It’s been quite some time since I’ve written anything about Customer Experience, a topic that’s been a passion of mine since working a long time ago in Boston at Forrester Research. (Also, since moving to Spain 15 years ago and seeing the total lack of focus in this area.)

Now, a post back at it. For anyone who doesn’t know Decathlon it’s like the Walmart of sports stores here in Spain (and other countries in Europe). Decathlon is in 57 countries and is the largest sport retailer in the world – they’re pretty big. And they have almost any sport gear and apparel you can imagine at great prices. In general the people that work there are friendly, nothing over the top or special, but nice enough.

Here’s what happened: at the checkout, for some time now, they give you the option of having your receipt printed in paper or emailed to you. Now most of the time I’ll just print it out because it seems more secure, even though I know it’s a waste of paper. The other day I bought a few articles of clothing. For some reason I decided this time that I would have it emailed to me. I double checked my email, confirmed the purchase, and out I went, happy as a clam.

Unfortunately, I later discovered that not only did one of the articles of clothing not fit at all like it looked on the store model (surprise surprise), but also I never received the electronic receipt. Yes, I checked spam, etc etc. oops.

Here’s what happened next: to my surprise when I brought the article back to decathlon and talked to the person at the front of the store and explained that I never got the receipt, they were totally fine with it. As long as I was going to exchange the item for another one and not interested in getting my money back there was no problem.

Wow. Since when did the customer is always wrong turn around over here? I have to say I was pretty impressed. Thanks, Decathlon, for understanding a common customer’s situation!