The story: Zappos.com sends flowers to its customer
Zappos.com is an e-commerce company which specializes in footwear and has grown from being a startup in 1999 to gross around a billion dollars now.
What does Zappos.com offer to its customers?
Shoes, good quality shoes and the best possible customer service. Free customer shipping and back within 4 days (They do it overnight to get the ‘wow’ from their customers). The free customer service did cost them 100 million USD in 2006 and Zappos.com turned profitable only in 2007 earning a few million dollars. Their competitive advantage is solely their customer service and “word-of-mouth” marketing that they get from their customer. They are the companies with most repeat customers and why not? Their customer testimonials tell a story to say the least.
Zaz Lamarr meant to return some shoes to Zappos, but her mom passed away and, naturally, she just didn’t have time. Zappos arranged to have UPS come pick up the shoes—and then sent her flowers:
When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.
Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.
This story went on to become a viral in America and the proved how a small gesture of Humanness can help you reap huge rewards. Something, which companies all around the world need to learn from.
Source: http://microreviews.org/zappos-com-delivering-the-wow-everytime/
– Nishant
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Customer Service in the Age of Social Media: Why it Matters More Than Ever | Launch Blog
- Value Is King: The 5 C’s of Job Value Creation | The Savvy Intern by YouTern
- Customer Service in the Age of Social Media: Why it Matters More Than Ever | Launch Box Media
- Customer experience: conoce a tu cliente y aumenta tus ventas - SB Shopping Basket
Managing Information for Innovation 
A very interesting post. Its nice to see how companies like Zappos are adopting ways to relate to customer convenience and emotions. I surely agree that other companies must learn from this act.
Ya! In today’s competitive world companies need to go beyond excellent products and perfect customer service. They need to come up with solitary ways and unique ideas to enrich customer experience and in that case, nothing would work better than targeting individual’s emotions. This way people get attached with the company and end up becoming their loyal customers.
This is a great example of not just stellar customer service, but of providing a human touch — this helps to make companies seem more “real” and easily relatable.
Interesting article! I believe most companies know the importance of good customer service, however, few companies could reach this standard. I think it largely depends on the personality and creativity of employees in the company. Also,there has to be a good company infrastructure to support it. I’m wondering how this company supports such creative actions.There has to be a flexible procedures to ensure the effciency of the custoer service.
The customers’ satisfaction is always the business goal for all of the companies. However, many companies just provide the customer services after the problems happen. The positive attitudes of dealing with the problems will help the customers to build up trust on the company. But the proactive behavior, such as sending cards to the customers when holidays come, will enhance the customer’s satisfaction and loyalty to the company, even if it’s only a small action.