A Little Customer Delight

Jeremy’s post “The Smallest of Things Can Raise the Bar in Customer Service” inspired me to write another “raising the bar” post. Hmmm, maybe this will be a series?

I received feedback from a customer who was extremely frustrated as he began using our service. His feedback included some words in all CAPS and ended with “grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”. Needless to say, he wasn’t afraid to express how he felt.

I wrote him back a formal apology and while his issue was no longer, I still asked if I can help him with anything, now or down the road.

His response was that of frustration again, mainly stating his whole reason to move to our company was to move to a great company and save money, neither of which he’s doing at this point.

Yikes. This made me sad. So, he’s basically staying with us because he already went to the hassle to move everything over. He doesn’t want to be with us, but what’s done is done. This is not the kind of relationship anyone wants with their customers.

So I wrote back once again expressing my apologies and thanked him for sticking with us. I also decided that I’d give him a small discount on his service to help.

Well, here was his reply:

Wow, I’m impressed! I worked for Xerox a long time and they had a program to strive not simply for “customer satisfaction”, but for “customer delight”. Well you have succeeded in delighting this new customer. I hope Phone.com and I have a long relationship.

I was impressed with HIS reply! I love this idea of “customer delight” and am glad that this discount, even small, helped him and changed his entire opinion of our company.

Delighted customers; now, those are the ones we want to have relationships with. Who will you delight today?

[custom_author=jenny]