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Vikram
South Indian Meal, Curry and an Unforgettable Customer Support Story
May 7th, 2013 
Curry up some great support!
There are a lot of ways to turn a customer over – offering them exceptional value, focussing on genius design, delivering a great experience. And sometimes, just sometimes all these come together, with some crispy Dosa crepes, and spicy chutney on the side.
Every time I fly down to the US, I spend the first couple of days binging on subs, hot dogs, and steak. Until I finally start craving some good old Indian food (usually by the end of the first week). So when I spotted the first Indian restaurant in Palo Alto, well into my third week this trip my stomach grumbles told me I should probably just walk in. And who are we, mere mortals, to oppose the cries of the hungry tummy!
The moment I walked in, I knew this restaurant, like every other Indian restaurant, was going to be unique. The strong waft of spicy curry, waiters scuttling about, and the seemingly structured chaos that I was all too familiar with. I settled into a table right next to a group of guys discussing their next startup idea, and outlining their business plan on a soggy crepe of Dosa in typical valley style. If you’ve lived a good part of your life on Indian food, you don’t really need to scan the menu to throw out your order. Judging by the increasingly violent grumbles from my stomach, I knew I wanted a South Indian Meal (or SIM).
The SIM probably holds the record for being the safest, and most forgettable order, ever. To the uninitiated, the SIM is a plate-full of everything Indian. You have breads, and rice. You get lentils and curry and watery soup. There’s a dessert. And sometimes there is a little banana that clearly shouldn’t be there. You don’t call your wife and mom and tell them you just ate a SIM. You order a SIM for just one reason – because you are hungry, and you want to go all the way. That’s all I wanted, and that’s all I expected.
And then, the waiter came along and changed everything for me.
Traditionally, each dish in the SIM is served in little cups, with unlimited seconds (or thirds, and so on). Of course, you will need to flag down a passing waiter and request a refill, which means most SIM customers end up with an elaborate dance involving flailing hands and eye contact.
And that’s the first thing that made our waiter awesome – he was there, ready with his big ladle of curry, gravy and rice everytime we looked up from our plates. No song. No dances.
Shall I fill in the blanks? Or should I chip in?
Good waiters make sure you get the things you ask for in light speed. Great waiters make sure you don’t even have to ask. Each time we finished a bowl of spiced potatoes or fried chicken, our waiter would be standing ready. Twice, he asked us if he should just fill in the blanks, before he proceeded to refill all the cups on our SIMs. And at least once he asked us if we’d like him to chip in, before throwing us some crispy chips.
Mom, I just had the best SIM Ever!
Despite the number of months that have gone by, I still remember that meal and the enthusiastic waiter who served us at that little Indian restaurant at Palo Alto. I’ve been talking about this great guy ever since (even writing a whole story about him). And I sure will drop in the next time my stomach throws a grumble tantrum when I’m around Palo Alto.
But did the waiter have to be nice? No. Did his work demand him to be so awesome? Not really. But he did, nevertheless. And that gave a regular, forgettable SIM a personality that I will always remember. He made me excited enough to talk, share the story. And that is the real customer experience that every smart business yearns for.
To put things in perspective, do you have your enthusiastic support agents waiting to wow your customers? And is your support team empowered to “chip in” proactively when customers need an extra hand, or are they still waiting for some flailing hands and eye-contact?
Aishwarya
Amazon’s Road to Customer Happiness..
March 1st, 2013 
Amazon's road to Customer Happiness
Once upon a time, there was this guy called Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. He was a good guy, a smart guy. He spent his childhood summers on his grandfather’s ranch and went on to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton with a Bachelors in Computer science and Electrical Engineering.
Jeffrey was just like you and me, if you and I had gone to Princeton, that is.
He worked at a bunch of companies and dabbled primarily in computer science, because he loved computers.
The beginning
However, unlike you and me, he came up with an idea that would change his life, and of everyone around him. Jeffrey quit his cushy, well-paid job at a New York hedge fund to start an online bookstore called Cadabra in his garage.
A bookstore? Online? You can imagine how people must have looked at him then.
Today, Cadabra is a company worth 90 billion dollars. And that smart guy from Princeton, Jeffrey? He’s one of the richest people in the world, his personal wealth estimated to be about 22 billion dollars. That’s just an estimate.
The guy is now known as Jeff Bezos. And Cadabra is Amazon.
