case study good customer service

6 Interesting Customer Service Case Studies to Inspire You

July 18, 2023

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An 11-year-old boy’s experience with LEGO customer service changed the company’s brand perception. It’s not only brought in more customers but also justified their lead position in the market. Here, we will discuss a few more interesting customer service case studies.

One good service can not just help one customer but also influence future customers. Reading others’ stories will help you understand ways to overcome new challenges.

I will start with some popular ones.

Popular customer experience case studies

Customer service is not just limited to providing product-related support anymore. We have passed the line way back. As the market gets more critical, everyone is running a few extra miles. Even the top companies in the field are not compromising anything. 

Let’s start with JetBlue’s customer service case study.

JetBlue sets an example of how you can use social media to provide excellent customer service. They have multiple teams at different levels that are active on Twitter. And there are many examples of it.

Here is one: Paul once tweeted that he couldn’t find Starbucks at the gate while boarding the flight. JetBlue immediately responded with an alternative, which was free for him.

Another challenge that JetBlue faced was the winter storm in early January of 2017 . They had to cancel a lot of flights at that time. And because of this, thousands of people were impacted.

The challenge here is that JetBlue cannot change the weather or ensure a safe flight during a storm. But they can provide up-to-date information.

So, they started to tweet updates about the storm and the flight schedule the whole time. As a result, even though the passengers were frustrated, they were happy with JetBlue’s service.

Zappos has a good reputation for providing the best customer support. And it has a lot of interesting customer service case studies. One particular service case created a lot of buzz in the market.

Zappos’s service agent talked with a customer for 10 hours in one call. And, surprisingly, Zappos took it in a positive way. The call wasn’t even about any service. 

This long call started with where and how that customer lives. Then, eventually, it turns into clothing and fashion-related conversation. Finally, the customer ended the call with the purchase of a pair of UGG boots.

It breaks all the records and wins a long-running battle. Which one is better, automated calls or live agents? And without a doubt, it’s the personal touch that steals the crown every time.

This customer service case study is a bit more heartwarming. 11-year-old James Groccia has Asperger’s syndrome. He was looking at an expensive LEGO set for his birthday. It’s the exclusive Emerald Night Train set.

James saved money for two years. The money came from his birthday gifts and his participation in research. But he was heartbroken when he found out that it was unavailable.

His mother looked everywhere possible. On Amazon, eBay, or any other platform, it was either out of stock or too expensive. Eventually, with the help of a social worker, James wrote to LEGO.

It was a huge surprise to James that LEGO wrote back. And not just that, they surprised him with the exclusive Emerald Night Train set just before his 11th birthday.

It wasn’t easy for LEGO as well. It was a discontinued set and a collectible. They had to track it down for him. This extra mile not only made that customer happy but also established a brand perception that cares about its customers.

WPManageNinja’s customer service case study

While we were looking for customer experience stories, we talked with our Support team head, Mr. Kamrul Islam , here at the WPManageNinja office. He shared a few interesting case studies with us.

“I made a full website using your table builder plugin.”

Our support team faces and solves a lot of interesting cases every day. So, from a lot of stories, we have chosen three interesting stories to share with you in this blog. And, we are not going to be technical here at all.

So keep reading.

Story #1: Fluent Form

Let’s start with a simple one. One of our clients creates a ticket with an issue through our Fluent Support helpdesk system . 

Ticket created from customer’s end

I am a Fluent Form user. And I want to create a booking form using your form builder.

Thanks a lot for contacting us. Let us get into it and see what we can do for you. We will get back to you ASAP.

Booking system plugins are typically used for appointment booking. However, our support team needs to find a way to use our form builder plugin to accomplish this task.

But instead of saying, “This is not possible,” to our client, they get to work. Started figuring out a workaround for this. For obvious reasons, a form builder cannot provide a booking system facility, but the team finds a way to use it as a basic date booking system.

Our support team used two date-picker blocks from our Fluent Form builder and used different blocks to pick the starting and ending dates. Our team got in touch with the customer and gave him the solution.

But the customer knocked again.

Ticket continue

I am happy with the solution, but I’m facing an issue. I picked one date from the “Start from” calendar drop-down, but I can still see the previous dates are active in the “End at” drop-down. I want it disabled.

Here is a screenshot.

We can certainly help you out with this. We will get back to you shortly with a solution. We really appreciate your patience, and thanks a lot for being with us.

As our support specialist stated, they provided a solid solution. They had to write some custom code to implement a new feature in the client’s system.

That customer not only gave us a 5-star rating for our service but also became one of our loyal customers.

Story #2: Ninja Table and Fluent Form:

Speaking of adding custom features, it’s one of the regular jobs for our support team. Support agents, from time to time, write custom codes to fulfill customer requests.

Once, we got another ticket about a dynamic integration between two of our products. And the request came in multiple layers.

Hi, I am ruining a multi-user-based site, and recently I purchased the Ninja table for my site. I bought this to list my users information in a single table. But after a few tries, I failed to do it. Can you help me?

Thanks a lot for connecting us. We can help you with your issue. We will get back to you ASAP with a solution. Thanks a lot for being with us.

Our support agent needed to create a table from the site’s SQL data that contained user information.

It was an easy fix. Ninja Table has that feature built-in. Our expert agent wrote a few lines of script to pull users’ information. It created a table from SQL data.

The tickets continue.

Now I can see all the users’ information in a single table. But now I want to display only logged-in user information in the table. The rest of the user’s information should be hidden for that user.

Sure, we can do that for you.

So, the support agent created a custom shortcode to embed the table on the display page. That custom shortcode restricted other users’ information to the logged-in user.  

But the client came to our support team again.

Hi, I’m very happy with the output. But now I need one more thing from you. I need another column in the table with a form link in it. If a customer clicks on it, it will open a new page with the form on it. And I need it to be prefilled with the information from the table. I don’t want my customer to fill out the form again.

We can certainly help you with this. Our engineers will get into it and get back to you soon with a solution.

Our support team has two challenges in solving this ticket.

• A table created using SQL data has a limitation. You cannot add a new column to the table without touching the SQL data. Altering SQL data is not a good idea at all. So, adding a new column in the table with a form link is difficult.
• Pull the data from the table to prefill a form with logged-in users data. And then make the prefilled input box uneditable.

Our team starts with the first challenge. We cannot create a new column without altering the SQL data. But then they figured out a way to replace particular data with the desired data. And in this case, the desired data is the form page link.

So, they used a column from the SQL data set that did not have important information. Using the custom scripting, they replaced the SQL-pushed data with the form page link. Part one is solved.

For the second challenge, our team used Fluent Form. They integrate the Fluent form with the Ninja table. With the help of some custom scripting, they were able to pull the data from the table into the form’s input box.

The client was really happy with the outcome. Just because of this service, the client bought all of our products. And there is no need to mention that the client became one of our advocates.

Story #3: Ninja Table

Customers can show you totally different use cases for your product. This particular story is the best example of this statement.

Hi, I am using your Ninja Table plugin on my site. I need to link a Google Sheet with the plugin. Is it possible?

Thanks a lot for connecting us. We have a built-in integration facility for Google Sheets in the table settings.

At this point, the WP Manage Ninja team sent a step-by-step video tutorial to show how to do the integration. and the client was happy with this.

But shortly after that, clients connected with our support team again with multiple queries.

I need your help to customize the table. I want to make it look different from a regular table. Specifically, I want to hide the header and border and resize the columns and rows. I also want to know if I can apply custom styling to the data from the Google Sheet and if an image inserted in the Google Sheet will appear in the table. So somehow, I don’t want it to look like a table.

Thanks again for connecting with us. All of your requests are possible. However, it would be helpful if we could have access to the site table on your site. This would allow us to provide you with a better suggestion.

The client shared a link to the site with the support team. The whole team was a bit confused.

Hi again. Thanks a lot for sharing the site link with us. But we may need a little more information about the site. And please specify where you want to put the final table. Also, can you please give us a link to the actual table?

I gave you the link to the table.

We are very sorry; you just gave us a site link. We cannot see any tables here.

That is the table.

May you please elaborate? What do you mean by that?

I made a full website using your table builder plugin.

After some inspection of the site, our agent realized our client had made a fully functional website using our table builder plugin. We were just amazed by this type of use case.

The client also linked the table with a Google Sheet, which we helped them with previously. This means that they do not need to log in to the WordPress dashboard to change any data.

The client can simply make changes to the Google Sheet from their phone, and our table plugin will automatically update the data on the site.  

This is so far one of the most unique and clever use cases we have seen for any of our products.

Takeaways customer service case studies

Up until now, we have shared six different customer service case studies. But these are not just stories. These case studies tell us what excellent service is. It teaches us how we can go the extra mile and how it can impact our customers.

Essential qualities of the best customer service reps

So, here are a few takeaways from these case studies:

• Be responsive. Respond to the customer, even if it’s a tweet. Be quick and efficient.
• Be helpful. Go above and beyond to help customers. This could mean tracking down a discontinued product, giving a refund, or even just sending a handwritten note. Personalization matters in customer relations. A good gesture could be to send customers gratitude notes that have been carefully crafted to suit their tastes. You can design cards , for instance, which gives you ample room for creativity and personal touch. Even when they don’t know it’s not required. This could mean offering advice, making recommendations, or just listening.
• Be transparent. Be honest with customers, even when it’s not good news. Customers always appreciate a direct response, even when they are angry.
• Be personal. Take the time to get to know the customer’s individual needs. This will help you provide more personalized service. Which will make them feel special.
• Be human. Don’t hold your personality back; let your human side shine through. Show that you care about the customer and their experience. This could mean using humor, being empathetic, or just being yourself. The personal level of connection is effortless. This will make your service seamless.
• Go the extra mile. Go above and beyond to help customers. This could mean tracking down a discontinued product, giving a refund, or even just sending a handwritten note. Whether you need to write custom code, provide training, or even just be a sounding board, let it be.
• Be creative. If you can’t find a solution, that’s fine. Go out of the box and come up with a new one.
• Be patient. Sometimes, it takes time to find the right solution that works. Be patient with customers and stay with them until they’re happy with it.
• Be open-minded. Customers may use your product in ways that you never intended. Be open to new ideas.
• Be impressed. Be amazed by the imagination and creativity of your clients. When you see customers using your product in a unique way, make sure to let them know how impressed you are.

Final thoughts

Being a tech support specialist or service agent is a challenging job, no doubt. A customer can come up with any type of issue. Hance, the service providers have to be sound enough to deal with any surprises.

The service-dependent industries are constantly facing a variety of cases every day. That’s why customer service case studies are a must-read for support and service providers. And, on the other hand, these stories can bring in new customers.

Start off with a powerful ticketing system that delivers smooth collaboration right out of the box.

Md. Ariful Basher

Hi, this is Abir, a web designer and full-time content writer passionate about psycho-thrillers and sci-fi. I focus on creating captivating content and visually stunning websites, ensuring a top-notch customer experience. Also, a food enthusiast!

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• Customer Interaction

4 Customer Service Case Studies to Inspire You

Customer service case studies help attract new customers to your business by showing them how your company can help them. Instead of simply telling customers what you can do for them, you demonstrate it with storytelling and draw them in.

November 24, 2022

6 mins read

If you’ve researched any brand it’s more than likely you’ve come across a customer service case study. Real-life customer experiences are a powerful way to advertise a brand and showcase the real interactions customers have when approaching a company’s customer service department.

Instead of simply telling a customer what it’s like to benefit from a company’s customer service, they demonstrate genuine examples of customers who have submitted tickets to their customer service team. 

On the surface of it, one company can appear much like another without powerful customer service case studies to demonstrate its impact. Customers will be required to actually sign up to your service before they can experience your customer support for themselves. 

What is a customer service case study?

A customer service case study is a strategy to show the experiences of customers that have actually signed up to use your product or service and have actually witnessed your customer service for themselves. 

Potential customers who are researching what your company has to offer will benefit from the case studies of customers that have already passed through the buying decision. Instead of a company simply telling prospective customers what they have to offer, they will be able to demonstrate their service in reality. 

A customer service case study goes beyond being a simple testimonial, however. It’s factual evidence of customers who have implemented your company’s product or service and a demonstration of its ability to actually deliver results. 

Why are customer service case studies important? 

Without customer service case studies, your business will struggle to show how it is helping its customers. A case study shows your prospective customers how the business has performed in a real-life example of customer service, and helps them imagine what it would be like to do business with your company. 

Customer service case studies show potential customers how your business has helped customers to solve their problems and further their business goals. Although there are other ways to market your business, customer service case studies are a solid way to reach out to new prospects and convert them into customers. 

Successful customer case studies showcase successful examples of customer service that persuade your prospects to actually buy. They show prospects how well your customer service actually works and highlights your product’s value. 

How do you write a customer service case study?

There are a few strategies you need to follow when writing a customer service case study. Having a variety of different case studies will enable you to reach more potential customers which cover a range of situations and needs. 

1. Focus on your personas

You need to consider the type of the customer that you want to attract with your customer service case study. Mapping out your personas is an important part of your marketing strategy because it helps you identify prospects with unique wants and needs. Your customer service may appeal to different types of individuals and it’s crucial to target each one specifically. 

2. Tell a story

At their core, customer service case studies are stories about particular customers. Simply raving about how great your company is wil be boring for your readers, and you need to take them on a journey. Stories need to have obstacles to overcome, and your case study should show how your product or service is the hero of the narrative. 

3. Emphasize benefits

The benefits of your customer service will help to appeal to customers that have a specific pain point to solve. Instead of focusing on products or features it’s important to show how your service will help them. Your customer service case study is likely to be a representative example of a customer that has similar problems to other prospects, and it’s important to help prospective customers visualize using your service. 

4. Highlight the results 

Highlighting the results that your customer service will help your customers achieve means focusing on the before and after of using your service. Genuine improvements to your customer’s business will help to convince them that your product or service is the answer. Showing the results of your customer service helps customers see how they can save or make more money after choosing your business. 

4 interesting customer service case studies

Quick heal and kayako.

Here’s the first interesting customer service case study from Kayako. There was a company called Quick Heal Technologies which was a provider of internet security tools and anti-virus software. They had millions of global users, but they were struggling to deliver outstanding customer service due to a high volume of customer service requests. 

One of their main issues was the absence of a system to track requests from different sources. Agents were checking many different platforms for customer service requests, and lacked a vital overview of the customer experience. They were losing tickets and suffering from incomplete information. There were delays in the customer support experience and the existing system couldn’t manage its workflow. 

Enter Kayako, help desk software. Their Shared Inbox Solution brought together the different customer service platforms such as email, Facebook, Twitter, and live chat. Quick Heal agents were able to support customers seamlessly and minimize the number of tickets that were dropped. They could significantly reduce their ticket response times and accelerate the time to resolution. Agents were able to much more effectively collaborate and reduce duplication of effort. 

Springboard and Help Scout

The next customer service case study is about Springboard, a platform which provides online resources and personalized mentors to help students build their dream careers. Their aim is to make a great education accessible to anyone in the world. 

So far, they have worked with 250 mentors to train more than 5,000 students over 6 continents. Their success has depended on their ability to create an open environment where students feel comfortable requesting feedback and discovering course information on their own. 

Springboard needed a solution that could help them build relationships with their students, even if it’s over email, and they decided that Help Scout was the answer. They chose Help Scout because it means they can have human conversations rather than treating their students like a ticket number. 

They make use of Help Scout’s help desk features to find key insights into students’ conversations, as well as their Docs knowledge base which provides answers to common questions. As a result, students are able to more effectively learn and overcome problems when they arise. 

We’ve got another customer service case study from an airline – in this case, JetBlue. They really know how to make their customers smile with small gestures and ensure they can win customers for life. 

One customer called Paul Brown was flying with JetBlue from the smaller terminal at Boston’s Logan airport. He realized that he couldn’t grab his usual Starbucks coffee because there was no Starbucks at the terminal. On a whim, he sent a tweet to JetBlue asking them to deliver his venti mocha, and to his surprise they obliged! Within minutes JetBlue customer service representatives had delivered the coffee to Paul’s seat on the plane. 

This example of customer service shows that JetBlue is willing to go the extra mile for customers and will ensure that the company can continue to attract more customers.

Gympass and Slack

Gympass is an international platform that gives companies and their employees 50% to 70% off a global network of fitness studios, digital workouts, and mental health and nutrition services. It was founded in 2012 and has experienced steady growth, now worth more than USD $1 billion. Users of Gympass have access to 50,000 gyms and studios in more than 7,000 cities, so they can work out while they are on the move. 

The problem with this growing company was communication across the globe. The company was overly reliant on emails which led to silos and employees missing out on vital information. The solution to this problem was Slack, a communications platform which is made accessible to all new employees so they have everything they need right from the start. 

Now, teams at Gympass work across a range of 2,000 Slack channels which are open to 1,000 employees. They can share documents, messages and information, keeping connected across locations and facilitating new projects like event planning. It’s enabled Gympass to build a strong culture of collaboration and ensure that every employee can find the information they need. 

Wrapping up

Customer service case studies help attract new customers to your business by showing them how your company can help them. Instead of simply telling customers what you can do for them, you demonstrate it with storytelling and draw them in. Showing your customers benefits and outcomes support them to make the decision to purchase. 

Before they actually have a trial of using your product or service, it’s hard for customers to know what it would be like. Case studies can give a valuable preview into what it would be like to work with your company and highlight customers that have already achieved success. 

Catherine is a content writer and community builder for creative and ethical companies. She often writes case studies, help documentation and articles about customer support. Her writing has helped businesses to attract curious audiences and transform them into loyal advocates. You can find more of her work at https://awaywithwords.co.

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Customer Experience

11 great customer service examples in 2023

Excellent customer service is essential for business. In fact, consumers are willing to spend 17 percent more with companies that deliver great customer service, according to American Express .

Unfortunately, it’s true that bad news travels faster than good news, especially in the age of social media. Most customer service stories online are about a bad customer service experience, and consequently, you don’t always hear about companies who are achieving customer satisfaction.

