Here's a question for you. Would anyone in your organization feel like they had the authority to do this?

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.

I'm guessing no. I'm guessing that there are probably a lot of layers of authority and permissions in place that would make most staff not even consider this an option. I'm also betting that your organization would feel like you didn't have the resources to do something like this.

But here's the thing. This is the kind of activity that sets people's expectations for how organizations SHOULD behave. Once you've had this kind of experience, mediocre service just doesn't cut it anymore. And people are talking about it so even if they haven't had the experience themselves, they see what's going on with other people so their expectations are higher, too.

The bar is being raised.

What are we doing to keep ourselves in the game? What are we doing to make sure that people heart us?

Photo via cybele-la