Mediocre customer service is so common, and so often complained about, that when a company does something really amazing, I want to run through the streets like Ebenezer Scrooge, casting aside my humbugs and proclaiming the good news to the entire Internet.
Let me tell you a story.
Betsy and I bought a Whirlpool washing machine five years ago when we got the house. It worked perfectly until several weeks ago, when it started having problems that made it basically unusable.
Now, we had never registered the product with Whirlpool. We had never bought a warranty. And it’s not like the product was brand-new anyway. So Whirlpool didn’t really have any obligation to fix this. I called them up, hoping – at best – for some over-the-phone troubleshooting and an estimate for someone to come look at it.
Here’s what happened instead:
- A woman carefully wrote down all the details of the problem. She also made a point of asking whether anyone had been hurt.
- She transferred me to someone else and also transferred the details I gave her. It’s astounding how rare that is.
- The second woman asked a few more things, then scheduled a local appliance company to come inspect the appliance for free.
- She then gave me her name, told me she was personally responsible for my case, and gave me a phone number to reach her directly. I’m not sure I can remember a single other time that’s ever happened.
- The inspector came, inspected, and decided it was fixable. She ordered parts for free, and returned a few days later to fix it for free.
- The washing machine is now working perfectly.
Whirlpool rocks, pass it on.
Brian D. Buckley 