10 Unforgettable Customer Service Examples to Follow

In a world where choices abound and competition is fierce, what sets businesses apart? The answer, quite often, lies in the art of providing exceptional customer service. But what does good customer service really mean, and why is it a game-changer for companies aiming to thrive in today’s dynamic market?

Simply imagine you walk into a cozy coffee shop, and the barista greets you with a warm smile, remembers your usual order, and takes the time to chat about your day. Or perhaps you’ve contacted a company’s support line with an issue, and within minutes, a friendly and knowledgeable agent not only solves your problem but also leaves you with a sense of satisfaction.

These are good customer service examples in action, where responsiveness, courtesy, and effective communication come together to create a memorable experience. But there’s more to this story than just friendly faces and efficient problem-solving.

In this article, we’ll explore the core of good customer service, unravel its definition, explore what it truly means, and provide you 10 inspiring examples that showcase the transformative power of putting the customer at the center of your business strategy. 

What Does Good Customer Service Mean?

Exceptional customer service refers to the act of providing a positive and satisfying experience to customers when they interact with a business or receive assistance. It is a critical component of building and maintaining a successful and reputable company.

Here are some key elements that define what does good customer service mean:

1. Responsiveness: Respond promptly to customer inquiries and needs, ensuring they don’t have to wait for extended periods to receive assistance.
2. Friendly and Courteous: Treat customers with respect, empathy, and a positive attitude, creating a welcoming and pleasant experience.
3. Effective Communication: Clearly and concisely communicate information and solutions to customers, ensuring they understand and are well-informed.
4. Problem Resolution: Address and resolve customer issues or complaints effectively, taking ownership and finding solutions promptly.
5. Consistency: Offer a consistent level of service across all customer touchpoints to build trust and reliability.

These five elements are fundamental to delivering a positive customer service experience and building strong customer relationships.

Principles of Good Customer Service

• 83% of customers agree that they feel more loyal to brands that respond and resolve their complaints. Khoros

• Businesses can grow revenues between 4% and 8% above their market when prioritizing better customer service experiences. Bain & Company

• 80% of companies use customer satisfaction scores to analyze customer experience and improve it. Harvard Business Review

Principles of Good Customer Service are the foundational guidelines that businesses and individuals follow to ensure positive customer experiences. They encompass strategies and practices for building strong customer relationships, delivering exceptional service, handling complaints effectively, and maintaining a deep understanding of the products or services offered.

1. Customer Relationship: Building and maintaining strong customer relationships is a fundamental principle of good customer service. It involves understanding customer needs, and preferences, and providing personalized interactions to foster trust and loyalty.
2. Training and Culture: Creating a customer-centric culture within your organization and providing ongoing training to your team members ensures that everyone is aligned with the goal of delivering excellent customer service. It empowers employees to consistently meet or exceed customer expectations.
3. Complaint Handling: Effective complaint handling is crucial. It involves acknowledging customer concerns promptly, addressing issues professionally, and finding solutions to resolve problems. Handling complaints well can turn dissatisfied customers into satisfied, loyal ones.
4. Product Knowledge: Having in-depth knowledge about your products or services is essential for helping customers make informed decisions. When your team can answer questions and provide relevant information, it instills confidence and trust in your customers, leading to better service outcomes.

How Brands Go the Extra Mile in Providing the Best Customer Service Examples?

Going the extra mile for customer examples actually means making more effort than is expected.

American Express says, 70% of customers say they have already made a choice to support a company that delivers great customer service.

We have broken down some of the key areas on how businesses go the extra mile in setting examples of good customer service.

• Focus on providing something extra – You can win customers when you go out of the track and provide them superior customer service.
• Identify the customer needs – When you focus on learning your customer needs you are able to deliver the kind of product or service they are looking for.
• Show personal interest – Customers are the lifeblood of your business. Taking them personally will help you to create good customer service examples.
• Keep it both ways – collect and implement customer feedback – Feedback is effective when you do not just collect but implement the feedback to enhance your brand.
• Try to go above and beyond – There are many good customer service examples that show going the extra mile has helped businesses retain customers.

