You may call me old-fashioned, but I still hope for great customer service whenever I interact with the businesses I patron. Yet, in today's day and age, customer service seems to be status quo. I am curious to know if others feel the same. Should we as consumers ask for, want, and expect excellent customer service?
Let me share a brief story where I recently had an experience where I received the type of extraordinary customer service we can only hope for and was treated as more than simply a paying customer.
From early in my marriage, I have owned a nice set of Hartman tweed suitcases. At the time I got them over twenty years ago, they were a top brand of luggage. Sadly, Hartman has been bought out by Samsonite, leading to much lower quality and service. After many years and many trips, the wear and tear hit a breaking point. Multiple zipper pulls on my luggage had completely broken off, making opening and closing my suitcases very difficult. It was pretty much impossible to find new replacement parts. As a last resort, I took it into Fink’s luggage (www.finksluggage.com) in downtown Portland where they were able to find used zipper pulls from previously owned suitcases. Because I live in Wilsonville (20 miles south of Portland), their location is quite inconvenient. Navigating downtown, trying to find close parking, and going in to pick up and drop off my luggage was quite a hassle. When I went to pick up the repaired suitcase a week or so after dropping it off, I had the exact same issue of finding a place to park and go in. On top of it all, I was in a huge time crunch. After making multiple trips around the block near their store, I could not find parking anywhere. I gave Fink's luggage a call to explain my situation. The employee who answered the phone immediately ran outside to my car with the fixed suitcase and placed it in the backseat of my car. In return, I gave him my credit card and headed around the block another time to avoid blocking traffic. After circling and returning to the storefront one last time, the employee was already outside, ready to return my credit card and receipt.
This type of customer service was totally not his responsibility, but he went out of his way to exceed my expectations and accommodate my inconvenience.
Because of this experience, I have to ask: am I providing customer service to that extent with Encompass Financial Planning? What do you want and expect from our firm? What can we be doing to go above and beyond to meet the needs of those we serve?