Superior customer service is not a myth, but it is something that every company can deliver. It does not matter, if it is a large well-known company, or a small local business, what matters most is how you care about your customers.
Here is a couple of popular stories of superior customer service.
This one may turn out to be apocryphal, but the story was all over the place after the launch of the iPad 2. Apparently a man bought an iPad online, then returned it to the company almost immediately, affixing a Post-It to the front of the device that simply read, “Wife said no.” Returns processors must have gotten a kick out of it, because the story eventually made its way to a couple of Apple VPs, who refunded the customer and returned the iPad with an attached Post-It that said, “Apple said yes.”
A family vacationing at the Ritz-Carlton, Bali, was always careful to bring their own supply of specialized eggs and milk because of their son’s food allergies. In this particular instance, however, the food was ruined en route. The Ritz-Carlton manager couldn’t find any of the special items in town, but his executive chef recalled that a store in Singapore sold them. The chef contacted his mother-in-law, who lived there, and had her purchase the items, then fly to Bali (about 2.5 hours) to deliver them.
You can say that big companies can afford that, and small business is not able to give away iPads and deliver food from Singapore as a show of superior customer service. Now take a look at the following example, found on Digital Spy forums.
When I had my wisdom teeth out, I had to get some antibiotics to prevent infection. My dad went and picked them up for me, but I didn’t look in the bag all day because I wasn’t up to it. Seven o clock that (Saturday) evening, and there’s a knock at the door. It’s the pharmacist, who has driven all the way across town to drop off some extra medication that she thought she’d forgotten to give me. Turns out I didn’t need it, but it was really, really nice of her to do that on a Saturday night, when she really had to go out of her way.
Personal attitude and attention to customers make superior customer service, not a company size.
