This chapter gives some great and even heart-warming examples of truly above and beyond customer service. One impressive example is that provided by a call service representative at RackSpace. She heard someone in the background of the call saying he was hungry, so she quietly put the customer on hold and ordered a pizza to their address. She continued her assistance, and the pizza was delivered while they were on the call together (p. 109). This is a super cool, and effective, way to get customers to talk about your company to their friends. In inducing word of mouth marketing, this is a great way to do so, as people are more likely to talk about your company or recommend it to friends if they have some level of emotion connected to it and if they have a specific story to tell that invoked those positive emotions (Schwarz, 2020).
A very intriguing piece of advice from this chapter is to look beyond problems customers are presenting to you in order to be the most helpful to those customers. Sometimes, as customers make complaints, they are looking for specific answers, but sometimes they are inadvertently asking for a specific feature (they are unaware they are even asking this). This leaves the entrepreneur or the company with the need to look beyond the problem (p. 116). This provides companies of one with a way to look at the bigger picture.
Jarvis also advises that all business must acknowledge mistakes as they are made (p. 122). Any level of acknowledgment is better than none. Acknowledgment and apologies can come in many forms and some businesses today have turned to humor to combat major issues or let-downs. For example, the KFC ‘FCK’ advertisement was a quick and simple way to ‘apologize’ for running out of their fried chicken. That advertisement can be viewed below.
(Campaign, 2018).
Jarvis concludes this chapter with the following thought-provoking messages. The following has been retrieved directly from his book.
BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT
- What you could do to ensure that your existing customers feel both happy and acknowledged
- Where you could help exceed expectations with your customer service
- How you could create opportunities for word of mouth and referrals
- How you own and then fix mistakes
- What you could do to ensure that your customers end up with wins (p. 123).
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