What Are the 7 Qualities of Good Customer Service?

Good customer service is essential for building and maintaining a loyal customer base. There are several qualities that contribute to providing excellent customer service. While there may be more than seven qualities, here are seven key ones:

1. Empathy

It is the ability to understand and share the feelings of your customers. When you empathize with their concerns and issues, it shows that you genuinely care about their needs and are willing to help.

2. Active Listening

It involves giving your full attention to the customer, asking clarifying questions, and summarizing their concerns to ensure you understand their needs accurately. This not only helps you solve their problems effectively but also makes the customer feel heard and valued.

3. Patience

Customers may be frustrated or upset when they contact customer service. Patience is crucial in handling difficult situations calmly and professionally. It’s important to avoid rushing the conversation and give the customer time to express their concerns.

4. Product Knowledge

A deep understanding of your products or services is essential to provide accurate information and solutions to customers. This knowledge enables you to answer questions, offer guidance, and troubleshoot effectively.

5. Communication Skills

It is key in customer service. This includes using clear and concise language, avoiding jargon, and being able to explain complex concepts in a way that customers can understand.

6. Problem-Solving Skills

Customers reach out to customer service when they encounter problems or have questions. The ability to quickly and efficiently solve these issues is a vital quality. It may involve finding creative solutions or escalating the problem to the appropriate department.

7. Positivity and Professionalism

Maintaining a positive attitude and professionalism throughout the interaction can greatly impact the customer’s experience. Even in challenging situations, staying courteous and respectful is essential.

These qualities are not only important for customer service representatives but for anyone in a customer-facing role, as they contribute to a positive customer experience and can lead to customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty.

Example of Excellent Customer Service from Real Brands

Accenture insights say half of the U.S. customers are no longer making decisions on the basis of price or product selection. They access what a brand says, does, and stands for thus creating good and bad customer service examples. Customers are ready to spend extra for brands that have created exceptional customer service examples and express brand loyalty by referring it to friends & relatives.

Let us go through top brands that have earned customer loyalty by providing excellent customer service examples

#1 Rackspace

Rackspace is a globally managed hosting provider, serving over 300,000 customers of varied sizes on a global front is an example of good customer service. The company strongly focuses on the commitment to its customer experience strategy, known as Fanatical Support.

The focus on creating great experiences helped them grow into one of the largest infrastructure providers with a revenue run rate of more than $1 billion and an incredible Net Promoter Score of 58.

Rackspace used the NPS metric to measure customer loyalty and in order to achieve a high NPS score, they focused on three elements. 

• They used NPS as a part of the customer satisfaction program for real-time assessment of the company’s performance and success.
• Motivating the new Rackers on the company’s mission and the 5 elements of fanatical support i.e. Responsiveness, Ownership, Resourcefulness, Expertise, and Transparency
• Achieve high customer satisfaction and build long-lasting customer relationships. 

With the help of fanatical support, Rackspace grew into one of the largest infrastructure providers with a revenue run rate of more than $1 billion and an incredible NPS score of 58.

Key takeaways:

• If your business focuses on achieving higher customer satisfaction, you can choose to use NPS and regularly measure it.
• Practice small gestures like Rackspace’s customer service team. For example, they ordered a customer a pizza while they helped to troubleshoot a problem – seriously, who doesn’t love free pizza?

#2 Swanson

Swanson Health Products is a well-known mail-order business and has developed to be one of the most popular global commerce companies. The company specializes in selling vitamins and health supplements online. The Swanson lines showcase indigenous and exotic health products of high quality at affordable prices bagging the best customer service example title. 

Swanson values their customer’s time. It implemented live chat on their website and it had a great impact on the company’s sales as well as revenue. By following the real-time support strategy, Swanson was awarded as one of the best customer-centric organizations among 25 top companies. Thus, it has made its place in good customer service examples.

Key takeaways:

• If your business demands to deliver instant customer support, use live chat as a go-to channel to deliver real-time assistance.
• With live chat, you can leverage the customer service script template to deliver the best service experience that will boost your customer satisfaction rate and increase loyalty.

