www.zappos.com
Zappos is subsidiary of Amazon that sells shoes and clothing. Zappos is known for it’s great customer service. A strong culture of customers first has been instilled throughout the company. They believed that it would be better off spending their marketing budget on customer service and to instead let their customers advertise for them through word of mouth(Harvard Business Review, n.d.).
They believed in their customer first policy to the extent that they moved the company to Las Vegas from Silicon Valley in order to set up a 24/7 call centre. Zappos carries out in depth training to all its empl0yees so each and every one of them would be able to follow their slogan of “Deliver Wow.” Unlike traditional companies that calculate employee performance through something known as “average handle time”(Harvard Business Review, n.d.) which measures the number of calls that an employee is able to take, at Zappos they do not hold their workers answerable to call times. Therefore, employees are able to spend more time with each customer and really focus on their problem. To the effect that, an employee once spent 6 hours on call with a customer to help her decide which shoes to buy. (Forbes, 2015)
Zappos goes on to maintain its customer first culture through its purchase and return policy. Zappos offers free shipping for delivery and returns of products(Forbes, 2015), taking on this cost themselves instead of placing it on their customers. They in fact encourage customers to order as many products as they desire and then just return whatever they don’t want. Furthermore, Zappos has 365 day return policy (Harvard Business Review, n.d.) unlike the usual 30 day policy even followed by its owner Amazon.
Now that Zappos’ customer policy has been established its time to look at the benefits of having a customer first approach. Through following this ideology Zappos grew from a company with no sales to a company with $1 billion dollars in sales in just 10 years (Harvard Business Review, n.d.). Through conducting market research it was found that the majority of sales came from returning customers. Buyers valued Zappos over its competitors like “Shoes.com” (Hoovers, n.d.) because of its exceptional customer service. The Zappos website is nothing special when compared to its rivals, it has no unique product that gives it an edge. However Zappos’ customer policy acts as its unique selling point and as its marketing.
In conclusion, while Zappos is an average in e-commerce website it is able to differentiate itself through its first class customer service. It can be seen that though customer service in itself is intangible it can result in tangible results for a business in the form of elevated profits. It raises the question of what the real worth of great customer service is.
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Sources:
Forbes. (2015, May 11). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2015/05/11/what-is-happening-at-zappos/#3cff9d4f4ed8
Harvard Business Review. (n.d.). How I Did It: Zappos’s CEO on Going to Extremes for Customers. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-i-did-it-zapposs-ceo-on-going-to-extremes-for-customers
Hoovers. (n.d.). ZAPPOS.COM, INC. Names of Competitors – D&B Hoovers. Retrieved from http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/competition.zapposcom_inc.53df08bdfbd6d68d.html