Customer Service Excellence Examples

My family took the typical last summer vacation before the beginning of school sports seasons and school. My wife planned a surprise two day trip that , which in theory, would keep our four boys, 14 year olds to 5 years old, entertained and exhausted. The location was Gurnee Illinois and the Six Flags Great America theme park with an overnight stay at KeyLime Cove, a new indoor water resort.

On this trip, three examples of customer service excellence surfaced.

Excellent Customer Service Example #1

Let me set the stage. It’s 9:45PM and the KeyLime Cove water park closes at 10PM. The tube slide lifeguard, a 6 foot something lean athletic looking young man, has been given the all clear that no other patrons will be coming down the tubes and he can begin his duties of stacking the double and single inner tubes that have just traversed hundreds of water park miles today. But first, he must deal with a small object, a third his size, our 5 year old son, Justin. The noise in the cavernous indoor water park is deafening and causes even people sitting next to each other to speak rather loudly so as to overcome the constant white noise of splashing and falling water.

Our Justin walked over and began a conversation with this end-of-day lifeguard. This young man spent 5 minutes (mind you that’s like 1 hour in adult time) face to face, sometimes only two inches apart, never losing eye contact, always smiling, asking for the occasional high-five when he thought it was appropriate. The young lifeguard probably couldn’t understand or hear the young boys declarations of how this day was just simply awesome and 5-year-old’s attempt to share it with someone. Somehow this young man knew (and maybe has seen this played out several times at KeyLime Cove) the significance of this little person’s desire to share, so he patiently waited while the little man continued expanding on his wonderful day.

We finally took pity on the young worker and asked Justin to return to our sides. I gave the young man a thumbs up and smiled. He also smiled and nodded his head, understanding fully that this was just as much of his job as making sure the patrons were safe while having fun.

Excellent Customer Service Example #2

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service. We’ve all read this sign. It’s a typical health code requirement in all restaurants. In this case the “No Service” portion was replace with “Exceed your Customer’s Expectations” by the restaurant manager.

The above mentioned Justin had broken his cheap flip-flops during the day’s adventure. Our car was parked about a mile away from the front entrance of KeyLime Cove. I’m tired and I thought that since this was a water park that they would let us slide (no water park pun intended) on the rule. NOPE! They explained that we would have to come back with the correct attire. Something on our son’s face caused the manager to jump into action. She said we should go sit down and she would check if they had any extra flip-flops. EXTRAS?????? Well, I guess it was a water park.

A few minutes later, the manager returned after visiting the upstairs gift shop and placed on my son’s feet a new pair. We offered to pay but she refused, She explained that she noticed how disappointed my son was that we might not be able to eat at her establishment, so she couldn’t allow that to happen.

Excellent Customer Service Example #3

At the end of the long day, we still had one special event planned. Our traditional “Un-Birthday” celebration. This is simply a necessity because our families can not attend all the birthday parties of all the different families, so when we do get together, we celebrate one “Un-Birthday” to make up for it.

My sister-in-law brought a sheet of brownies and we wanted to eat it at the restaurant. You can image the typical response from most eateries. Not at this one. The same above mentioned restaurant manager focusing on customer satisfaction jumped in again and took the sheet over to the ice cream parlor area of the restaurant and had it decorated. Not just adding a word or two, but on the borders, and added fruit as well to give it some color. This was really over the top and just capped the end of this two day adventure with a sense of true customer service excellence.

In fact, on the 3 hour ride home, I began to form my thoughts for this post. This small family vacation trip, and the customer service examples forever etched in my mind. And I declared to my wife, “We will be going back there again!”

See also:

Customer Experience Investment Opportunities

Great Customer Service and Peer Recognition

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