When people read about Amazon’s meteoric rise from its humble beginnings, the question that begs to be answered is how. How did he do it? How did he convert a nondescript online bookstore into the world’s largest online retailer, an entity that now threatens to change the way books have been read for hundreds of years? How did Cadabra go from selling books to become the behemoth it is today?
This is how we dance..
A lot of people credit Amazon’s meteoric rise to Bezos’ initial business plan, one that ignored short term benefits and focused on long term goals. It didn’t expect to make a profit for the first five years or so. However, Amazon pulled through just like Bezos envisioned it would.
And the key component that enabled Amazon to grow so much is the focus on what Bezos thought was the most important cog in the wheel – the customer. Amazon’s entire approach was, and remains, put together with just one goal in mind – to make the customer happy.
This strategy is implemented in three ways – the largest selection ever, every possible convenient method of purchase, and the lowest prices on the planet. Amazon has an unlimited online inventory of nearly everything under the sun. However, just a large selection isn’t enough to bring customers. The low prices take care of that, cutting out the competition, who just cannot operate on such economies of scale. And then they throw in things like free shipping, tracking orders to make it as convenient as possible for the customer.
It’s an irresistible combo for a customer, the biggest temptation since a beautiful young lady got tricked by a snake into taking a bite out of a mysterious apple.
Customer love and marketing strategies
Well, then how is free shipping and low prices helping Amazon make a profit, if its competitors are foundering? The simple answer is, well, it isn’t. They could be making a lot of money by charging for shipping but they’ve chosen not to. In a presentation to analysts in 2009, Thomas J. Szkutak, Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer, claimed that they lose 600 million dollars a year as foregone shipping revenue.
There was quite a furore when Bezos slashed the advertising budget to bring about the free shipping feature, essentially pouring ad money into customer satisfaction. People called the move foolish and cited inexperience. How in the world was Amazon going to survive without marketing?
“If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that”, said Bezos. “Word of mouth is very powerful.”
Point was, he wasn’t taking away money from marketing at all, he was just diverting it into what was really another marketing channel. And it was a masterstroke. He’d focused all of Amazon’s strength into building a great customer experience. He made his customers the marketers.
And it worked. Amazon became Amazon.
However for everything to work out as it has, Bezos had to put in a lot of work to make the customer experience become what is today – legendary.
Everything I do, I do it for you
Amazon came up with a lot of firsts in the industry, innovating its way to an unparalleled buying experience.
The famous super saver shipping is a customer’s dream come true, converting millions over to the Amazon way of doing things, where’s my stuff allows a customer to track his order’s location, one click ordering removes the sequence of steps from viewing product to cart to actual purchase and makes it just one click, and so on.
Then there’s Amazon’s customer reviews, the reviews feature on the product page which became a staple of every e-commerce company on the planet. But the feature that represents Amazonian innovation at its best is the related recommendations. Using your browsing and buying history and using big data to profile and recommend products, Amazon gives you a personally curated shelf full of things you are interested in.
Enough about the buying experience. Let’s talk about borrowing stuff. It started out as a free two-day shipping service for a flat annual fee, but Amazon Prime is so much more now. It has now expanded to include Amazon Instant Video that lets Prime members stream their favorite movies and TV shows. It also lets them borrow books off the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it ?
Amazon structured the entire process of purchase such that nine times out of ten, a customer can complete his transaction without interacting with an Amazon employee. Employees step in only for unusual circumstances like defective products or order problems, the department of customer service.
Like the strategy to provide the best experience possible, Bezos has a unique strategy for customer service. Unlike most companies where the customer puts in a call to support, Amazon has a policy of asking its customers to fill out a form declaring their phone number and the hours during which they’d like to be contacted. And most times, a call is patched through to the customer within the same day, sometimes the same hour! The representatives undergo extensive training to make sure that they’re able to be of maximum use to the customer. It’s a little known fact that it’s mandatory for all Amazon employees to man the phones for two days, every two years. Even Jeff Bezos isn’t exempted from this.
The rule is enforced to make sure that no employee loses sight of the thing that is most important to the company: the customer.
Rumors and Legends apart..
All of these strategies that Amazon has put so much thought into has paid off. The Internet is full of stories of Amazon’s magnaminity.
