My wife and I recently experienced suspect customer service at a furniture store, an occurrence that has made me rethink my definition of how to treat customers. Last year, I defined customer service as follows: “Customer service is equivalent to how you cordially serve your customers to make them happy.”

Sounds good. However, being nice and cordial isn’t customer service, that’s just something a good human being does. Being understanding, maintaining a willingness to help, and striving to keep a customer feeling at ease when problems arise is good customer service. It’s easy to be nice when all is going well, but when issues come up, that’s more difficult. It’s at that moment when good customer service can fail or be realized.

The individual helping us at the furniture store was very nice throughout the majority of the buying process. However, when a problem arose with our order, due to her fault, she quickly tried to bypass the situation. I stopped her, and returned to the discrepancy. She then become very curt and rude for our wanting to correct the situation, with the store manager even. Although Lindsey and I were happy with our purchase and the issue with our order was taken care of, we left with an awkward feeling. We weren’t treated very well near the end. I don’t think we’ll shop at that store again.