My favorite part of my ProCO360 podcast interview with Jeff Eldridge of Liberty Puzzles was the conversation about how they replace puzzle pieces lost by a customer for free (great stories about the cause of missing pieces by the way!).  He said they have two full-time team members whose job it is to do that – free to the customer.

Can you find the missing piece?

I quickly did the math and asked Jeff, “Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier to simply send those people a brand-new puzzle?

To Jeff, that’s not the point.

The point is customer engagement.  Jeff said that customers are sad when they call for a replacement piece. They spent hours with friends and family during which they collaborated, found pieces for each other, and had relationship enhancing conversations… then they were left with an ungratifying hole in the puzzle rather than a fulfilling sense of collective completion.

Liberty Puzzles fixes that sadness.  Often the lost puzzle piece can be attributed to a dog.  Liberty Puzzle offers to put a photo of the dog on the “wall of shame” and reports that back to the customer.  There are now hundreds of dogs on the wall!

So, while my idea may have been cheaper and easier, every puzzle piece lost by a customer is an opportunity for Liberty Puzzle to build a friendship.