Customer Service Gold, Customer Service Platinum . . . and Customer Service EXTRAORDINARY
Jordan Kelly • 13 August 2025

If I owned a retail business, I'd hire these two away in a heartbeat . . .

You know that type of customer service that you experience every once in a blue moon and never forget?


Well here's a couple of customer service pros, that I hesitate to call 'pros', for the sole reason that they're just doing what clearly comes naturally to them.


But these two are SO far beyond even the "gold standard" it's hard to know where to start in genuinely complimenting them.


Isaac At the Rosebowl Cafe


In Feilding the other day for a veterinary visit with my little dog, I'd bought him some food and realised I hadn't brought his travelling bowl. I'd just availed myself of some tasty sandwiches in my favourite stop in the town - the Rosebowl Bakery & Cafe - and, a bit gingerly, went back in to see if they'd help me out with a takeaway container to decant my little guy's food into.


What an extraordinary customer experience that otherwise simple exercise turned out to be:


Isaac, one of the younger assistants there, didn't treat the request in the largely throw-away manner you'd probably expect such a request would be treated: Like, "Sure, here you go."  Or, "OK, but we charge 50 cents for our containers." That's been the standard response on the odd occasion I've been in a situation where I've made a similar request elsewhere.


No, no. Not Isaac. I was a customer. And clearly, in his mind, a customer has very specific needs, and regardless of the size or nature of the request, a customer's needs should be properly identified and satisfied with diligence. Which is exactly what he went about doing . . . as I co-operated in a somewhat startled state, with his incredibly insightful questions.


How big is your dog? What volume of food are you going to be decanting into the container for him? If I give you this one, or this one (pointing out two options), which one will he be able to reach into better? OK, wait there, he says.


He returns with the two options. But now . . . there's more detail and diligence to come:  How big is the can? If you don't decant the whole can for him for this meal, would it be better to have this takeaway container here? Because you can put the whole can itself into this one, and it also has a better lid, and that means the car won't get reeked out on your long drive home. What do you think, he asks?


Well, I hadn't thought that deeply into it, but as I drove home with half a can of uneaten dog food in a perfectly sized container with a well-fitting lid and thus a non-stinky car, you can be sure I did think about it at that point.


Even remarkably, I had assumed Isaac must have been a dog owner himself. No, he said, he wasn't. He was just thinking through the situation.


And then I pulled out my wallet to pay. No, no, he said, "we have plenty of containers out there; no need, just happy to help. Have a safe drive back."


What can I say? What an extraordinary asset to a customer-facing business of any type . . . and most especially one like a high-traffic cafe a la the very impressive Rosebowl.


And now to Claire at The Warehouse.


Claire has a smile that wouldn't just light up a room . . . it lights up her entire surrounding environment at Masterton's The Warehouse.


Whenever I've encountered her, I've thought, "Oh, there's that smiling lady again."


There's a human warmth to this equally extraordinary service staff member. And a very high degree of conversational intelligence.


Claire is the staffer for whom no request for help is a big deal or too much bother. To the contrary, Claire is the team member who won't just tell you that what you're looking for is "in Aisle No. 10". She wouldn't dream of it. She'll put down what she's doing and walk you straight there . . . and she won't leave you until she's helped you more specifically with what you want.


I went to get a pair of slippers last night. The dickety little hangy thingy they were all on had me completely constumpled trying to get my incorrect size rejects back on them and back on the hook they came off. So I did my best, failed, gave up, and left them neatly against the shelving.


Approaching a nearby staffer from behind as she stacked a shelf, I intended to draw her attention to said unhung slippers.


Swinging around with her trademark twinkling mile-wide-smile (before even seeing who she was about to stand facing, or knowing what they wanted i.e. I could have been any grump or gronk), I saw it was "the smiling lady".


Said smiling lady (who I now know as "Claire") then proceeded to thank me profusely for "my kindness".


My kindness? Yes, she said, thank you so much!


Well I never.


And then (something to the effect of):  "Do you need any help with anything else?"


And then a brief, friendly and very intelligent chat sparked by something to do with said item, before encountering her in another part of the store, and having her offer again to help me with another item, on which she provided an insightful commentary that I much appreciated.


Think About It From An Employer's Perspective


I'm always a bit reticent to go on like I sometimes do about what some readers might consider a mundane, everyday experience.


But think of this from the perspective of an employer, many of whom I am acutely aware really have their work cut out for them, getting and ensuring genuinely good staff.


You'd imagine they'd really appreciate this commentary . . . and you'd imagine any employer suffering the either short-term or long-term pain of less-than-optimum customer-facing staff, would also read this commentary with great envy - and a sincere wish that they had customer service pros like Isaac and Claire on their payrolls.