One great story is about a man who ordered a PS3 for his son from Amazon.com. He intended it to be a Christmas present and ordered it to arrive early. However the 21st of December arrived before the present and he was surprised to realize that he still hadn’t received it. He got in touch with Customer Service and explained his predicament. The representative checked on the order’s status and together, they pieced together the whole story. One of his neighbours had apparently signed for the order and he realized that the neighbour must have placed it on the doorstep. A check with the neighbour confirmed the whole story and he was distraught to realize that it was four days to Christmas and his son’s present was now missing. This was when Amazon’s customer-first culture kicked in. The rep reassured the man that they were convinced that he’d never gotten the package and agreed to send out a replacement. Not only did it arrive in time for Christmas, they didn’t even charge him for shipping.
This happy customer went on to tell his story to millions through an article in the New York Times. Amazon had no way of knowing that he was a New York Times columnist or that he’d be so touched with the gesture. They were just doing what they do best: making customers happy.
Was it just great customer support or a marketing strategy that is out to prove that Bezos is a genius? Either way, it doesn’t matter to Amazon because it’s somehow both things at once.
Are you on the same road?
It isn’t easy to do what Jeff Bezos has done; he’s built an enterprise which has dedicated its every action to making the customer as happy as possible.
These days there are support tools that help you provide incredible customer support through not just the traditional channels like Amazon does, but even through social media or communities. Of course, Amazon had on its side sheer numbers and its super efficient processes, but with just a little bit of effort, every company can aspire to do what Amazon has done for the world of business – making the customer feel important again.
Sairam
The Lemonade Boy who Listened – 3 Lessons in Customer Service
November 16th, 2012 
The Lemonade Boy's Lessons in Customer Service
A decade ago, ‘customer interaction’ meant very little.
The little kid with the lemonade stand just had to place his table on the right intersection, make enough lemonade and price it right to reap his riches.
Conversations with customers would, in most cases, be a muffled grunt or an excuse to tender exact change. And when the kids from across the block started competing, our lemonade kid just had to slash his prices. If he could get his lemons cheaper than everyone else there was just no stopping him. And he could always add a little bit more water. After all, who would notice?
Except his customers, of course. And our little man realized that if he wanted to stay in business, he had to start listening.
And listen he did. It was as simple as placing a fish bowl & a notepad on his stand for customers to drop their feedback. Every night, the lemonade boy spent an hour reading all the feedback and responding to them. And as he grew (and his business expanded to the parking lot), customers started flocking to him. Not because the lemonade was cheaper or even better than everybody else, but because they believed in the Lemonade Boy who Listened.
So what was that really big deal that turned the little kid with watery lemonade into the Lemonade Boy who Listened?
Lesson 1 – Make it easy for customers to talk to you
The Lemonade boy had a fishbowl and a notepad. The customers did not need to bring anything, except themselves. Ask yourself this – How easy is it for your customers to talk to you? If the answer is ‘very easy’, you are in a good place and should treat yourself to a lemonade.
But if you need your customers to bring their pens and paper, its time you got yourself a fish bowl. Now!
Lesson 2 – Listen, act and show them that you listen
At first, there were just a couple of letters, some nice and some nasty. As the days rolled by, the fishbowl had to get refreshed thrice every day. But the lemonade boy still listened – he committed himself to going through every feedback, and acting on it. And if the backlog ever piled up, he spent his nights and weekends clearing them up. Now, if you are still able to keep your fishbowl consistently clean for the next day, kudos.
But if the backlog is piling up you better put on reading glasses, because your customers know when you aren’t listening to what they say.
Lesson 3 – Be honest. Good lemonade is all about personality
The girl from the red brick house three blocks away felt the portions were too small. The lemonade boy wrote back telling her the quality and poetic elegance that goes into every cup. And, the next day, he showed her exactly what went into making that one portion of freshly squeezed lemonade. Today, the Lemonade Boy’s lemonade is no longer a drink. It is a story that every customer wants to relate to.
Your support is the brand that your customers directly relate to. Break away the monotony and drive a personality in every cup of lemonade you serve.
Sairam
Sumair
Aberdeen Group’s New Research on Social Media in Customer Service – Guest Post
September 27th, 2012 Aberdeen’s Service Management team is looking to dive deeper into the impact that social media (For research purposes, social media includes Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Forums, Discussion Boards, Communities etc.) is having on customer support via a new research survey. This survey analyzes:
1. Key trends in the use of social media tools in customer support
2. The benefits from and challenges to be considered while integrating social media into a customer support strategy
3. Best practices in maximizing the impact of social media as a customer management and engagement tool.
If your organization is currently leveraging social tools in support, evaluating their use, or has yet to consider their use, we would welcome your participation in this survey. For spending the time to become a part of our research panel on this topic, Aberdeen will provide a copy of the summary report when published in early October 2012.
