I recently ordered a piece of software online from an emerging software company. For reasons I can not disclose in case members of my family are reading this, I can not tell you the name of said company - but I will update this after December 25th and link to the company. In the meantime, if you’re curious - please leave a comment and I’ll tell you what type of software this company makes.

Anyway, I had ordered my software (not available as a download) and was anxiously awaiting it’s arrival. After almost four weeks with no software, I contacted the company. I got the funniest auto responder ever, which was followed by the most personal response from a real customer liaison person that I have ever received (and it was outside of regular business hours - on a weekend nonetheless!). I was told that darn UPS must have misplaced the shipment and they would ship another one for me priority that Monday. That was a little over a week ago, so I contacted them again late last night, and received a friendly response from the customer service rep very quickly (again- outside of regular business hours). She told me that I had a couple more days to go before I should worry that UPS had forgotten about me, but she gave me an alternative! She knew I wanted the software in time for a certain holiday, so she gave me download instructions - top secret download instructions - so I could have it sooner. When my actual software arrives in the mail I will have it as a backup.

I wish I could mention this company’s name here, because the service I’ve received is outstanding, and I would recommend the product without ever having used it - based on the relationship that I’m building with the company through their website, blog (hilarious) and the customer service representative that I’ve been in communication with.

We all need to do this in our companies. When you have a customer complaint - FIX IT! Do what you can to make them happy. If the customer service rep told me, ‘tough luck - I am sorry that you won’t have it in time for the holidays’, this would be a different blog post all together.

In my policy and procedure manual, under the ‘Customer Service’ heading, it states that if a client is unhappy - do whatever you can, within reason, to make them happy. I used the same philosophy while waiting tables in my past life, and I believe it to be true.

Imagine how nice the world would be if you never had to argue with a customer service representative. If you didn’t have to sign your life away after standing in a line up forever to return something. If you didn’t send a support ticket to a company and started pulling out your hair because it was three days later and still no response. If you weren’t told, “sorry, we’re out of pavlova but I brought you an extra fork” by a waitress AFTER they had served your husband his chocolate cheesecake that he only ordered because you ordered dessert and there was nothing else on the dessert menu that you wanted…..

Without our clients and our customers we wouldn’t be in business. It’s that simple. Why doesn’t everyone get that?

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