Have you ever experienced great customer service?
I think we’ve all had the opportunity to discover some good – even great – service at some point in time though out our journey in life.
But have you ever enjoyed a customer service experience that made you smile and talk about that service for days – weeks – even years on end? Now that would be some amazing service – wouldn’t you agree?
Far too often people take for granted the person on the service side of things (whether it be intentional or not). And unfortunately, many customer service type industries get a bad rep so to speak due to their front line employees… with their lack of care, lack of interest, and overall lack of love for their job/careers. Kind of sad isn’t it?
I get it – not everyone can be happy and love their job all the time – everyone is going thru their own “thing” and we can never fully know what that “thing” is – but when a person’s attitude affects the end customer… Hmmm do we just chalk it up to a “bad day”?
Ok – I may have gotten a little off base here – my intent was to actually point out some over the top Customer Service experiences that George & I received during our recent travels. A few weeks ago, we headed off on an adventure to Virginia Beach. We like to get away after the business of Christmas and out of the snow too – and we happen to enjoy Virginia Beach in their off-season (it’s so much quieter).
We needed to get a car wash…
Although the car was spotless when we left on the Friday morning that we headed out – needless to say our drive from home to Virginia Beach left the vehicle extremely dirty – due to the varied weather we traveled through (it was rather embarrassing actually) . So George being George (and all techie) decided to “google” “Car Washes in Virginia Beach”. One of the options he saw happened to have some great “Yelp” ratings too – so off we went to “Green Clean Auto Wash” for a well needed car wash.
This Auto-Wash place had several Self-Serve Bays & Vacuums, along with Shampoo & Fragrance Vending machines too. But we were there for the Drive-Thru Touch-Free LaserWash G5 (the works so to speak)… and there was a little line up ahead of us for this service too.
As we sat there and observed, we noticed the attendant pre-scrubbing the vehicle (at the front of the line) before it went thru the car wash – man he was doing an amazing job – he literally washed the entire vehicle by hand before it went thru the touch-free wash. Wow that was quite impressive, and to look at the SUV – it didn’t really need the car wash at all now – lol.
And the car in front of us – well we weren’t sure why it was even there either – as it barely had a spec of dirt on it and yet it was in line waiting for a wash too. Due to time constraints that car just opted for the Drive-Thru Touch-Free LaserWash G5 wash.
And while we were still waiting and watching – the attendant came up and started chatting with us. He apologized for the wait. He told us how busy he’d been that day, he laughed and joked with us, and told us about all the services available. He filled us in on the line up of vehicles in front of us and let us know the type of service we’d be getting.
He was super friendly and extremely energetic… he told us what our options were, helped us decide on the right service, and then he delivered as he’d promised – and with a great big Smile too! We got an amazing pre-wash… yes – the car was clean prior to the Drive-Thru Touch-Free LaserWash. We were definitely satisfied customers and we shared our appreciation with him too.
Starbucks Service with a Smile 🙂
One of our favourite places to relax and have an espresso or a treat (or both) is Starbucks, especially when we’re in Virginia Beach. There’s one that’s not too far away from where we stay (maybe about a 1/2 mile walk this time – last time it was over 1 mile). And we use it as our reward for getting out for a walk/jog each day. We typically do our walk first and then hit up the Starbucks on route back as our treat (sometimes we’ll visit twice in one day – especially when they offer the treat receipt incentive).
Okay… I may have gotten of track again – as I’m supposed to be telling you about great service.
For the most part, Starbucks is known to have some pretty great service (and we’ve experienced this first hand in several countries). Well on this particular visit, we encountered some exceptional service. A young guy greeted us, and took our order (all the while with a smile). We asked about the new “Flat White” and what the process was, as we’d yet to try them out. He was excited to tell us about them and to advise that it was actually one of his favourite drinks to make – so that’s what we had.
We sat at the bar and chatted a little while our drinks were being made – and then while we were enjoying our Flat Whites he sat with us on his break and we chatted some more. It was an enjoyable experience and he was quite enthusiastic to share his love for his job.
Well – needless to say we went back several times over the course of the week (and yes they had the Treat Receipts too). Each time that we were there, that same young guy chatted with us and made us feel super special. He went out of his way it seemed to ensure that we were completely satisfied with our visit.
“Service, in short, is not what you do, but who you are. It is a way of living that you need to bring to everything you do, if you are to bring it to your customer interactions.”
~ Betsy Sanders
Care to share one of your excellent customer service experience stories? We’d love to hear from you, and others will benefit from reading your noteworthy saga too.
Thank for being here… Cheers 🙂
