Indira Luxe Reiki Mandala Wooden Side Table

I recently purchased two lovely cabinets from NJ Interiors - well-priced, and delivered on time.

Now, while one cabinet arrived in perfect condition. The other, however, seemed to have had a bit of a crisis en route. The area around the legs was chipped, which in turn enabled the grub screws to fall out and ultimately left me with legs I was unable to secure into the actual cabinet.

Now, in today’s modern world, customer service tends to follow one of two paths:

1. You email, never hear back, and assume the company’s entire support team has been made redundant and the board have replaced them all with the office Yucca plant as part of some backwards cost-saving exercise.

2. You call, only for an automated system to tell you that "We are experiencing incredibly high call volumes and estimated wait times are 45 minutes". This is usually the case whenever I call a support line which says to me that a company either has a ludicrous volume of issues / complaints, or the board have dont have enough staff to answer even a moderate number of calls because they replaced all the staff with the office Yucca plant, again due to that backwards cost-savong exercise that will ultimately damage their reputation and form the catalyst behind their future insolvency.

So, not wanting to go through the rigmarole of repacking the thing, putting down all the seats in my car, removing the parcel-shelf and then paying extortionate return fees when I finally do reach a drop-off point, I did what any rational person would do: I glued it together.

But I still sent NJ Interiors a polite message. More of a “Just so you know, this isn’t quite what I ordered” than an angry complaint - although I was pretty put-out.

To my surprise, I received a very prompt, very human response offering to help. I didn’t reply - largely because I was busy, but also a bit because I assumed it would go the usual way (i.e. nowhere).

Then came the call from Sarah. Now here’s where the story takes a delightful turn.

Sarah was genuinely apologetic, kind, and entirely lacking in the sort of scripted monotone that usually accompanies these conversations. She didn’t ask for seventeen photographs, a handwritten affidavit, or the name of my childhood pet. No. She simply offered a replacement and arranged to collect the damaged one. Efficient. Empathetic. Entirely without fuss.

Frankly, I was shocked.

This is how customer service should be: listening to the customer, resolving the problem, and doing so with a level of understanding based on how they would feel if they were in your position.

As the Marketing Director of a company specialising in luxury homes, I’ll certainly be sharing this experience with my network of interior designers - and I won’t hesitate to recommend NJ Interiors at every opportunity.

So, thank you, Sarah, and the team at NJ Interiors. You reminded me that, against all odds, proper customer service still exists.

Hats off to you!