Good Customer Service Appreciation Day!
June 8, 2009
Did you know that today is Good Customer Service Appreciation Day? It seems all we ever hear about customer service are negative experiences. I was listening to John Jantsch interview an author the other day and heard an interesting comment; many times people will talk badly about a company that they’ve never even been a customer of simply because they heard “negative buzz” about it from someone else.
I had some great customer service last week so I decided to make today Good Customer Service Appreciation Day. Check out my good experiences and be sure to leave yours in the comments below.
eBay Express
We needed a rather expensive baby related item last week and needed it in a hurry. I bought it on eBay for $100 cheaper than at Baby’s R Us and asked the seller how much I could pay to have it rushed to us. Here was her immediate response:
I dropped your item off at Fedex this evening, tracking should be available on-line within a few hours. I bumped up the delivery time for you without cost, it was only $6 dollars more and should be to you by Friday morning according to Fedex. thanks again for your purchase and congratulations!
Not only did she save us $100 bucks, she rushed it to us at no extra cost. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Covista Communications
Due to some credit card fraud, we were issued a new card several months ago. Apparently Covista had our old card number on file and hadn’t been able to bill us since February. I got an automated phone call letting me know our bill was past due and giving me a phone number & website I could use to settle our bill. I got the phone number from the Covista website and had a customer service person on the phone immediately, no holding.
I explained to her my situation and she setup my new card right away and in a very pleasant manner. Unlike the terse responses I’ve become accustomed to getting from customer service reps, this lady was pleasant and helpful. She didn’t sound irritated that I was calling or put off by my questions and was very gracious on the phone.
She didn’t charge me any late fees and when I asked her to help me with another question she didn’t put me on hold or transfer me to another department.
Within minutes of discovering I had a billing problem, the issue was pleasantly resolved, and I was off the phone and moving on with my life. It was by far the best customer service I’ve had on the phone for a very long time.
Share your good customer service stories below.
All posts by Ben Edwards
I love the intent of this post. It is never a bad idea to focus on the positive, especially when there is plenty of bad news these days.
Personally, two of the best customer service experiences I have had both revolve around failing hard drives, one with my old Mac PowerBook, and the other with my new MacBook.
Apple Store
The first occurred when the hard drive started failing on my old PowerBook. I took it to the Apple Store to have it checked out. It was still under warranty but they no longer stocked the same size drive my PowerBook originally came with. The Apple Store “genius” (that’s what they’re called, I’m not trying to be disingenuous) came out and told me the “bad” news. He then said that if I didn’t mind they wold install a larger drive at no cost!
ComputerDNA
A few years later, I quickly stuffed the hard drive in my new MacBook to capacity and needed to upgrade to a larger drive. I called the local Apple authorized repair shop and they quoted me a reasonable price for the upgrade. It was after 2PM on a Friday and I asked what time they closed. They told me that if I brought it up to them by 3PM that they would have it back to me by close of business at 5PM because they didn’t want me to go all weekend without my laptop! I hoped in my car and dropped the system of at 3PM sharp and was even more pleasantly shocked when i received the call at just after 4PM that said my system was ready for pick-up! How’s that for service.