februari 2, 2007 14:52 - Great service from Schleich

Our son Wijnand has been a longtime fan of the Schleich handpainted figures, especially the "World of Knights" series.

Recently, for his birthday he got a box with a Jousting set from foreign friends, but one of the models was fabricated wrongly. But since our friends bought this set abroad, we couldn't simply return it to the store.

So, I logged in on the Internet and send them a short e-mail about the matter. What followed was a very friendly e-mail conversation and today Wijnand received his replacement piece from Germany over the mail, accompanied with a very nice excuse letter. He was overjoyed with it.

Exemplary service by Schleich. Even though they slipped up, they came through with flying colors!

Well done, Schleich!

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect.
They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.
DONALD PORTER

(Go to URL)

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februari 11, 2007 18:43 - Are your customers THIS grateful?

On November 28 last year I wrote about the blog of Dr. Ken Evoy. In my mind one of the shining lights when it comes to customer service.

A few days in the new year, he received a magnificent gift from a group of grateful customers. Yesterday, Dr. Ken wrote about it in his blog. Check it out.

It only happens when your in business for more than money. It happens when your product changes lives... Dr. Ken's Site Build It! changes lives... here are a couple of video testimonials that illustrate it:

Think about it... are your customers this grateful?

Gratefully yours,

Erwin.

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februari 15, 2007 16:57 - Little annoyances

Customer Service is not just about handling calls and smoothing the wrinkles of annoyed customers. It's in just about anything you do as a business.

Take packaging for example. Packaging is not about customer serrvice you say?

When I was having lunch, I was holding a box of cereal. At the side it said: Best before: see top of box. So I had to search the top of the box for the actual date! Same when I was cooking rice for dinner, the package had a nice instruction how to cook it. However, then I had to search for the details about the cooking time and the amount of water from elsewhere on the pack.

Now, at most these are little annoyanes... hardly worth the trouble to write about. But the question nags in my mind, as I can't see a sound reason why the data i not just put in one place. Why send your customer looking elsewhere?

It annoys me... a little. A (small) bit of disservice to me as a customer.

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februari 16, 2007 23:36 - A solid non-brick wall. Hiding behind policies.

Robert Ringer wrote an excellent article on a 'disease' festering amongst many businesses.

In "Customer Service is a Mindset" (great title, very true!), he talks about customer service people who have one big goal. It's not, as you might guess, service the customer. It's about getting rid of the customer, asap.

Hiding behind non-existing policies... oh brother. (Go to URL)

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