#3 Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC)

IRCTC has launched an AI-enabled chatbot – Ask DISHA (Digital Interaction to Seek Help Anytime), the next-generation eTicketing system to serve millions of passengers every day to answer various queries. IRCTC literally proves the phrase “going the extra mile at work examples” and sets an excellent customer service example.

DISHA, the AI-enabled chatbot, promptly answers the most frequently asked queries on the ticket booking platform. The bot has around 400 preset frequently asked questions and is also capable of predicting user queries to answer customers in zero wait time.

The IRCTC has increased the website’s capacity to 20,000 tickets per minute starting from 2000 tickets per minute (in 2014), in the last four years. IRCTC remarked that it is almost a ten-fold increase.

Key takeaways:

• You can deliver real-time answers to the basic queries asked by your customers that will improve customer experience and your team’s productivity.
• With the bot, you can engage your customers when your customer support team is not available and improve the satisfaction rate.

#4 Commonwealth Bank Australia

Banks are moving towards providing personalized and insightful online banking experiences for our customers, and artificial intelligence along with the powerful technology behind it sits at the center of this shift.

Commonwealth Bank launched a virtual banking assistant called Ceba to provide real-time customer support. The Ceba chatbot is available to more than 6.2 million NetBank and CommBank app customers, taking the bank’s customer interactions to a new level. Ceba is available 24×7. It can recognize approximately 60,000 different ways customers ask for the 200 banking tasks activating their card, checking account balance, making payments, getting cardless cash, etc.

Here are some of Cuba’s top Q&As:

• Can I have a copy of my statement?
• What is my credit card limit?

The bot also tells customers what they are spending their money on, making it a highly powerful and effective tool for the Commonwealth Bank. CBA has scaled up a system to automatically suggest 20 million conversation starters a day to have with customers in its physical and digital channels.

Key takeaways:

• You can create your banking chatbot to deliver a seamless end-to-end experience depending on the customer’s requirements. The simple queries will be answered by the bot and the complex ones will be routed to the support expert.
• Provide your customers with personalized and insightful service experiences that will boost customer loyalty.

#5 JetBlue Airways 

Customers don’t like waiting around too much to get a reply from the brands they interact with. 

Responding through proactive channels like email or phone is not enough. Social media is a very important channel that customers choose to connect with your brand. 

So, you also need to respond fast to customer comments on social media. Emarsys says 3.2 billion social media users worldwide, and this number is only growing. That equates to about 42% of the current population.

JetBlue Airways is one of the best customer service examples when it comes to response speed with an average response time of 4-5 minutes on Twitter. Thus, it can be assumed that their response times on other channels are taken care of.

The response time usually differs depending on your industry and customers. Nonetheless, you should monitor the social media channels your brand is active on, and where your customers prefer to contact you. 

With 25 people dedicated to social, JetBlue keeps 24×7 coverage on its Facebook and Twitter channels. Customer communication is streamlined through one Twitter handle, where they try to respond within 10 minutes. 

Key takeaways:

• Social listening can make all the difference. So, it is very important to practice social listening and actively respond to customer’s comments (both positive and negative).
• Quickly responding to the customer’s queries makes them feel heard and valued. They are more satisfied and retain with your brand.

#6 Zillow 

Convincing customers isn’t a forte of computers and nor will it ever be. To create an everlasting connection, a human touch is essential. Customers come up with thousands of questions, and if they are left unanswered, they will divert their interest elsewhere. So, businesses should have a service mission based on customer service and improving customer experience.

Zillow focuses on the design of its website to offer the best user experience. Even though the home page, provides all the information a user may need. Users can easily search for homes to buy or rent. Further, locations can be searched according to name, address, neighborhood, city, and zip code. Other information, such as mortgage rates and agent information are also available. This is how the real estate company is counted in the best customer service examples.

Key takeaways:

• A visually appealing interface plays an important role in providing a delightful digital experience and is the main part of customer service. So, adapt the design concept seriously to outperform your competitors.
• Provide easy navigation and all the essential information nested beautifully across your homepage.

