Customer service can be hard. Listening to unhappy, and sometimes unreasonable, customers for 8-9 hours a day takes patience.

But, no matter how difficult the situation, you can always turn it into a huge win for both your company and the customer.

Here’s some fascinating (and 100% true) customer service stories to inspire your own relationships with your customers:

1. An Apology from Mr. Bezos Himself

Amazon’s made mistakes. Even big mistakes. In fact, they poorly handled a situation where they allowed illegal copies of popular novels to be sold on their website.

Rather than some generic statement about “making a mistake” or defending their mishap, Amazon called it for what it is directly from the mouth of their own CEO:

And he didn’t even use a pre-written statement!

Now that’s inspiring and builds confidence in your customers.

2. Sainsbury’s Takes Advice from a 3-Year-Old

This is absolutely not a joke! And it makes total sense. Basically, the story is that the company made a bread called “Tiger Bread” that looks like this:

Looks delicious…but do you see the resemblance to a tiger?

Well, neither did one 3-year-old. She thought it looked more like a giraffe, and so with help from mom and dad, she wrote a letter to Sainsbury’s telling them just that.

The customer service manager took the time to respond, and told the story of why it was called Tiger Bread.

Elated that someone responded, the three-year-old’s mom took the response and posted it on her blog.

It quickly went viral and customers began demanding the bread be called “Giraffe Bread” in droves.

Sainsburys went with the flow and changed the name, even posting a note about the story in their physical retail locations.

What do you think happened to sales after Sainburys listened and responded in the way they did?

3. Auto Mechanic Makes the Mundane Rock

You don’t have to wait for complaints or total disasters to happen to make an awesome customer service story.

You can do it with normal service experiences…and even ones that go well.

Check out this simple note one auto mechanic sent after completing a routine repair for one customer:

Guess who’s now become a customer for at least the next several years, and possibly for the rest of their life?

4. Lego Saves the Day

Young Luka adored his Legos. One day, he decided to take one of the characters, Jay XZ, with him to the store, even though his dad told him not to.

And of course, the character was lost.

So, Luka wrote a simple note about the situation to Lego. Not only did he get a fun and creative response that eventually went viral, but Lego did more than just replace his missing character:

Opportunities abound for you to create your own legendary customer service stories.

Use these stories to inspire your own service, and turn that into an opportunity to grow your business.