Awhile ago, I was the very lucky recipient of an Amazon Kindle. I’m not going to lie: I love that thing. It’s portable, it holds many, many books at once, it downloads apps my kids can play while we wait at the doctor’s office.

In short, it’s amazing.

Which is why when it recently stopped charging, my stomach almost fell through the floor.

I called Amazon tech support. They were very careful in their wording while speaking to me, but after going through some over-the-phone live trouble shooting, they saw it truly wasn’t charging. So they sent me a new charger, overnight, completely free of charge, to see if that would solve my issue.

The next day, I went online to print a return label for a different item I’d ordered from Amazon. There was nothing wrong with it – Amazon had shipped things correctly, quickly and offered a competitive price for the item. I’d just decided to go a different direction with some of Alex’s birthday gifts, and had decided to return it. When I reached the screen to print my return label, I received an astounding surprise. Amazon agreed to refund my money AND told me to keep the item. Just because I was a loyal customer who had a long history with them.

Now, to be fair, I spend a lot of money on Amazon. The free gift they gave me only amounted to around ten dollars. However, they didn’t need to give me anything. And I was so surprised that they were giving me something when I hadn’t even complained that I now cannot stop talking about it. In fact, I’ve even written a blog post about it which is kind of like free advertising.

Are you inspiring this kind of loyalty and joy in your customers? How can you reward your most loyal customers – and turn them into your biggest brand advocates?

If you can figure this out, you might find that your customers sing your praises to everyone they know, doing your sales work for you.