Julianna
While reading Seth Godin’s blog, I came across one of the best examples of customer service that I have seen in awhile. Zappos is a US company, that sells shoes and handbags online. A customer had such an extraordinary experience with the company, she wrote about it on her blog, in an post titled “I Heart Zappos”.
A Zappos customer had bought several pairs of shoes for her mother, some of them didn’t fit, so she notified the company she would be returning the shoes. Her mother was subsequently hospitalized and passed away shortly after, and when a Zappos representative emailed her to find out why the shoes had not yet arrived, she told them that her mother had passed away and she would send the shoes back as soon as she was able to. The Zappos representative told her not to worry, and arranged for UPS to come pick up the shoes rather than her having to take them to the courier’s office to be shipped (their standard company policy). While that was already a wonderful step, the customer opened her door a few days later to a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, from – you guessed it – Zappos.
The woman was understandably incredibly touched, and wrote a blog entry telling her story and thanking Zappos for their thoughtfulness, and amazing above and beyond customer service. While this happened back in July, the story has been building and especially making the rounds on the Internet the last couple of days. Zappos is getting some amazing publicity from a wonderful act of customer service, and they should accordingly praise their thoughtful staff member. If this is part of their corporate culture, Zappos is a fantastic company that deserves the praise being lauded at them. For a company whose entire business is online like Zappos, building relationships can be difficult, but if you encourage your employees to put customers first, you can generate strong customer loyalty.