While traversing the Web recently I found a site I’ll be visiting again frequently.  It’s called Not Always Right.  It’s full of funny customer service examples as told by the employees.  Most of them involve challenging (and often unintentionally funny) customers.

Here’s one I especially like:

Customer: “Excuse me, do you sell baked chicken here?”
Employee: “Sorry ma’am, this is a bakery. There is a deli a block down the road.”
Customer: “Exactly, this is a bakery. You should have the baked chicken I need.”
Employee: “No, we sell baked goods here, like bread and cake. The deli is just a block away down [street].”
Customer: “You sell BAKED goods at the BAKERY and I want BAKED chicken.”
Employee: *tries something different* “Umm… we’re sold out.”
Customer: “Oh. Well, I guess I’ll go to the deli down the road then.”

I like this because the employee figured out exactly how to connect with this customer:  Step into the customer’s world.

Too often we expect the customer to see things from our perspective. We want them to come over to our side of the fence.  And why not? Life’s easier when others cater to our needs, right?

But we’re here to serve our customers the best way we can. That means we go to their side of the fence. We use their language and we try to see the world from their point of view (even if it is silly).  And when we do this, it works. We connect with them.  We are better able to give them what they want, in a way that works for us.

That’s what Amazing Service is all about.

Other articles you might like:

• Train your staff to be cheese experts for your customers
• Maybe he will… Maybe he won’t… WON’T
• Tiny shop uses Twitter to connect to one customer at a time
• Never to part (with your customers)
• Black Jack Pizza Should Win a Customer Service Award

How to Exceed Your Customer’s Expectations

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