I recently bought a tea kettle from Target. Sadly, when I brought it home and opened the box the tea ball was missing (I’d even bought some tea to use it). So I decided to write the manufacturer, explaining that the missing merchandise was no doubt the work of a tea ball vandal, and asked if they could help. I wasn’t expecting a response, but when someone actually replied I had a renewed faith that I’d be throwing tea parties in the no time. To my surprise, COPCO didn’t send a replacement tea ball. They sent an entirely new kettle set—pictured below. And that was pretty damn nice of them. It doesn’t take a lot to treat customers like humans, but many businesses forget to. It would have been easy for my note to go unnoticed or ignored by someone who just didn’t care that much. After all, I’m just some guy off the street asking for free stuff. But they didn’t ignore it. And, because of that, I have a new respect for the brand—because they gave a shit about my experience with their product. Who knows, maybe one day all customer service departments will rally around branding instead of thinking like fraud investigators. (Thank you, Pat.)

Sent from mobile. Please excuse brevity, poor grammar and bad language.

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