Social media tools offer organizations a unique path to engage with their customers and prospects, one that can replace, supplement, or go way beyond the engagement avenues currently available to organizations. Yet, most organizations use social tools solely for marketing purposes. In 2011 research on multi-channel support, only 23% of 180 organizations polled indicated having a social strategy in place for customer service. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of respondents indicated that social as a channel was owned by marketing. However, respondents did indicate that they expected to see a significant uptick in customer discussions around support on social channels and that 52% were either initiating investments in or increasing support for their social customer service initiatives. There is a spectrum of social strategies deployed for support, from listen only, to listen and respond, to listen, respond, analyze and engage, and much more. The impact of these strategies can be extremely significant from a customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability perspective.
Please take the survey by clicking here.
About the Author
Sumair Dutta is the Vice President and Principal Analyst for Service Management at the Aberdeen Group. His coverage areas touch upon customer service strategy, customer experience management, and field service. He can be reached at Sumair.dutta@aberdeen.com or @Aberdeen_CSO on Twitter.
Sairam
Why Dexter would choose a hosted helpdesk!
September 26th, 2012 
Why would Dexter choose a Hosted Help Desk solution?
If you grew up watching Dexter (the boy genius with a lab in his basement – not the confused compulsive killer-hero) cranking up world-changing inventions at his lab, you are going to love this. After all, when it comes to all things ‘technology’, who better to follow than the prodigy himself.
With the kind of research and inventions that the boy genius comes up with in his lab, of course he needs a good help desk solution.
First, he needs to be connected to the world outside so he has all the right variables accounted for.
Second, he cannot rely on just his memory and a bunch of notes to keep track of all the human conversations, time travel, and home chores.
Third, he needs his shut-down-and-recover procedure in place before DeeDee gets into the lab again.
For someone who could build an entire laboratory from scratch, build machines that could destroy (and save) the world, and irradiate the O,N,K,E and Y out of monkeys, and turn them into mutated superheroes, you could rashly be driven to believe Dexter would chose to build and maintain his own help desk software on his turf (or basement).
So here’s our argument why he would rather use a hosted help desk solution that is safely nestled on the cloud -
1. DeeDee doesn’t have to press that button.
Remember the time Dexter creates this giant of an invention, and needs DeeDee to press that button to get it started?
Well, now he doesn’t need DeeDee’s help to get this support desk installed, running, or upgraded. In fact, there is no button in the first place! With his help desk software hosted on the cloud, Dexter can get his tech support fired from just about anywhere, from any device with an internet connection and a web browser!
2. The Data is Mandark-proof.
Dexter does not have to worry, not even a teeny weeny bit, about Mandark coming and getting his top secret data from the helpdesk. With his hosted helpdesk, Dexter’s secret formulae, plans, blueprint and resolutions are super secure. Top class data encryption and an uber safe data center mean the security of his information is a given.
3. Dexter gets to focus on just his inventions
Dexter gets to focus his time on efforts on the things he enjoys and does best, like creating alternate energy sources from annoying Facebook pictures. First, since there is nothing to install or upgrade, he doesn’t have to babysit his hosted help desk software. And second, he now gets to use the best-in-class features and capabilities from his hosted help desk before he can say “Computer, Lights On!”
4. It’s faster than a genius-made-superhero.
The hosted helpdesk can even put Monkey to shame. The primate superhero that Dexter created would also be flummoxed by the speed at which the hosted helpdesk works, how fast the data moves in the cloud and how quickly and easily and almost imperceptibly the updates happen. (Yeah, faster than Monkey’s straight-up flights into space to face Rasslor). After all, you don’t really expect a radioactive primate super hero to beat a super fast hosted help desk environment, do you?
5. The laboratory’s help desk doesn’t have to be hidden behind the bookcase.
The helpdesk will be completely rebranded and painted in his favorite colours, so Dexter doesn’t have to hide it behind his bookcase. The helpdesk will be completely Dexter’s own, and that takes away one of his biggest worries to choose a hosted helpdesk – no hiding anymore!
