Today I took ownership of a rather spiffing print by the very talented Phil Wall, I will try and get a picture taken of it soon but the print itself isn’t what I wanted to talk about.

What I want to talk about is the outstanding level of customer service that I received from him.

My order was placed with the printers at the same time one of his own orders was, my order being directly delivered to me and his order obviously going straight to him.

The day after his order arrived he contacted me to ask if I had received mine, I had not – I didn’t think I would, I had assumed I would be waiting at least a week but as soon as he heard I had not he was putting things in place to ensure I was kept happy.

He contacted the printers, double checked my address, offered to get it re-sent and was already organising free stuff for me as a sorry. All this because a third party had taken an extra couple of days to do with delivering something.

The net effect of this is that even before my order arrived I was already planning what my next purchase from him might be.

I don’t want to guess at how long he took doing this, but I would imagine it would take no longer than 45 minutes in total to do the checks and send me quick messages reassuring me and keeping me in the loop.

If you were told you could spend 45 minutes working with a customer that would almost guarantee that they would stay loyal to you for life would you do it?

I think you would, and I think you should.

Does this scale? Of course not, at least not easily but that is no excuse to not aim to do it as often as possible with your clients.