Does Exceptional Service Build Loyalty?

You be the judge.

I had an extraordinary experience lately, and I wanted to share it with you because I feel it is very relevant to success.

We bought some edemame (soybeans) in teh grocery. My husband and daughter and I love edemame...now I personally prefer to eat them steamed in the pod, with a little sea salt sprinkled. But for some reason we were inclined to get the kind that's already shelled (husked? whatever you call it, it is ready to eat!) I found a package by Melissa's in the organic section of produce at my local grocery.

When we were ready to heat and eat the edemame, we put some into a small pyrex dish adn put them in the microwave (yes, I know all the "bad" stuff about microwaves, but sometimes I am just downright lazy. If you've seen The Success Method website, you already know that.)

Well, after about 10 seconds, the soybeans start popping and sparking.

Huh?

I take them out and inspect them, stir them up a little, make sure there's no metal in there (it's in a glass dish, i'm thinking maybe a staple or something from packaging? nothing) and put them back in adn press start.

This time, after about 5 seconds, the beans start popping, sparking and SMOKING.

Yikes.

I take them out and call my huisband over to see.

Now, you have to understand -- Andy is an extremely analytical person. In his mind, beans just don't catch fire in the microwave, so he has to do his own experiment to see for himself. Yes, I know. Welcome to my world.

So after Andy conducts his own experiment, he declares what I've already decided: We're not eating these beans. Soemthing is wrong iwth them.

Duh.

Now MY tendency is to return teh beans to teh store, tell them they are bad, adn either exchange them or get a refund.

Taht's not satisfactory to Andy.

He gets on the phone with the people at Melissa. He explains everything to them. They ask us to FedEx teh remaining beans to them, at their expense, and they arrange a FedEx pickup for the next day (it was already around 5pm at this point). The people at Melissa tell us they will send it to their labs, and call us back with what they find out

I'm thinking....yeah, I won't hold my breath on hearing back from them.

They say for the inconvenience, they are also sending us coupons that we can use on other Melissa products.

FedEx comes the next day, and in my mind, it's all a done deal.

But then soemthing extraordinary happens. About a week later, we get a phone call. From the Melissa people.

Apparently, their soybeans have a very high iron content (5 times that of other soybeans). They are now calling for the make and model of our microwave, because they were conducting their testing on a 2 year old microwave, but we have a brand-spanking new one (when we built hte new home) that is far more powerful.

Check this out -- not only were they doign additional testing, they were pulling together a meeting to discuss how to change teh packaging on their edemame, so that other people didn't have the same problem.

Wow. I am impressed.

Talk about your personal responsibility!

I was blown away. What kind of company is this? Where a single call, by a single customer can prompt action from a whole team of decision makers???

I don't know about you, but when I worked in the corporate world, there was nothing like this going on. Complaints were mollified (or ignored) at lower levels, until escalated to higher levels, and if the complainer wasn't extremely persistent, they pretty much just got a pile of excuses with a hefty side dose of "the runaround."

When I was in the corporate world, I can remember attmepting to personally resolve complaints, and hearing my boss (and boss' boss) say that there was really nothing we could do, our hands are tied because of...blah, blah, blah, blah.

But then again, maybe that's why I left the corporate world. Things sure are different now.

If one of my customers gets a hold of me, I'm taking care of them ASAP. There ISN'T anyone else to blame or pawn things off on. The buck stops here.

Seems like that same philosophy rings true at Melissa's.

So here's the success lesson --- would I buy from Melissa's again?

Hell yeah.

Would I buy those same edemame again?

Hell yeah.

Will I microwave them again?

Hell no.

For me, I think the lesson was threefold:

1 - Not all corporations suck. Some of them actually give a darn what their customers have to say.

2 - It pays to speak up. Think about this: how many people before us probably saw the sparks and threw out hte package, vowing never again to buy that brand of edemame. Or worse yet, vowing never to buy from Melissa's. Or maybe they even didn't hear or see hte sparks, tasted the food and threw it out, thinking it was bad. One phone call can solve problems. FAscinating.

3 - Microwaves are NOT good. I've heard it before, but I'm seeing more nad more evidence, and it's becomign clear to me that the convenience is not worth the reduction in health.

What did you learn from this story? here are some possible lessons:

- don't microwave edemame
- don't microwave anything
- go the extra mile
- take customer comments seriously -- someone's safety could be at stake
- speak up
- people in corporations actually care about you AND will listen to what you have to say

Choose as many of the above as you like,and feel free to post a comment with your own.

Your QoD:

Where in your life (or business) are you passing the buck? What would happen if you stepped up your level of personal responsibility?