All of Dexter’s contemporary labs are already on the cloud. The smart money is on Dexter choosing an online helpdesk as well.
Well, if you are still wondering if you should move to a hosted help desk solution as well, here is a free green paper that can help you make a choice.
Ramesh
Is your support ‘mobile’ enough?
September 4th, 2012 
Not long ago, there was a time when terms like “premium support” and value added platinum packages made sense. Those were days when a business could muscle consumers to pay for what was already rightfully theirs. Business could hide behind Caveat Emptor, and the support team was just an auxiliary. And this worked, for a really really long time.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work anymore. Today, consumers expect businesses to respond to issues and fix them in real time. And that is a big problem for the traditional support philosophy. Your help desk can no longer wait until the alarm bells ring to start supporting customers.
The good news is, customer support today is the critical link between the business and the consumer.
Keeping your support team mobile and ready to resolve issues round the clock is the difference between a happy customer and a social media flame that can burn you up badly. So here is a quick recipe to take your support everywhere you go:
1. Keep a tab on that “social thing”, and resolve issues in real-time
“55 percent of people stopped doing business with companies because they didn’t resolve issues in a timely manner. ” – Bolt Insurance.
When a customer mentions you on Twitter or on comments on your Facebook page, it’s your job to ensure that their interaction gets enough attention. If you take too long to reply, your customer is probably gonna grow tired of waiting, and either think you’re just lame, or assume you aren’t proactive enough to do business with.
The Recipe
An intelligent ticketing solution that lets you track and respond to queries, praise and complaints on social media should do the trick. But even if you aren’t going all gung-ho with customer support on social media, you should at least have an eye on what the world is talking about your brand, even if you are on vacation. If you aren’t too particular about getting your whole team to contribute though, a social media app that lets you search, follow and respond from your mobile should do the trick.
2. Take your support on-the-go
On average, for every hour you spend working on your desk, you spend two on your mobile device leafing through email, catapulting birds at pigs, checking into the neighborhood coffee shop, and swatting fruits with your ninja sword. That means your help desk could be more than twice as efficient, if you could squeeze it into your phones and iPads.
“On average, we spend 2.5 hours everyday on our mobile phones. That’s over twice the amount of time we spend eating and one third the time we sleep.” – Microsoft Tag.
The Recipe
Make sure you are “connected” to your help desk round the clock. Of course, if you want to save on data charges (and battery life), get your help desk to send you push notifications every time something needs your attention, instead of burning 3G data all the time.
3. Keep your devices in-sync with your help desk
Once you have found yourself a mobile app, the next step is to get all your devices ready for it. This means that you need customer support apps up and running on all your devices. Once you do, you need not worry about leaving your iPad back at home, since you will be able to use it from your Android phone.
The Recipe
With native apps forcing the way, experience across tablets, phones and desktops can be very different. Make sure you get adjusted across all the different devices. Or even better – look for an app that gives you a seamless experience across them all.
So do you plan leaving your helpdesk unmanned every time you are away from your desk? Or are you gonna gear up your support team to go mobile?
Sairam
Why should your help desk be ready to take on a Zombie Apocalypse?
August 23rd, 2012 
5 steps to get your support ready for a Zombie Apocalypse!
Should you even be asking this? Of course you should be ready to face a Zombie Apocalypse. But for the Zombie disbeliever in you, there are a lot more reasons your support team should be ready to face a Zombie Apocalypse than a bunch of living dead chasing your customers. So here are five reasons why you should really get your help desk ready to take on a Zombie Apocalypse, even if it you think it’s never really going to happen:
5. Your bases are good to go, when the load is low
Best to be prepare your support structures when you can. When the zombies attack and you are under pressure, you most probably will not have time to get yourself ready. After all, your customers must know where to look for help when they are on the run, right?!
4. It could be your one chance to win everlasting love
When the going gets tough, the tough get their machettes and baseball bats out of the closet. During the attack, your customers will be relying on you, and that’s your one chance to outclass your best service. Give them what they want and make them your customers for life.
3. It’s a good reason to get in shape
Those long boring periods without Zombies on the prowl and scared customers calling in can dull even the sharpest support teams. Getting prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse means you will need to beat your fastest response times, resolutions and customer satisfaction scores every day.
