I was chatting yesterday with a friend about his plans for the weekend. He was planning to fly early this morning to Liverpool with his wife and two sons to see a soccer game. The game was to be between his and his sons’ favourite football team – Everton FC and West Brom – two teams in England’s soccer Premiership. And it was a birthday treat for one of his sons – one of those birthday treats that Dads love as well!
Some weeks ago he had booked four tickets online in Everton’s family enclosure. To his surprise Everton contacted him afterwards wondering why he had booked four adult tickets. Someone at Everton was wondering why four adults would go to the family enclosure. Having clarified that two of the four “adults” were actually minors, Everton provide a refund of twice the difference between adult and minor tickets. Great initiative by Everton – and also high integrity.
Impressive eh? But it doesn’t stop there. They also asked the name of the boy having the birthday – and said that they’d send him birthday greetings over the public address system 15 minutes before kickoff. And to cap it all they asked my friend to send them a digital photo of his son so that they could try and incorporate something into the programme.
Fantastic eh? Perhaps this was just someone being nice. But this sort of customer service is also in the provider’s rational self-interest. My friend will tell lots of people this story. He agreed to letting me blog about it so you the reader has now heard it. And there’s one happy boy who I suspect will still be telling people about this when he’s middle-aged like his Dad and me. Hats off to Everton! And the result? Everton 2 – 0 West Brom.
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