11 customer service examples to inspire your team in 2024 [+takeaways]

The customer churn rate spikes and renewals plummet. You’re left wondering why your customers are deserting you all of a sudden.

They are not churning because of a lack of features or a few bugs.

It’s because you haven’t yet mastered the key differentiator that distinguishes industry leaders from their competitors: Great customer service.

Your customers aren’t just buying your product—they’re buying an experience. And if that experience isn’t smooth, supportive, and responsive, they’re gone. Fast.

According to PwC, 32% of new and current customers would stop doing business with a brand or company they’d previously loved after just one negative experience. Just one. So, you can’t afford to go wrong with customer service and risk losing your valuable customers.

Your customer service should be the reason customers stick around, renew, and recommend you. And it’s possible to deliver excellent customer service if you get a few things right.

To inspire you, we’re diving into 11 real-world customer service examples of companies that are nailing it, so you can do the same.

Let’s begin with some basics.

What does excellent customer service look like?

Excellent customer service goes beyond answering customer queries and being reactive. It’s about anticipating needs to deliver proactive customer service, creating seamless experiences that solve problems quickly, and delivering consistent value across every touchpoint. And when customers find you valuable, they’d naturally want to stick with you for long.

Here are the key elements that goes into delivering excellent customer service:

1. Fast response times:

A study notes that 51% of customers expect businesses to be available 24/7 to meet their expectations of convenience and accessibility. Quick resolutions by ensuring low first reply time build trust and keep customers engaged.

2. Personalization:

The one-size-fits-all approach no longer works. Customers want tailored interactions that take their unique needs and business goals into account. McKinsey and Company reveals 71% expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and get frustrated when this doesn’t happen

3. Proactive support:

Don’t wait for the customer to come to you. Companies should provide solutions before the customer even realizes there’s a problem.

4. Omnichannel support:

Providing consistent, high-quality support across multiple channels like chat, email, social media, and self-service channels is essential. A survey shows that 71% of consumers expect consistency across all online channels, yet only 29% say that they experience consistent omnichannel customer service.

5. Empathy and human touch:

In this hyperdigital world, customers crave human interaction. They want to feel understood and valued. And companies that add the human touch in customer service will build customer loyalty through empathy.

Why is it important to deliver good customer service?

Delivering good customer service is important as it helps you improve customer satisfaction by helping you build strong relationships with your customers, which ultimately promotes your business growth.

Customer service isn’t just about making customers happy, but has tangible business benefits:

1. Good customer service increases customer retention:

A whopping 98% of consumers agree that a positive experience with an organization results in a greater likelihood to purchase or continue to purchase from them. Customer retention is the key to long-term profitability since it’s far cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one.

2. Good customer service decreases customer churn:

Poor service drives up your customer churn rate, as we saw how customers can leave and never do business again with you because of one bad experience. Great service reduces churn, which leads to higher customer lifetime value.

3. Good customer service drives customer advocacy:

Satisfied customers are more likely to become brand advocates, helping to drive organic growth. Positive experiences often translate into referrals, which means more revenue.

4. Good customer service brings more revenue:

When your customers are satisfied, they would be willing to add services or upgrade their existing packages. So, investing in the quality of your customer service can directly impact your bottom line by increasing customer spending and upsell opportunities.

11 examples of good customer service

1) Apple

Apple needs no introduction at this point. Its tech products like the iPhone and MacBook and services like Apple Music and iCloud are all-pervasive in today’s world.

Another reason that Apple is famous is its commitment to keeping its customers happy and loyal. Apple’s Net Promoter Score touched 72—far ahead than other consumer electronics brands.

Excellent customer service examples from Apple:

• While handling difficult customers, Apple’s customer service staff are encouraged to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and be empathetic toward them. Empathy helps to disarm customers and get them to open up to continue the conversation in a positive manner.
• To ensure consistent and branded experience across multiple types of customers, Apple gives its customer-facing staff the A.P.P.L.E method:
• (A)pproach the customer
• Probe to get them to open up to you about their needs
• Present them with choices
• (L)isten to alleviate any concerns or objections
• (E)nd by leaving the customer feeling empowered

Key customer service takeaways:

• Lead with empathy—Apple’s approach shows that understanding the customer’s perspective is crucial for fostering constructive conversations.
• Implement a structured framework like Apple’s A.P.P.L.E. method to consistently guide customer interactions, ensuring tailored solutions and leaving customers feeling both heard and empowered.

2) Tesla

A leader in the electric vehicle industry, Tesla maintains an 87% brand retention rate among customers, according to a Bloomberg survey. The company’s customer-focused initiatives, aside from its engineering excellence, contribute to the brand loyalty.

Excellent customer service examples from Tesla:

• To reassure customers of a consistent experience, Tesla does everything on its own—whether it’s production, sales, messaging or customer relationship—from start to finish. This is in sharp contrast to other car companies, who partner with dealerships to sell and service their cars and put customer experience in the hands of a third party.
• Tesla lays strong emphasis on self-service. After test driving a car, potential Tesla customers are sent a link so they can configure their car and learn about pricing. Tesla gives customers the information to make their own decisions.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Own the entire customer journey. Tesla’s direct control over every touchpoint ensures a seamless, consistent experience without relying on third parties.
• Empower customers with self-service tools. Tesla’s approach gives customers autonomy, allowing them to make informed decisions at their own pace, which enhances trust and satisfaction.