2. The Breakdown Protocol is ready: You are prepared for the worst.
There aren’t a lot of things we can think of that can get worse than a Zombie Apocalypse. Which means if you have your Zombie Service Breakdown Strategy in place, you are ready to take on anything – service disruptions, black friday support overloads, bugs, inventory issues… Anything!
1. If a Zombie Uprising DOES happen, you are good to fight them already.
Oh zombies, you say. Bring ‘em on. You get to be the guiding beacon and hero to all your customers, instead of cowering under a cubicle with just an old kettle for defense.
Whether you believe in them or not, being Zombie-ready is just good business sense for your support. Go ahead, get your Zombie armors out. And get your customer support prepped up for anything with this free Greenpaper on The 6 Ways to Make Your Customer Support Zombie-Ready. Go ahead, download it for free, & protect your helpdesk.
Oh, and you’re welcome.
Sairam
Customer Support Spotlight 3 – Your Support Team
May 21st, 2012 In our last post, we talked about the dimensions of customer service and its personal and procedural aspects.
This time we’ll be discussing the most important stakeholders in service execution – the customer support team. In fact, as the ones who have to blend the personal and procedural dimensions, the support team is the most important cog in the wheel.
So what makes a great support team?
In all the pointers and lists written towards better customer support, somehow the importance of the actual people who deliver the support is downplayed.
Your customer support team is a million times more important than the technology and the processes. Getting a great team in place is half the job done.
Here’s what we at Freshdesk think is important.
The Customer Support Team - Your Support Lifeline
Three things your Support Team should know
The support team is the face of your company, the people who man the touch points between the customer and the business. And for them to be effective, this is what they should know:
The Organization
By organization, we mean the broader values the company stands for, the general attitude towards customers and so on.
The Product
By knowing the product, we mean knowing every aspect of the product or service, operational or otherwise.
The Consumer
By knowing the customer, we mean maintaining a cordial, healthy and empathetic relationship between customers and support.
Two things your Support Team should have
Empowerment
Empower your support personnel to do what they think is best in situations and back them to the hilt. If they are worried that their decisions will be criticized, they have no incentive to make customers feel good.
Give them that incentive.
Communication
Forge for them a direct channel to the people that matter. This would be the ‘procedural’ part of the customer service quadrant. It is these processes that become cumbersome in growing companies. Support Teams should not have an ‘escalation matrix’. They should be able to talk to the person they want to, when they want to. The customer wants something done, and to the point that nothing gets in the way, the information channel should be as clear as ever.
Give them that clarity.
How we do it at Freshdesk
Our support team takes decisions on a lot of stuff. If one of our a customers is upset, our team can offer him/her pretty much anything that Freshdesk can possibly deliver.
And what if there is an escalation, a feature request or a bug that needs to be fixed? Our support team has a direct line to the developers, the technology team and of course our CEO. They have all the information they want, and hence are able to give our customers great support.
All our customers know our head of support personally, because of their interactions with him. In fact, when Freshdesk attended the NASSCOM event last year at Bangalore, a few of our customers turned up just to meet him. We marketing folks were merely waved at and sidelined. True story. 
In the end, it is the people who matter. Trust your support team, and your customers will trust you.
Sairam
The Legend of Zappos – Building a Brand with great Customer Service
January 11th, 2012 How did they do it? Seemingly, this one question is what everyone wants answered. How? In an atmosphere of commerce and e-tailing where just delivering the product was considered an achievement in itself, how did these guys come in and create the impact they did? Not easy questions to answer, you might think. Well, wrong.
Zappos did it because they got their priorities right.
But still, how?
The answers can be found if we explore the history behind arguably the biggest customer service brand on the planet.
The Birth of Zappos
It was 1999. Nick Swinmurn wanted to buy a pair of Airwalks from his local store. He couldn’t find them, as much as he searched for it, and it was there that he saw an opportunity. He came up with a plan to sell shoes online, nothing more, nothing less, and approached Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin of Venture Frogs with what he’d charted out. Tony Hsieh wasn’t too impressed with the idea and almost deleted Swinmurn’s voice mail. But as luck would have it, seeing some merit in the Bay Area entrepreneur’s pitch, Venture Frogs invested $500,000 in what was first called, quite simply, shoesite.com. A few months later, shoesite became Zappos.
After pulling in revenues of over $8.5 million in 2002, Hsieh and Zappos executives decided that the company needed some direction, a guiding principle, that would set them apart from the ever growing crop of online retailers. They sat down and set down some long-term goals for 2010.