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by Jordan Kelly 27 February 2026
Readers following the coverage of my attempts to get to the bottom of what happened to my beloved little papillon, Harry, with whom I was extraordinarily closely bonded, will know that: (A) The rot in Massey University’s Companion Animal “Hospital” (CAH) runs deep. (B) Honesty and transparency is not their policy. Denial, dismissal, stonewalling, legal threats and intimidation are. (C) Animals aren’t safe there, with cruelty embedded in “care”, and your property (as your pet legally is) not considered your property at all, as far as Massey, its CAH staff and management are concerned. Your pet is theirs ; to do with as they please, according to their mindset and their modus operandi. And if that involves catastrophic levels of unauthorised, contraindicated, convenience sedation to facilitate their use of your pet in monetised student video collections (including on private cell phones, and to which you will be given no access), this too, according to Massey, is its own God-given right and “best practice” Standard Operating Procedure. (D) “Informed Consent” has a very different meaning in the Massey playbook to that which is generally deemed its accepted definition. (E) “Accountability” is a foreign concept and not one with which they have any intention of becoming acquainted. (F) Laws – including those governing animal welfare, property conversion and more – are not only optional, in Massey’s case, they simply don’t apply. In fact, they appear blissfully ignorant of them according to my (and Harry's) experience. You know all that. You’ve read about it here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here and in most of my other now 30+ articles covering the numerous different sub-atrocities within the overall atrocity that was the demise and disposal of my precious little Harry. Actually, "atrocious" doesn't come anywhere near to being an adequate adjective. Despite having been a professional writer since I was 16 and having upwards of 25 published books under my belt, I don't actually have an adjective that's adequate for the pure evil that was perpetrated upon Harry . . . and, by extension, me . There is not one word or one phrase that can sufficiently convey the depth and breadth of the sheer, unadulterated wickedness that festers without restraint within the walls of Massey University's Companion Animal "Hospital". What you, my readers (or those of you not on Massey's massive legal team payroll) didn’t yet know – because I didn’t yet know – is that record and evidence tampering (which, for any other New Zealand citizen would attract jail time of up to 10 years under the Crimes Act 1961 Section 258 (Altering document with intent to deceive) or Section 260 (Falsifying registers) , and/or a $10,000 fine under the Privacy Act Section 212(2)(b) - appears also to be included in the “we’re exempt” culture of Massey and its veterinary “hospital” staff. Note to Readers: The above laws aren't some hypothetical, bottom-drawer, dusty old legal tracts in archaic library textbooks. They're real, "living" laws that apply to every individual in our country. And today, they are being made to apply to Dr Stephanie Rigg and her "colleagues" who falsified Harry's records to create a cover-up of what they did to him . . . and to me. I will, duly, see Dr Rigg and her associates in Court. Dissecting the Cover-Up: Massey’s Metadata of Deception But back to what readers do know for a moment: You’ll know that I’ve been in the battle of battles for the past two months to extract Harry’s full records (or anything approaching them) from Massey’s Legal and Governance department. HOWEVER . . . there was one thing I hadn’t known how to decipher that they actually had finally drip-fed to me. It was File Name: Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit) . I’ve been learning a lot about veterinary science, record-keeping, and law in general lately. Not because I wanted to. But because if you want to figure out how deep the rot really runs at Massey, you kind of have to. So I’ve learned a bit about how to decipher clinical metadata. Just e nough to realise that this Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit) is exactly where the digital fingerprints of a cover-up are hiding. Despite the fact that this document has as much redacted as it shows (probably more), with ALL staff names and positions blacked out, for example -I still found four distinct “smoking gun” entries in these otherwise heavily-redacted metadata logs. BIG. FAT. SMOKING. GUNS. that amounted to one undeniable overall conclusion: This document isn’t a clinical record so much as it’s a literal crime scene . There were already so many dodgy inconsistencies in the few items I'd managed to pull out of Massey to that point (as I've documented in various of my preceding articles). But this document is where, undeniably, the bodies are buried. You just need to know which clod of dirt to look under. Hidden in Plain Sight . . . In A Little Thing Called the Metadata (That the Average Pet Owner Wouldn't Even Know Existed ) There are four hidden but key findings demonstrating that the entire timeline of Harry’s “experience” in that hellhole were was orchestrated, and the sudden "neurological event/decline" exit strategy planned for him were a total fabrication. And that fabrication had a start time. (For this start time we will initially revert our focus back to Massey's previously-supplied "Clinical Summary" (in all its dodginess) . . . We will then lead from the immediately below into the afore-mentioned "Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit)". Bear with me. I promise not to let this get boring). Well, one of two start times. 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An Expert Contributed Commentary (FOR LATEST INVESTIGATION FINDINGS, GO HERE .)
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