I’ve written before about some excruciatingly poor customer service experiences. The web is a great platform for it. But, I don’t think we share great experiences often enough.

About a year ago, we were shopping for a white suit for our little Tobin. It was a painfully morose thing: we were looking for something to bury him in. He’d not yet passed, but every day was more difficult and it was clearly imminent. It’s the sort of thing that is made markedly easier by doing it beforehand, although you’d rather not do it at all.

If you’ve lived in Utah (or Provo, in particular), you know there is no shortage of “white clothing” stores, selling white suits, dresses, veils, tuxedos, belts, shoes, or anything else you could ever want to wear that is white. Except no one seemed to have anything sized for a three-year-old.

We visited three or four specialty stores and the LDS distribution center; the only thing we found was a white jumpsuit. On a whim, we stopped by Men’s Wearhouse (in Orem, on the corner of University Pkwy and State St). The sales-people there know me, as I do much of my shopping there. We explained what we were looking for. They didn’t have anything his size, but suggested several places we might look. We’d visited each of them. The salesman then asked if it would be alright for him to call around to other stores. We agreed, and gave him my cell phone number.

Across the parking lot there was (yet another) white clothing store. They didn’t have anything in stock, but had a (frilly) tuxedo in his size that they could bring down from another store. After looking at a similar one in a different size, it was clear the tuxedo was much too flashy given the solemnity of our purpose.

While we were there, the gentleman at Men’s Wearhouse called—he and another worker had been scouring the phone book, and suggested a couple of other places we might try. We thanked him for his work, but we’d already visited the places he was suggesting.

Fifteen minutes later, he called again. After dialing every listing he could find, he had tracked down a store in American Fork called Little Things Mean a Lot, which not only had a suit in the right size, but was holding it for us.

When we arrived at Little Things Mean a Lot, the salesperson there expressed her condolences, and showed us the suit (which was waiting at the front). It was perfect. Clean, simple, and white. She said she’d spoken with the manager before we arrived, and given the nature of our circumstances had agreed to offer us a discount. We were grateful and impressed, and ended up buying suits for our other children as well, in part because the service was so good.

As a customer, I’m not afraid to boycott a company for lousy service, or support a local company that’s filling a local need. It’s experiences like this that make me a customer for life. I wish more companies were like these two.

Posted in Customer Service, Tobin