Keep scrolling to find customer service examples that will inspire, as well as tips for improving your customer experience.

What does excellent customer service look like?

The definition of “good” customer service is flexible, because it entirely depends on the level of expectation that customers have for your brand. This can be affected by variables such as your industry, product cost, brand reputation and more.

For example, if you’re flying in Economy, you don’t expect a 5* service with champagne and snacks - but if you were flying Business class, you’d be annoyed if those things weren’t provided for the higher cost of your seat.

What consumers expect from your customer service experience is the key factor in whether they perceive your brand to be great or terrible. Do they want to be able to resolve issues on multiple channels, or do they go to one channel for specific problems? Is your average response time more important to them, or is it how many self-service options you provide that matters? Is poor customer service the main reason why they might try a competitor?

Your support teams are your front line, shaping customer experience on a day-to-day basis. They can be proactively helpful in providing customer service that’s memorable, and turn a bad customer service experience around.

Investing in great service is worth your while. Don’t lose customers and brand loyalty by failing to meet and exceed expectations - grow your business’ revenue by ensuring that your excellent service keeps customers coming back.

Examples of good customer service experiences are more often than not the result of a kind, customer-centric service agents who are good at the following things:

Good customer service examples

• Responding quickly: A customer will appreciate fast response times when they want to ask a question or highlight a problem.
• Acting on customer feedback: When a customer support agent acts on the feedback they’ve received, it shows them that their opinion mattered.
• Showing empathy: Employees that try to understand a customer’s point of view make a customer feel valued, and can turn an angry customer into a happy one.
• Maintaining customer self-service options: Sometimes customers would prefer to find their own answer to problems rather than getting in touch with your customer service center. Having an up-to-date FAQ page or knowledge article base can be very helpful.
• Providing omnichannel support: Different communication channels can support customers that have busy schedules or want flexibility in how they connect with businesses. Your customer service teams need to be prepared to offer support through email, phone, live chat, and social media.
• Going the extra mile: When an employee is able to deliver excellent customer service beyond the customer’s expectations or adds a personal touch to the service experience, it can leave a positive impression and increase customer loyalty.

A less generalized amd more specific example of enhancing customer satisfaction and building loyalty is by offering discounts and coupons (depending on your industry and needs).

Why is delivering excellent customer service important?

There are several reasons why great customer service is important for your business. Below we list the most important ones.

Satisfied customers will spend more

According to Hubspot , 68 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for products and services from brands associated with excellent customer service. When you invest in delivering great customer service, you’re creating happy customers but also generating enough brand equity to charge a premium for your offering.

Your ROI will improve and profits will increase

Deloitte found that brands that were customer-centric were 60 percent more profitable when they were compared to companies that neglected to focus on customer experience. Your support team should be empowered to provide excellent customer service, not just for the customer’s benefit, but for your brand’s financial benefit as well.

Customers are more likely to forgive you

If you provide good customer service, you can convince customers to return, even if something didn’t go as they expected. Salesforce found that 78 percent of consumers will do business with a brand again after a mistake is made if the customer service is excellent.

Customer loyalty improves with great customer service

Microsoft says that a whopping 96 percent of customers believe customer service is vital when they’re choosing to be loyal to a brand. If you don’t provide customer service that meets expectations when dealing with an upset customer, you risk alienating them from returning to spend more. Quality service will help you to increase customer lifetime value.

A great customer experience means a higher chance of recommendations

Consumers who have a good customer service experience are more likely to recommend your brand to other people. Our own XM Institute found that consumers who rate a brand’s service as “good” are 38% more likely to recommend that company to others.

Real-life examples of great customer service

It's one thing to talk about what good customer service is in theory, and another to apply it to real-world companies. Below are eleven customer service examples from companies that go above and beyond, as well as the customer service tips we’ve taken from their stories.

• JetBlue - Thank frequent customers with small gestures
• Tesla - Meet your customers where they're at
• Adobe - Respond to customer service complaints before they happen
• Trader Joe's - Help those in time of need
• Coca-Cola - Get involved in social causes
• Zappos - Personally reply to every email
• Us! - Provide an exceptional event experience
• Sainsbury’s – Don't be afraid to change everything
• American Express – Give customers benefits that can be used globally
• Walmart - Invite customers into the company family
• The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company – Turn customer errors into service opportunities

1. JetBlue - Thank frequent customers with small gestures

Paul Brown was flying JetBlue airlines when he casually tweeted that he couldn’t grab his Starbucks coffee before boarding the plane because he was flying out of the smaller terminal at Boston’s Logan airport. Within seconds of seeing the tweet, JetBlue sprang to action and the airport customer service reps delivered a Starbucks venti mocha to his seat on the plane. Brown was elated and raved about JetBlue on Twitter.

Good customer service takeaway : This is definitely one of those great customer examples other companies can learn from. The main takeaway? Your customers don’t always need large gestures, but just want to know they’re appreciated. In fact, 68 percent of customers leave because they perceive you don’t appreciate them.  I’m sure after knowing his request was heard, Mr. Brown feels appreciated and he’ll be a loyal customer for a long time. Keep your company at the top of your customer’s mind, with good customer care by doing small acts for more people, instead of a few large things for a lot of people. Believe it or not, it's the simple things that count and produce loyal and happy customers.

2. Tesla - Meet your customers where they’re at

Tesla literally meets customers where they’re at by going to the customer’s home and fixing issues on their car. It’s convenient for the customer because they don’t have to sit around a repair shop and it can be scheduled on their own time. This is an example of excellent customer service.

Flat tire on Sunday. Called Tesla, git a loaner tire within 40 minutes. Today they came to my house to replace the tire in 10 minutes. scheduled to come back to fix a small issue next week. What other car company does this? @elonmusk @TeslaModel3 @Tesla #mobileservice pic.twitter.com/GiNwOM3RJZ — Chris Kern (@cjk7216) October 31, 2018

3. Adobe - Respond to customer service complaints before they happen

When Adobe had an outage due to an issue with Amazon Web Services, they posted a tweet about it before they started getting customer complaints. The tweet contained a video of a puppy stampede as a distraction and lightened the mood. While there were some comments asking when the program would be running again, many replies focused on the adorable puppies.

Hi all, some Adobe services are down due to the AWS outage: https://t.co/U2qtybaT8J Here's a puppy stampede to take your mind off of it. ? pic.twitter.com/Glv6Anavje — Adobe Customer Care (@AdobeCare) February 28, 2017

4. Trader Joe's - Help those in time of need

An 89-year-old man was stuck in his house during a snowstorm and his granddaughter was worried he wouldn’t have enough food. She called around to several grocery stores and asked if they would deliver, to no avail. Finally, Trader Joe’s said they normally don’t deliver, but they would help. She read off a big list to the store and they delivered the entire order and more within 30 minutes, free of charge.

5. Coca-Cola - Get involved in social causes

Since 1984, Coke has given back more than $1 billion through the Coca-Cola Foundation. What’s great is they give back at the local level and not just to large organizations. For instance, Coke in Ireland initiated the Coca-Cola Thank You Fund , which gives €100K annually to local charities that empower young people, foster sustainability, and encourage diversity and inclusion.

6. Zappos - Personally reply to every email

Zappos responds to every email it receives, even if it’s addressed to the CEO. In this case, a woman sent a request to Tony Hsieh and even though he was unavailable, his representative sent a humorous and engaging email back.

7. Us!  - Provide an exceptional event experience

During many conferences that we attend, we send our  “Qualtrics Dream Team” to fulfill customers' needs and wishes to make the event a truly exceptional experience. From food and drinks, to swag, to even vacations and massages, our team tries to fulfill as many requests as possible. They also collect customer feedback and make changes for a better event experience, such as room temperature and providing phone chargers.

Not a legal comment, but every other company listed here has some example of a customer thanking them for good customer service. I think our example would be stronger if we had something like that.

Curious to know how we run the Dream Team using our own software, or why we bring it to events like #CXOLeadersSummit ? Stop by our booth and we'll share all the secrets! Our team is here till 4pm AEST. pic.twitter.com/pEjfd2Jl8K — Qualtrics (@Qualtrics) August 8, 2018

8. Sainsbury’s – Don't be afraid to change everything

When Sainsbury’s, a UK supermarket chain, received a letter from three-and-a-half-year-old Lily Robinson, they ended up rebranding one of their products entirely. Lily thought their "tiger bread" didn’t resemble a tiger’s stripes at all – it looked more like the pattern on a giraffe. Sainsbury’s responded that the little girl was right and made new labels to share Lily's insight with other customers.

9. American Express – Give customers benefits that can be used globally

American Express maintains their position as a top-tier credit card company by offering its customers plenty of extra benefits: complimentary travel flight credit, insurance, and access to airline lounges to name a few. Combine these worldwide benefits with American Express's 24/7 support line and its global partners network and you have a company that truly connects with you wherever you are.

10. Walmart - Invite customers into the company family

Walmart has a reputation for being focused on providing value to everyday families. They live out their family focus through the way they treat their employees. When one of their associates turned 101 years old, they shared the news on Facebook and invited customers to participate in the celebration.

11. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company – Turn customer errors into service opportunities

Ritz-Carlton employees are allowed up to $2,000 to fix any guest problem, no questions asked. One example was told by customer John DiJulius, who left his charger behind at The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota. He received a next-day air package with his charger and a note saying ‘Mr. DiJulius, I wanted to make sure we got this to you right away. I am sure you need it, and, just in case, I sent you an extra charger for your laptop.’

How to provide great customer service

The best way to provide a good customer service experience is to gather feedback, set metrics and take action on your overall customer experience (CX) .

Why not check out our free survey template to collect feedback for customer service and contact centers? You can download it here.

With Qualtrics, you can track key metrics with a customer service benchmark report to help you to understand how your service is improving over time. Track interactions and feedback across the customer journey and customer service experience, and set action into motion to gain customer trust and loyalty.

Best customer service practices: Improving agent effectiveness

Diana Kaemingk

Diana Kaemingk is a contributor to the Qualtrics blog.

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Customer Service Case Studies: Real-Life Examples Of Service Scenarios.

Are you looking for real-life examples of customer service scenarios that can help you improve your own customer service skills? Look no further!

In this article, we will explore a series of case studies that highlight different aspects of effective customer service. These case studies will provide you with valuable insights into how to handle challenging situations, resolve issues, and create positive experiences for your customers.

Customer service plays a crucial role in the success of any business. It is not just about answering phone calls or responding to emails; it is about building relationships and exceeding customer expectations. By studying real-life examples, you can gain a deeper understanding of the importance of effective customer service and learn strategies to enhance your own skills.

In each case study, we will delve into different scenarios and examine how businesses successfully handled them. From resolving product quality issues to dealing with difficult customers, these case studies will showcase various approaches and solutions that you can apply in your own work.

Get ready to dive into these insightful stories that demonstrate the power of exceptional customer service!

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Effective customer service is crucial for the success of a business.
• Empathy and proactive customer service are essential aspects of providing excellent customer service.
• Prompt resolution of product quality issues, with notification and compensation for affected customers, helps maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Handling difficult customers with a calm and empathetic approach, offering alternatives, and empowering them to make choices can build trust and loyalty.

The Importance of Effective Customer Service

You can’t underestimate the impact of great customer service – it’s like a warm cup of coffee on a chilly morning, instantly making you feel valued and appreciated.

In today’s competitive business landscape, providing effective customer service is more important than ever. Customers have numerous options at their fingertips, and one bad experience can send them running to your competitors. That’s why empathy plays a crucial role in customer service.

When customers feel understood and cared for, they’re more likely to become loyal advocates for your brand. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. In customer service, this means putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and genuinely listening to their concerns.

By showing empathy, you demonstrate that you value their emotions and are committed to finding a solution that meets their needs. This not only helps resolve issues effectively but also builds trust and strengthens the relationship with your customers.

Proactive customer service is another essential aspect of providing exceptional support. Instead of waiting for customers to come to you with problems or complaints, proactive customer service involves anticipating their needs and addressing any potential issues before they arise.

This approach shows that you’re dedicated to delivering an outstanding experience from start to finish. By taking the initiative, you can prevent problems from escalating and create positive interactions that leave a lasting impression on your customers.

The importance of effective customer service cannot be overstated. Empathy allows you to connect with your customers on a deeper level by understanding their emotions and concerns. Proactive customer service demonstrates your commitment to going above and beyond expectations by anticipating needs before they become problems.

By prioritizing these aspects in your approach to customer service, you can foster loyalty, build strong relationships with customers, and ultimately drive success for your business.

Case Study 1: Resolving a Product Quality Issue

Resolving a product quality issue can be challenging, but did you know that 86% of customers are more likely to repurchase from a company that resolves their complaint? When faced with a product quality issue, it’s important for companies to take immediate action and address the problem effectively.

One notable case study involves a product recall due to safety concerns. The company promptly notified customers about the recall through multiple channels such as email, social media, and website announcements. This proactive approach not only ensured customer safety but also demonstrated the company’s commitment to resolving the issue.

To further enhance customer satisfaction during this challenging time, the company offered compensation to affected customers. The compensation included a full refund for the recalled product as well as additional discounts on future purchases. By going above and beyond in compensating their customers, the company not only mitigated any potential negative feelings but also showed genuine concern for their customers’ wellbeing.

In addition to addressing individual complaints, the company took steps towards preventing similar issues in the future. They implemented stricter quality control measures throughout their production process and conducted thorough inspections before releasing any products into the market. This proactive approach reassured customers that their concerns were taken seriously and instilled confidence in the brand’s commitment to delivering high-quality products.

By resolving a product quality issue promptly and ensuring customer satisfaction through compensation and preventive measures, companies can not only retain existing customers but also build trust with new ones. It’s crucial for businesses to recognize that effective customer service goes beyond simply resolving complaints; it requires taking responsibility for failures, implementing meaningful solutions, and continuously improving processes to prevent similar issues from arising again in the future.

Case Study 2: Handling a Difficult Customer

Navigating through challenging interactions with clients can be a test of your company’s ability to handle difficult situations. Dealing with angry customers requires a delicate balance of empathy, patience, and problem-solving skills.

One real-life example of a company successfully managing a difficult situation involved an irate customer who had received a damaged product.

In this case, the customer contacted the company’s customer service department immediately after receiving the damaged product. The representative on the phone remained calm and empathetic throughout the conversation, acknowledging the customer’s frustration. They apologized sincerely for any inconvenience caused and assured the customer that they would resolve the issue promptly.

The representative then offered several options to address the problem, including sending a replacement or providing a refund. By presenting these alternatives, they empowered the customer to choose what solution best suited their needs. This approach helped defuse tension and created an atmosphere of collaboration rather than confrontation.

Ultimately, by effectively managing this difficult situation and prioritizing customer satisfaction, the company not only resolved the issue but also built trust and loyalty with their client base.

Case Study 3: Going Above and Beyond for a Customer

Exceeding expectations and leaving a lasting impression, one company went the extra mile to ensure a memorable experience for a dissatisfied client. The customer, let’s call her Sarah, had purchased a high-end laptop from this company but encountered numerous technical issues soon after receiving it. Frustrated with the product’s performance and the lack of support she received initially, Sarah reached out to the company’s customer service department for assistance.

To address Sarah’s concerns promptly, the customer service representative assigned to her case took immediate action. Recognizing that resolving her technical issues alone would not suffice in restoring Sarah’s trust and satisfaction, they decided to go above and beyond what was expected. The representative personally followed up with Sarah daily to provide updates on their progress in fixing her laptop. They also offered additional compensation for the inconvenience caused by sending her a complimentary accessory package.

In addition to their exceptional level of communication, this company created a personalized experience for Sarah through small gestures that left an indelible mark on her overall perception of their brand. One example was when they surprised her by upgrading her laptop’s warranty without any additional cost. This unexpected act not only demonstrated their commitment to providing quality products but also highlighted their dedication towards ensuring customer satisfaction.

By going above and beyond in addressing Sarah’s concerns and surpassing her expectations at every turn, this company exemplified outstanding customer service. Their proactive approach not only resolved technical issues efficiently but also left a lasting impression on Sarah concerning how much they valued her as a loyal customer. Through personalized attention, generous compensation, and unexpected upgrades, they not only ensured Sarah’s satisfaction but also fostered a long-term relationship based on trust and loyalty. This case study serves as a powerful reminder that going the extra mile can make all the difference in customer satisfaction and retention.

Case Study 4: Turning a Negative Review into a Positive Experience

If your business has ever received negative feedback, it’s important to know how to turn that experience into a positive one.

In this case study, we will explore how a business addressed a customer’s concerns and transformed their perception from negative to positive.

By taking the necessary steps and going above and beyond, the business not only resolved the issue but also improved their reputation in the process.

The negative feedback received by the business

Despite your best efforts, your business was bombarded with a barrage of scathing feedback that left you reeling. Customers expressed their dissatisfaction with the quality of your products and the poor customer service they received.

These negative reviews not only affected customer retention but also posed a threat to your brand reputation. The negative feedback highlighted areas where improvements were needed. It pointed out flaws in your product design, manufacturing processes, and communication channels.

While it may be disheartening to receive such criticism, it presents an opportunity for you to address these issues and enhance the overall customer experience. By acknowledging the shortcomings and taking immediate action to rectify them, you can regain customers’ trust and loyalty while rebuilding your brand’s reputation.

The steps taken to address the customer’s concerns

After receiving the negative feedback, we quickly took action to address the customer’s concerns and improve our products and services. We understand that addressing customer complaints is essential for maintaining a positive reputation and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Our first step was to reach out to the customer directly, expressing our apologies for any inconvenience caused and assuring them that their concerns were being taken seriously.

To resolve the customer’s issues, we implemented a thorough investigation into the matter. This involved examining the specific details of their complaint, evaluating our internal processes, and identifying any areas where improvements could be made. By conducting this analysis, we were able to pinpoint the root cause of the problem and develop an effective solution.

