Today more than ever, customer service really matters. Some time after that, she sent me a letter and a photo of her father., It was quite a story. Each month, every employee is able to give a coworker $50. The original idea for the book was simple. To maintain focus on the customer, they laid a few initiatives to ensure customer service was central to what they did as they scaled. The 4 Top Customer Service Screw-Ups You Must Avoid, One Company Will Pay You to Enjoy It Rain or Shine, Scheme That Caused Her to Lose Her Home of 3 Decades, 15 Best Entrepreneurial Conferences You Need to Attend, 6 Time Management Hacks to Regain Your Energy, Man Sues South Florida Beach Resort After Claiming His Foot Was Left 'Seriously Impaired' Due to 'Searing' Pool Deck, Jeff Bezos Was Caught on Video Dancing at Coachella, But It's His '$12 Amazon Shirt' That Has the Internet in Stitches, 6 Principles From the Navy SEAL Code That Will Make Your Team Stronger. In fact, Zappos has a dedicated space on their website where agents can share their customer stories. In fact, Zappos commits itself to delivering wowor at least a wow attempton every phone call that employees field in its contact center, employees who are called, in Zapposspeak, the Customer Loyalty Team. make employees happy, so they can make customers happy. 50% of the customers shopping from Zappos do return for further purchases. By 2002, Zappos was running out of runway. Even after four weeks of onboarding and training, focusing the entire time on how to make that personal, emotional connection we're so known for, the Zappos customer loyalty team still follows just one general rule: "Always do what's right for the customer!". Create fun and a little weirdness. We originally published this post on September 9, 2016, and we updated it on February 6, 2019. The customer service strategies behind Zappos' success that you can implement today. Learn about theses six powerful time management strategies you can implement in a hybrid or remote workplace. It acts as a medium for the employees to freely express themselves, and a way everyone can get a pulse of where the companys culture and core values stand. Tony looks at me sourly, or as sourly as his essentially affectless demeanor would allow. Because to understand Zappos, and in particular Zappos celebrated customer service methodology, Tony isnt the only place you can start. If youve ever shopped on Zappos.com, you know the site isnt overly flashy. CALL the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team: 1-800-927-7671 2. Running a warehouse 24/7 isnt a cost effective strategy when it comes to running a delivery business. If youcall most customer service places, if you ask for anything thats not normal they have to talk to a supervisor or just say oh our policy doesnt allow that and whatever. Chattermills technology ensures that no piece of feedback remains unseen and unheard. Keeping very much in tune with the belief that customer service shouldnt just be about the department, it should be the entire company. These insights can be used by the entire team to allocate resources more efficiently and hone in on the priorities behind logistical, product, and marketing strategies which drive the companys value generation. Hear a kid in the background, ditto. Or (and this is perhaps most common), connect over the details of the customers order or the particular question or difficulty that has them calling inbut in a way that goes beyond a just the facts approach. Zappos So Zappos has expanded the mission of their famous Customer Loyalty Team (i.e., their contact center) to include offering themselves as a "Customer Service for Anything" resource,. Those values are set up to reflect everything Zappos does, including how they interact with customers, how they interact with each other, how they interact with vendors and business partners. For extra credit, consider having all of your employees pitch in to support the customer service team during peak moments of the year, like the holiday season, July 4th weekend, etc. Then in the contact center, you have to coach your agents towards those values. Jeff Bezos and Amazon were such big admirers of their culture, operating model and dedication to customer experience, they acquired the business for $1.2bn. If you enjoyed the blog why don't you check out our previous company profile on Zoom. Check. I'm a customer experience consultant and customer service trainer. Here are the four KPIs they use to monitor, track and improve performance: Measuring Call Quantities Zappos's longest call on record lasted more than eight hours, and guess what? This team works 365 days and 247 to make the entire journey special. So we generally try to stay away from policies, we just ask our reps to do whatever they feel is the right thing to do for the customer and the company. Always providing 110% service; even when it wasn't expected of them. Want to Drive Growth? Now you dont have to put those $90 Nikes on Craigslist. Meet Zappos. Zappos developed a set of key values that lives at the heart of their company culture. Zappos doesnt make it hard for customers to get in contact. The company's entire strategy is to create loyalty through incentivizing 'wow' moments and emotional connections. Broadly speaking, the telephone at Zappos represents human contact, and extending rather than contracting the amount of time and resources that the company wants to spend in human-on-human connect with customers, whether it is telephone to telephone, terminal to terminal, or even asymmetrically, like when the wildly engaging employees at Zappos create their signature video demos for any and all products they have for sale on their site. 3. When agents always have to ask for approval or squirm around policies, they dont feel trusted. Id argue, in fact, that the best way to understand Zappos and its approach to customer service is by studying the chalkboard on the wall of Zappos onsite contact center. Retailers with gated offer programs include Urban Outfitters, J. Utopian, one might wonder. Chattermill 2015-2022 All Rights Reserved, Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open Minded, Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication. And she built that connection to spark happiness and improve well-being with one of her customers. By 2009 Zappos had grown revenue to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales. If you don't have established values, define them and make sure customer focus, service or obsession is one of them. Its the key to how we build customers for life., Half an hour later, Tony himself points to the telephone as the differentiator of the Zappos customer experience. I definewow customer service as service that goes beyond fulfilling basic customer expectations and does so in a creative, unexpected way. These "wow connections" can be achieved by an employee taking special action: action that iscustomizedfor that particular customer and goes beyond the expectations of a mercantile, pay-for-play relationship. 