Good Customer Service and A Wonderful Apology

When I worked in the customer service industry one of the phrases I truly liked was:

turn every complaint into a compliment

At the end of last year I moved house. I dutifully contacted everyone I could think of so that they could update my address details.

After a few weeks, I realised that I was still receiving bank statements that had been forwarded from my old address so I wrote to the bank again.

Unfortunately I still kept receiving forwarded statements so I went into a branch and asked them to change the address immediately and register it as a complaint as despite writing to the bank twice, my address had still not been changed.

Within a few days I received a letter of acknowledgement from the bank….to the right address.

A couple of days later I received a phone call from the bank and had a very nice conversation with them about the situation. The person I spoke to was pleasant at all times, apologetic and reassuring; data protection is after all a very serious matter and there is a very real fraud risk when your post, particularly banking information, is sent to the wrong place.

By way of apology, the bank credited my account with £250 and today I received this lovely bouquet.

Now that is what I call good customer service!