#7 DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) 

DSW has encountered tremendous growth, which has also meant mounting customer service pressure yielding millions of inbound calls per year. DSW turned to SmartAction to collaborate on a self-service strategy to augment its NICE inContact platform with conversational AI.

The big box retailer who was discount-focused and just a brick-and-mortar store is today a leader from an omnichannel customer experience perspective. They deliver amazing experiences, not only in-store but also through our mobile app and our website.

 

 

With IVA, the Virtual Agent powered by SmartAction interacts with customers in a similar manner to a live agent. The bot greets the customers, identifies the intent, and authenticates the customers. The intent that is complex is routed to the live agents while the simple ones are handled by IVA.

The ROI was that 85% of our customers had complete identification and authentication through IVA. It resulted in an overall 19% reduction in agent handle time and a 30% increase in CSAT. And this made DSW enter the top customer service examples.

Key takeaways:

• Implementing a chatbot solution can help to scale your customer support during peak times without any additional cost.
• You can easily use the bot to collect the customer information that can be used by the agents to further process.

#9 The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota 

Ritz-Carlton is a globally acclaimed hotel company that is committed to excellent customer service. It aids in reinforcing and promoting employee engagement in their regular work to focus on the smallest thing that can help to build a better customer experience.

John DiJulius left his laptop charger in his room when he left the hotel. He thought of calling them but before he called, he received an air package next-day from The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota. In the package was the charger with a note asking if was it okay and an extra charger for Mr. John. The Ritz-Carlton Group President, Herve Humler, said in his interview with Forbes, ‘The key to making customer service visionary is team engagement.’

Key takeaways:

• Ritz-Carlton empowers customer service employees with the authority to spend up to $2,000 per day to improve customer experience. Similarly, you should structure and incentivize your team so employees can have more power to resolve customer queries. 
• You should focus on measuring qualitative and quantitative customer feedback apart from the total queries resolved that were assigned in a day.

#10 IKEA

Like many other stores, IKEA also focused on customer retention. The customer support team ensured that every single visit to IKEA was a positive experience. They focused on delivering high-quality service by being available and being tuned in to the customers’ needs – before, during, and after a purchase. It thus is one of the best examples of good customer service in the retail sector. Their major work areas include:

• For customer relations, the agents welcomed customers and provided them all kinds of advice and information using their comprehensive product knowledge.
• At the returns desk counter, the agents showed extra courtesy when customers returned the product to maintain their goodwill. 
• At checkout, it was direct interaction with customers so having deep knowledge of the products, services, and different payment methods IKEA offers is important.
• Ballroom  IKEA wanted kids to enjoy their visit to the store in order to help parents in shopping. In the ballroom, you supervise the children and ensure that they are safe.

Forbes ranks IKEA’s brand as the 46th most valuable in the world (at $11.9 billion) and annual revenues are just shy of $40 billion, gained from its 345 stores in 42 different countries. IKEA meets the customers-first purpose, the customers-first business plan, and it has also instituted the Human Resource Idea.

Key takeaways:

• Focus on giving peace of mind to your customers while shopping by taking care of and supervising their kids.
• Give the best in-person experience by advising and answering all the queries related to products or services.
• You can also offer free home delivery and free assembling with a minimal charge.

#10 – Betterment

Betterment a well-known online investment advisor, used proactive chat invites to engage with their important customers when they sign up for a new account. Handling the monetary demands of customers demands high credibility and trust.

Apart from the established user experience (UX), Betterment made a smart attempt to move customers down to its exceptional investment funnel. Live chat proactive chat offers the opportunity for advisors to provide instant, personalized financial services to new customers so they can invest with confidence.

99% of first-time website visitors are not ready to buy. The role of the support representative is to identify the intent of their prospects, nurture them through their education and evaluation stages, and deliver high-quality leads to their sales team so they can close the deal.

Key takeaways:

• You should always focus on identifying the needs and requirements of your customers.
• You can educate and recommend the best deals to your customers to close a sale successfully.

