Jeanne Bliss

It’s an everyday charge up the hill to be there for customers in ways that are important to them. Beloved companies gladly do the hard work. They’re in the scrimmage every day to earn the right for their customers to return.

Beloved companies think and rethink how to conduct themselves, so they earn the right to their customers’ continued business. The “experience” they deliver is far more than the execution of an operating plan. They leave customers thinking, “Who else would have done this?” “Where else could I get this?” “I want to do this again.”

By creating reliability in the way you do business, and fusing that with moments of contact delivered from the customer’s point of view, you earn the right to grow.

Griffin Hospital wanted to have no secrets between themselves and their patient “customers,” so they decided to make medical records available to patients and their families.

This gesture showed that managing the journey to health was an equal partnership. They wanted to mend years of a perceived imbalanced relationship, so Griffin made the total transparency of patient medical records an olive branch. Anything the hospital knew, the patient and family could know. In doing so, Griffin Hospital patients could spend all the time they wanted with their records, have them explained, and consider them their “own.” They could even make comments on their own charts.

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“Let’s make sure we do the right thing,” CEO Harry Kraemer told Alan Heller, president of the Baxter International Inc. division responsible for dialysis equipment, when dialysis patient deaths began in August 2001 in Madrid, Spain, and Croatia. Rather than waiting to know if they were at fault, Baxter took accountability immediately, with a global recall of all of the filters and a hold on distribution of warehoused filters. It was finally determined that a fluid made by another company that was not flushed out of some of the filters during equipment testing had entered patients’ bloodstreams during dialysis, causing the deaths. Even though this error was not caused by Baxter, their equipment was involved. CEO Kraemer didn’t blame other parties and didn’t hide the facts. He apologized publicly with heartfelt empathy and humility. As a result, Baxter decided to shut down the plants that made the filters. They settled with all families involved.

“What we try to do is do the...

Newegg.com is loved, from technical wizards to those who are just beginning to introduce technology into their lives. A big reason for this adoration is because it tells the truth about its inventory to customers. The minute the warehouse runs out of an item, Newegg.com marks that product as unavailable on the Web page or it is removed from their site.

Newegg.com breaks from the frequent practice of electronics and technology retailers who offer an extensive inventory, feigning depth and availability of product. Often those other retailers order the item from the supplier only after the customer places an order. As anyone who’s experienced this practice knows, the benefit is all on the side of the merchant, not the customer. They’ve got the customer’s money, and those other merchants have checked “fulfillment” of the order off their list. But the customer is left waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Newegg.com knows their customers start watching the clock as soon as...