They say when a customer has a bad experience, they’re likely to tell as many as sixteen people about it. But if that same customer has a good experience, they may only tell half of their friends. Why does this happen? I think in part because people like to bitch, myself included. Ranting to your friends is a whole lot healthier than trying to physically harm the business or person involved, even though that’s usually what most people fantasize about.  People also want to make sure their friends don’t experience the same shitty service, and sharing it is one way to protect them.

Since I recently wrote a pretty scathing post about two businesses WHO SUCK AT CUSTOMER SERVICE, I feel I have a due diligence to tell you about two companies that are actually KICKING ASS. ( I’d also love to hear who you’ve had good experiences with, so leave a comment below.)

First up—my new best friends, Maplehurst Florist. Beaten and broken down after weeks of floral shenanigans, I was pretty certain I was never going to find a florist for our wedding (or at least find one that got the wedding date and my name correct).  Out running errands, my mom and I came across a business card for Maplehurst. We realized we were standing around the corner from there shop, so on a whim, we decided to stop in.

I wasn’t expecting much, given my past experiences and the fact that we didn’t have an appointment. But right from the beginning, they were wonderful. We spoke with a man who informed us Wendy, the woman who does wedding arrangements, was on vacation. “Oh, ok,” I said disappointed. I think he must have seen the hopelessness in my eyes because to my surprise he gave us a quick little rundown of their work, their prices, and even showed some arrangements for an upcoming wedding. I took Wendy’s info and left.

A week later, I booked an appointment. Remember how I told you the chick from Price Chopper took down so much useless information about the wedding during our consultation? Well, Wendy asked me about five questions over the phone prior to the appointment. She also was able to fit me in the next day. I was already impressed.

Mom, Liz, and I arrived to the appointment, and introduced ourselves to Wendy (now known as the nicest woman in the world). And whatta know? Maplehurst actually had books FULL of floral arrangements, as well as photo albums of their wedding work.

Once I gave her an idea of the type of flowers I liked, she started pulling out some real flowers and arranging them to give me a sense of what my bouquet would look like. What a concept! Again, I gushed that this was extremely helpful.

But I guess what I was most blown away with was that she was able to give us an estimate for everything in just a few minutes.

“You mean I don’t have to wait a month for this to come in the mail?” I asked, half joking, half confused.

“A month? Oh no! Sometimes we aren’t able to give the estimate that day, but the most we’ve ever made people wait was a few days. Where exactly did you go before us?” I proceeded to tell her the abridged version of my previous post.

So yeah. Needless to say, I practically hugged her at the end of the appointment, thanked her up and down, and put down my deposit. And did I mention that Maplehurst also has an ice cream window? That’s how I knew this was meant to be. Florist…check!

The other business I was pleasantly surprised by lately was Gadue’s Dry Cleaning. I don’t know about you all, but I am in my late twenties and I had never used a dry cleaning service before. I usually avoid “dry clean only” like the plague because to me it equals dollar signs. But I needed my bridesmaid dress from DIZ’s wedding spot-cleaned since someone had spilled (several) beers on me and the dress was now growing some sort of mutant mold. Yeah, probably shouldn’t have waited 9 months to get that taken care of.

Gadue’s did a great job of cleaning it up and taking out all of the spots in a very reasonable amount of time. It was also pretty affordable.

But what impressed me most with these guys was what I received in the mail a week later: A hand-written card, thanking me for being a new customer.

Talk about excellence customer service. I guarantee the next time I need something dry cleaned I will go to them. All because they made me feel valued, they thanked me, and oh yeah, they got my name right.

What businesses do you think do a great job with customer service? Leave a comment below and let’s give these guys some love.