3) Zappos

Zappos is widely cited as a prime example of a customer-obsessed company. Tony Hsieh, former CEO of the online shoe retailer, once wrote: “If we were serious about building our brand around being the best in customer service, customer service had to be the whole company, not just a single department.”

Excellent customer service examples from Zappos:

• Customer service reps from Zappos are expected to develop a personal emotional connection with each customer. When one of the reps found out that because of a death in the family, a loyal customer had forgotten to mail back a pair of shoes she’d planned to return, the rep sent her flowers.
• The reps aren’t provided with call scripts as Zappos believes that reps letting their true personalities shine during every phone call helps them build that connection.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Prioritize emotional connections—Train your team to identify personal moments where they can go above and beyond, like sending thoughtful gestures that foster deeper loyalty.
• Encourage customer service agents to use their natural personalities to create authentic, relationship-driven conversations that build trust.

4) The Ritz-Carlton

The luxury hotel chain is not just known for its impressive global presence (108 luxury hotels and resorts in 30 countries) but also for its exceptionally high standards for customer service.

Excellent customer service examples from the Ritz-Carlton:

• Every employee, from housekeeping to management, can spend up to $2,000 per day, per guest, to resolve a guest’s problem, without seeking permission from a supervisor. Entrusting employees with decision making authority empowers them to resolve customer problems at the earliest.
• Employees of the Ritz undergo rigorous training to exceed customer expectations of and uphold the organization’s mission and values. The training program would comprise classroom and online sessions, one-on-one coaching, and even week long seminars.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Empower through autonomy. Granting frontline staff significant decision-making authority fosters a culture of accountability and ensures swift, personalized problem resolution.
• Commit to continuous excellence. Builds a workforce that not only understands but embodies the brand’s values, consistently exceeding customer expectations.

5) Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s, the chain of grocery stores spread across America, has a reputation for turning customers into fanatics. Its business strategy is to not just cultivate loyalty but advocacy among customers, resulting in an estimated $16.5 billion in sales per year.

Excellent customer service examples from Trader Joe’s:

• Trader Joe’s simplifies the shopping experience for customers by selling almost exclusively items under the Trader Joe’s private label. This way, customers don’t feel overwhelmed by multiple brands, sizes and deals on products they’re looking to buy. Plus, there are no sales, rewards cards or coupons.
• Employees are trained to go above and beyond and have the freedom to find unique ways to help customers. For instance, if a customer inquires where an item is, employees would walk them to the product while having a conversation. This makes customers feel appreciated instead of being treated like an inconvenience.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Simplify the customer journey. Eliminate decision fatigue and reduce friction for customers.
• Empower customer service employees to foster a sense of connection that makes customers feel valued rather than rushed.

6) Slack

A poster child for product-led growth in the tech world, Slack has become indispensable for several organizations today. And a large portion of the team communication platform’s success comes from the commitment to customer experience management.

Excellent customer service examples from Slack:

• Slack owns the underlying systems—billing, user administration, signup and login—that supports growth elements like onboarding and free-to-paid conversion. Being a full-stack product team helps Slack optimize customer experience down to the inch, and help every company effectively adopt and scale Slack within their organization.
• For new users, Slack provides a freemium version that provides everything a user needs to understand the platform and begin collaborating. Instead of having key features out of reach in its free version as many companies do, Slack aims to be highly valuable to every user on the first day, even in the freemium plan.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Owning critical systems like billing, onboarding, and user administration allows for precise optimization and a consistently superior customer experience.
• Offer immediate value to drive engagement—Providing meaningful, accessible features from the start ensures users experience the product’s value early, fostering trust and encouraging long-term adoption.

7) Uniphore

Uniphore supports over 1,500 customers and clients at the world’s biggest enterprises, across major industries like telecom, banking and financial services, healthcare, retail, insurance and other verticals. Uniphore’s Enterprise AI platform supports billions and billions of customer and employee engagements across 20 countries on a weekly basis.

Excellent customer service examples from Uniphore:

• Using DevRev, Uniphore’s customer support team managed to identify issues before the customer so they never had to reach out in the first place. This made work quicker, more predictable, and consistent for the support team and improved the customer experience.
• Since many incoming customer queries require engineering and product management teams to work together, the transparency of support data across the organization that DevRev has allowed Uniphore’s support teams to become a strong ally to engineering and product management. This has empowered the organization to dive deep into customer issues, solve customer problems quickly through collaboration, and deliver top-of-the-line customer service.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Proactively resolve issues before customers reach out to ensure a seamless and stress-free customer experience.
• Foster cross-team collaboration to enhance the quality of customer service and customer satisfaction.

Read Uniphore’s full story here.

