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February 08, 2006

Annals of Great Customer Service, Pt. 2

The way I understand it, this online bookseller, 800 CEO Read, thought it would be a fun promotion to give away a bunch of books every day, so they started a daily book giveaway blog called In Bubble Wrap.

In any case, they hooked me, and I go to that site everyday. I've won two books so far. But here's where the customer service comes in: for a variety of reasons both of those books were returned to sender, and in both cases, the bubble wrap guy emails me, asks me what happened and then re-sends the book on his own dime.

I told him that I thought that was good customer service and he said:

I appreciate your support. But it's strange. Before I read your email, I published today's offer which I think applies here. I guess I just work in a place where service is the norm, so it doesn't seem like I'm "going above the call of duty". From my perspective, it's just things are supposed to be done.

Well, his actions speak for themselves, and I wish everyone shared Ryan's view on customer service.

Annals of Great Customer Service

So I ordered a replacement battery for my old iPod from these guys, and I've been really impressed with the customer service. First they sent me an email apologizing for a delay since they were having a stocking issue, and then they followed up once the batteries were back in stock, and then I got the battery. And you know what: we're talking about a two or three day delay, and they really went the extra mile to keep me in the loop. Then, I broke the little doohickey that opens the ipod up and sent an email to their customer service asking if they knew of a household item that would do the trick; they email back: don't worry, we'll send you another one for free. Got to love that.

Kokopelli Music.

Holy Moly: Cool new touch based UIs await us!

Some of the demos are kitschy, but this is an astonishing demo of a new touch based UI. Click to Play Video.