Great Customer Serivice

Being that I have been in the service industry pretty much all my life (parents have always owned restaurants & liquor stores - my first job was pouring sodas at my dad's restaurant when I was 6...I charged him 5 cents a soda I poured...), I have a very high standard for customer service. When I go to a store or a restaurant, I expect to be greeted with great customer service. What does that mean?

"Hi! How are you today?" and a pause, waiting for the answer...eye contact is a must.
"Thank you for stopping by!"
"Did you need help finding something?" followed by eye contact again, waiting for the answer.
"Enjoy the rest of your day"

That to me is great customer service - you're taking care of your customer by showing you care.

I pretty much expect genuine service. One thing that has been driving me crazy lately are the stores that ask you (at checkout, mind you - I find that pretty condescending), "did you find everything you're looking for today?". when I answer "no" - I either hear crickets or the store turns code blue. No one knows how to handle it! That to me, is not great customer service.

In the past year, I've challenged my vendors, contractors, and other colleagues with some situations I've been in and I've seen some excellent examples of customer service that I feel needs a shout out!

~ The Hartford Insurance - I had a business claim. My agent not only walked me through the process, but she called to see how the replacement parts were working out. Wow! My claim was paid within 2 weeks of the filing AND she called to see how everything was working out! Amazing!! How simple was it for her to put a reminder in her calendar to call me up and ask? Did it make me tell other wedding vendors about their insurance? You bet it did! and they're the first on my post!

~ Smug Mug - these guys always get kudos from me! A "small" business (I think family owned) who remembers their customers. I have had some really out of the box problems happen a couple of times - last night to be exact. They emailed me right away and explained what happened and gave me suggestions to fix it on my end and then how to get the information back to them. Steve was responding to me at 11:00 EST last night to make sure I did it correctly! WOW! No matter where in America Steve was, that's still fantastic because it was after hours! Thanks once again!

~ Kaplan Computers in Manchester, CT. I had two computers crash in a row and lost some information in the transfer to the new computers (silly thing of switching OS from vista to Windows 7). They asked me to come in so they can try to retrieve my information - it ended up taking longer than they thought (I had my kids with me...), they asked us to have a seat on a couch, put a movie in, turned up the volume so they could hear, and brought me coffee. It made the almost two hour wait almost bearable with two small children! My tech repeatedly came out to give me updates. How simple is that? But fantastic because I'm talking about them!

~ Best Buy - I'm sure most of you are looking at the computer sideways on that...but this was something so simple! I bought a new computer at the store to replace the one in repairs. I put the computer on my Best Buy credit card and the clerk had to call in for an authorization code so I had to wait a few minutes longer. When I got home, there was an email thanking me for being such a great customer and that Best Buy appreciates my business and they were sorry it took so long to process my transaction. The clerk at the store didn't apologize, I got an email. That brightened my spirits a bit! I ended the day on a good note!

~ And to all of the sales clerks, food/bev servers, agents, etc who said my two favorite words: "THANK YOU" - the most simplest way to give the BEST customer service is to THANK your customer!
"Thank you for stopping by"
"Thank you for thinking of us"
"Thank you for buying something"
"Thank you"

I'm not going to mention any of the poor customer service I encountered in the past few months because this post is not to stress on the negatives...I don't think that we need to draw attention to the negatives, I think we need to stress the amazing! THANK YOU to everyone who have given me wonderful customer service and THANK YOU for reading this! :)

What does great customer service mean to you? feel free to comment!