What does it take to wow customers ?

Amazon communicates shipping delays in advance

Amazon proactively communicates information about shipping delays. By doing this, Amazon not just resolves questions in their customers’ minds, but also saves time and productivity for their support team, who can go on to resolve more complex questions.

Slack notifies customers about a security breach

Slack informed its users in advance about an unauthorized security access. With specific details about what happened in the breach and how their customers’ data was affected, the email also linked to a blog post about Slack’s security policies.

Netflix proactively apologizes for video streaming issues

Some Netflix viewers had a subpar experience because of an encoding error in the video player. To compensate for this, they proactively apologized and threw in a 3% credit coupon.

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Kashflow apologizes for a glitch and offers a solution proactively

Kashflow makes it really easy to create and share invoices. When documents sent from Kashflow weren’t received by intended recipients because of a technical issue, they sent out an apology. Beyond that, they also included a template their customers could use when they resend invoices to their clients.

Optimum Financial Solutions use dedicated relationship managers

Optimum Financial Solutions is an Indian IT Firm that provides cloud based solutions for wealth management to financial intermediaries. They assign all their customers a Relationship Manager who takes care of their needs and ensures they don’t have to get in touch with multiple POCs to get their problems resolved. In case a customer is not very active, the relationship managers initiate a courtesy call to check in on the customer and ensure things are smooth and optimal. In addition, they also regularly update customers on software releases and get feedback from them to improve the overall user experience.

AT&T sends personalized ‘video bills’ to their customers

AT&T sends a personalized explainer video along with their bills to help customers understand every aspect of the bill in great detail. This makes sure customers know exactly what they are being charged for, and also helps reduce the number of inbound calls on billing issues.

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Debenhams has advanced buying guides on its website

Debenhams, a leading UK-based clothes retailer, has set up comprehensive buying guides on its website to help customers find what they’re looking for easily. They anticipate that navigating around the huge range of options can be daunting to a user, and have built the buying guides in such a way that the customer is able to narrow down what they’re looking for and make the right purchase decision.

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Evernote supports quick replies on Twitter

Evernote tries to anticipate why users might be trying to send them a direct message on Twitter, and shows them relevant options to start the conversation. Users can choose to get help on an existing ticket, or submit a feature request using the choices available. This helps the brand feel more accessible before the issue is picked up by an actual support agent.

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Autopilot contacts customers who visit their support portal

Autopilot, a marketing automation company, proactively reaches out to users who visit their support portal, a while after they’ve left. By reaching out, Autopilot ensures customers got the help they were looking for. While at it, they also receive feedback to go back and improve their help content.

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Citibank automatically detects a customer’s travel plans

Citibank automatically detects a customer’s upcoming travel plans based on charges in their credit card. The bank also asks their customers to keep their contact information up to date before their travel plans begin, so they can alert them if there are any suspicious transactions.

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Airbnb detects travel plans and informs users of hosting services

If Airbnb notices a customer making travel plans, they proactively send them an email that talks about the advantages of hosting services. This helps to educate the user that while they’re away, they can host their space for another traveller.

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Lenskart lets customers try frames for glasses at home

Lenskart, an Indian online eyewear store, understands that customers visiting their site for the first time may be overwhelmed by options, struggling to pick a frame for glasses. They give them the option to try out a bunch of sample frames at the comfort of their home, for free. If they’re happy with the frame, they can purchase it on Lenskart later.

Codeship reaches out to users to troubleshoot their issues

Codeship is a Continuous Integration service that helps developers automate, test and deploy their builds. Codeship proactively reaches out to users whose builds have failed five times in the last 24 hours. They extend a hand to these users and offer to help them troubleshoot their issues.

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Cleartrip proactively reaches out to customers about refunds

Cleartrip is an Indian online travel company. If a Cleartrip customer cancels their trip, they receive an email in about a week that asks them if they got the refund credited to their account. The email mentions they can reach out to their support team if they hadn’t yet received it.

Amex detects travel plans and shares useful security tips

Amex automatically detects that a customer is travelling soon and shares some useful tips with them to make communication easier in the unlikely event of suspicious account activity.

Fiverr warns users about what can get their account suspended

Fiverr is a marketplace where you can find freelance services for a variety of business functions. It lets users looking for freelance services directly connect with the people offering them via chat. When these users are engaging with each other, Fiverr keeps a track of what is being typed in the chatbox. Based on the words being used, messages are displayed that warn users of what kind of interaction can get their account restricted. For example, if the word payment is detected, the user is warned that accepting or asking for direct payments can have implications on their account.

Caratlane compares diamonds to everyday objects to guide users

Caratlane, an Indian online jewelry store anticipates people have trouble perceiving the size of diamonds they’d like to buy online. They compare it with everyday objects so that customers have a better idea of whether the pendant is too big or too small for them. Beyond improving conversions, this delights customers and leads to a friction-free shopping experience.

Heap Analytics apologizes for slow query response times

Heap Analytics is an online analytics tool that helps users track interactions on websites and iOS apps. When they notice that a particular query takes longer than usual to execute, they reach out to the customer to apologize for the slow performance. They also reassure the customer that this issue is being looked into, and that they’re working to deliver optimal performance.

Mention offers to help customers in filtering their tweets

Mention, a social media monitoring software, detects when a user is getting an abnormally large amount of mentions on a particular day on Twitter. They anticipate that people may not like receiving a huge number of emails when their brand is being mentioned, so they send out an email asking the customer if they need any help in filtering their alerts.

Morton’s Steakhouse surprises Peter Shankman at the airport

Morton’s steakhouse decided to surprise Peter Shankman who jokingly tweeted asking them to meet him at the airport with a porterhouse steak when he landed. They actually did, and this story became viral establishing Morton’s as a brand who truly go out of their way to please their customers.

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Samsung sends man a phone after a viral Facebook interaction

Samsung received a humorous letter with a dragon drawing asking them for a free Galaxy S3. They sent a witty response to the customer on Facebook which soon went viral. Acknowledging the positive publicity from the incident, they actually sent the customer a free phone and even personalized it with his dragon drawing.

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Teabox offers customers who abandon their cart a free coupon

Teabox is an Indian tea brand that sells tea and tea-based products online. When Teabox notices a customer abandoning their cart, they give them a call and offer a free discount coupon. This gives customers the impression that they genuinely care, helps uncover problems in their customer’s journey and helps Teabox build loyalty points.

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Uber refunds the full trip amount after a bad driver experience

After a customer gave a low trip rating on Uber due to a bad driver experience, Uber was quick to apologise. They went one step further and made sure that the customer was never mapped to that particular driver again. They also refunded the full trip amount to make it up to the user.

Bonobos gives free coupon to people who abandon their cart

Bonobos sends this email when their customers abandon carts, and also throws in a 20% discount coupon for their first order. The email is quirky - and it always gets noticed in a sea of promotional emails.

JetBlue greets customer with a welcome parade at the airport

JetBlue is one brand which is serious about delighting customers in the most unique way possible. When this customer jokingly asked them for a welcome parade when she landed, she was actually greeted by a parade of JetBlue employees holding welcome cards.

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Winc gives a free coupon code on cart abandonment

Winc is an online wine store based in the US. They offer a free discount coupon if they notice a customer abandoning their cart. Not only this, they populate their email with wine suggestions based on what the customer had earlier looked at to help make their purchase decision easier.

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Amazon apologizes to a user by extending Prime subscription

When Amazon noticed that a customer is not happy with a delay in the delivery date despite being a Prime member, they proactively extended his Prime subscription by one month as a token of apology for the inconvenience caused.

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