Once we identified areas for improvement, we promptly made necessary changes to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. This included updating our training programs for staff members involved in customer service interactions and enhancing quality control measures throughout our production process. We also communicated these updates transparently with all relevant stakeholders to ensure everyone understood our commitment to resolving customer issues.

Addressing customer complaints is not just about solving individual problems; it is about continuously improving our overall products and services. By taking immediate action upon receiving negative feedback, we demonstrate our dedication to providing exceptional experiences for every customer.

We remain committed to resolving any issues promptly while striving to exceed expectations in delivering high-quality products and top-notch service.

The transformation of the customer’s perception and improved reputation

Now that the steps have been taken to address the customer’s concerns, let’s discuss the transformation of their perception and the improved reputation of your business.

By promptly addressing the customer’s issues and providing a satisfactory resolution, you’ve demonstrated your commitment to customer satisfaction. This level of responsiveness not only resolves the immediate problem but also leaves a lasting impression on the customer.

As a result, their perception of your brand is likely to improve significantly. They’ll appreciate your willingness to listen, understand, and take action to rectify any issues they may have faced. This positive experience can lead to increased brand loyalty as customers recognize that you value their feedback and are committed to delivering exceptional service.

To further enhance customer satisfaction and foster brand loyalty, consider implementing these strategies:

• Personalized follow-up: Reach out to customers after resolving their concerns with personalized messages or phone calls. This gesture shows that you genuinely care about their experience and want to ensure their ongoing satisfaction.
• Proactive communication: Keep customers informed about any changes or improvements related to the issue they encountered. Sharing updates showcases transparency and builds trust in your ability to continuously improve.
• Loyalty rewards program: Offer incentives or exclusive benefits for loyal customers who continue choosing your brand despite any initial challenges they may have faced. Rewarding their loyalty encourages repeat business and strengthens long-term relationships.

By investing in improving customer satisfaction and building brand loyalty, you can create a positive reputation for your business while fostering long-term success in an increasingly competitive market.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key elements of effective customer service.

Effective customer service requires several key elements.

One interesting statistic is that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. This highlights the importance of providing exceptional service.

Effective communication plays a crucial role in customer service as it allows you to understand the needs and concerns of your customers, while also conveying information clearly and concisely.

Empathy and understanding are equally important, as they enable you to connect with customers on an emotional level, showing them that their satisfaction is your top priority.

By incorporating these elements into your customer service approach, you can create positive experiences that leave a lasting impression on your customers.

How can companies measure the success of their customer service efforts?

To measure the success of your customer service efforts, you can utilize various customer satisfaction metrics and conduct thorough customer feedback analysis.

Customer satisfaction metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Effort Score (CES), provide valuable insights into how satisfied your customers are with the service they received. These metrics allow you to quantify customer sentiment and identify areas for improvement.

Additionally, analyzing customer feedback through surveys or social media monitoring enables you to understand specific pain points and address them proactively.

By consistently measuring these indicators and taking action based on the results, you can continuously enhance your customer service performance and ensure a positive experience for your customers.

What are some common challenges faced by customer service representatives?

Handling difficult customers and managing high call volumes can be incredibly challenging for customer service representatives. Dealing with irate customers can feel like trying to calm a hurricane with a feather, as their frustrations can reach astronomical levels. It requires an extraordinary level of patience and empathy to navigate through their anger and find a resolution that satisfies both parties.

Additionally, managing high call volumes can feel like juggling flaming swords while walking on a tightrope. The constant influx of calls puts immense pressure on representatives to provide quick and efficient assistance without compromising the quality of service.

However, despite these Herculean tasks, customer service representatives rise above the challenges by employing exceptional communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction.

How can companies improve their customer service skills and knowledge?

To improve their customer service skills and knowledge, companies should invest in comprehensive training programs that provide employees with the necessary tools and techniques to handle different scenarios. These programs can include modules on effective communication, problem-solving, and empathy to ensure that representatives are equipped to handle any customer interactions.

Additionally, implementing feedback systems that allow customers to provide their input and suggestions can also be beneficial. This feedback can help identify areas for improvement and enable companies to make necessary adjustments in their processes or training programs.

By prioritizing ongoing training initiatives and actively seeking customer feedback, companies can continually enhance their customer service skills and knowledge, leading to improved overall customer satisfaction levels.

What are some best practices for handling customer complaints and resolving issues?

When it comes to handling customer complaints and resolving issues, think of yourself as a skilled navigator guiding a ship through stormy waters. Customer feedback is like the wind, sometimes gentle and other times fierce, but always pushing you towards improvement.

Conflict resolution is your compass, helping you find the right path to address concerns and turn unhappy customers into satisfied ones. Actively listen to their grievances, empathize with their frustrations, and offer swift solutions that demonstrate your commitment to their satisfaction.

By taking ownership of the problem and going above and beyond to resolve it, you can transform a dissatisfied customer into a loyal advocate for your brand.

In conclusion, effective customer service is crucial for businesses to thrive in today’s competitive market. As demonstrated by the case studies discussed, handling product quality issues, difficult customers, and negative reviews with empathy and proactive solutions can turn potentially negative experiences into positive ones.

One interesting statistic that highlights the impact of great customer service is that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience (Source: PwC). This statistic evokes an emotional response as it emphasizes the value customers place on exceptional service. By investing in providing top-notch customer service, businesses not only create loyal customers but also have the potential to increase their revenue.

To ensure success in customer service scenarios, it is essential for businesses to empower their employees with proper training and resources. By equipping them with problem-solving skills, effective communication techniques, and a genuine desire to help customers, companies can build strong relationships and foster trust. Additionally, embracing technology solutions such as AI-powered chatbots or self-service options can streamline processes and provide faster resolutions.

In summary, delivering exceptional customer service requires a proactive approach that focuses on resolving issues promptly while exceeding expectations. By prioritizing the needs of customers and going above and beyond to provide personalized solutions, businesses can create memorable experiences that result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Remember, investing in superior customer service is not just about satisfying your current customers; it’s about attracting new ones who’re willing to pay more for an outstanding experience.

The eSoft Editorial Team, a blend of experienced professionals, leaders, and academics, specializes in soft skills, leadership, management, and personal and professional development. Committed to delivering thoroughly researched, high-quality, and reliable content, they abide by strict editorial guidelines ensuring accuracy and currency. Each article crafted is not merely informative but serves as a catalyst for growth, empowering individuals and organizations. As enablers, their trusted insights shape the leaders and organizations of tomorrow.

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Customer Experience

5 Case Studies to Improve Your Customer Service

As more and more customer transactions occur virtually, the quality of online help desks and customer service support is becoming an essential differentiator for companies. An estimated  73% of consumers say a good experience is critical in influencing their brand loyalties.

Customer satisfaction directly impacts the bottom line, too, as 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue.

Apart from the stats, it is important to look for examples of company success stories improving customer service and productivity. Having high-performance customer service is essential for any company, regardless of industry. Check out these five case studies that will help you improve this process in your business.

How Quick Heal optimized their customer service, extending support hours and responding to inquiries faster

Quick Heal Technologies is a leading provider of internet security tools and anti-virus software, serving millions of users worldwide. Like many fast-growing companies, they experienced bottlenecks in their customer service process due to the high volume of requests.

• No system to track requests from different sources. 
• Agents could not maintain a global view of the customer request, negatively impacting customer service.  
• High incidence of lost tickets and incomplete information.
• Customers were not happy with the support delays.  
• The existing system did not manage its workflow.

Quick Heal researched several options yet didn’t find a solution with the right blend of factors. That’s when the team signed up for a free trial of Kayako. Before the free trial even ended, Quick Heal decided that Kayako was the right solution.

Kayako’s Shared Inbox Solution creates a frictionless experience by unifying interactions from different sources like email, Facebook, Twitter, and live chat. The Shared Inbox Solution means QuickHeal agents can serve customers more efficiently while preventing dropped tickets and lost conversations.

Kayako Benefits for Quick Heal:

• Reduced ticket response and resolution times
• Improved collaboration and reduced duplication of effort
• Extended support hours
• Consolidated conversations from multiple sources

“Without Kayako, we would not be able to manage all of the incoming ticket requests in an organized manner nor provide the quality of support we stand for. Kayako is far more efficient than our previous help desk system.” Sushant Dashputre, Assistant Manager of Technical Support at Quick Heal

Are you ready to deliver Friction-Free Customer Service? Capture your customer’s entire journey in a way a support ticket or traditional help desk never could. Discover Kayako Single View

Increasing NameCheap’s agent productivity through a self-service knowledge base

Namecheap is a leading domain registrar and technology company that offers domain registration, hosting packages, and related services. Customer support is vital to Namecheap, especially because they serve many repeat customers. Scaling personalization in support is imperative to avoid customer churn.

• No optimized workflow for the high volume of requests led to customer complaints.
• Due to a complicated and overwhelming process when responding to customer tickets, Agents became stressed. 
• Low productivity for service agents.

Namecheap began to look for a reliable, unified customer service software solution. They had difficulty finding an option that fit all their needs. The Namecheap team then learned about Kayako and decided to try it.

After Namecheap integrated Kayako into their website, they saw an immediate improvement in agent productivity. They implemented a Self-Service Portal with tools like macro-libraries of responses, automated replies, and a self-help knowledge base to help customers get helpful answers anytime they need help.

Kayako’s SingleView gives agents a complete visualization of the entire customer journey, from initial purchase to most recent customer service inquiry for individualized customer questions needing personalized support. Kayako enables Namecheap to scale personalized customer service, the holy grail for companies with a high volume of repeat customers.

Kayako Benefits for Namecheap:

• Improved self-service knowledge base.
• Streamlined ticket management.
• Boosted productivity.
• Increased customer satisfaction.

“One of the things we most value about Kayako is how carefully they have thought about real-life support processes. In all aspects, Kayako provides us with value in buckets.” Nata Trusova, Director of Customer Support at Namecheap

How Envato manages multiple customer bases in one place and resolves tickets faster

Envato is a world-leading online community for creatives. The company’s steady growth since 2006 outpaced its existing resources for support requests. Envato tried building their own help desk and quickly saw that a DIY solution would be prohibitively expensive in terms of time and money.

They began to search for an existing customer service software solution that could meet their needs and fit their budget.

• Existing support system not keeping up with the volume of requests. 
• Support requests were hard to track, sometimes going to individual emails. 
• Envato managed multiple customer databases and needed a way to coordinate them.

Using Kayako’s SingleView dashboard, Envato could access multiple customer databases in just one place. SingleView provides a complete view of the customer journey so that customer service agents can provide personalized support to every customer.

Using features like Kayako’s ticket parsing rules, Smart Routing and internal collaboration tools helps Envato efficiently give customers accurate answers every time. With Kayako, the Envato team handles more requests in less time while increasing the quality of customer service. Best of all, Kayako is a scalable solution that can grow with Envato.

Kayako Benefits for Envato:

• Resolved tickets faster.
• Managed all customer databases in a single system.

“Kayako has allowed us to extensively customize our help desk. This really meant that we can just make our help desk work in the way we want, rather than coming up with an elaborate system to fit into the technical requirements of other help desks. It has functionality that other support providers have not been able to match.” Jordan McNamara, Community Manager, Envato

Increasing Texas Tech´s customer satisfaction with a communication and collaboration platform

Texas Tech University is a top institution focused on advancing higher education, research, and health care. With more than 10,000 employees and over 36,000 students, their support team was overwhelmed with the volume of service requests.

• Support staff, students, faculty, and many other stakeholders were frustrated because the system couldn’t handle the high volume of support requests. 
• The situation reflected poorly on their brand as a top higher education institution. 
• Staff was trying to manage support requests using a shared Outlook account.
• They had no way to collaborate internally on support requests.

After comparing different options, Texas Tech chose Kayako because it offered  Kayako Collaborators Feature they needed to coordinate internal communications and to serve customers with faster responses.

Their team quickly implemented Kayako’s out-of-the-box features and immediately saw improvement.

“Once we implemented Kayako, we immediately noticed an increase in the quality of communication and collaboration, especially between our support and development team. Our customers also praised the improved communication.” Kevin Eyck, Enterprise Server Administrator, Texas Tech University

Kayako’s integrated self-service feature helped Texas Tech reduce the number of live-agent.

tickets by assisting customers in helping themselves. Texas Tech also leveraged Kayako’s customization options, using a custom LoginShare and integrating it with the intranet and applications used on their campus.

Kayako didn’t just help Texas Tech improve the support experience for the customer; it also enhanced their internal team’s productivity.

With Kayako, Texas Tech University handles all of its support requests quickly and easily resolves customer problems. Customers also benefit from the improved processes for ticket management and communication.

Kayako Benefits for Texas Tech University:

• Reduced the number of support tickets.
• Improved internal collaboration.
• Gained self-service capability.

How Kayako helped CoinStop reduce average response time and implement omnichannel customer support

Coinstop is a trusted provider of cold storage cryptocurrency hardware wallets. After launching in 2016, Coinstop experienced extremely rapid growth.

They soon struggled to manage and respond to all of the support inquiries and questions from potential customers. The Coinstop team began searching for a customer service software solution that was easy to use and implement.

• Rapid growth was putting a strain on the existing bare-bones support process.
• Coinstop must spend time educating customers as well as selling to them.
• Customer service practices did not scale with the company.
• Coinstop was providing customer support using a single email account. 
• Manually responding to hundreds of emails per day wasn’t a productive use of time. 
• There was no way to track the progress of support requests, they couldn’t standardize responses across the various agents, and they found themselves asking repetitive questions that frustrated their customers. 

Coinstop needed a help desk and live chat software to organize and optimize their support. They chose Kayako customer support software because it offers the best experience for both support agents and customers.

Using the Kayako dashboard, agents can interact with customers across multiple social platforms, email, and live chat. Agents can see the customer’s history from all channels, not just chat or email.

Everyone on the Coinstop team has immediate access to all the information they need to provide quick, personalized support to customers with Kayako’s SingleView.

Kayako Benefits for Coinstop:

• Reduced average response time.
• Managed a higher volume of tickets with the same number of agents.
• Improved collaboration between departments.
• Implemented omnichannel support.

“You need one place to browse every single conversation you have had with each customer. Kayako is very well organized. You can tie everything into it, including emails, social media, and team members.” Christopher Pavlesic, Co-Founder of Coinstop

Are you ready to increase your team’s efficiency? Provide a better employee experience and speed up internal support with Kayako HelpDesk. Discover Kayako Self Service

Common Challenges, Custom Solutions for Customer Service Help Desk

As you can see, companies across a spectrum of industries often share similar challenges with customer service. Do you have questions about improving your customer service process? Join world-class customer support teams like the companies in these case studies using Kayako to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Book a Demo today.

What you should do now

• Start your free trial or take the tour to learn more about Kayako
• Increase your knowledge on everything related to customer support with our free eBooks , Webinars and Case Studies
• If you know anyone who'd enjoy this content, share it with them via email, LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

Deliver Excellent Customer Support Experiences With Ease

These 13 Stories of Remarkable Customer Service Will Put a Smile on Your Face

Technology changes, but human nature is perpetual — and there are few things in life and in business that we enjoy more than seeing one person helping another.

Truly remarkable customer service goes beyond fixing bug or handing out discounts. It's about leaving people with a positive memory of your business.

When a flight attendant goes above and beyond for a frightened passenger, or a fry cook helps an elderly man to his car in a rainstorm, you're witnessing something more than “good” customer service—the customer getting what they asked for. You're witnessing someone going out of their way to make a customer's day, week, or month, and that's an important part of customer service that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Read on for thirteen stories of star service reps who went the extra mile for their customers.

Try the customer support platform your team and customers will love

Teams using Help Scout are set up in minutes, twice as productive, and save up to 80% in annual support costs. Start a free trial to see what it can do for you.

1. ATM gifts, not ATM fees

It was the height of summer, and at four TD Bank locations across Canada, a group of customers were being invited in to test out a new model of ATM.

When they used the machines, however, they found that these Automated Teller Machines were actually Automated Thanking Machines. Rather than balance checks or cash, they only spat out gifts.

A mother who never had the chance to take her kids to Disneyland received a family-pack of passes to finally go. Another, with a sick daughter in Trinidad, received a plane ticket. And one lucky Blue Jays fan received an invitation to throw the first pitch at a home game.

They weren't the only ones to get thanked, however. Over 30,000 TD Bank customers received recognition from TD on #TDThanksYou day. Every customer in a branch at 2 p.m. received a $20 bill. Customers logging in through their online banking or over the phone were informed that they would receive a direct deposit of $20.

If you're somehow still feeling cynical, then just check out the YouTube comments on this video . Virtually all of them thank TD Bank, express their amazement at this event, or suggest that they will or have switched to TD Bank after watching it.

Those are the kinds of results you can get when you automate processes in a human way and use them to enrich, not replace, your customers’ experiences.

2. How Bob the waiter got a 200,000% tip

This Redditor's husband , fresh off a root canal operation that left him unable to eat real food for days, was dying for some diner fare. When he finally regained the ability to chew, his wife took him out. She was excited to celebrate his return to the land of real food.

After an unusual wait, the husband and wife were finally seated next to a noisy blender at the end of the bar. Problems with the dinner service cropped up almost immediately.

Their waiter—“Bob”—hurriedly took their drink orders. He didn't ask if they were ready to order food. When they finally did, Bob brought out one of the side dishes before the entrees themselves arrived. And it was the wrong side dish.

After a few apologies and a “divine” burrito, the husband and wife were ready to pay the check and leave. When they got the check, they first thought the $0.01 listed was a mistake.

Discounts are so often used as last-ditch attempts to salvage a terrible experience that we forget how powerful they can be as preventative maintenance.

Restaurateur Danny Meyer , whose restaurants have consistently beat the odds in a very rough industry, talks about hospitality in terms of “good” vs. “great.” With a “good” experience at a store or restaurant, things may go fine. You may get everything you wanted precisely the way you ordered it. But it's rare for an employee to make you feel special, like they're on your side. That's what Bob did here by recognizing something crucial.

Few would expect a discount in this situation. And that's precisely why the discount is so powerful.

In the end, the family left Bob a $20 tip—or 200,000% of .01. Not bad for Bob!

3. Comfort through the turbulence

When Garrick, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, found himself in the position to help a passenger in need, he went above and beyond the call of duty.

Nine-year old Gabby, a type 1 diabetic, was severely anxious about being on an airplane. Garrick, a Southwest crew member, worked throughout the flight to make her more comfortable, bringing her special drinks and trying to make her laugh after he noticed her struggling during takeoff.

When the plane hit a serious patch of turbulence, he let her sit in the empty seat next to him, talked to her about his daughter (the same age as Gabby), about her pets, her school, and even let her grab his arm for comfort.

At the end of the flight, Garrick used the PA to tell the whole plane that his friend — Gabby — had just overcome her fear of flying, and that she deserved a round of applause from the whole plane. “The whole plane clapped for her,” her mother reported afterwards, “It was a wonderful experience on Southwest. We are forever grateful to have met such a beautiful, selfless soul.”

“She is a brave girl and it was a pleasure having you and her both onboard with us,” Southwest wrote back on her Facebook photo. “Rest assured, we will make sure that Garrick gets the recognition he deserves for his kindness.”

4. Under Wendy’s umbrella

This is a short tale that we wish we had more information on.

Posted on Reddit without any additional details or a follow-up, the submitter was at least able to capture a really heartwarming moment: amidst a pretty harsh rainstorm, a Wendy’s employee went outside, removed an umbrella from one of the tables, and walked an elderly man to his car.

Being a good citizen is about more than giving people discounts or refunds when they've had bad experiences. Sometimes, you need to go even further and extend empathy and a helping hand.

5. The Pom-Pom Pearl fan club

Who would’ve thought that you’d be seeing two tales of exceptional service from fast food companies?

While a boisterous personality isn’t for everyone, it’s hard to resist “Pom-Pom” Pearl Weaver’s charm and enthusiasm. The 89-year-old Arby’s employee draws fans from all around, the local press even giving some well-deserved attention to a woman who was truly passionate about making people’s day:

"Whenever anyone—young and old alike—steps up to the counter, Weaver waves a blue-and-white pompom and chirps "Hi everybody, welcome to Arby's!" writes Lara Brenckle. "She's fantastic," said the store's general manager Christian Stakes. "I don't want to diminish what she does, but she's the mascot. If she's off for a week, people ask about her."

Weaver herself attributes her attitude to her upbringing. “As one of 11 children,” she says, “there was always plenty to do.” In a service business, it's crucial to have people on your team that do more than represent your current culture—you need to have people who push the culture you have forward. Find people who represent your brand well and keep them around.

6. A Netflix live chat treasure

Taking the customer service tone to the front lines, this next example from a Netflix employee is best if you read the full thing for yourself below.

Here’s the entire screenshot of a Netflix customer who contacted support via their live chat. He definitely walked away with a great story to tell:

Kudos to Michael for trying something a little different and for rolling with whatever came next thanks to an equally hilarious customer.

7. Praise be to Gaben

Valve Software and its lovable leader Gabe Newell have definitely been a recent topic of discussion in our team chat room.

Valve is an amazing company for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is their Handbook for New Employees and how they can manage as a billion dollar company with no managers .

Gabe (often affectionately referred to in the PC gaming community as “Gaben”) has to be one of the most responsive CEOs when it comes to talking with his fans. He always seems to have time for his customers, no matter how big Valve gets.

This next story comes from a longtime fan of Valve and their highly popular games. Here’s what happened according to the customer:

"Last year, it was almost my birthday. I sent Gabe Newell an e-mail saying that I loved all of his games and that it would make my year if he would autograph a piece of paper and send it to me. A week or so later I got an e-mail from the manager of merchandise. He had said that they were sending something my way. I used the tracking number he provided and found that the package weighed close to 4 pounds. I was so excited. Finally, it’s two days before my birthday. The package has come in the mail. I open up to find not only a Portal mouse pad signed by the Gaben himself, but a copy of the book The Sacrifice with a ton of signatures from Valve employees. Needless to say it made my life.”

Valve certainly attracts some passionate fans, but Gabe always finds a way to be a man of the people, and he is without a doubt one of the best sources of inspiration for CEOs everywhere.

8. J. Crew's coupon conundrum

Despite my fondness for the occasional debonair pink tie, my closet is pretty standard. Still, I find myself constantly browsing Reddit’s Male Fashion Advice for the candid tales of great service in the ecommerce space.

One of my favorites actually comes from a larger company, J. Crew. Told in this thread by an appreciative customer, here’s the long and short of what happened:

J. Crew has a Factory page where new arrivals are sold in very limited amounts. During a particular sale there, a customer used a “one-time” coupon during checkout, but he accidentally canceled the order after placing it.

With the coupon now wasted, the customer decided to email support. J. Crew told the customer that they would gladly hold the order with the coupon applied; the customer would just have to call to confirm the order (due to the limited supply).

The customer wasn’t able to call until the next day, and by that time, the original items ordered were sold out. To his surprise, the customer was contacted by a support rep, who stayed on the line with him to pick out similar items from the regular J. Crew site, and at checkout, the support rep applied the closest Factory prices and the original coupon for the customer.

Needless to say, the customer was ecstatic:

"I am blown away by the lengths they made to make me happy when I wasn't upset in the first place, and even considered the mistake was on my end. I highly recommend J. Crew now just because of their customer service. They could not have been more kind and accommodating."

One of the best takeaways from the thread comes from a comment made by a former employee: "As a (former) employee they gave us a lot of leeway to keep the customer happy…"

9. Jack Threads & Jill

A customer service rep named Jill—fitting since she worked at JackThreads—has managed to win me over despite the fact that I’ve only ever seen her words on a screen. See for yourself; I wish I had a larger image, but below is a conversation Jill had with a customer dealing with a defective product:

Look closely at the language she uses and how the conversation gets personal, but not intrusive.

10. The aloha bear

It’s always nice to see outstanding service recognized by a happy customer. In a heartwarming story shared on Reddit, a service rep tells the tale of an older customer who called in because her netbook wasn’t working. Having recently suffered two strokes, she explained that she was struggling with writing, and she was forced to call in due to her malfunctioning netbook.

The service rep initially explained that the traditional thing to do was to mail it in for repairs. The women grew teary over the news, explaining that this was fine, but that she was dependent on the netbook to communicate with her daughter stationed in Hawaii and her deployed son-in-law.

Knowing that red tape shouldn’t stop her from taking care of a customer in need, the support rep quickly exchanged the netbook for her (sending her a new one), and even spent the extra time helping her set up the old passwords and account names, in addition to re-downloading Skype so she could talk with her family.

What really makes this a great story, however, is the follow-up. Out of the blue a few months later, our heroic service rep gets called down to the office. To her surprise, waiting there was the woman on the phone, holding a card and a teddy bear with a hula skirt:

"She says that what I did meant so much to her and her family that she called our corporate office and told them what I did, and that her daughter sent up the card and bear as a thank you."

11. No shoes, great service

Zappos customer service is the stuff of legends . Here’s an example that has some interesting lessons to teach about the dangers of red tape.

A customer was shopping for shoes for her elderly mother. Due to a medical condition, her mother had very sensitive feet and was often in pain when wearing hard-soled shoes. The customer bought six pairs of shoes from Zappos, and her mother tried them on and found two that she could bear to wear for long periods of time.

When it was time for her mother to return the other four pairs, she called Zappos, and in talking with the employee, this woman discovered that the person on the other end of the line could relate to her plight; the employee’s father had suffered from similar foot problems due to diabetes.

The employee ended the conversation by saying that she would pray for the woman to feel better, but the story doesn’t end there:

"My mom called me to relay the news, and I could hear the smile on her face from 600 miles away. She said that the lovely Zappos person had sent her an enormous bouquet of lilies and roses to let her know she was thinking of her. My sister emailed the company to thank Zappos for taking such good care of my Mom. Two days later, my mom, sister, and I were contacted and told we are now “Zappos VIP Members,” which entitles us to free expedited shipping on all our orders. My sister vows to buy every pair of shoes, from now on, from Zappos.”

Is somebody cutting onions in here? I swear, I just have something in my eye!

Truly a sweet story, and all thanks to Zappos’ willingness to trust the people they hire .

12. When milk & eggs fly

If there was ever a customer service hall of fame, Ritz-Carlton would be one of the first inductees. They base so much of their business on doing things for their customers that most others wouldn’t.

While their most famous story may be Joshie the Giraffe and his extended stay, that’s not the only great report from Ritz-Carlton. Perhaps my second favorite story comes from this Businessweek article detailing the lengths the company will go to satisfy its customers:

One family staying at the Ritz-Carlton, Bali, had carried specialized eggs and milk for their son who suffered from food allergies. Upon arrival, they saw that the eggs had broken and the milk had soured. The Ritz-Carlton manager and dining staff searched the town but could not find the appropriate items. But the executive chef at this particular resort remembered a store in Singapore that sold them. He contacted his mother-in-law, and asked that she buy the products and fly to Bali to deliver them, which she agreed to do. Of course the family was delighted. After an experience like that, do you think this particular family would even consider staying somewhere else?

Who would? No wonder so many of their customers stay for life .

13. Trader Joe's Dance Off

Nothing disappointed me more in my search for tales of great service than coming across this story and not having a picture to share with you.

Coming from the blog Life with the Kid , written by a mother about life with her son who has high-functioning autism, this next tale drives home a point we’ve made before: Trader Joe’s knows a thing or two about caring for customers.

It’s best told from the mother’s perspective, which I’m happy to share with you below:

"This evening I took the kid to Trader Joe’s to pick up some groceries. He was bouncing off the walls, unable to reign-in and control himself… But if there’s anything I’ve learned, real life has to happen. Groceries aren’t going to buy themselves. He almost ran into an Employee—again. The employee rolled with it, pivoting easily to change his direction. I spoke with the kid, 'Please pay attention. You almost ran into that guy.' ‘That guy’ told me not to worry about it: ‘It’s part of the job. We’re always dodging around customers.’ ‘So, it’s like a constant dance party?’ I asked. And that was it — DANCE PARTY, indeed. That guy called out another employee who was stocking the frozen food and next thing I knew… they were literally jammin’ out, bringin’ down the house in the middle of the frozen food isle. And then, invited my kid to dance along. At first, he was too shy. But after about 30 seconds of watching these two grown, awesome people rock-it-out, he started bustin’ a move. And they cheered him on. And my heart was glad: Glad to be at Trader Joe’s; Glad that these employees were awesome people; Glad that my kid was getting his antsy-ness out in a fun way with positive reinforcement from these adults who will never know how thankful I am for their ability to turn a stressful moment into a fun memory. My kid will always remember Trader Joe’s as the place he danced.”

What a great memory and great service to their customers, and all thanks to a pair of employees who know how to have a little fun.

Like what you see? Share with a friend.

Gregory ciotti.

Greg is a writer, marketing strategist and alum of Help Scout. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn .

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Southwest Airlines: A Case Study in Great Customer Service

Table of Contents

Southwest Airlines serves over 126 million passengers each year, provides service to 121 airports across 11 countries and has maintained its nearly 72,000-employee roster with no involuntary furloughs or layoffs in its history. In addition to its commercial and financial success, Southwest Airlines is known for its excellent customer service. Southwest has built an impeccable reputation by putting customers first and ensuring its employees are content and financially secure.

This model of exceptional customer service can be extrapolated to fit the needs of almost any industry if you employ strategies that work for your business. We’ll explain why Southwest is so successful as a company and a customer service provider to help other businesses understand and implement its tenets. 

Southwest treats its employees well

Great customer service starts with happy employees. Southwest treats its employees well by backing individual employees’ decisions and providing everyone with quality employee benefits . For example, the company offers a 401(k) plan and matches contributions dollar-for-dollar up to 9.3 percent of the employee’s eligible earnings. It also offers a profit-sharing plan, an employee stock purchase plan, health and well-being rewards, as well as quality medical, vision and dental coverage.

In addition to benefits, Southwest also encourages professional development through in-person and online classes, mentorship programs, and even a Career Mobility Center that supports internal career advancement through advisement sessions and interview prep resources. The company also prioritizes community outreach, encouraging and incentivizing employees to give back to causes that matter to them.

Making employees brand advocates is your best defense against bad customer service.

Southwest makes excellent customer service its mission

According to a mission statement on Southwest’s website, “The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and Company Spirit.” 

Southwest outperforms competitors in customer service

In its last survey of the airline industry from 2018, the Temkin Group compared nine U.S. airlines on the quality of their customer experience – the sum of all a customer’s experiences and interactions with a brand. The strategy of focusing on customer experience is built around the needs of the individual customer over the lifetime of the customer-brand relationship.

The Temkin Group’s survey ranked each airline on the criteria of functionality (how well experiences meet customer needs), accessibility (how easy it is for customers to do what they want to do) and emotion (how customers feel about the experience).

Southwest Airlines earned the highest score every year the Temkin Experience Ratings were published from 2011 to 2018, except for 2015. In the most recent rankings, the company received the highest score in the airline industry, 76 percent – 10 percentage points higher than the industry average score of 66 percent. 

Over the years, Southwest Airlines has maintained high ratings among customers, even amid a global pandemic and overall declines in passenger satisfaction. According to the 2023 J.D. Power North American Airline Satisfaction Study , Southwest ranked highest in customer satisfaction for a second consecutive year for the economy and basic economy segment.

How Southwest Airlines emphasizes the customer experience

Southwest Airlines takes the following crucial steps to prioritize the customer experience:

• Southwest offers multiple avenues for customer support. Customer experience is no longer just an in-person interaction or a phone call. It’s now online, in live chat and more. In addition to multiple phone numbers for different customer service issues, Southwest offers live chat (via mobile app), email and a self-help resource center, allowing multiple touch points and opportunities to delight customers .
• Southwest adapts to meet customers’ evolving expectations. The airline invested over $2 billion to improve the customer experience. From improved real-time travel communications to bag tracking to bolstered self-service options, Southwest proactively meets passenger needs to make traveling more convenient and comfortable.
• Southwest empowers employees. Southwest takes care of its employees, which, in turn, helps employees take care of its customers. Providing robust financial and wellness benefits and ongoing career development allows Southwest’s team to perform at its best and effectively support its customers.

Examining Southwest Airlines as a customer service case study can help other companies learn to provide a great customer experience and place customer service at the forefront of their mission and company culture.

How to provide excellent customer service

All businesses should strive to achieve Southwest’s exceptional customer service. However, many of its specific strategies are tailored to the airline industry and may not work for your organization. Here are a few additional methods any business can implement to give its customers the service they deserve.

1. Be responsive to issues.

Nothing is more frustrating than being put on hold for over an hour, especially if you’ve already paid for a product or service. Remember that your customer relationships don’t end after money has been exchanged. These relationships are long-term commitments that must be cultivated over time.

If you don’t have the time to answer calls all day, consider staffing your business with more agents or outsourcing customer service calls. Ensure all customer service reps and outsourced service agents use one of the best CRM software platforms to ensure consistency and informed help. You can also streamline your communication channels and preferences to accommodate as many customer inquiries as possible. For example, it’s easy to set up a chat feature or an FAQ page on your website to avoid being overwhelmed by calls. 

With so many options available to help your customers, there’s no excuse for leaving them in the dark when they have an issue.

2. Communicate beyond complaints.

Responding to problems swiftly is vital to maintaining a high level of customer service, but communicating with your audience shouldn’t stop there. Starting a weekly email newsletter or using X (formerly Twitter) as a customer support channel are great ways to stay in touch with your base.

A simple “thank you for thinking of us” when a customer tags your brand on social media can go a long way. It’s a simple, cost-free measure to set your business apart as one that truly cares about customer service.

Use proven customer service metrics and KPIs like customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores and customer effort scores to improve your overall customer service.

3. Get to know your customers.

Customers love a personalized experience because it makes them feel heard. However, to ensure the personalized experience stays positive, you should understand the customer’s wants and needs. Maintaining this mindset will help ensure the customer trusts you and your company in the long run.

Almost every customer service representative has some kind of script they must stick to, but there are opportunities to veer off-book and personalize the experience. You could ask customers what they’ve been up to lately or why they chose your company, or just find a way to make them laugh. If you’re willing to go that extra mile, it can be the difference between keeping a customer and losing them.

4. Keep a positive attitude.

When trying to keep a positive attitude toward the customer, it can help to inhabit a service persona. How you speak to your customers can sometimes be more important than what you say. This approach allows you to connect with the customer on an emotional level. You’ll understand their explicit needs and better understand their overall attitude toward you and the company. If you focus on positive thinking and a positive attitude, customers will likely respond in kind.

Danielle Fallon-O’Leary contributed to this article. 

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6 great customer service stories: how to turn good to great

For most people, good customer service is an expectation. At the bare minimum, customers expect their questions to be answered and any issues to be resolved quickly. That’s the default.

When you meet these expectations as a business, you’re providing good customer service, sure, but it’s nothing to really write home about. It won’t make you stand out. So how do you stand out?

You turn good customer service into great customer service by adding a human touch and a sprinkle of compassion to all your customer interactions.

Yes, the relationship between a company and a customer is a business exchange at its core. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be more personal. Customers are people first—and treating them that way is a great way to exceed their expectations, leaving them feeling great about their interaction with your company.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️   Ready to offer 5-star customer service?   Get strategies for every stage of the customer journey with this free eBook .

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But what does the company get out of it?

For one thing, you’ll feel great to have helped someone! It’s heartwarming, and that’s why people love reading and sharing these remarkable customer service stories. But if those warm and fuzzy feelings of charity aren’t doing it for you, there’s also the other thing.

Your business will look good.

By going above and beyond what customers are just asking for, you’re taking their customer experience up quite a few notches. And whether it’s B2C (business-to-consumer) or B2B (business-to-business) customer service , the better their customer experience is, the more likely they are to share the story with others—both online and through word-of-mouth. Every time the story is shared, it’s free marketing for your brand.

