Leveraging Every Customer Interaction
July 22nd, 2010[ General ]
I’ve been reading Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness and really enjoying it. It’s nice to read a book written by a person, ie not a ghost writer. In reading it, I’m learning about Zappos and their customer service culture. While I’ve never ordered anything from them, I find myself craving their level of service when I interact with other companies. They place such high value on each and every interaction with their customer.
A recent example I went through. First I’ll say that I’ve had a pair of Chacos flips for a couple of years now and they’re the best flip flops I’ve ever owned. About a week ago one failed on me (see pic). Now I despise wearing shoes so I was initially stressed about having to go without my flips in the summer but I knew my chacos had a lifetime warranty so I’m good. Maybe.
Cut to the fine print. Ah yes, the lifetime warranty for a product where “lifetime” is the life of the product as determined by the company producing it. Lovely. I sent Chacos a photo of my broken flip flop for them to evaluate and decide if my flip flops were dead or simply injured.
So here’s the rub. After a day wearing shoes in this heat I couldn’t handle it any longer. While I’d love to buy a new pair of chacos, the combination of trying something different and the risk of having my chacos replaced or repaired, landing me with 2 pairs, led me to buy a pair of Birk’s. I switched and chacos lost me as a customer.
Sure enough three days later I received an email politely informing me…
“In this case we believe that the broken toe pole is a result of normal wear and tear and therefore we are sorry to inform you that Chaco will not be replacing the footwear. Although Chaco products are made to endure strong activity and made to last it is normal that after a couples of years of good use the footwear has to call it a day!
We are happy that you enjoyed our product for several years and we hope that you will continue to do so for the years to come.”
So what went wrong here?
First, assuming that I’m willing to wait 3 days for you to email me a short email informing me you aren’t going to do anything. It shouldn’t take three days for you to say no, sorry.
Second, I never asked for a full replacement. They failed to offer me a way to remain a chacos customer. In fact they offered me nothing, it was a dead end, a waste of time leaving a bad taste for a brand.
Now I’ll esteem Chacos USA because the irony is that they handled this well. You see, I started this whole thread with their US entity only to realize in the end that being in Canada, they had to pass me to their Canadian entity and I had to start the entire process over again. While dealing with the US rep, she immediately told me it’s doubtful my flips could either be repaired or replaced under warranty. She immediately offered me 20% off a new pair along with free shipping. I responded saying yes please, telling her what colour I’d like and my address. That’s when she hit me with the “oh you’re in canada, sorry.”
The key difference was immediacy and the feeling that they wanted to keep me as a customer. Had I been able to finish the path I started with chacos USA I would be a chacos customer today yammering on to everyone about my new sandals. Instead I’m wearing birks while writing a blog post.
Zappos (and chacos USA?) understands that customer interactions aren’t about interpreting your company rules for the public. Being polite doesn’t count as customer service, that’s just a base requirement of having a conversation with someone. Emailing someone a “no, go away” email, dripping in politeness, comes off as sarcasm or idiocy. Needless to say my reply to them about how much I was enjoying my new birk’s was very polite.
Zappos understands the value of leveraging that one interaction you are lucky to get with a customer over their lifetime and doing everything possible to deliver them a little happiness.