Angelica Cabrera

Ever heard a customer demand something ridiculous at a store? That’s exactly what YouTuber Jia Jiang has been doing, but on purpose. Jiang has started a hidden-camera video series he calls “Rejection Therapy”, where he visits various stores and asks them for unusual requests, usually receiving no’s, to the amusement of his viewers.

In a recent video in the series (shown below), Jiang visited a Krispy Kreme in Austin, Texas, and asked to buy 5 donuts linked together to create the Olympic symbol. The recipient of his strange order? A woman named Jackie, who did not reject him and was instead patient, understanding, and creatively figured out a way to fulfill his request. The cherry on top? At the end of the video, she doesn’t even charge him for it, shocking Jiang.

The video has garnered 2.5 million views and counting in less than 2 weeks. The comments on the video on Youtube, Reddit, and other sites have been overwhelmingly positive, with many YouTubers saying she should get a raise or promotion. Twitter is abuzz as well, with the hashtag #heartjackie being spread by the online community.The Twitter account of Krispy Kreme Texas (@krispykremetx) tweeted “Krispy Kreme TX loves Jackie! Checkout her mad customer service skills!” Clearly, these 5 donuts that probably cost less than $10 have generated Krispy Kreme a thousand times more, at the very least, in PR and advertising online.

I think the large part of the appeal is the genuine nature of the video. Jackie did not know she was being recorded, so her actions were authentic. PR is so often done in an intentional way by companies, by manipulating media and carefully issuing press releases, that videos like these are refreshing and are more meaningful to the public. Many of the posts on the Internet have also touched upon the fact that this type of behaviour is a “rarity” in the food industry – this type of behaviour does not seem to be experienced by customers in this sector (especially when dealing with large multinational chains), and clearly, they value it greatly.

Perhaps what Krispy Kreme can learn from this interesting experience is that customer service can be a primary differentiator in their ever-competitive market (in addition to those perfectly glazed donuts!). Becoming more relationally oriented and investing in training your employees to be like Jackie will benefit your company in the long-run, both in terms of product quality and marketing purposes.