Most of the time, customer service stories (and their cousins, customer success stories ) are shared on social media—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. But there are plenty of other places online where people are talking about your brand that you might not come across as easily. Places like Reddit, personal blogs, and Quora, for example. (Phones are still a common channel for customers, but online customer service is quickly catching up.)

We’ve gone through and gathered a few stories of great customer service—and what businesses can learn from them:

• Target employee helps teen tie a tie and prep for a job interview
• Southwest Airlines rescues a forgotten bridesmaid dress
• Gaylord Opryland gives guest a hotel-exclusive clock radio
• Sainsbury’s takes advice from a three-year-old
• H&M employee creates a makeshift prayer room
• Morton’s delivers a surprise steak

Let’s get into what great customer service stories look like.

How customer-obsessed is your business? Take the quiz. 💚

🌟 Want to provide better customer service?

Enjoy the quiz!

1. Target employee helps teen tie a tie and prep for a job interview

We can all remember how nerve-racking our first few job interviews were. One teen in Raleigh, North Carolina 1 wanted to make sure he made the best first impression possible.

Before his job interview, he stopped by Target to pick up a clip-on tie. He asked an employee for help, but it turned out that the store only sold regular ties.

Rather than leave it at that, the employee offered to show the young man how to tie a tie. From there, they practiced a few handshakes and went over some mock interview questions.

When the teen went to leave the store, he was met with supportive cheers from other Target employees.

A shopper named Audrey saw their exchange and snapped a quick photo, later posting it on Facebook.

People were touched by the story. A customer who had been in the store at the time commented on the photo, “This picture cannot convey the warmth and kindness in their voices as they worked with him.”

It clearly resonated with a lot of people—the Facebook post has over 54,000 likes and almost 5,000 shares.

​ [ebook-download title=”How customer-obsessed is your business?” link=”https://netstorage.ringcentral.com/documents/quiz_how_customer_obsessed_your_business.pdf” cta-text=”Take the quiz” src=””]

The takeaway

Hire people who have not only good customer service skills , but also the kinds of qualities you’d like to represent your company and your brand. The Target employee could have easily just helped the teen by taking him to the tie section and left it at that. And that would have been perfectly good customer service .

Instead, he took the extra time to go beyond what was being asked of him. Not only did he (and the other supportive employees) make this young man’s day, he made Target look good.

2. Southwest Airlines rescues a forgotten bridesmaid dress

Imagine you just landed in Costa Rica for your sister’s wedding, excited to celebrate the big day as a bridesmaid. But then you realize you forgot your bridesmaid dress back home in Texas!

That’s what happened to Grayleigh Oppermann. 2

Understandably, she began to panic and reached out to her friends Rachel and Taylor to see if they could help her ship the dress over in time for the wedding.

First, Rachel went to FedEx but they told her they wouldn’t be able to get the dress to Costa Rica before the wedding due to customs. So, she turned to Facebook. She posted in a local Facebook group to see if anyone was traveling to Costa Rica soon and could take the dress along with them. No luck there either.

As a last resort, Taylor reached out to Southwest Airlines on Twitter after seeing they had a flight to Costa Rica the next morning. She tweeted pleading for help, throwing in #WorthATry for good measure.

And it worked!

The next morning, Taylor met up with a representative from Southwest Airlines for the dress handover. From that point on, the airline kept everyone updated every step of the way:

They even added a dress tracker so that Grayleigh, the bride, and everyone else could follow along:

Southwest even added a special flight tag in their system—#RescueTheDress.

When the flight landed, Grayleigh was finally reunited with her dress:

What a relief! Southwest really did save the day.

The best customer service teamwork happens across departments and works even if you have a remote support team —and this story is a great example of that. To save the day, multiple teams at Southwest Airlines had to be able to communicate effectively and efficiently, including the social media team, the customer service managers, the cabin crew, and the flight operators. They put communication channels and processes in place (and it helps too to have good customer service apps ) to keep everyone connected, so that when something does suddenly happen, everyone is ready to go.

A collaboration-focused communication tool like RingCentral can come in handy here to help your team communicate with each other in real time. You can be on a call while messaging another team member and file sharing, all in one place:

3. Gaylord Opryland gives guest a hotel-exclusive clock radio

Christina McMenemy had stayed at the Gaylord Opryland resort three years in a row 3 for the annual BlissDom conference.

On her first visit, she noticed lovely, relaxing music playing in her hotel room when she first walked in. It sounded like something you’d hear in a high-end spa. She realized it was coming from the clock radio that doubled as a sound machine.

Throughout the weekend, Christina noticed how relaxed she felt when the music was playing. It was the best sleep she’d had in ages!

She loved that clock radio. So before she checked out, she asked the hotel where she could buy one for herself.

Unfortunately the hotel didn’t sell them, but they gave her the model number and said she could find one in any store. She took that model number from store to store for two years but could never find one that had the spa sounds. It was looking like the clock radio she wanted was a hotel-exclusive.

During her third stay at the resort, Christina had just about given up hope but decided to try her luck on Twitter. Here’s how it went:

So that was that. Christina had officially given up.

She spent the evening at the conference closing party and came back to her room for the night. To her surprise, she found a second clock radio sitting on the dresser and an envelope with her name on it:

“ Christina, Thank you for following us on Twitter. We hope you enjoy these spa sounds at home. If you need anything, please let us know. Sincerely, Elizabeth, Nick & Tori. ”

Needless to say, Christina was very excited and appreciated the resort’s kind gesture. “You reaffirmed that there are still companies out there focused on great service, and you’ve made a lifelong fan out of me. And you’re now helping me get some of the best sleep possible, year-round, which any mother will tell you is a feat worthy of high praise.”

Going “above and beyond” for your customers is a commonly discussed customer service best practice —and a great way to increase your customer retention . Why is that important? Because improving your customer retention can directly impact your bottom line in a very positive way. One study showed that just a 5% improvement in customer retention can actually bump profits up by a whopping 25%. 4

And if you’re serious about customer retention, you’ll want to keep track of your customer’s relationship with your business. This means having all their relevant details in one place that anyone on your customer service team can access.

For example, RingCentral’s identity merge tool gives you a complete picture of your customer based on their previous interactions with your team. That way, whoever is helping out the customer at any given moment can pull up the customer’s full history and provide a more personalized experience:

Gaylord Opryland recognized a valuable opportunity to turn a longtime customer into a customer for life. And they looked great in the process.

4. Sainsbury’s takes advice from a three-year-old

Sainsbury’s is the go-to supermarket for many families in the United Kingdom. Little Lily Robinson is a part of one of those families, and one day, she had a suggestion to share. 5

The three-year-old (well, three and a half to be exact) wrote a letter to the supermarket chain asking them why their patterned loaf is called tiger bread when it should be called giraffe bread.

Sainsbury’s customer manager, Chris King, loved Lily’s idea and wrote back. “Renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea—it looks much more like the blotches of a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn’t it?”

He went on to explain how the loaf got its name, saying “It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a looong time ago thought it looked stripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly.”

He included a £3 gift card and signed the letter “Chris King (age 27 & ⅓).”

The heartwarming exchange began trending on Twitter. People were talking about it, but like most of these stories, it eventually died down.

About seven months later, the story re-emerged after it was shared on Facebook, Twitter, and multiple blogs. It was then that Sainbury’s was bombarded with messages from people telling them how much they liked Lily’s idea. And Sainsbury’s listened.

“In response to overwhelming customer feedback that our tiger bread has more resemblance to a giraffe, from today we will be changing our tiger bread to giraffe bread and seeing how that goes,” the supermarket said:

Now that’s a great example of customer collaboration .

It’s hard not to love this story. Why?

Chris King really connected with the customer—in this case, little Lily. Their exchange of letters was more than a service interaction between a company and its customer. It was two people sharing a human moment where they discussed animal prints on a loaf of bread.

This is a perfect example of why customer service is so important —and what people mean when they say “treat your customers like people first.”

We’d venture to say that you should give your employees the freedom to be people first, too.

As a byproduct, Chris helped Sainsbury’s, a massive supermarket chain, look friendly and approachable. And they built upon that even further when they actually changed the name of the bread. They proved that they actually do listen to their customers.

It might seem trivial because it was just the name of a bread loaf, but little things like that can make a major impact when it comes to how people perceive your brand and what they associate you with.

5. H&M employee creates a makeshift prayer room

In a customer service appreciation post on Reddit 6 , one user shared a touching story about a time when they were shopping with a Muslim friend at H&M in Indiana:

They end the story appreciating the inclusive and positive nature of the team at H&M.

Hire a diverse staff. It’s clear from this story that these customers felt comfortable in their local H&M because of the body-positive and diverse staff.

A diverse staff is also more likely to understand customer needs. Whether that’s finding the right pair of jeans for a short but curvy body or setting up a makeshift prayer room as a kind gesture. It makes for a better customer experience overall.

At the same time, hiring a diverse staff shows your company’s commitment to inclusivity. Even though appearances shouldn’t be the main reason to do it, the reality is that it does make companies look better.

But most importantly of all, you’ll be giving opportunities to marginalized people, and that’s always an all-around great thing.

6. Morton’s delivers a surprise steak

As Peter Shankman 7 waited for his flight, he started to get hungrier and hungrier. He realized that if he didn’t eat soon, he’d be stuck hungry for the entire plane ride home.

Not one for fast food, he tweeted to one of his favorite restaurants asking for a delivery as a joke. It was Morton’s, his go-to steak spot:

Peter was a longtime customer of Morton’s and knew they didn’t offer delivery. He really had no expectations when he sent the tweet—it was just a bit of fun.

A few hours later, he was stunned to see a man in a tuxedo walk up to him in the terminal holding a Morton’s bag. Inside the bag was a 24 oz. Porterhouse steak, one order of Colossal Shrimp, a side of potatoes, Morton’s signature bread, two napkins, and silverware.

Once the shock wore off, Peter realized how much had gone into this delivery.

“Morton’s Hackensack is 23.5 miles away from EWR, according to Google Maps. That meant that in just under three hours, someone at Morton’s Corporate had to see my tweet, get authorization to do this stunt, get in touch with Morton’s Hackensack, and place the order. Then Morton’s Hackensack had to cook the order, get it boxed up, and get a server to get in his car, and drive to Newark Airport (never an easy task, no matter where you’re coming from) then, (and this is the part the continues to blow me away,) while all this was happening, track down my flight, where I was landing, and be there when I walked out of security!”

We’re willing to bet it was the tastiest steak Peter had ever had.

You might not be able to go above and beyond for every customer request your company receives, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it at all. Even though Morton’s doesn’t offer delivery, they saw a valuable opportunity to make an impact.

Morton’s strengthened their relationship with an existing customer, went way beyond their customer’s expectations , making it more likely that he’d continue to order from them. In the same move, they made a positive splash as word of the story spread. People who had never heard of Morton’s before knew about it. And we’d bet some of them probably stopped by for a steak of their own.

It’s easy to miss tweets, posts, comments, and messages that come through online when your company has multiple public-facing communication channels. It can definitely get a bit messy. That’s why it’s best to have all your customer communications in one organized place. Something like RingCentral Engage Digital ™ can be a game-changer when it comes to connecting quickly and easily with customers across all your digital channels.

Want great customer service stories for your business? Treat your customers like people

In each of these stories, companies and employees took a good customer service experience and turned it into a great one.

All they had to do was remember that ultimately they are people helping out other people. You don’t need a huge budget or a big team either. Many of these customer service stories weren’t that expensive—it just involved a bit of thoughtfulness, a certain degree of autonomy granted to an employee, and sometimes a postage stamp.

What kind of great customer service stories do you want your business to be known for?

1 usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/02/06/north-carolina-target-tie-worker/22971617/

2 today.com/style/southwest-airlines-rescues-forgotten-bridesmaid-dress-saves-day-t149743

3 amommystory.com/2012/03/a-crazy-example-of-great-service.html

4 media.bain.com/Images/BB_Prescription_cutting_costs.pdf

5 bbc.com/news/business-16812545

6 reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/comments/afmpt2/appreciation_post_best_customer_service/

7 huffpost.com/entry/peter-shankman-mortons-steak-tweet_n_930744

Originally published Apr 16, 2020, updated Jul 01, 2022

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How to Approach Customer Service Like Disney

Updated: August 13, 2021

Published: February 16, 2021

Walt Disney once said, "Do a good job. You don't have to worry about the money; it will take care of itself."

Essentially, Disney was saying that the "why" of your business shouldn't be about making money. It should be focused on your customers. Do you want to bring them happiness, create memories, or make their job easier?

If so, then you need to focus on creating experiences instead of focusing on your bottom line. That's just one of the great lessons that Disney has taught us about customer service.

But, what else can we learn? Let's dive into the Disney customer service model and discover what B2B/B2C companies can learn from it.

Disney Customer Service Model

Disney has a guiding principle; a common purpose that all of its employees are responsible for upholding: "We create happiness by providing the best in entertainment for people of all ages everywhere."

To ensure employees live by that mission, Disney has a defined set of quality standards that help cast members through their decision-making process for all customer service issues. With this approach to customer service, cast members are empowered to make decisions. This brings us to Disney's Four Key Basics , in priority order: Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency.

Cast members should always practice safe behaviors and put safety first. They are supposed to project a positive image and energy, be courteous and respectful to all guests, and go above and beyond expectations. Cast members should stay in character and perform their role at all times. And with efficiency, the goal is to use time and resources wisely.

These standards are also prioritized so cast members can make their own decisions.

For an in-depth overview on these key points, check out our video case study on Disney here.

Besides the four key basics, Disney also has seven service guidelines :

• Be Happy – make eye contact and smile.
• Be like Sneezy – greet and welcome every customer. Spread the spirit of hospitality. It's contagious!
• Don't be Bashful – seek out guest contact.
• Be like Doc – provide immediate service recovery.
• Don't be Grumpy – display appropriate body language at all times.
• Be like Sleepy – create dreams and preserve the magical guest experience.
• Don't be Dopey – thank every Guest!

With these guidelines and standards, Disney can train all cast members to share and provide the same level of service. These guiding principles are what empower cast members to give exceptional service because they know the core goal is to create happiness.

Ultimately, Disney's customer service is carefully designed. The company has built a reputation for excellence. If they didn't provide excellent customer service, would they have the brand authority they have? Probably not.

Customer service is a key component of brand perception. In fact, Disney has such an excellent customer service reputation that they even teach this at their Disney Institute .

So, now you must be wondering, "How can I approach customer service like Disney?"

• Empower your employees.
• Create a culture around your customers.
• Meticulously design your customer service standards.
• Provide excellent training for your team.
• Go above and beyond.
• Use the LAST model.

1. Empower your employees.

One of the main things we can learn from Disney's customer service framework is to empower employees to make good decisions.

Everyone should understand the standards and guidelines so they can make autonomous decisions. You don't want your service reps to feel like they can't make decisions and managers to feel like they need to micromanage their direct reports.

2. Create a culture around your customers.

Another way that Disney has designed their customer service is with the compass method. A compass has North, West, South, and East on it to help guide people.

The Disney compass has Needs, Wants, Stereotypes, and Emotions to guide its cast members.

This customer service plan is focused on identifying customer needs, anticipating customer wants, understanding the stereotypes people might have about your company, and tapping into customer emotions.

The Disney company culture is centered on knowing what customers need and want while contextualizing that information with stereotypes and emotions.

Ultimately, with this plan, Disney will know their customers intimately and continue learning about them.

3. Meticulously design your customer service standards.

As you can tell, the customer service plan at Disney is thoughtfully designed. Your customer service should follow suit.

You need to figure out what the common purpose of your company is so that employees can use that purpose as a guidepost.

With a common purpose, and defined values and standards, your employees will be able to make great customer service decisions.

4. Provide excellent training for your team.

For customer service to work like a well oiled machine, you need to hire the right people. Your employees should be happy, friendly, energetic people. Additionally, you should treat them well so that they want to perform well.

Once you've hired a great time, you need to provide consistent, excellent training for them. Disney provides several detailed orientations teaching cast members everything they need to know about Disney and how to do their job.

This could be a long process. At HubSpot, our new hire training lasts at least two weeks (maybe more depending on the role).

Also, you don't want to forget to provide continuous training opportunities. Whether it's through an online learning program or mentorship programs, your employees should have several ways to develop and grow in their job.

5. Go above and beyond.

One of the guiding principles at Disney is to exceed expectations. At your company, you should implement going above and beyond into the culture.

Encourage and reward employees who are always exceeding expectations. Your reps shouldn't just do the bare minimum. They should think about how they can go above and beyond with every customer interaction.

6. Use the LAST model.

A previous Disney employee remembers that cast members were supposed to use the LAST model during customer interactions with upset guests. This acronym stands for: Listen, Apologize, Solve, and Thank. This is how employees are expected to handle customer complaints.

Your company can and should teach your reps about this model. A great customer service rep will actively listen to the customer, genuinely apologize for what they're going through, solve the problem, and thank them for their patronage. This is one of the best models to show empathy while fixing an issue.

Disney is known as the happiest place on Earth. While not every company can have that kind of reputation, you can apply the same business model and principles to your company to help you improve your customer service.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Your guide to creating customer case studies (+ some show-stopping examples).

Teams are constantly looking for ways to stand out in crowded markets. Customer case studies may be just the differentiator companies have been seeking to give them that competitive edge. Not only do customer case studies showcase the types of pain points that a product or service can address, but they also highlight the results and successes real-life users have seen.

To put it simply, a customer case study is a real-life, detailed story that spotlights a customer’s opinions and achievements based upon the usage of a product or service. 

Typically, customer case studies follow this format:

• Introduction: Setting the stage with situational context 
• Challenge: Evaluating the problem at hand
• Solution: Providing an overview of how the product or service was used
• Benefits: Highlighting the key advantages
• Results: Recapping the aftereffect once the product or service was implemented

Similar to how competitive comparison landing pages provide trust and credibility for a brand through real-life recommendations, customer case studies deliver the same effect. These studies are people-focused, factual, and stray away from the promotional lingo that prospective customers have seen time and time again during their product search. After all, what prospect wouldn’t want some insight on the successes users have seen thus far? 

