Excellent customer service

I experienced excellent customer service today. I’d like to think that we all strive to provide the best service we can at all times but reality is, we don’t always do it. So, this day stood out because I had three instances in a row where I was made to feel like a greatly valued customer.

Brenthaven
I’ve been shopping for a new bag for the new MacBook Pro. Based on the reviews in apple.com, I decided on the Brenthaven Metro but was dismayed to see that it would take 6-8 weeks to ship. Not to be deterred, I checked out brenthaven.com and found that they, too, have a store. So I picked up the phone to ask if it will take 6 weeks to ship. The lady who helped me assured me that no, it will not take 6 weeks. In fact, she’ll make sure that my bag gets shipped out today! When she found out that I live in Canada, she told me how much the shipping fee was - $21! That’s 30% of the cost of the bag! So she said she’d give me a 10% discount on the bag to offset some of the shipping cost. I didn’t actually complain about the shipping fee. I did say “oh” in a bit of a surprised tone but I accepted it as part of buying something that is not available locally. But she threw in the discount without me asking for it. How wonderful is that? Anyway, we ended the call with me feeling like I’m their favourite customer ever. And confident that their bag will be of excellent quality as well.

MacJournal
When the PowerBook was stolen, I realized that I didn’t write down the serial number for the MacJournal software that I bought. So I emailed them, explained the situation, and asked them to send me the serial number. And they did the very next day.With the arrival of the new MacBook Pro, I went out setting it up for my use. One of the first things I did was install MacJournal from my backup and register it. But I got an error saying the serial number is invalid. So I email them again to ask what’s wrong. That’s when I found out that I got an upgrade for free! I had originally bought version 3. Version 4 came out a couple of months ago but it’s a paid upgrade and I decided to just stay where I was since version 3 was working out just fine. But I found out that the serial number they gave me is for version 4. It doesn’t work with version 3! So I happily download version from their site and install it. I registered it and viola, it worked. And I’m officially upgraded to version 4. For free! How fun!

London Drugs photo
I need to get a passport. Mine was stolen and I may be going on a trip in three weeks. So off I went to London Drugs on Broadway to get my photo taken. I try my best to look pretty without smiling (apparently, the official reason for the non-smiling photos is for the government agencies to be able to do face mapping). The lady took my photo, looked at it, and said that my face it too oily. I was reflecting light like an aluminum foil. So she handed me a tissue, a cotton pad, and some face powder. We try again and this time, it seemed to be okay. So I go and dawdle for about 5 minutes then return to the photo counter. It turns out that my mouth was ever so slightly open so the photo was no good. We try again. She showed me the picture and I thought I looked angry. I wish they’d just let me smile! Another photo. I thought I looked even angrier. So I asked if she can just use the previous one. This whole time, she’s helping me with a smile, not once giving me a hard time for my vanity. She was so nice! I thanked her profusely for being so patient and left London Drugs happy. Not because of my photos where I looked somewhere between puzzled and “please don’t let this be a bad photo” hopeful, but because of how this lady was so nice to me. She rocked!