3. It's that important. Very few companies are able to stick to this long-term vision. Zappos had to worry about short profitability and long term growth. When evaluating Zappos' social media customer service strategy from this view, you may have noticed that it has a lot of visibility on social media. In the following three years, Zappos grew to achieve $840 million in gross sales and added additional products such as handbags, eyewear, clothing, watches, and kids merchandise. How Zappos Is Creating Truly Personalized Marketing Why does Teslas Zero Dollar Budget Marketing Strategy work? Zappos wanted top quality and the best resources handling its customer service, and the high rents at San Francisco and competing ecosystem meant that they could not get the best talent for their budget. So, we listened to our customers and came up with a solution: We would allow customers to order the same shoe in multiple sizes to try them on in the comfort of their homes, with free shipping and free returns. So whats the story behind their rise to become the most loved e-commerce brand on the planet and whats their secret to delivering a brand powered by customer experience? Live Content: Micah Solomon Speaks on Customer, Live VideoMicah Solomon Speaks on Customer Service, Your Customer Is The Star: An eBook From Forbes. We focus on making sure we have a great service-focused culture. Zappos releases a culture book every year. Related: I'm Buying Your Customer Experience, Not Your Product. Talk with a customer on the phone for 10 hours and 29 minutes. In the business universe, at a micro-level customer is like the nucleus of an atom, and at a macro level, the customer is like the center of the solar system. They display the customer care numbers easily visible on every page instead of burying several layers (or clicks) below the surface. Pimped out conference rooms to set the stage for a genuine conversation rather than an interrogation? After Kelli shipped a new pair of shoes to Tommy and ended their convo, she felt the urge to do more. Build customer experience strategies backed by the data in your contact center, offering them $2,000 to quit after 2 weeks of training. Zappos loosens the reins and putsemployees closest to the customerin control of the customers fate. Instead, they have everything to do with how satisfied a customer is at the end of a service interaction. If you get the culture right, then a lot of really amazing things happen on their own. - Tony Hsieh, CEO @ Zappos. All this was happening at a bad time. The 5-Step Guide to Navigating Legal and Regulatory Changes in Business. And unless he was talking her off a cliff, the 10-hour scenario isnt understandable by traditional call center logic. Two battle-tested approaches to customer service are the Amazon and Zappos methods. Zappos uses a differentiation strategy. As customer service standards continue to dip, delivering outstanding customer care is a truly fantastic way to differentiate your company from the rest of the herd. This final statistic is troubling to Ryo Hanalei Zsun, a former call center agent (customer loyalty team member, in Zapponian) who served as the guide on my tour, and whose dialogue until now has been bathed in Hawaiian-inflected equanimity (as he told me, although hes lived on the mainland since 1999, he proudly carries on the spirit of Aloha). And, with tales of surprise packages and thank you cards, you see how much agents love making a positive impact. As if it could get much better than that, Tommy sent a thank you letter and pictures to Kelli, and so did his Colonel. Website Planning and Creation Customer Service Strategy- Theoretical Foundations: "Customer is King" is a timeless and worldwide business motto! The total amount that a customer spends on the products/services of the company is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). This is a BETA experience. Tony Hsieh decided they needed a bigger purpose than just making money. Where most companies see expenses and costs, Zappos sees opportunities. Agents are available to text daily from 5am - 8pm PST. Entrepreneur and its related marks are registered trademarks of Entrepreneur Media Inc. How Zappos creates a customer-obsessed culture -- and you can, too. And, they rally every employee around those core values and shared purpose. Contrary to most brands, it wasnt all talk. AI-powered text analytics has allowed Zappos to better understand the customer experience from start to finish. Breathing space is necessary as well when youre hiring for wow; you need the time to find the people with an aptitude for make emotional connections with customers. Combined with the free 2-way shipping, this takes away the customers' risk and makes it convenient for them to order as many shoes as they want, keep the ones that fit, and return the others at no additional cost. Yes, this policy has meant that the returns at Zappos are around 35% of online order values (compared to the general brick and mortar retail industry average of 10%) but the customer WOW factor has led to increased customer loyalty. Companies known for their customer service, like Zappos, set a standard in service that other companies have to match now, too. Zappos positions itself as A Service Company That Happens To Sell Shoes. The top management was not averse to the prospect of having Zappos Airline and Zappos Hotels someday. And that kind of restrictive environment leads to a negative customer experience. At Zappos, they believe if you get culture right, most of the things - like great customer service, or building a great brand will happen naturally on its own. After this, Kelli recruited help from her fellow Zappos agents, and they sent dozens of packages, supplies, and thank you cards to all the soldiers at Tommys base for the holidays. Ideally, this number has to be high. We want to align ourselves with a shareholder and partner that thinks really long term (like we do at Zappos), as well as do whats in the best interest of our existing shareholders and investors.