Andrew Spittle

More often than not my customer service experiences with other companies leave me disappointed. Here’s a story about a company that not only hit the mark for good service but absolutely obliterated it and became the standard from which I now define good service.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a pound of Happy Cup coffee beans. I hadn’t seen the brand before but they were a Portland-based company that does neat stuff with the proceeds so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The coffee was great. Then, halfway through the bag, disaster struck. I was grinding beans in the morning when my grinder made a terrible noise. The kind of noise that makes you immediately think, “That wasn’t good.”

I disassembled the grinder but couldn’t see anything too out of place. Then I brushed some of the grounds away. Staring back at me, wedged between the blades, was a little rock. Looked like maybe a bit of quartz.

The bane of my broken grinder. Notice the white-colored rock stuck toward the bottom-right of the blade.

That bummed me out but it wasn’t a huge deal. Honestly, I figured it was my fault for not noticing that before sending the beans through. Figuring Happy Cup would like to know the blend info to maybe track any other reports I gave them a call and left a message saying I’d found a rock in the Sip-a-ragua blend packaged at the end of December.

Adam from Happy Cup called me back within the hour. He apologized profusely and offered 3 free bags of coffee. That totally made my day. Not only was it a quick response but they were more than willing to fix things up. I told him that’d be great and that I really liked the blend.

Handily I had an old grinder laying around so I wasn’t completely out of luck for that morning. I mentioned to Adam that the only way I knew there was a rock was that my grinder “found” it. Without hesitating Adam asked if my grinder was broken too. I told him that it was. He immediately said, “Well we’ll replace your grinder as well. If you can get me the details of make and model we’ll order it today.”

Happy Cup delivers.

Yesterday a Happy Cup employee delivered the 3 bags of coffee and a brand new grinder to my door. Absolutely blew me away with the level of care they put in to their customer service. All I had bought was one bag of coffee and yet they still treated it like the most important thing in the world to them. Now they have a loyal customer for a long, long time.