Now that you have a better understanding of what a customer case study is, let’s dive into why they are important from a competitive standpoint and explore some tips on how to incorporate them into your marketing strategy.  

The importance of customer case studies 

Competition is heating up more quickly than ever before and is not expected to cool off anytime soon. Our 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence Report found that 53% of businesses say that the majority of their deals are competitive–an 8% increase from last year. 

Sales teams need the help of marketers more than ever before to combat the growing number of industry rivals. To be successful in prospective calls, in particular, they need to be equipped with loads of marketing collateral, battlecards to guide them through objection-handling, and more. Customer case studies may be that piece of collateral they didn’t realize was missing from their stack to help seal the deal. 

According to Eccolo Media’s 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey Report , customer case studies rank as the fifth most influential content marketing type in the purchase process for both small technology businesses and large enterprises. That’s an impressive ranking when it's being compared to assets such as product brochures, emails, and white papers. In fact, 42% of respondents said that in the last six months of the survey, they had consumed customer case studies as a way to evaluate a technology purchase. 

As I’m sure you can see, there’s no doubt that customer case studies can help you stand out from your competitors. Let’s take a look at some examples that you can model yours after. 

Successful customer case study examples

While some customer case studies come in the written form (typically distributed as a PDF), other organizations opt to turn it into a video–or do a combo of both. 

Check out these examples from Zoom, Hootsuite, and AT&T below:

1. Zoom featuring Groupon

In this example, Zoom opted for a video case study. It opens up with a multimedia services manager at Groupon discussing the company’s pain points and then goes into how Zoom helped solve them. The video is professional, to-the-point, and highlights how Zoom has provided Groupon with a standardized platform that meets the needs of its video-first culture.

As you can see above, Zoom also has an entire web page dedicated to case study videos–all highlighting different industries but with the same end-goal–streamline companies’ telecommunications needs. It’s clear that the page can resonate with a variety of audiences and that’s the key to success.

2. Hootsuite featuring The British Museum

This case study example from Hootsuite is a combination of both text and video. When you first open the page, it provides some context at the top describing who is being spotlighted and why ( The British Museum ). The page then immediately dives into a video. Following that video are the following sections: “What They Did," “How They Did It," and “The Results." This approach appeals to prospects looking for both a quick synopsis (the video) or more in-depth information (the written portion).

Looking at the example above, the page ends with some impressive statistics bolded to grab a reader's attention and a quote provided by a member of the customer’s leadership team. Prospects will walk away with a comprehensive understanding of how the platform could benefit them and the types of results customers have achieved.

3. AT&T featuring Birkey's Farm Store

AT&T chose a more traditional route for a customer case study with Birkey’s Farm Store –a PDF format. This format ensures that all of the information is organized, clearly displayed and that the key elements are emphasized. This format allows for a visual representation of data and easy scanning for important details. For those in a time crunch, chances are they’ll prefer this format–just be sure you’re engaging readers through graphics, bolded text, colors, etc. 

Historically, customer case studies were in written form but as technology evolves, videos have come into play, stealing the spotlight. While there is no right or wrong format to use (it truly does depend on a reader’s preference), it is important to note that HubSpot estimated that over 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. My vote goes to a combination of both like the Hootsuite example!

5 tips for creating a customer case study

Now that you’ve checked out some examples of what a good customer case study looks like, let’s dive into some tips on how to be successful in creating one. 

1. Determine your target persona(s) upfront

Before putting pen to paper, pinpoint the groups within your target audience that your case study should resonate with. Catering your studies to specific personas will ensure that the right audience is reached and that it is relevant to your readers.

2. Connect with your team

Be sure to connect with your company’s customer success and sales teams to hear what customers they think are best to target. After all, they will have great insight since they are the day-to-day contacts. You’ll want to choose customers with whom you have strong relationships and who, of course, have seen great results based upon implementing your solution. While the case study would be “free advertising” for them, there’s no doubt that they’d be doing you a favor by going out of their way to help you bring this asset to life.

3. Create case study interview questions

Once you’ve got your customer(s) selected for the case study (and they’ve agreed to participate), take some time to draft out universal interview questions. Ideally, these questions can be used in the future and are general enough to translate to all industries that would be spotlighted on your page.

Your customer(s) will also be appreciative of your preparedness. It’s important to make the process as easy as possible for them and coming in prepared with a list, will ensure that your conversation is focused and strategic. After all, your case study needs a beginning, middle, and an end–make sure you gather enough information to put it all together into a full story.

4. Utilize statistics

Although your customer’s “results” won’t be revealed until the end of the case study, don’t shy away from using stats throughout it–in fact, it’s encouraged! Statistics stick out to any viewer and can be helpful for those trying to sway decision-makers. For example, when setting the scene, describe how many employees and locations the customer has and make those numbers stand out. Although it may seem minute, these stats can help readers determine whether their company is similar and the results achieved are comparable.

5. Build out a case study web page 

It’s important to showcase your case studies in a strategic, organized, and easily accessible way (scroll back up to the Zoom example as an example). Create a designated case study hub on your website. When building out this page, it’s important to have a plethora of customer case studies–that way there will always be a case study that a prospect can relate to. Be sure that all types of industries you work with are represented and that your page is broad enough to appeal to the masses.

Incorporate case studies into your marketing plan

Marketing teams are always looking for ways to express the benefits of a product or service authentically and creatively. This type of non-promotional collateral can make a major impact on the number of leads generated and can add a new level of credibility to your brand name. It paints a picture of the types of success a prospect could have and that’s the recipe to success for any deal getting closed.

Not only do customer case studies showcase the value of your product or service, but potential customers are provided with a better sense of how real customers leverage it to excel their business. And as a bonus, it’s free publicity for your customers – that's a win-win in my book! 

If you have any other tips for creating a successful customer case study, let us know in the comments below!

See why Gong, Mastercard, and ZoomInfo trust Crayon to help them win more competitive deals.

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30 customer service review examples to develop your team

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Customer service review examples for "you're doing great"

Customer service review examples for improving in certain areas , review examples to improve customer service skills.

Happy employees, happy customers. At least, that's what they say. When it comes to providing stellar customer service, it's important to first examine your employees' experience .

At the heart of any thriving workforce is feedback. So, when it comes to empowering success with your customer-facing employees, feedback is critical . 

How are you investing in meeting your employees' needs ? Are you providing opportunities for feedback ? Are you actively listening to your employees? Do you use positive feedback as a form of employee recognition ? 

We've compiled 29 examples that relate to not only customer service  but also   customer satisfaction ,   customer relations ,   customer management ,   customer focus ,   handling customers appropriately , and general   customer skills . Try practicing some of these example phrases with your employees. 

• You’re a great team player and you constantly help others meet their customer requests. Well done!
• Your loyal customer base is outstanding. Customers often ask for you by name and you have a lot of repeat customers as a result. Great job!
• Clients constantly request you for advice to solve their problems. You’ve become quite the go-to person with our customers.
• You have no problem building rapport with everyone you come in contact work. This is a great customer service skill to possess.
• You’re really good at obtaining first-hand customer information and using this information to improve our products and services. You should show the rest of us how you go about obtaining this information.
• You’re really good at following up with the client so as to ensure that they are never left in the dark. Keep it up!
• You're really good at focusing on what customers need and require. You have a real instinct to understand our customers. Good work!
• You have the natural ability to understand and feel what your customers are experiencing, and you are able to meet their needs effectively. Well done!
• You excel at serving your customers. Great job!
• Even when customers are difficult, you still manage to give them feedback in a timely and constructive manner.
• As a customer service representative, you have to be able to handle criticisms, complaints, and special requests from time-to-time. You need to be able to handle these queries as customer retention is vital for our company to survive.

You tend to focus too much on internal operations and you let customer problems go unheard. You need to deal with customer problems in a timely and efficient manner.

It is difficult to follow policies, practices, and processes as you make too many exceptions to customers. Try adopting a more hardline approach and make sure customers fall in line with what the policies are.

You tend to be a little too defensive about our product and company. Remember the customer is always right. Try to listen to what they have to say.

As you fall under the customer service department, it is really important that you get to know our customers. Try to get out more and get to know them.

Try to make time to visit customers and get to know them. It goes a long way in building rapport with them and they’ll appreciate your effort.

Customers often complain that you fail to follow up with them as promised. It is a good idea to stick to your promises. Try to under-promise and over-deliver.

When you’re on the phone, try to get to know the customer as a whole person. This helps build rapport and you’ll understand your customer problems quicker.

• When products are updated, it is imperative that you understand the changes as quickly as possible so that you can answer any customer queries.
• While the customer is always right, sometimes they have the tendency to have unrealistic demands. Try to negotiate so you reach a middle ground.
• Always try to exhibit creativity and flexibility in solving customers’ problems and questions.
• Remember to make the customer feel like a top priority. It’s important that their needs are met and they feel like they can provide honest and open constructive criticism .
• Try to be 100% committed to outstanding customer service. If you go above and beyond what the customer expects, you will be creating a good employer brand . 
• You need to be more transparent with company information. If a customer requests some information or some resources, don’t be afraid to share this with them.
• Try refrain from speaking poorly about our competition. It’s not respectful or progressive. Despite differences, we want to ensure everyone is treated with integrity. 
• Try to address problems as quickly as possible even if it’s a demanding customer.
• You need to aim at providing constructive and timely advice to our customers. They need to feel like they are understood.
• If there are pending delays, be proactive and inform your customers of these hold-ups.
• Remember to never be manipulative and unduly influential when a customer is trying to purchase a product. At the end of the day, it’s their choice whether they would like to purchase the product or not.
• Even if the customer is always right, never allow them to treat you badly and attack you personally. if you feel you are being mistreated, let your manager know. If you escalate the issue, the issue will be addressed in the appropriate manner. Psychological safety is important to prioritize, even in a customer relationship. 

If you're looking for ways to help boost your employees' customer service game, BetterUp can help. With  virtual coaching , you can help your employees improve their communication, problem-solving, and relationship skills.  Unlock the potential  within your workforce with the power of  personalized coaching . 

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Madeline Miles

Madeline is a writer, communicator, and storyteller who is passionate about using words to help drive positive change. She holds a bachelor's in English Creative Writing and Communication Studies and lives in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time, she's usually somewhere outside (preferably in the mountains) — and enjoys poetry and fiction.

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10 B2B Case Study Examples to Inspire Your Next Customer Success Story

• October 24, 2023

Case studies, also known as customer stories, are valuable content assets for attracting new customers and showing your expertise in a competitive market.

The more case studies you have, the simpler it gets for your customers to make decisions.

Case studies provide a firsthand experience of what it’s like to use your product or service, and it can give an “Aha!” moment to potential customers.

While product demos and white papers are great for generating leads, their use is limited to highlighting product features. 

On the other hand, case studies showcase the transformation a business has undergone while using your product.

A case study offers potential customers a glimpse of the positive changes they can expect, which is more compelling than simply showcasing your product or service’s excellence.

• Customer mission should be given at the beginning
• Follow up about specifics and metrics
• Use quotes from their side to highlight
• Work out the biggest benefits of your offering and make reference to them
• Make sure your success story follows a brief and logical story structure

In this article, we’ll review 10 examples of outstanding case studies that have collectively helped secure millions in new client business. Let’s get started.

What Is A Case Study?

In simple terms, a case study highlights how a product or service has helped a business solve a problem, achieve a goal, or make its operations easier. 

In many ways, it’s a glorified and stretched-out client testimonial that introduces you to the problem that the customer is facing and the solution that the product has helped deliver. 

Case studies are invaluable assets for B2B SaaS, where sales cycles tend to get lengthy and costly. They’re a one-time investment that showcases your product’s features and benefits in rooms your sales team can’t be in. 

What Makes A Good Case Study? 

There is no one-size-fits approach to a good case study. 

Some case studies work better as long, prose-forward, and story-driven blog posts. Whereas some are better as quick and fast-fact content that doesn’t add to the chatter but gets straight to the point. 

Here are some of the tenets of good case studies:

• Product-Led : Focuses on showcasing the product as the solution to a specific problem or challenge.
• Timely : Addresses the current issues or trends relevant to the business’s ideal customer profile (ICP) . 
• Well-structured: Follows a clear, organized format with easily digestible writing style and synthesis. 
• Story-driven: Tells a compelling and relatable story that puts the reader in the customer’s shoes. 

Case studies must tell the customer’s story regardless of style or content density.

Other than that, visuals in case studies are powerful in increasing conversion rates, by providing real evidence and taking attention.

Companies can also use their website, social media, and newsletters to promote case studies and increase visibility.

Below, we have ten diverse case study examples that embody these principles. 

B2B Case Study Template from Our Team

We will share great and proven B2B case study examples that you can get inspired by in the following section, but before that, let’s take a look at an easy and effective template from our team.

10 Best B2B Case Study Examples To Take Inspiration From

Plaid is a fintech company specializing in equipping users with a secure platform to connect their bank details to online applications. Addressing the pressing concern of financial security, Plaid leverages compelling case studies to showcase the remarkable transformations their clients experience.

Take Plaid’s case study of Betterment, for example. 

The study begins by stating the goal that the customer is trying to achieve, which is to “onboard new users and drive engagement.” Right next to the goal is company details, and followed below is a singular problem and its solution.

The case study continues by keeping the business’ desired result front and center and offers a generous outlook on the SaaS business.

The core process of how Plaid helps Betterment is cleanly laid out, which is a brief version of a ten-page white paper. 

What follows are several benefits that Plaid offered to Betterment. 

Plaid’s subtle yet effective product integration and clear, well-organized process make it simple for customers facing similar challenges to envision the solution.

2. SalesHandy

SalesHandy is an email automation software that personalizes high-volume cold emails. The company heroes client success stories for its case studies and opens the heading with their wins. 

Check out this B2B case study example from Sedin’s case study published by SalesHandy.

Readers need context, and case studies should always begin by outlining the exact problems their product or platform aims to solve. 

Here, SalesHandy expertly introduces us to Sedin’s use case and the challenges that the business is facing.

After a lengthy context, the case study highlights Sedin’s core challenge in the words of its personnel. 

This personable approach ropes readers in and lets them empathize with Sedin’s challenges. 

With a single scroll in, SalesHandy lays out the solutions to Sedin’s core challenges and integrates its product. 

This highly detailed case study covers all corners and includes the exceptional results achieved in record time. SalesHandy closes the study with a word from the character already introduced to the readers. 

SalesHandy doesn’t shy away from giving a detailed account of its process, which is crucial for highly technical products and enterprise packages that involve multiple decision-makers. 

B2B Case studies, first and foremost, should be written in a language that your ICP understands. 

Playvox is a customer service platform that helps businesses streamline business operations. 

This industry-specific case study of Sweaty Betty by Playvox addresses unique challenges within a niche industry, such as account assessment times for retail and online shops. 

The case study starts with the results it achieved for Sweaty Betty. 

The case study follows a straightforward, albeit impactful, challenges-solution-results format as we scroll down. 

But instead of listing out solutions in bullet points, Playvox uses customer voice to present the transformation that Sweaty Betty went through. 

With this formatting, Playvox doesn’t have to tout the platform’s usefulness. Sweaty Betty is doing it for them. 

4. Base Search Marketing

We promised diverse case studies, and here is a stellar B2B case study example of a single deck case study of Shine Cosmetics by Base Search Marketing.  

Base Search Marketing is a boutique link-building and SEO agency that works with startups and mid-level businesses. 

This case study, which can be reviewed as a brochure, gives you an overview of the customer and lays out the challenges that the business is facing. 

You’ll notice how the study uses the CEO’s quote to mention a pretty universal problem that most startups face: “limited resources.”

By highlighting the results in the left tab and laying out the process on the right side, this case study does a masterful job of covering all corners and telling a desirable customer success story.

Another approachable form of case study is slide decks, which you can present in boardrooms and meetings and act as a sales pitch. 

Loganix nails it with its case study deck for rankings.io. 

If you have a complicated product or service requiring an in-depth explanation, then using this format would be a great option. 

The solution, stated in simple bullet points, drives the message home.

Fewer words. Cleaner decks.

Using this methodology lets the audience walk through the case study with visuals, bullet points, and concise text. 

6. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a SaaS leader in the social media space, and this Outcome-led Case Study proves just why it is so good at capturing the markets.

The study kicks off with a result-forward headline, piquing the interest of readers who are interested in getting similar outcomes. 

There’s much to appreciate in this succinctly written case study, but the headlines get our attention and hold it.

With every scroll, results are presented to you in the form of graphs, quotes, and visuals. 

The study ends with a quote from the customer, which repeats the outcome stated in the headline. 

Leading remote teams is a challenge that numerous teams will face moving forward. CoSchedule makes operations easy for these teams, and it doesn’t shy away from stating just how through its case study. 

7. Wizehire

Case studies have evolved from lengthy blocks of text confined to PDFs to a new digital era emphasizing impact over verbosity.

Wizehire’s succinct case study is a prime example of this shift. It uses fewer words to create a powerful impression.

From the very first page, the case study introduces us to Kris, the customer and central figure of the story. Without the need for extensive scrolling, we quickly grasp vital details about Kris: his role, employee turnover, location, and industry. 

In the second slide, we are immediately taken to the solution that Kris got by working with Wizehire. 

The case study ends with a passionate testimonial from Kris, who deeply believes in Wizehire. 

The case study has less than 300 words, enough for local entrepreneurs like Kris Morales, who want to hire talent but don’t have the resources for proper vetting and training. Until, of course, Wizehire comes along. 

8. FreshBooks

When a reader can see themselves in a case study, it takes them one step closer to wanting to try the product.

This case study by Freshbooks uses a beautiful personal story of an emerging entrepreneur. 