Key Benefits of Good Customer Service

• 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand known to offer good customer service experiences. HubSpot

• For 86%, good customer service turns one-time clients into long-term brand champions. Khoros

• An NPS Promoter score has a customer lifetime value that’s 600%-1,400% higher than a Detractor. Bain & Company

• 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. Salesforce Research

• 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service. HubSpot Research

Good customer service offers numerous benefits to businesses, as it is a critical component of building and maintaining a positive reputation and a loyal customer base. Here are some key benefits of providing good customer service:

• Customer Retention: Satisfied customers are more likely to stay loyal to your brand. They are less likely to switch to competitors and more likely to make repeat purchases, resulting in long-term revenue.
• Increased Sales: Happy customers are more likely to spend more and make additional purchases. They may also recommend your products or services to others, leading to new customers.
• Enhanced Brand Reputation: It helps to build a positive brand image. Word-of-mouth recommendations and positive online reviews can attract new customers and strengthen your brand’s reputation.
• Reduced Customer Churn: When customers are satisfied with your service, they are less likely to discontinue their subscriptions or contracts, reducing churn rates and increasing customer lifetime value.
• Customer Feedback and Improvement: Engaging with customers allows you to gather valuable feedback. This feedback can help you identify areas for improvement in your products or services, leading to product enhancements and increased customer satisfaction.
• Cost Savings: It is often more cost-effective to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. Good customer service can reduce the need for extensive marketing and sales efforts to attract new customers.
• Competitive Advantage: Exceptional customer service can set your business apart from competitors. Customers are more likely to choose a company that is known for its great service over one that isn’t.
• Employee Satisfaction: Happy customers can lead to happy employees. Employees who see satisfied customers are often more motivated and content in their roles.
• Reduced Complaints and Disputes: Effective customer service can address issues before they escalate into formal complaints or disputes, saving time and resources in the long run.
• Customer Insights: Through customer interactions, you can gain insights into consumer preferences, needs, and trends, which can inform your business strategy and product development.
• Brand Loyalty: A positive customer service experience can foster deep loyalty. Customers who feel valued and well-served are more likely to stick with your brand even when competitors try to attract them.
• Customer Advocacy: Satisfied customers can become advocates for your brand, promoting it to their networks and generating referrals.

Tips To Deliver Good Customer Service 

 

Delivering good customer service is essential for building and maintaining a strong customer base and a positive reputation for your business. Here are some tips to help you provide excellent customer service:

1. Understand Your Customers: Take the time to understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and expectations. Tailor your service to meet their specific requirements.

2. Be Attentive: Listen actively to your customers, show genuine interest, and make them feel valued and heard.

3. Be Friendly and Approachable: Greet customers with a warm and friendly demeanor to make them feel welcome.

4. Communicate Clearly: Use clear and concise language when speaking or writing to customers, avoiding jargon and technical terms.

5. Solve Problems: Focus on finding solutions to customers’ issues, take ownership of problems, and work to resolve them.

6. Be Patient: Stay patient and composed, even in challenging situations. Avoid becoming defensive or argumentative.

7. Follow-Up: After a transaction or service request, follow up with customers to ensure their satisfaction and ask for feedback, demonstrating your commitment to their experience.

Final Thoughts 

The high-quality customer service examples above prove that customer service is highly imperative for businesses of all sizes and industries. But can you figure out the common thing in all these customer service examples? 

Listening and acting on customer feedback. With good customer service feedback examples, you can understand how important it is to collect and work on customer feedback. The best way to offer service to your customers is what they are looking for and listen attentively to their experience with your brand. To monitor all the channels your company is active on is equally important to know what customers say about your business.

There is no shortcut to keep your customers satisfied so upgrade your quality of customer support. But signing up with REVE Chat will not only help to deliver real-time support but also personalize it based on their needs. Sign up with REVE Chat and level up your customer support. Hopefully, the above-mentioned examples help you to pick up pro tips to apply in your business to create excellent customer service examples.