Do Mom Businesses Offer Better Customer Service?
Posted in Fashion, Life, motherhood, reviews on 02/04/2010 01:56 pm by EmilyI recently experienced TWO (I know!) fantastic customer service experiences from businesses started by moms. Is that a coincidence?
The first one came from See Kai Run. I had ordered Little Miss several pairs of (totally adorable) half price shoes during their December sale. By the middle of January I figured something must be up so I emailed them and asked them what was going on with my order. I very quickly received an email back apologizing and explaining that it seemed they had experienced a technical glitch when I placed my order that charged me but didn’t schedule my order to be fulfilled. Sadly because this hadn’t been discovered the shoes I had ordered were now all sold out. They apologized again and then offered me two different ways they could remedy the situation. They could either refund my credit card immediately or I could choose ANY three pairs of replacement shoes from the site – email them the size and styles and they would ship them to me right away. I chose the shoes (um hello!) and was able to order Little Miss these adorable shoes:
There was never any question or debate that they were going fix the problem – they admitted it was their mistake and immediately remedied it – making me tres happy and an ongoing customer.
My second great experience was with Mally Bibs. My grandmother had sent Little Miss some money for Christmas and had asked we get her something special with it. After much thought I decided that it would be sweet to get her one of the personalized Mally Bibs – I could chose the design (I love their old heart and crossbones design), the colours (her nursery colours of course) and have her name put on it.
With their custom design studio you choose the colour for the front, the pattern on the front, the main colour for the back, the colour of the pocket on the back and the colour of the name. I wanted the colour on the back to match the pink of the heart pattern on the front and thought I got it right – until the bib arrived and I realized that the colours on my screen weren’t the same as the bib.
Now I know that I am probably one of the only people that would notice but when you pay $50 for a bib you want it to be exactly how you want it to be and I knew it would bug me every time I looked at it. So I emailed Mally Bibs and explained the situation and asked if there was anything that could be done.
I received an email back very quickly from them saying that although they usually charge for changes and repairs they could see how similar the colours looked on the screen so if I sent the bib back to them they would fix it for me for FREE!
This is all in stark contrast to the service I’m receiving from my insurance company as I try and get our beloved iMac replaced after it was damaged. Do mom businesses better understand their customers (mostly other moms) better? Are they more sympathetic? Or do they better understand that moms are more likely to talk to other moms about their experiences and therefore one bad experience can have an outreaching impact? Whatever the answer this is one mom who is very grateful that they are more clued in and that both See Kai Run & Mally Bibs made my life easier! Thanks!
