My wife and I went out for coffee in town this morning. Instead, of going to our usual Costa Coffee, she decides we needed to get rid of the loyalty points she had accumulated on her Nero’s card, so before you know, here we are waiting for almost 10 minutes to get a Latte and a espresso for me.

From where I was sitting I could see the people in the growing queue getting restless. (They were all just too British to protest, and that included my wife!). What we had expected to be a pleasant time sitting down and enjoying our coffee together turn out to be an uncomfortable time spent looking at our watches to make sure we wouldn’t miss our appointments.

What we didn’t know, however, was that this morning Nero decided to have their new trainee serving at a very busy hour which unluckily for them was a bad timing choice. I was certain, I would not come back to Nero again. I had a many reasons why not to return, I thought…just then, the manager came over to our table and said: I am so sorry you had to wait this long, she then explained the reasons and said, here are your cards back, today the coffee is on us!

This very small experience led me to think that if businesses are interested in staying on top of their game, they will have no choice but to go the extra mile in today’s competitive market. Always! I have now decided I will comeback to Nero, not because I have some free coffee but because I believed the manager was truthful to me and interested enough to comeback to us and put things right..

I also think that the language used many times before: ‘don’t take it personally but business is business’ will not have a place in this very transparent culture. Business not only means serving large scale but also in paying personal attention to the needs of its customers!

Have you recently had any similar experiences of good/bad customer service?