Got an email challenge from a skeptic named
No.
As I’ve stressed before, great customer service is what’s expected these days. Using Starbucks as an example, you EXPECT to be greeted, have your (usually rather complicated) order taken efficiently, pay and pick up your drink down the counter shortly after.
What this girl did by diffusing a potentially negative situation went way beyond mere "service." Frankly, "service" is a weak term. It conjures up visions of the deaded "Service Manual," you know, the ones that make employees greet you with a robotic "Can I help you?" and follow the corporate flow-chart of "Do this if..." or "Do this when..."
Alfred Hitchcock once said:
“There’s no terror in a bang,
...only in the anticipation of it.”
With Surprise, it works the opposite way: The excitement IS the Surprise, not the expectation of it.
Service is for servants. Surprise is for those who rule.