I love Zappos. For a company built on treating their customers right, even they go above and beyond the call of duty. Let me tell you about my experience.
Last week I ordered a couple of pairs of new shoes in advance of the Labor Day weekend. I ordered them on Monday, hoping that I would have them by the time the weekend rolled around and I was leaving NYC for the weekend.
That afternoon, I received a surprise email. Here’s what I saw:
I was happy.
Then I received notice that Tuesday morning that my shoes had shipped and that they would be delivered by 3pm! Under 24 hours free shipping? Perfect.
I tweeted about it:
Then, things got awesome.
I received this tweet back:
No big deal, I thought to myself. So I tweeted back:
Next thing I know, I receive this tweet:
Check my email? What? I checked my email and lo and behold this is what I saw:
Sweet! So I tweeted back:
And then received:
That’s not all!
Yesterday, I arrived at work to see a package laying on my desk. Here’s what it was:
That’s right, not only did Zappos get me my stuff in under 24 hours and upgrade me to VIP for free, they also a week later sent me a free copy of Tony Hsieh’s book to read. I had been planning to order it that day as well!
Thanks Zappos. You guys do social media and customer service right.
That is amazing. It seems like they’ve built layers upon layers of added perks just to make people feel awesome about the shopping experience. I’ve never seen anything like that. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Scott –
Thanks for the comment! They sure have built some really smart layers. I was thinking Zagg should take a leaf out of their book and do something similar. You guys seem to have a cool culture as well. With a bit of creative thinking you could take over the iPad accessories space pretty easily!
It certainly has me thinking about taking customer service to the next level. We’re not bad, by any means, but it’s obvious that superior service makes for a good addition to the SEO strategy. 🙂
Absolutely. I was amazed at how they found my info all from my Twitter handle. I mean, I’m not hard to find online at all, but it was still impressive! Takes a bit of hustle, but it pays off.
No link love for Zappos? Bad customer for life :p haha.
This just proves that an awesome customer service can do get you a link.
Haha I wondered at lunch if I had forgotten to link to them. Maybe I’ll not do it and see if they ask me for one? 😉
I’ve the read the book, it’s very inspiring. In the book, Tony Hsieh explains that that’s their way on living inside the company… Delivering happiness. I love the part of the pizza!
I’ll retweet this post. It’s fantastic.
Absolutely. Obviously I’m reading the book right now. It’s inspiring! And their culture sounds fantastic; I’d love to visit there someday (hint hint Zappos).
been thinking… this is actually a good bait, where you’ll just monitor those kind of tweets, and see if the “customer” has a good social authority (lots of followers) and has his/her blog’s URL mentioned on his Twitter profile.
Then a good follow up of “check your mail” approach (may come in form of VIP account or freebies) could do the link magic.
Totally. Part of me suspects that this is what happened. It was only after I responded again that I got the VIP thing. Maybe follower numbers helped? Hard to know. I do know their service is awesome!
Amazing story, Zappos is certainly going to very more than just one very happy customer and a link out if this!
You bet!
I’m sure we’ll begin to see copycats to this approach, which is fine. But it’s the originality that’s striking.
I’m sure, but if it holds businesses to a higher customer service accountability, I’m fine with copycats. It was the unexpectedness of it that got me!
Impressive! They just earned at least 1 new customer from reading about your experience. I agree with Ash, it’s nice to see a company really step up to the plate and set a standard.
Brilliant!
Great story!
I’m in Canada & a few months back I decided to order from Zappos online.
The customer service experience was fantastic and I actually sent them a followup email to tell them so! (something I had never done before with any company, online or otherwise)
Sadly now, they no longer service Canada but whatever Customer Service model they are using, it should be examined closely by other companies.
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The power of Social Media! Awesome article! I’ll have to check them out now! Thanks so much 🙂
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I think it is a sign of how jaded we have become with customer service that I expected a ‘but’ at some stage in your story. But kudos to Zappos because there was no ‘but’, only incredible customer service. This is how it’s done!!!
I love great customer service. I definitely scream it from the roof top (or blog about it) when it’s done right. Way to go Zappos!
Agreed, Melizza. It was just amazing to see customer service/social done right when I see so many who do not “get” it.
Great example of customer service that how it helps to build an image or reputation for any business, which ends with a brand name that people love to keep in their mind or like to memorize it.
Zappos is a truly great web site. This is also why Amazon acquired it for nearly a billion dollars. What I admire most apart from how interactive it is, customer service, speed etc. is how powerful it is as domain.
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