On a recent trip overseas, I stopped to visit my brother in-law who was very much in favour of taking us to his favourite neighbourhood pubs; each one seemed to specialize in at least one thing. On this particular night, it was the pub that offered THE best sticky toffee pudding. We called in advance to make sure they had it and to reconfirm the hours of operation. When we got to the pub, we were informed that the last piece had just been sold; the server offered her apologies. We kind of joked that we came all the way from Canada to get a piece of this famous sticky toffee pudding and thought nothing more of it.
Here is where the service recovery came in. Two different staff members (one from the kitchen) came back to the table to further apologize and offered to give us the recipe so we could try it back home. Nice touch I thought. It wasn’t until we forgot about it, paid the bill and were walking down the street that I shifted from “nice touch” to “wow”...
The server came running down the street, paper in hand. It was the recipe, handwritten on three small pieces of paper, including page numbers and detailed instructions!
I was in shock. Why? Because at that moment I felt really important as a customer and that this company actually cared about its customers' experiences. The fact that I didn’t get to try the dessert was not nearly as important to me as the respect and value for customers demonstrated by the organization and its service professionals.