You love your customers (well, most of the time) — and you do all you can to keep them happy. So you’ll appreciate these real-life stories of sweet customer service.
Whether it’s at a fast food restaurant, on social media or during a marathon phone call, most people who deliver the customer experience do things from the bottom of their hearts.
Here are some of those exceptional stories to sweeten all of us up just in time for Valentines Day:
1. See the bigger need
A customer service rep got a call from a woman who recently suffered two strokes. The customer had trouble typing, so she called — rather than emailed — to get technical help with her malfunctioning computer. Normally, the customer would need to send her netbook to the manufacturer to have it repaired.
Source: HelpScout.com
The customer depended on the computer to stay in touch with her daughter stationed in Hawaii. The rep understood the dynamics, and quickly arranged to have a new computer sent to the customer. Then she took extra time to help the customer set up her login details, accounts and Skype so she could get in touch with her daughter.
A few months later, the customer visited to give the rep a big thank you and teddy bear dressed in a hula skirt.
2. Use any resource you have
When an elderly man using a walker left a Wendy’s restaurant, it was pouring outside. He would’ve been soaked by the time he reached his car — if it wasn’t for a resourceful, kind employee.
Source: Reddit.com
The young man pulled an umbrella from an outdoor table to hold over the older man as he shuffled to his ride, and the story went viral on Reddit.
3. Go with it — whatever ‘it’ is
Some customers have completely different needs than others. And it takes some really awesome customer experience professionals to recognize the right time and circumstances to do something different and special based on that.
It happened at Trader Joe’s recently, when a mother was shopping with her high-functioning autistic son. The boy was “bouncing off the walls,” according to his mother, and almost crashed into an employee. The employee said not to worry about it because he’s always dodging customers.
The mother said that it sounded like a dance party — and that’s what it turned into. The employee and a colleague started dancing and encouraging the young boy to join in, which he eventually did.
And his mother blogged:
And my heart was glad: Glad to be at Trader Joe’s; Glad that these employees were awesome people; Glad that my kid was getting his antsy-ness out in a fun way with positive reinforcement from these adults who will never know how thankful I am for their ability to turn a stressful moment into a fun memory. My kid will always remember Trader Joe’s as the place he danced.
4. Do your best, then better
When a young boy had to receive a liver transplant around the holidays, he was disappointed he’d miss playing the newest release of his favorite video game. His father, distraught for far bigger, obvious reasons, reached out to the video game maker, Bungie Studios, letting it know about his son’s love of the game and current situation.
The Bungie team quickly pulled together a card with get-well wishes and sent it off to the boy in the hospital.
As if that wasn’t enough, the team rushed to build the boy a custom helmet based on the main character in his favorite video game series. Then they got the helmet, plus shirts, toys and custom art from the game designers to the boy on Christmas day.
5. Simple thanks works
Small acts of kind service are just as touching as the big ones. Take, for example, a technician at an auto body shop in Streetsboro, OH. He includes a personal note in customers’ cars after taking care of them.
Source: Reddit.com
What’s more, his kindness has a bit of urban folklore to it now. When one customer posted his note on Reddit, praising the technician, other customers from many years past chimed in to say they knew who did it. They’d been recipients of the great experience, too, at one time or another.