Any other organization that had achieved this volume of success so fast would have concentrated on profits and the numbers associated with it. But this is where Zappos took the first steps towards becoming what they are today. They did not just make the plans. They gave themselves a cause, and executed it with single minded ruthlessness.
The Execution
The first step that indicated that they were doing things differently was when Zappos abandoned Drop Shipping, which then accounted for 25% of their revenue base. Drop shipping is the practice when the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer.
The decision was based on supplying superior customer service, which would later become what Zappos would stand for. As Hsieh said at that time, “I wanted us to have a whole company built around customer service and we couldn’t control the customer experience when a quarter of the inventory was out of our control.”
In 2008, Zappos hit $1 billion in annual sales, two years earlier than expected, and an year later, they fulfilled their other long-term goal, debuting at #23 on Fortune’s Top 100 Companies to Work For. And in 2009, Amazon announced that it would buy Zappos for $940 million, wherein Zappos would continue operating as a separate entity from within Amazon.
How did the company grow so fast? For most of it’s formative years Zappos had minimal advertising, and the company grew mainly by word of mouth and by repeat customers. It turns out that 75% of Zappos’ customers are repeat clientele, which is a mind blowing stat.
There is no secret here. Zappos became Zappos because of the fanatical customer support it offered. That, is the company’s brand. As Hsieh puts it, “Back in 2003, we thought of ourselves as a shoe company that offered great service. Today, we really think of the Zappos brand as about great service, and we just happen to sell shoes.”
The company’s policies are drawn from their stated goal of giving “the best service in the industry”. Shipping is free, they have a 365 day return policy, and of course, they have the legendary Zappos call center. The service has acquired cult status, customers swear by it, and thousands refuse to buy from anywhere except Zappos.
The Legends themselves
Here are a couple of stories that might help you understand the type of service that Zappos distinguishes itself on.
Zaz Lamarr meant to return some shoes to Zappos, but her mother passed away and, naturally, she just didn’t have the mental time for it. Replying to a Zappos mail regarding the return, Lamarr sent a short reply stating that her Mother had died and that she would get around to doing it soon. Zappos arranged to have UPS come and pick up the shoes, so she could take care of more important things – and then sent her flowers.
In 2009, a traveler checked into a hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. When the traveler was unpacking she realized that she’d forgotten a pair of her favorite shoes. She had purchased the missing shoes at Zappos, so she headed to its website. When she could not find another pair of the same shoes, she called service. Zappos no longer had the shoes, but its headquarters are just outside of Las Vegas. The Zappos team located the shoes at a nearby mall, went there, purchased the shoes, and then hand-delivered them to her hotel, all at no charge.
There are other stories out there in the blogosphere, some of them truly incredible. But what is evident is that delivering great customer service works. Zappos have built a brand from the bottom up focussing on only one principle – exceptional customer service. There is no reason why others can’t as well.
Getting the Culture right
In 2009, Zappos was awarded for the “best use of social media” by Abrams Research. Company policies encourage employees to engage customers on Social Media and give them authority to amaze customers however they want. Hsieh’s edict to employees is to present a human face to customers, to let them know that someone at Zappos is listening, and waiting to give them anything they might need. They have succeeded in doing this. Zappos employees are explicitly told to go above and beyond traditional customer service. Call center employees don’t have scripts, and there are no limit on call times. The longest call recorded was reportedly over five hours long.
After saying all this, it is important to state that it isn’t easy to build a company with all it’s employees united by a single minded dedication to the cause. The values have to be embedded in the organization, the employees have to believe in it, support agents should be given a lot of decision making authority. Hsieh’s belief is that “if we get the culture right, then everything else, including the customer service, will fall into place.” He’s right. Whatever processes are put in place, if the passion is missing, all the effort will be for nothing.
Today, there are customer support tools that enable you to do what Zappos does. Some of them have evolved so much that it actually makes it easier for you (than Zappos might have found it then) to serve customers on Social Media. It’s just the small matter of the decision to do so, and then enabling your organization as well.
In conclusion, it is important to remember that rules can be easily framed and hanged on a wall, but only if the spirit of customer service is infused inside an organization, will an organization even come close to what Zappos has achieved.
PS – Zappos were ranked 6th on Fortune’s list of “Best Companies to Work For” in 2011.