This story is about how Richard Howorth, the owner of Square Books, treated his customers. Jeff Bezos took this story to heart when he founded Amazon.
One day at Square Books, he was called on by his managers to handle a difficult customer. The young woman was angry because “a kid on the second floor had knocked some dirt down on her car,” Howorth recalled. “She was saying, ‘My husband is a lawyer.'”
He went outside, saw the dirt on her car and blew off the dust, he said. “It was nothing.”
But she remained unsatisfied, he said. “I asked her, ‘Can I wash your car for you?'”
She said yes, and Howorth drove with her and her friend to the local car wash — only to find it closed for repairs.
She became more irate.
“Can we just go to my house and wash it?” he asked.
She replied yes, and so at Howorth’s house, he washed, rinsed and buffed her car.
He asked her if that was good. She replied yes. She became downright pleasant.
She dropped him back off at Square Books.
The next morning, he said someone overheard the young woman talking “about the nice man who washed her car, confessing, ‘I wasn’t that nice.'”
Later that day, the young woman returned to the store, this time with all her friends, and they all bought books.
Are you doing the best you can for your customers?
Source: One Click by Richard Brandt
The Samurai Coach 