My favourite football team is Brøndby IF. Over the summer, they signed a player who had formerly played in the youth ranks of the club, but later signed for the large Dutch club Ajax Amsterdam. His name is Michael Krohn-Dehli. After returning to Brøndby, he has made an instant impact on the team, clearly fighting to be one of the best players in the entire league.

I’m a great fan of Michael’s play, so it seemed natural that, in buying a new Brøndby shirt, I’d get one with Krohn-Dehli on the back.

So I ordered such one at the newly opened online Brøndby shop. I placed this order on Friday the 14th of November (a week ago now). Yesterday, however, I received an email telling me that unfortunately, Krohn-Dehli shirts had been so popular that they had sold out. I would have to wait for a week before I could get mine.

This, all in all, was quite decent. Sure, it’s bad to sell out before you can inform new customers that you have so, but I would certainly have placed the order anyway. The great thing, however, was that they went at greater strides to satisfy me.

Yesterday, Denmark played Wales at home in a friendly. (In a game we lost 1-0, alas.) This match was played on Brøndby Stadion, which — you guessed it — is owned by Brøndby IF. What the shop did was to offer me two tickets, absolutely free of charge, that I could pick up at the stadium.

To rephrase: they offered me free tickets worth about 200 DKK, because I would have to wait another seven days to get my order. That is damn fine service. This essentially turned an experience where I could have become a little sour (“why didn’t you write so on the page?!”) into one where I was deeply awed with their generosity.

Of course, they could offer me the tickets, because they had far from sold out, and there was no chance that they would. My coming to the stadium would only result in a little more potential revenue from beer or hotdog purchases. Still, I found this a perfect example of how to treat your customers, once you mess up on your end.

(Also, because it was with such short notice, I was unable to attend. So in effect, they made me more than happy with the experience of shopping with them, and they didn’t even have to give me the free tickets.)