It was a night of bad beats. Three fives was beaten with three sixes, trip queens was beaten by trip queens with a higher hole card, and a jack high straight was beaten by a queen high straight.

My stack of chips was disappearing faster than a mound of cocaine at Charlie Sheen’s house. I needed help. So I turned to Twitter.

Holding a full house, but running low on chips, I tweeted:

Hoping Quicken Loans can come through quickly while I’m holding a full house. That’s enough collateral isn’t it?

And come through they did.

Obviously monitoring the Twitterverse for mentions of their name, I received a response:

@quickenloans Poker, huh? anything I can help with?

Now it was obvious that both they and I knew that my original tweet was in jest, but the wonderful thing was that they played along. They responded precisely the way my original tweet was intended: with levity. They showed their human side, not their corporate veneer. And by doing so, they distinguished themselves from every other company that would have monitored Twitter for mentions of their company name and sent some canned and inappropriate marketing pitch in response.

Quicken Loans made themselves memorable simply by having a real person respond exactly as they should: personably.

Now why don’t you do the same?

Update: Quicken Loans has been monitoring my posts this afternoon also and followed up with thanks for the positive post and friendly birthday wishes. The result: I won’t forget them, and they’ll be at at the top of my list should I need financing in the future and they’ll be included in my Social Media Studio seminar series detailing successful social media case studies. I love a good story, and they delivered one.

Let me freely acknowledge right up front that I love Chipotle and think their iPhone app is one of the most thoughtfully designed and easy to use online ordering apps. In fact, if I intend to eat at Chipotle – even if I’m in my car outside – I’ll order on my iPhone because it remembers my last order and I can complete the entire ordering process with a few taps on the screen.

Chipotle has eliminated pain from my life. The pain of waiting in a snaking line in the middle of the lunch rush, having to yell your order over the din of the crowded restaurant, and having to juggle food and money when finally arriving at the register. The entire exercise to obtain my food is time consuming and generally annoying.

Recognizing this, Chipotle released their iPhone app, allowing customers to order from their phone (or online) and proceed directly to the register to pick up their pre-paid lunch. Annoyance eliminated.

Or so I thought.

Then the phone calls started. Every time I ordered from my iPhone, I’d receive a phone call about an hour later asking if my food was ok. Every order, another phone call. Another intrusion. Another unwanted and uninvited interruption of my afternoon. With no apparent way to get them to stop.

After the first call, I was understanding. After the sixth I was aggravated. After the tenth I was pissed.

I elected to order from my iPhone precisely because I did not want to call and speak with their employees. I elected convenience and privacy. I never elected to chat with the Chipotle staff. I never opted in.

Chipotle never asked me if I wanted a phone call from their customer service staff. I never gave them permission to contact me on my personal phone. They simply assumed that their definition of good customer service would be met with gratitude and understanding. They were wrong.

So, to test their ability to deliver real, personalized customer service I sent them an email. I complained about their intrusive phone calls and asked to be removed from whatever contact list is generated after an iPhone order.

And Chipotle came through. They responded the same day, apologized, acknowledged that they should have incorporated some type of opt-in button or check box, and assured me that I wouldn’t receive any more calls. And then they followed through. After placing two more orders last week I anxiously awaited a follow-up phone call that, to their credit, never arrived.

So, what’s the lesson for your business? The definition of excellent client service is defined by your customer, not by you. And your service delivery processes have to be flexible enough to adapt to differing definitions. I have no doubt that Chipotle still calls many of their iPhone ordering customers, and that’s fine with me if it’s fine with those customers. They just needed to know that my definition of outstanding service never involves calling my mobile phone. I just want tasty tacos with extra salsa, hold the phone call.

But I got to thinking last night how they could have turned their failure into a memorable example of their customer commitment with the application of imagination and creativity.

The steps I detailed yesterday are the customer service minimums necessary to assuage an aggrieved customer. But what if you want to do more? How can you transform a customer service mishap into a distinctive, memorable, brand building event?

Let’s consider Continental’s dilemma: they lost my bag and must return it. So, how could they transform this simple logistical exercise into a memorable experience? Off the top of my head I can think of several.