8) Spotnana

Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform brings a fresh perspective to corporate travel, making it simpler, more affordable, and efficient. The company operates at the intersection of technology and travel, empowering a network of agency, supplier, and technology partners to innovate and elevate the travel experience.

Excellent customer service examples from Spotnana:

• Spotnana enhanced its customer support using DevRev to provide quick, consistent, and accurate responses to queries. Plus, customers are given a clear view of ticket resolution progress and upcoming features designed to address their specific concerns.
• Having collated data from product and customer experiences in one place at DevRev, Spotnana improved its customer experience through more data-driven decisions.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Providing customers with clear, real-time updates on issue resolution fosters trust and improves satisfaction.
• Harness integrated data for strategic decision-making to enhance customer experience.

Read Spotnana’s full story here.

9) Bolt

A leading checkout technology platform, Bolt guarantees retailers best-in-class customer conversion with seamless and secure one-click checkout. Bolt’s Universal Shopper Network allows its customers to recognize and connect with over 80 million customers, which is about 1/3rd of all online shoppers in the U.S.

Excellent customer service examples from Bolt:

• DevRev’s automation tools streamlined Bolt’s support agent workflows, significantly reducing time-consuming manual tasks and enhancing productivity. This automation not only improved agent efficiency but also boosted overall customer satisfaction.
• The integration of an advanced knowledge base system ensured both customers and support staff had access to consistent, accurate, and up-to-date information. This helped Bolt to transform its customer support framework into a more efficient and responsive system, better suited to meet customer expectations.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Automated customer service workflows reduce manual tasks, boosting productivity and improving customer satisfaction.
• Accurate, accessible information through a robust knowledge base empowers faster resolutions and enhances the customer experience.

Read Bolt’s full story here.

10) ActionIQ

ActionIQ is a leading customer data platform designed to tackle intricate data challenges, such as access, augmentation, and activation of customer data. According to a recent Gartner Voice of the Customer survey for Customer Data Platforms, ActionIQ achieved 100% willingness to recommend among its customers, making it an industry leader in customer satisfaction.

Excellent customer service examples from ActionIQ:

• ActionIQ aligned customer support more closely with engineering efforts using DevRev, allowing the company to resolve incidents effectively and work directly with customers on data and integration issues. This improved alignment between engineering and support teams cut median incident resolution times by 67% and reduced customer ticket resolution times by 50%.
• The support team also managed to increase agent productivity as DevRev helped them drive a 68% increase in the number of incidents closed within Level 1 Support (per agent, per month) and an overall 18% increase in the number of incidents closed (per agent, per month).

Key customer service takeaways:

• Align Customer Support with Software Engineering. Cross-team alignment accelerates incident resolution and enhances customer issue handling.
• Maximize agent productivity through optimized to drive efficiency and better customer service delivery.

Read ActionIQ’s full story here.

11) Binah.ai

A leading provider of health and wellness monitoring software, Binah.ai supports over 150 clients worldwide in the insurance, healthcare and wellness sectors, including several Fortune 500 companies. The platform enables organizations to gain easy access to end-users’ shared health data, allowing them to provide better services at lower costs.

Excellent customer service examples from Binah.ai:

• Binah.ai streamlined its customer support workflows for its agents using DevRev’s AI-native functionalities like issue resolution suggestions and advanced ticket summarization. This has led to a significant improvement in customer service.
• Integrating DevRev’s fully functional AI chatbot that provides instant and accurate answers to clients and automatically updates its knowledge from internal articles has helped Binah.ai to improve its overall customer experience.

Key customer service takeaways:

• Leverage AI for streamlined support—AI-driven tools enhance workflow efficiency, enabling faster and more accurate issue resolution.
• Implement AI-powered chatbots—Automated, real-time assistance improves customer experience by providing instant, reliable answers and updates.

Read Binah.ai’s full story here.

Deliver excellent customer service with DevRev

The customers of today demand faster, more personalized service. And sticking to ways of the old isn’t going to help your business keep up with the rapidly-evolving customer expectations.

To deliver excellent customer service going forward, you need to leverage generative AI for customer support. You need a tool that lets your team prioritize and track support tickets, enable cross-functional collaboration, and empower customers with self-service—all using AI.

And that platform is DevRev, an AI-native platform that unifies customer support and product development.

As you saw in the customer service examples with Uniphone, Spotnana, Bolt, ActionIQ, and Binah.ai, DevRev can transform experiences for customer service staff, support engineers, product managers, and software developers.

At the heart of DevRev is its robust knowledge graph, in which data from legacy systems is continuously being fed in real time to an interlinked network of customer, product, employee, work, user, and session records. This organization of structured and unstructured data connects the work you do to its relationship with your product and customers.

That’s not all. DevRev’s GenAI-powered search and knowledge base management enhances self-service for customers and internal teams. Customers can type their queries and instantly get an accurate solution without having to manually navigate through your knowledge base.

And what can you achieve with all these? An 80% deflection in support tickets. Steep decrease in time-to-resolution. An increase of 25% in your CSAT within the first 3 months of implementation.

Book a demo now and see how DevRev’s AI-first approach helps you deliver excellent customer service, every time.