A heartwarming tale of above and beyond customer service.

Check out this story of supermarket giant Sainsbury and how they responded to a letter telling them they were wrong.

The Customer Is Always Right: Sainsbury’s and Ms. Lily Robinson

While it’s so easy to say that customers are always right, accepting it as a precept for operating your business is quite often difficult as it may mean giving more control than you like to. As the owner or the manager, you should continue to be in the thick of things when dealing with customer complaints and suggestions. When you’re having a hard time remembering this critical role of your customers in improving your bottom line, you may take a hint from Sainsbury.

Three and a half-year-old Lily Robinson sent a letter to the company asking why one of their breads was called “Tiger bread,” when it looked more like a giraffe’s skin pattern. Cute, funny, innocent, but not the kind of letter a company as large as Sainsbury would pay attention to, right?

Wrong. They sent a reply agreeing with her observations, along with a gift card. But they went overboard too. They changed the name of the bread per her recommendations, and even honored little Lily’s contribution by acknowledging the reason for the change of name.

Although the change took a while for Sainsbury to fully implement, their kind and fun response to Lily’s letter generated more than 130,000 likes on Facebook.

 

How would you have responded?

How can we make our customers feel that their suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated?