The other day, a friend of mine was raving about this wine club service she recently signed up for.
Wine delivered straight to your door is probably worthy of praise on its own, but, as my friend reported, this service goes above and beyond in the customer service arena. For example, if you don’t like the wine they send you, they’ll replace it with something different (and no, you don’t have to return the open bottle).
As I was listening, I paid attention to my reaction, which was shock.
Why was I so shocked to hear about such stellar customer service?
It seems like amazing customer service is rare these days (note: I am famously easy to please, so this is saying a lot). And while I know that people complain about bad experiences more freely than they share good experiences, think back to the last few times you had really excellent service. I don’t know about you, but they stand out for me because they’re few and far between.
I’m not going to wax poetic about customer service because there are many other blogs, websites, books, and LinkedIn posts that can do it better. But I will say that what it comes down to is that customer service is built on relationships and an understanding of needs. But simply meeting needs isn’t enough for service to be considered great or even good; you have to go above and beyond.
Unfortunately (for the customer), it seems like “above” is getting lower and “beyond” is getting closer.