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It’s increasingly vital for organizations in all industries to provide superior customer service that exceeds expectations and meets users’ needs quickly and efficiently. To do just that, one of the best ways is to learn from the examples of the best in the business.
What is superior customer service?
Superior customer service involves exceeding customer expectations through following best practices and innovative solutions like conversational automation. Key elements include fast response times, acting on customer feedback, showing empathy, offering omnichannel support, self-service options, and providing a personal touch. These strategies ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty by addressing and resolving service challenges effectively.
Superior Customer Service Examples: 10 Companies That Are Crushing It
Harnessing customer service best practices enables companies to go the extra mile to delight their customers. Here are impressive examples of superior customer service:
1. Sainsbury’s Gives a Young Customer Exactly What She Wants
U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury’s received a letter from a three-year-old customer named Lily Robinson, advising them their “tiger bread” looked more like giraffe patterns than tiger stripes. The chain took the feedback on board, designed new labels to showcase Lily’s insight to her fellow customers and renamed the product “giraffe bread.”
2. American Express Counts the Benefits
Maintaining your status as one of the world’s largest credit card providers comes with huge customer expectations. American Express delivers on this with global benefits such as:
- Complimentary access to airport lounges
- Flight credit
- Insurance
- A partner’s network
- 24/7 support that ensures instant support whenever and wherever customers need it, in any time zone or language
3. Ritz-Carlton Charges Up Exceptional Support
Hotel chain Ritz-Carlton gives employees a budget of up to $2,000 to fix any guest problems. For example, when a customer left his laptop charger at a hotel in Sarasota, an employee not only sent the charger to him via next-day airmail but also bought him an extra charger, just in case. This is an excellent example of using customer mistakes as an opportunity to go above and beyond and show you care.
4. Nordstrom’s Personal Touch Never Tires
Retailer Nordstrom is a brand so synonymous with superior customer service that it has a book written about its approach. The brand focuses on the small things, such as helping customers find and purchase products faster and providing personalized experiences.
Nordstrom also has a policy of always saying “yes,” including when a man walked into its Fairbanks store in Alaska and asked for a refund on snow tires, which Nordstrom doesn’t sell. The checkout clerk immediately handed him $145 because that was “what the customer wanted.” This example may be a little extreme, but Nordstrom’s superior customer service encourages customers to come back for more and share their positive experiences.
5. Virgin Atlantic Nails Negative Feedback Response
How you respond to negative feedback can make or break your customer service. Virgin excels at using negative comments to create bonds with customers, and founder Richard Branson considers complaints as an opportunity to “turn a customer into a lifelong friend.” This famously included inviting a passenger who had a bad meal experience to join the airline’s culinary council and overhaul its menu.
6. Starbucks Gets Employees on a First-Name Basis
Starbucks is a huge advocate of its customer service heroes providing experiences that go beyond customers’ expectations. This includes baristas putting effort into the visual element of every drink and developing new ideas based on customer feedback. But its most high-profile case of providing the personal touch is asking every customer their first name, which is then written on their cup.
7. IFFCO Solves Claims Issues With AI
Increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming instrumental in delivering faster, more accurate customer service in the insurance sector. For example, the IFFCO-Tokio General Insurance Company found that up to 30% of customers weren’t satisfied with their claim assessments. It implemented an AI tool to assess vehicle damage from images customers uploaded on its app. This resulted in:
- Claims that previously took up to four hours to settle being completed in just 15 minutes
- 30% cost reduction
8. Glossier Uses Customer Insight to Make Products Shine
Skincare brand Glossier crowdsources customers’ opinions to shape its beauty and skin products. It still uses this approach to give customers exactly what they want, including launching a sunscreen product that doesn’t have the smell and sticky texture as other brands in the market.
9. JetBlue Sets the Service Standard for Airlines
Airline JetBlue set the customer service standard for the industry with its Customer Bill of Rights, which is “dedicated to inspiring humanity.” It set a precedent with its remote customer service team and offers a range of fun traditions like its People Officer, who surprises passengers with gifts and rewards. That continued with great pandemic customer service, as the airline offered free flights to medical personnel even when its own business was under threat.
10. Walt Disney World Makes a Spectacle of Customer Service
The best customer service often comes through employees noticing an issue and taking action to solve it themselves. Walt Disney World cast members noticed theme park guests were suffering problems with their spectacles or sunglasses breaking. So they decided to create repair kits, which meant the park could fix the glasses themselves at no cost to their customers.
Delight Your Customers With Superior Service
Delivering superior customer service often involves brands going the extra mile and closely monitoring for potential challenges their customers and employees may experience. Brands that excel in exceeding customers’ expectations often spot a common problem and seamlessly transform it into an opportunity to delight.
Discover how Uniphore’s AI technology can help you exceed expectations and deliver personalized customer service.