ex-husbands truck that I had borrowed, and I noticed someone seemed to be following me down the main street of the small town I lived in. The car followed me into the parking lot of the store I worked in, and I was getting a little nervous.
The gentleman who followed me in parked WELL AWAY FROM ME, and got out of his car. He yelled over that I had no brake lights, and he just wanted to let me know so I could get them fixed. I thought it was nice of him, one, for parking far enough away as not to frighten me, and two, for letting me know about the safety (or lack thereof) of my truck.
I went to work at the customer service desk and got busy right away. I noticed a line of about 5 people, and watched the last customer patiently waiting her turn. It took me almost 15 minutes to get to that last customer. She explained that the day before she had been down the road at a light, and noticed a cell phone on the trunk of the car in front of her. She got out and picked the phone up and knocked on the window of the car to give the lady the phone. The lady said that the bag boy who had just loaded her groceries must have left it there and drove off.
This lady kept the phone, drove out of her way the next day, waited patiently in line, just so she could return the phone to us!
(The bag boy would have been in serious trouble for losing the phone as it was a “store use” phone)
After work, I drove to an auto supply store and explained that my brake lights were out. The owner of the store, who was late for an appointment, took the time to go out to my truck, unscrew both tail lights, test the flashers and all the bulbs, and replaced only what was defective!!!
I was so overwhelmed by the end of the day…my life had been going rather badly of late, and this was just what I needed to believe in people again. I still know that there are alot of assholes around, and I, being a “jerk magnet” tend to get more than my share of them…but this was “A GOOD DAY!”