Using a deeply personal story, the study appeals to people who are just starting and aren’t accountants but suddenly have to deal with employee invoices and a dozen other bills. 

The text progresses in an interview-style study, with the customer taking the mic and illustrating the challenges that startups and small businesses face. 

This style works because readers crave insights directly from customers. Getting authentic testimonials is becoming increasingly challenging. Well-crafted case studies can be valuable substitutes, provided they seem realistic and from the heart. 

Featuring quotes or testimonials from satisfied customers throughout the case study adds to its credibility and authenticity. Just like this testimonial Case Study by Slack .

Slack is a giant in the realm of digital communication, with more than 20 million active users worldwide. However, it is tough to break into the market of group communications. After all, Slack competes with both WhatsApp and Microsoft Team regarding market share. 

To level the playing field, Slack features case studies from top entrepreneurs and market players who have been served well by it. 

Its case studies are laden with personal stories about how the platform boosts productivity. 

At the same time, the software also plugs in the “try for free” banner to make sure that customers are aware of the inexpensive nature of the software.

It’s not easy to get such detailed testimonies from the C-suite, but when you’re Slack, businesses tend to make an exception. 

Some case studies are based on highly niche subjects, where nothing is at the top of the funnel. Kosli nails it with this highly technical case study of Firi.

Technical case studies are designed for niche audiences who are already aware of the problems that the software can solve. Case studies like these are clean and smart and come with solutions that have a counterpart solution. 

There is absolutely no fluff and nothing that can be a reason for C-suite executives to bounce from. 

It’s full of information-packed pages designed to hook the reader in and present the tool as a formidable solution to their problem. 

You’ll notice how they weave Kosli through the entire case study, and the first-person report comes from the customer. 

B2B Case Study Examples In Short

In the B2B SaaS industry, converting new leads and securing new business has become increasingly challenging. In this landscape, impactful content assets such as case studies and customer stories are sometimes the only things moving the needle. 

Crafting a compelling customer story empowers brands to enable potential customers to engage directly .

🚀 Customer stories evoke empathy from buyers

🤝 Customer stories help build up your relationships with vocal brand advocates

⬇️ Customer stories lower your prospects’ information cost

Once you’ve determined the most effective way to convey information that resonates with your leads, you can collaborate with your content and design teams to create impactful case studies to generate new business and prove your expertise and experience in the market. 

Zeynep Avan

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Customer Experience Management , Global Response Blog

Going from good customer service to great customer service.

Can great customer service really impact your brand, or is good customer service good enough?

In today’s saturated marketplace, customer service matters more than ever. As the recent data highlights:

• 86% of customers would leave a brand they were previously loyal to after just a few bad experiences, with 62% saying just one bad experience is enough to dissuade their loyalty.
• 68% of customers will pay more for products or services from brands known for their excellent customer service.
• 89% of consumers are more likely to purchase again in the future after having a positive customer experience.

So, not only is great customer experience a key differentiator among brands, it’s also a key driver for brand loyalty and even sales and profitability. The data indicates that customer service and customer experiences are directly related to your bottom line—yet many companies overlook the value of improving customer service from good to great.

According to a 2022 study, 87% of companies believe they’re providing “excellent CX,” while a mere 11% of customers agreed that businesses delivered excellent service. So, not only does customer service matter more than ever, but delivering service that truly wows customers is more difficult than ever as well.

How can brands deliver great service in today’s world? In this article, our team of experts outlines the four key attributes of good—and great—customer service, and the key tactics and strategic insights to know as you implement them at your organization.

4 Key Attributes of Good Customer Service

Customer service has many components, but the most essential elements break down to just four key categories. In fact, according to a recent survey by PwC, nearly 80% of American consumers cite these four elements as the most important ones for great customer service.

These are speed , accessibility, connection (or friendly service), and helpfulness (or agent knowledge). Let’s break down each of these key attributes of good customer service.

Speed. Customers want help, and they want it quickly. As a customer yourself, you probably instinctively understand their desire. Whether or not the problem is truly urgent, you don’t want to be on hold for 25 minutes or have to wait several days for an email response whenever you need a problem resolved from a company. As such, providing speedy and efficient service demonstrates that your company values your customers by valuing their time.

Accessibility . Accessible service means meeting customers where they are, and making it effortless for them to get the help they need. We’ve all experienced the companies that seem to make it intentionally difficult to find their customer service phone number, or have a live chat option available, only for no agent to ever “pick up” your chat. While not every brand needs to be available on every possible channel, making it easy for customers to contact you and receive the help they need is a key component of good service.

Connection. Friendly service is still a key attribute of good service, and this shouldn’t be too surprising. In a depersonalized world, having a moment of genuine human connection is typically pleasant—and when customers connect that pleasant experience with your brand, they tend to remain more loyal and even spend more. Employing and empowering friendly agents to respond with empathy to your customers is essential for good service.

Helpfulness. Finally, knowledgeable help is an obvious must. When customers contact your support team, there’s generally a problem they need solved or an action they’re trying to complete that they need help with. If your support staff is fast, easy to contact and friendly, but they can’t solve the customer’s problem, that’s still a major problem. As such, good customer service requires agents who are seasoned problem-solvers, able to resolve customer concerns both efficiently and satisfactorily.

These four attributes are core components of any good customer service solution—but in a competitive market, good isn’t always enough. So how can companies go beyond good to deliver truly excellent customer service?

Going Beyond “Good” – How to Deliver Great Customer Service

Great customer service doesn’t have to be futuristic or show up at the airport with a fresh steak for a customer (although that certainly checks the box). Instead, great customer service goes above and beyond in those four categories that consumers cite as the most important: speed , convenience , knowledgeable help and friendly service .

So, how can you move beyond “good” to develop excellent customer service in these four key areas?

Improving Customer Service Speed

Speed matters to consumers—and it matters a lot. In fact, 53% of consumers cite speed as the most important aspect of great customer service.

However, speed can be difficult to define. For many customers today, speed doesn’t just mean fast—it means instant, and on-demand. Customers want 24/7 service that’s accessible anytime and can get them the answers they need immediately. Not sure how fast is fast enough? Here’s the recent data:

• 66% of customers expect a live chat response within five minutes.
• 35% of consumers expect a response on social media within 2 hours.
• Around one-third of customers expect a response via email within 1 hour or less.

Of course, improving speed is easier said than done. To improve your speed in a way that customers will actually notice and appreciate, implement one of these tactics:

AI/Chatbots. AI can help speed up many backend operations when it comes to call centers , ensuring that your agents reduce call handle time and thus speed up operations overall. In addition, chatbots or virtual assistants can not only reduce the amount of time an interaction takes, but it can also reduce the number of interactions that human agents need to take care of. Of course, a chatbot can also be available 24/7 to help as many customers at once as needed.

Live chat. Although customers expect a response most quickly via live chat or over the phone, live chat is a great way to supplement phone lines. As opposed to a voice call, most agents can handle a number of separate chats at the same time, allowing customers to get help more quickly. In addition, supplementing with chat bots or virtual chat agents can help keep your chat function live 24/7 and moving quickly.

Outsourcing. Sometimes you simply need more agents to achieve the speed needed at scale for your business. When this is the case, outsourcing some or all of your customer service to a trusted partner is the most efficient way to scale up your business and improve speed of service.

Improving Customer Service Accessibility

Of course, part of providing speedy service involves being accessible to customers. The easier it is for customers to find you and contact you, the faster they can get their questions answered. Two key ways to make yourself more accessible to consumers is through omnichannel support and self-service solutions. 

Omnichannel support. While many consumers today still prefer phone calls, the average consumer has contacted customer service through at least three different channels . As such, omnichannel support is a must. Importantly, though, omnichannel support is more than just being accessible on a variety of channels. It also means creating a seamless experience between those channels so that when customers contact you on a new channel, that agent has the background on their previous interactions.

Self-service solutions. Self-service options are a great way for customers to get answers quickly, but they’re also an important way to improve accessibility. Because self-service allows the customer to take the lead on getting answers, they’re available anytime—24/7/365. You can’t get much more accessible than that!

Improving Customer Service Connections

Unlike speed or accessibility, connection is difficult to automate. According to a recent survey of US consumers, 86% still preferred interacting with a human over an AI chatbot. As chatbots improve over the next few years, that number is likely to lower, but there are always instances where humans will prefer to interact with other humans—especially during stressful, complex or high-risk situations.

So how can brands improve connection and relationships through their customer service ?

One of the most effective ways to do so is to employ personalization throughout your entire customer journey. When customers feel that your brand knows them, understands their preferences and caters to their needs, they’ll naturally feel more connected to your brand. In addition, personalized solutions, interactions and recommendations during customer service touch points go a long way. This can be as simple as using a customer’s name, or more complex, such as making a personalized recommendation for a customer based on previous purchases.

At the end of the day, the key is in treating customers like people, not case numbers. While this may seem obvious, 61% of consumers still say they feel they’re treated more like a number than a person, highlighting that most brands still have a long way to go with personalization and connection.

Improving Customer Service Helpfulness

Helpfulness is an obvious core component of good customer service. After all, the primary reason customers contact a brand is to receive help with some problem or situation. However, just providing an accurate and helpful offer isn’t always enough for true excellence in customer service.

The best customer service is proactive as well, going above and beyond to “seal the deal” and make sure things are wrapped up and going well for your customers. This can take place during a customer-initiated interaction as well as when customers haven’t initiated.

One straightforward way to go above and beyond with your customer service is to simply ensure that the problem is resolved to the customer’s satisfaction before ending the call and closing the case. Far too often, cases are marked as resolved before they truly are, leaving customers dissatisfied and creating more customer service tickets in the long run.

For example, if a customer calls needing a password reset or help getting back into a locked account, rather than just having agents provide them with a temporary password or sending the reset email, have your agents wait on the phone with them to ensure they were able to successfully get back into their account or reset their password.

Customer Service Examples To Learn From

Sometimes the best way to learn what excellent customer service looks like is to see it in action. Here are four brands doing customer service well, and the takeaways you can learn from them to implement in your own organization.

Wistia is a video hosting and analytics platform that’s becoming well-known for their excellent customer service, and great content. How do they do it?

They take an approach to customer service that’s unique for many companies, yet true to their brand and product: implementing personalized videos into their customer service responses. After all, they’re a video hosting platform—why shouldn’t they also use video in their customer service?

From personalized how-to videos or videos answering customer questions or walking a customer through the product, video is a great way to educate and inspire Wistia customers. In addition, they’ve also been known to use video to send personalized messages, thank-you notes or check-ins as well, combining customer service with customer success .

The takeaway?

Don’t fit yourself into a box, or assume you have to use certain channels just because everyone else is doing it that way. Instead, be true to your brand—and your audience—and use the channels and service methods that make the most sense for you and your customers.

Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain is famous for their excellent customer service—but you don’t have to employ Ritz-Carlton levels of luxury to develop good customer service. In fact, some of the principles behind their customer service are applicable no matter your brand. So, what does the Ritz get right in their service?

For one, they empower their employees to deliver exceptional experiences. Rigid customer service solutions don’t allow for personalization, nor do they create memorable experiences for the customer. Instead, the Ritz allows staff members a budget of up to $2,000 per situation to solve customer problems and create memorable, exceptional experiences.

With values such as “I am empowered to create unique, memorable and personal experiences for our guests,” and “I own and immediately resolve guest problems,” the Ritz provides employees with practical boundaries as well as flexibility and freedom to truly inhabit those values.

Ready to perfect your CX?

In an interview with Forbes, Herve Humler, President of the Ritz-Carlton, said, “I believe in the power of recognition and empowerment leading to great employee engagement. And employee engagement is critical to guest engagement. Employee empowerment and recognition is the core of our culture and how we achieve outstanding service.”

Not only is employee engagement and empowerment implemented at all levels, it begins from the very top. When employee empowerment and customer experience remains a focus for even top-level executives, it becomes much easier to integrate this into all levels of the company.

The takeaway? 

Empower your employees to create exceptional customer experiences. In many cases, your customer service agents or other customer-facing employees have a good idea of what customers need and want—they speak with them all day, every day, after all. You don’t have to give each employee a $2,000 budget to do so, either. Instead, allow variation from your standard scripts, flexibility and creativity in solutions, and a reasonable budget based on your brand for creating memorable service.

Developing a sense of ownership, responsibility and trust among your employees—and empowering them to truly own and take action on customer problems—will help develop personalized, exceptional service for your customers.

Chewy, an online pet food and pet-related product retailer, is well-known now for going above and beyond to delight and care for customers. Most importantly, empathy is at the heart of their customer service.

For example, many customers have shared online about the care and support they received from Chewy when a pet died. Many Chewy customers are enrolled in automatic pet food shipments, so when a beloved pet passes, they have to cancel their subscription. Upon doing so, many customers have reported receiving handwritten notes, small pet-related gifts or refunds of already-shipped food from customer service agents at Chewy who helped them cancel their orders and learned of their pet’s passing.

Not only does the brand provide a solution for the customer—canceling their order or subscription—but they go out of their way to respond with empathy and create an emotional bond that makes the customer feel valued, especially during a difficult time.

Keep empathy at the forefront of your customer service interactions. Whether it’s showing concern for a customer going through a hard time, sympathizing with a difficult aspect of your product, apologizing for a service failure, or connecting with a customer over a shared situation or preference, making connections with customers and empathizing with their problems and excitement is at the heart of great service.

Stitch Fix is an online clothing brand that creates excellent customer experiences through personalization. For Stitch Fix, personalization isn’t just a customer experience tactic—it’s at the heart of their entire business model.

The Stitch Fix brand aims to resolve what many people experience as an awful in-store shopping experience, by allowing customers to work with personal stylists to receive a box of new clothing pieces each month. Once they receive their box, customers can try on items and either purchase them to keep or simply return them.

This personalization is delivered at every stage of the customer experience. From the beginning, customers start with a style quiz to understand their shopping and fashion preferences, then begin receiving personalized fashion recommendations and pieces from stylists who tackle user profiles one-by-one.

At every stage, Stitch Fix has asked, “How can we make the shopping experience better for the customer?” and then has created a personalized journey that is accessible and convenient for the modern shopper.

Know your audience, and personalize your products for them. Stitch Fix knew the traditional shopping experience wasn’t working for their audience—and they revamped the entire experience with their customer in mind, plus catered the experience to each individual shopper along the way. With your own brand, finding ways to incorporate personalization at every stage of the customer journey will take your customer service from good to great.

5 Steps To Implementing a Great Customer Service Strategy Within Your Organization

Implementing great customer service is easier said than done. These five strategic steps can help you create practical change and deliver exceptional experiences, every time.

Start with the customer

Of course, great customer service begins with the customer. You need to understand what the customer wants, and what customer preferences are at every stage of the customer journey, on both a high-level and an individual scale. That is, what do our customers (generally) want at this step of the customer journey, and also, what does this particular customer want?

Customer profiling and customer journey mapping can both be helpful tools to help understand your customers, both collectively and individually. Once you’ve gained a solid understanding of the customer, keep a customer-centric approach at every stage of the customer journey.

As you implement new customer service tactics, you should constantly ask yourself, “how does this benefit the customer?” By keeping a customer-focus , you can work to anticipate customer needs (through knowledge of the customer) and solve for them in advance (through a customer-oriented business strategy).

Doing so will not only amplify your customer service, but it will allow you to proactively engage and support your customers, delivering stronger customer experiences that will drive loyalty and revenue over time.

Get the right data….

As you develop a customer service strategy, having the right data in place is essential. Not only does the right data help you understand your customer and customer preferences, but it also enables you to understand the customer experience, your operational success, areas of improvement and more.

With so much data available, though, which is the right data to track?

As a baseline, companies who want to create exceptional customer experiences should be tracking and measuring both operational data as well as experiential data . Operational data reveals how well you’re delivering on service fundamentals, while experiential data reveals how customers are actually experiencing your brand.

As you implement a customer service strategy, you should aim to track metrics across the four key areas of service discussed above: speed, convenience, experience and resolution. For example, you might measure:

• Speed via time in queue, average call length, average handle time, or so on.
• Convenience via Customer Effort Score or abandonment rate
• Experience via CSAT or NPS scores
• Resolution (or Helpfulness) via FCR rates, open tickets vs. resolved tickets, time to resolution and so on.

Clear data allows you to understand your performance in each of these key areas, drawing out areas for improvement and highlighting important customer insights.

…so you can personalize your experience

Speaking of customer insights, another key area data can help with is personalization. The right data allows you to know and understand your customer so you can deliver personalized service, even at scale.

As you seek to implement more personalized experiences, identify key touchpoints along the customer journey, then ask your team:

• How can we make customers’ experiences more personalized at each of these steps?
• What would make this experience better for our customers, in general?
• What could we learn about individual customers to make this experience better for each customer, individually?

Once you have answers, collect the data you need to personalize effectively. Remember, personalization can be small—incorporating personalized touches like birthday surprises, personalized recommendations based on past purchases, reminders to refill a product they previously purchased and so on. These small touches add up and help customers feel that you are there to support them at every step.

Empower agents

Data isn’t the only answer—as discussed above, companies who want to offer truly great customer service need to empower their agents to provide it—even if that service goes “off the books” a bit. Rather than limit your agents to scripts or textbook solutions, agents need to be empowered to solve problems with customized solutions.

In addition, agents need ongoing training, resources and support to continue doing their jobs well, a step that many companies overlook. In a recent study, less than 30% of customer service agents said they felt empowered to do their jobs well, and 62% said they wanted more “skills-based training to improve their performance.” You can’t support great customer service without also supporting the agents who are powering that service!

Finally, empower your agents to collaborate together to solve problems and go above and beyond for customers. The majority of customers today expect teams to collaborate on their behalf to provide seamless experiences and solutions. As a result, customer experience leaders need to provide channels for collaborating both within and outside of the customer service team.

Partner with an expert

Finally, getting serious about delivering exceptional customer service may mean partnering with an expert to really develop and execute successfully on a customer service strategy. When you work with a customer experience expert, like our team at Global Response , you’re not just getting more resources—you’re getting a team of experts with 40+ years of experience in customer service that can develop and execute the strategy that makes the most sense for your brand, your audience and your goals.

