One of the services that Leapfrog Leadership provides is to help organizations understand the differences between Customer Service and Customer Loyalty, and how to create the latter. Every once in a while we encounter a company that really “gets it” and like to hold them out as an example of how to foster Customer Loyalty.

I recently purchased a product called a Squeezebox Duet. This product is made by Slim Devices, a part of the Logitech family. When my Squeeze box showed up I encountered several issues with it and contacted their customer support line. I was on hold for less than two minutes and then put through to a very considerate analyst. He didn’t take me down some forced march with a canned script but rather did an outstanding job of troubleshooting my situation. When it became clear that the issues I was having were more than he could handle he transferred me to their second level of support. When he made the transfer he stayed on the phone to make sure that the hand off went smoothly.

Within a fairly short period of time the second level analyst (Tyler) determined that my unit was faulty and would need to be replaced. He gave me the option of returning it to Logitech or to the vendor from whom I had purchased it. I told him I’d contact the vendor before making a decision. He contacted me the next day to find out what my decision was and I told him I was going to return it to the vendor. While I was waiting for the replacement to arrive, I was contacted again by Logitech wanting to know if the replacement had arrived.

When the new unit arrived it worked much better than the original unit but I was still experiencing some minor networking issues (not caused by their device). Before I had an opportunity to contact Logitech I received a phone call from them. Do you see a pattern here? They called me!

I’m not going to drag this story out any further but will end it by saying that the new unit is working way beyond my expectations, Logitech was very proactive in making certain that my expectations were exceeded and their analysts were highly trained technically and very focused on providing an outstanding experience.

I do not know if this level of expertise is unique to the Slim Devices portion of Logitech or if it is indicative of the company as a whole. I do know, however, that this was one of the best customer support experiences I’ve ever had. Customer Loyalty is much more that simply doing the right thing when asked to do so. It is proactively seeking ways to go beyond doing the right thing and treating the customer like a respected friend in the process.

I am now much more than a satisfied Logitech customer. I love that company. I love the way I was treated, and going forward will no doubt be more understanding of snafus than I might otherwise have been. And most importantly, I’ll be preaching their goodness to anyone who will listen.

And that is what Customer Loyalty is all about.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 9:59 am and is filed under Outstanding Examples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.