We only ever hear negative things about customer service, because a satisfied customer rarely spends time gushing over their experience on the internet. Commenter KillerIri5h is an exception, raving about his Xbox Live customer service experience in today's Speak Up on Kotaku.
So like many people, I've fallen on hard times financially. I'm an artist in the video game industry and been looking for work. Needless to say being on unemployment doesn't afford you any luxuries. So when it was time to renew my Gold membership ($60), even though I've been a member for over 6 years now, I had to call in to tell them to cancel.
I want to say first that I don't mind paying a yearly subscription for a membership. I understand it takes a staff for upkeep, security, updates, etc. But the timing of it all was just bad. So when I called I was upfront and honest...and the customer service rep (let's just call him Jon) could see how long I had been a member, purchases, etc, on his computer. After I explained my situation imagine my surprise when he said, "let me see if we can work something out seeing how long you've been a member." Like a lot of people I've had some bad experiences with Xbox customer support. So I was surprised to hear that they wanted to work with me to help keep me as a member. Jon came back and said, "we could do two different things for you, either short term or long term. For short term you could do a one month membership and we'd only charge you a $1. This way you can put it off and see where you are in a month job wise. Second, long term, I can give you a 40% discount and charge you $35 dollars for this next year subscription."
I was taken back a bit...all too often you only hear about the horror stories, the problems, the screw ups, when it comes to customer service. Rarely do you read about customer care, well, actually caring! Thanks to Jon I'm still a member...even though this may be some "standard" discount that I'm unaware of, I was still touched that he genuinely wanted to help me out. He could have just thanked me for my patronage and said, "them the brakes," and cancelled my membership. But it was his willingness to help and how he went about it that made me want to not only stay a member, but write about it here on Kotaku.
So my question is, does anyone have any good stories about customer service that they just haven't taken the time to write about? I'd love to hear it! Thanks for reading and I hope everyone has a great day. Now I'm going to go play some co-op on Portal 2 :-)
About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have a forum on Kotaku called Speak Up. That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best Speak Up posts we can find and highlight it here.
(Image does not depict Xbox Live customer service, but we wish it did.)