Ready to take your customer experience from good to great? Connect with an expert from Global Response today, and get a partner that’s dedicated to creating loyal customers for your brand.

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How To Write a Case Study That Speaks to Your Customers

How to write a customer case study in 6 steps

• Identify the need
• Identify the subject
• Conduct your interviews
• Cover the basics (who, what, how)
• Provide the right framing
• Include emotion

For a prospect who’s just about to make a purchase, a case study could be the most helpful piece of content they could come across.

A case study tells the story of a customer just like them : someone who faced a similar challenge and, with the help of your business, overcame it. This prospect can see themselves in the case study, and the testimony of a real-life customer will have more weight than any other marketing materials you have. 

But, as with any piece of content, a case study needs to be produced in just the right way to have the most impact. Too vague and the effect is lost. Too salesy and the prospect doesn’t trust it.

The best case studies are detailed without being dry, and poignant without being mawkish.

At IMPACT, we guide our clients to write compelling case studies that they can use with prospects in the sales process. Below, we’ll give you the step-by-step guide we teach so that you can put this powerful tool into the hands of your own sales team.

Below, we’ll cover:

• What a case study is (and isn’t).
• How to write a case study in 6 steps.
• Examples of great case studies to inspire you.
• How to know if your case study is working as it’s supposed to.

Ready to tell your customers’ stories? Let’s walk through this process together.

What is a case study?

A case study is a piece of content that tells the story of a customer’s journey. Ideally, this customer struggled with a specific problem before they found your business and your solution, which alleviated the pain point. 

Case studies are so effective because they balance anecdote and quantitative data, so they appeal to both the head and the heart. 

Marketers, after all, are storytellers, and case studies are a wonderful chance to tell the story of a customer . Humans are hard-wired to appreciate stories of struggle and triumph, so your case study should fit right in. 

A case study will usually take the form of an article, but it could be a video or other medium as well.

Most often, case studies are written with bottom-of-the-funnel prospects in mind. As someone approaches a purchase, the case study can help convince them that buying from you is a good idea. 

What a case study isn’t

Although a case study is marketing material for your business, it is not about you . The customer is the hero of this story. Your business is the guide that helped them overcome challenges and succeed.

Case studies should include emotion (more on that later), but they should not be sentimental or emotionally manipulative .

How to write a case study in 6 steps

Jen Barrell is a content trainer at IMPACT who works with businesses to plan their inbound marketing strategy. She has guided numerous clients through the case study writing process. 

She advises a six-step process to produce a rough draft, after which you should follow your normal process for QA and publication. 

These are the steps she asks businesses to follow. 

Step 1: Identify the need

Before you begin, Jen says, you must determine the need this case study will solve. Ask yourself these questions:

• Who are you actually writing this for?
• What key problems are you trying to solve for the reader?
• At what stage in the buying process will this case study be used?

Having answers to these big questions up front will save time in the long run. You want to be sure about your audience and your scope so that you know exactly how to tailor your message to suit your future customers. 

Step 2: Identify the subject

Second, you’ll need to determine who you’ll be writing about. It could be a business or an individual, depending on what you sell, but it should be a single customer, so focus on only one.

Talk with your sales and service teams to decide on some previous customers who could be good subjects. Compile a short list of possible candidates and reach out to them, explaining the process and timeline.

According to Jen, this is a time to follow the path of least resistance. “The best case studies are created out of interviews,” she says. “You want to talk with people who are enthusiastic and genuine.” 

In other words, if they’re resistant to your initial outreach, they’re likely to be a less compelling interview subject. 

Step 3: Conduct your interviews

A good case study tells a story. You’ll need to compile solid evidence to show the effect your business has had on that customer’s life.

• Did your insurance company help them rebuild after a disaster?
• Did your team help them win their court case? 
• Did your marketing plan help them successfully launch a new product line? 
• Did you provide alternative solutions for their design process so they could be more efficient? 

Whatever the case may be, you’ll need the numbers to back it up. What was it like before, during, and after your company’s involvement? What initial challenge did they face? What positive results did that customer eventually see? How long did it all take?

You’ll need to do research to find the raw data to make these key points. You can get some from your team and some from the subject.

But a case study isn’t just about numbers and profit. Sure, these may be your main findings, but you don’t want to overlook the human element. You’re telling a positive story about transformation. 

In your interviews, make sure to ask questions about the people behind the numbers. Ask questions about the emotions they felt during their journey.

Step 4: Cover the basics

Any reader looking at a case study is looking for very specific information. They want to know the same thing:

• Who is the customer being described? What makes their story relatable?
• What were the problems they were facing? What challenges did you help solve? What other possible solutions did they try or consider?
• How did your company’s offerings — whether product or service — help the customer succeed?
• Results: What did their success look like? How long did it take? What were the details of the experience?

If you cover these basics in every case study you write, you’ll produce a consistent product that is digestible for bottom-of-the-funnel prospects in the final stages of a purchase.

Jen says, “This is a time when having a formula to follow will serve you well. Prospects might read several case studies at once, so make sure they’re easy to read and well-structured.”

Step 5: Provide the right framing

As the writer, it’s up to you, to provide the right framing and structure to make your case study grab the reader’s attention while at the same time conveying relevant facts that might feel dry.

This starts in your introduction. 

Most case study intros jump right into the who-what-how without providing the context of what’s to come. Instead, Jen advises using a “P-E-P” approach in the intro to hook the reader. Think of this as the welcome mat of your case study, she explains. “In your introduction, start by identifying the problem , then demonstrate your experience , then offer a promise .”

• Start by connecting with the reader by showing them you recognize the problem they’re experiencing. For instance, if you’re writing a case study that shows how your roofing company helped a customer replace their roof after a hurricane, then most likely the people drawn to that particular case study are experiencing a similar situation. 
• Then you’ll want to provide the context of the case study by telling them who you are and the expertise you have to solve their problem. While the case study certainly isn’t about your company or product, the reader does deserve to know who’s advising them. 
• Finally, your intro should make a promise to the reader about what’s to come. This is the space where you’ll preview to your reader what the payoff is for reading through to the end.

What the P-E-P approach looks like in practice

For the example above, the case study introduction might look something like this:

The worry that natural disasters cause homeowners can easily turn to panic when a worst-case scenario occurs. The loss of a roof during a storm both exposes the physical contents of your home and tests your emotions. You’re left wondering how long it will take to repair, if your house is safe to live in, how you’ll deal with insurance, and who will help you navigate through this mess in the coming days. [Identify the problem.] As a Florida-based roofing company, Acme Roofing has helped 20 families in the past year alone repair their homes when the unthinkable happened. Jane Smith and her family lost their roof in the last hurricane and have some crucial advice for not only making it through this trying time but coming out with a home that’s both beautiful and safe for her family. [Show your expertise.] Keep reading to find out what happened to Jane’s home and the steps she took to secure a safe place for her family. [Offer a promise of what’s to come.]

Any article could rely on this intro format, but case studies are especially well-served by this approach, Jen says.

From there, each section of the case study should smoothly lead into the next. Be sure to provide transitions and appropriate pacing. This should be informative, but not dry like academic writing. 

Step 6: Include emotion

Be sure to include human elements that convey to the reader that this is a real story involving real people. There are emotions connected to every decision we make, and conveying these in the case study will enhance its appeal to your audience. 

Was he afraid he would lose his business?

Was she frustrated by previous products that didn’t solve her problem?

What did they feel when your business stepped in? Relief? Joy? Satisfaction? 

Include these emotions .  Case studies often come across as extremely dry, but this is one article type that can carry heavy emotion. Use the emotion of the people you got to know during the interview process. 

After you’ve completed these steps, you’ll have your rough draft. Share it with the customer whose story you’ve shared. See if anything needs further exploration or additional background information.

Bring together two or three trusted colleagues who can serve as editors. Avoid having too many cooks in the kitchen, though.

Then, polish and refine what you have, including the feedback of your colleagues, to create your final draft. If necessary, work with a graphic designer to create visual elements to help enhance the story. 

Then, get that sucker in the hands of your sales team .

Case study examples to inspire you

What does an actual case study look like? There are dozens of ways your business could approach a case study, but don’t forget those core elements. You must tell a compelling story that will resonate with your target audience: potential customers who are almost ready to make a purchase. 

Example 1: IMPACT and Bill Ragan Roofing

Here’s a narrative-style case study that tells the story of one of our clients, Tennessee-based Bill Ragan Roofing. 

Note how writer Jolie Higazi balances the numbers and the human element. Readers feel like they’re getting to know this business and want to celebrate its success. 

Example 2: Screensteps and The Peninsula Jewish Community Center

Screensteps provides training software to businesses for onboarding and other instruction. Here is a case study explaining how they helped a nonprofit implement a new CRM for more than 200 employees. 

With wit and illustrations, they tell the tale in a way that is accessible and engaging. Again, this doesn’t feel like research writing. It reads as a compelling narrative — and includes quotes from various stakeholders throughout. 

Evaluating your case study

How will you know if your case study is any good? 

Simple, says Jen. Listen to your sales team. 

In most cases, case studies will be used by your sales team with bottom-of-the-funnel prospects who are close to a decision. Jen advises that marketers check in with sales reps to see exactly how the case study landed with a prospect. 

Did they ask follow-up questions? Did they see themselves in it? If your case study is covering all the bases, your sales team should be raving about it. If not, go back to the drawing board and make it better.

If your case study is aimed at a broader audience, evaluate it the way you would any article. “Look at your conversion data,” Jen says. “Make sure that your bounce rate is low because that shows your audience immediately wanted to learn more about what you offer.”

The real-life stories your buyers need

Case studies are incredibly useful for your sales team and helpful for your buyers. However, keep in mind that they need to be regularly updated to avoid looking stale. If you tout yourself as a cutting-edge business but your case studies all come from five years ago, you might inadvertently hurt your chances with a prospect. Even a great example might not age well.

Once you produce a case study, it will be up to you to update as needed. Set aside time each quarter to read through old content and make sure it’s up to date and still makes sense.

If you need help convincing your potential customers that your offerings are perfect for them, case studies are perhaps your greatest asset. Spend the time to tell these customer stories so that your prospects can learn about a real-life situation in which they can see themselves. 

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How Canadian Tire leveraged the potential of customer data with AI

Decentralized data re-centers focus on customers for one of Canada’s most iconic and trusted retailers.

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The better the question

How fast could you drive business without a data roadblock?

Advanced analytics and artificial intelligence changed a two-lane road into an information superhighway.

I n 1937, Toronto-based Canadian Tire Corporation (Canadian Tire) surprised and delighted its customers with a novelty: clerks on roller skates. These “fillers,” as they were called, were able to fulfil customers’ catalog orders just a little faster on wheels.

Innovative customer service has been the primary driver of Canadian Tire’s business model for more than a century, as the company has grown from a single tire shop to Canada’s leading all-purpose retailer. With more than 1,700 locations across three industries, 13 recognizable brand banners, and 34,000 employees, Canadian Tire has expanded to provide general merchandise, sports apparel and gear, automotive products, real estate, and credit card offerings.

In 2021, Canadian Tire developed a strategic plan to elevate its customer-centric culture through a business transformation powered by data insights. The iconic Canadian company recognized an opportunity to bolster its brand position by sharpening its focus on the customer through data quality, accessibility, analytic capabilities and, ultimately, effective business application.

“We knew we had the customer data available to drive our entire business farther and faster,” says Jane Nakamachi, SVP, Business Architecture at Canadian Tire Corporation. “What we wanted were more sophisticated capabilities to sort, request and grant access to our business leaders who need specific data sets to grow their areas of the enterprise.”

Priority target areas included clearer data sourcing and ownership, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AAAI) capabilities, and an optimized technology infrastructure.

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Previously, only a limited number of people were able to generate and provide the various reports needed for analysis, planning and decision-making. Leaders saw a chance to open the information pipeline to accelerate queries and increase data accessibility for Canadian Tire’s wide range of business units and stakeholders.

Canadian Tire asked Ernst & Young LLP (EY) teams to create a plan to help modernize all of its customer data environments — in a deliberate shift from over-centralization to a more decentralized, business-embedded data model. In addition to improving visibility and operational efficiencies, the core objective was to drive growth and facilitate customer personalization across its 13 banners.

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Mapping to the future with data federalization

Customer data puts power steering in the hands of those driving the business.

To help Canadian Tire improve its customer data management, EY teams launched a thorough data maturity assessment. Focus areas were data management processes, data accessibility and governance practices, business intelligence or Microsoft Power BI proficiency, and AAAI capabilities.

What we wanted were more sophisticated capabilities to sort, request and grant access to our business leaders who need specific data sets to grow their areas of the enterprise.

Jane Nakamachi

SVP, Business Architecture at Canadian Tire Corporation

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Data federation was a top priority. EY teams conducted an inventory of Canadian Tire’s customer data, holding some 40 discovery meetings with more than 100 stakeholders over the course of three months. Critical questions included how data was entering the company’s current system, where it was being captured and stored, and who and what programs were generating reports based on that data.

Process mapping revealed nearly 500 data paths with numerous redundancies, resulting in multiple copies of similar customer data sets bogging down the entire system. There were also notable gaps in the data and inconsistencies in how it was sourced and provisioned by stakeholders. EY teams identified 165 data processes to be refined for Canadian Tire’s future state operating model.

“With a massive volume of retail business being transacted and multiple brand banners to consider, this was an energizing challenge for EY teams to take on,” says Alex Mohelsky, EY Global Technology Strategy Lead and Chief Innovation Officer. “We brought in an exceptional team with knowledge ranging across data management, AI and analytics, cloud transformation and change management – we were able to address every aspect successfully while working alongside our Canadian Tire counterparts.”

To strategically leverage data as a competitive advantage, the EY team recommended Canadian Tire realign and configure its existing data architecture and technology investments in a data mesh construct. The proposed platform, built on the Microsoft Azure stack, would unite a distributed domain-driven architecture, self-service design and product focus, helping Canadian Tire cultivate synergies among the legacy silos.

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The new data governance model places decision-making power with a collective federation of domain owners, granting localized autonomy to those who use the data to drive business forward. Shared standards and evaluation metrics were created to address regulatory compliance oversight for a healthy data ecosystem.

One of the most notable outcomes of the six-month transition from centralized to domain-based data architecture is a new, internal data and analytics organization for Canadian Tire. Based on the EY teams’ recommendation, Canadian Tire’s Chief Data Officer and executive leadership made a significant investment in head count as well as technology infrastructure, spearheading the recruitment of nearly 100 data scientists and managers with experience in this emerging field. The expanded Canadian Tire team will oversee data governance and empower Canadian Tire’s various business users to access what they need, creating a data-driven culture across the entire organization with AAAI serving as the engine.

Rather than abruptly shifting all oversight of data and analytics to this new business unit, Canadian Tire extended the EY teams engagement for a full year to facilitate a collaborative innovation lab, where Ernst & Young LLP and Canadian Tire data teams worked side-by-side to build out the new data and analytics architecture. The two teams paired up according to functions and roles so that EY professionals could introduce the system to the Canadian Tire team through structured onboarding, training and coaching. More than 10 experienced EY mentors worked directly with 20-plus Canadian Tire executives to provide knowledge, share experience, and position the new data organization for success.

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A decentralized data model, supported by a smarter technology infrastructure and restructured governance, has unleashed the potential of customer data for Canadian Tire’s business growth. Agile methodology helped coordinate, support and govern the more decentralized approach to foster operational and business success​ for the 24 business units engaged in the transformation.  

New dashboards on the Microsoft Power BI platform enable business domains to harness data in more agile ways. Banners can now use this data more effectively to analyze product performance by stock keeping unit (SKU), applying the results to determine what items should be promoted where, when and how.  

For example, Canadian Tire’s Triangle Rewards Program is now strategically calibrated to match products with buyer patterns, exclusive deals and future marketing potential by capturing high-volume, real-time insights into customer interaction and purchasing trends across digital channels.  

“Retail is among the most competitive of all the industries we work with, and Canadian Tire is in the upper echelon with multiple brands, locations, online outlets and customer incentive programs,” says David McQueen, EY Canada Managing Partner, Consulting; Member, EY Canada Executive Committee. “Data management is of paramount importance to large retailers like this. We needed to bring the strength of experience and current knowledge to get their data models right.”  

Phase 1, streamlining Canadian Tire’s customer data management, led to an encore. EY teams are now supporting a transformation of Canadian Tire’s product data management.  

Canadian Tire may have traveled miles from its original tire store, but the company has never lost sight of its purpose – serving a loyal customer base with speed, stability and forward vision.

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Viaplay launches as add-on Prime Video channel in the US

April 18, 2024 13.11 Europe/London By Julian Clover

Jason Priestley as Gerry McNamara in Börje – The Journey of a Legend on Viaplay (Credit Jenny Unnegård)

The Viaplay channel is now available as an-add on subscription on Amazon’s Prime Video Channels in the United States.

Following a 7-day free trial, subscribers will pay $5.99 a month for the service, which offers a mix of Scandinavian series and films.

In February, Viaplay closed its own app and direct to consumer streaming service in the United States and Canada. Its international distribution strategy now centres around building local partnerships.

Vanda Rapti, Viaplay Group EVP Viaplay Select & Content Distribution: “We’re thrilled to increase the Viaplay subscription channel’s distribution in the United States. This shows the universal appeal of high-quality Nordic and European content and will make these titles more accessible to viewers across the United States than ever before”.

The Viaplay subscription channel is already available in North America through partner platforms such as Comcast Xfinity, The Roku Channel and Xumo.

Viaplay’s US content includes crime drama, young adult series and documentaries.

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About Julian Clover

Julian Clover is a Media and Technology journalist based in Cambridge, UK. He works in online and printed media. Julian is also a voice on local radio. You can talk to Julian on Twitter @julianclover , on Facebook or by email at [email protected] .

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