1. Provide me with text messages, Tweets or email notifications when my bag makes it onto the plane, when it lands, when it’s put in the delivery van and when it’s delivered. Every bag is barcoded and it would not be difficult to extract this information along the bag’s route and keep me posted regarding its progress home.
2. When delivering the bag, put a special luggage tag on the bag, preprinted with name, address and frequent flyer number that connotes special bag handling treatment on future flights. The tag could instantly communicate to baggage handlers that this customer was inconvenienced before, let’s make sure this passenger’s bag is never mishandled again. It would be nice to know that my bag was being treated like a VIP on future trips.
3. How about popping a free upgrade into my frequent flyer account for use on my next flight to compensate me for my inconvenience?
4. Attach an envelope to the returned bag with coupons for free drinks or movies on my next flight. The envelope would be designed to stay attached to the bag so that I would have them in hand the next time I went to the airport and checked in.
5. Send me an email apologizing for the airline’s error and providing a link to an assortment of perks that I can print or send to my smartphone to use on my next flight.

Instead of putting the failure behind them and forgetting about it, they should use it to provide continuous reminders of their commitment to passenger comfort and service. Celebrate the mistake, bring it front and center, let other Continental staff members recognize those passengers that have suffered from less than stellar service so they can make up for it. Track the mistakes, publish them, and make sure your staff is aware of your trends and rewarded for eliminating poor service.

Or, they could follow United’s example and just break my stuff. Any other ideas?

So, when I returned yesterday from a 3 day trip to Tulsa, OK on Continental Airlines and my suitcase (an orange Tumi bag, naturally) failed to circle the baggage carousel, I was wondering if I was about to suffer a similar customer service nightmare. Fortunately, Continental did just about everything right – with the exception of actually delivering my bag, along with me, to Cleveland.

Rule 1: Accept Responsibility
Don’t try to shift blame to another department, another city’s staff, heavy airline traffic or aberrant weather. Your client doesn’t want to hear excuses. United took their beating largely because they refused to accept responsibility for what was undeniably their staff’s fault.

Continental’s baggage claim rep, unlike United’s, was cordial and professional, acknowledged the airline’s error, immediately discovered where my bag was (Houston) and expressed concern whether there was anything in the bag that I needed that night. She then adhered to Rule #2, looked me in the eye and I listened to her…

Rule 2: Apologize
I’m constantly amazed how few businesses actually apologize for their errors. Dry cleaners, waiters, mechanics, cable installers. No matter who you are, if you or your company screw up, the first words out of your mouth should be “I’m sorry.” Even if it’s not your fault. Even if it may be partially or largely your customer’s fault. Your apology isn’t an admission of guilt, it’s simply an acknowledgement that you have sympathy for the customer having to deal with their situation.

At 11 at night, after traveling for 7 hours, I was tired and annoyed, and Ms. Robinson’s sincere apology and concern salved my irritation. She knew my bag’s sleepover in Houston wasn’t her fault, and I knew it wasn’t her fault, but by apologizing for the company, she shifted the focus from the mistake to…

Rule 3: Explain How You Will Correct The Mistake
Everyone screws up sometime. We understand. What’s crucial is how will you correct your error? What’s your plan? How will you resolve the problem without introducing more inconvenience or disruption in your customer’s life?

After accepting responsibility and apologizing for Continental’s mishandling of my bag, Ms. Robinson told me exactly how they were going to resolve my problem: my bag was going to be flown up in the morning and they would deliver it to any address I specified. Then she provided me with all the contacts and phone numbers of anyone I might need to talk with the next day and I left the terminal hoping that they would actually…

Rule 4: Correct the Mistake
Promising to correct the mistake is an important step, but actually taking the promised action is essential. So, when I received a call from the third-party service that dropped my bag off on my front porch I knew that I wouldn’t be writing a viral song about Continental’s baggage handling miscues.

What more could I expect? They screwed up. They admitted it, apologized, promised to fix the problem quickly, and did what they promised. No hard feelings, Continental. Now, can you send Ms. Robinson over to United to show them how it’s done?