Even when you work with world-class brands (retailers, mobile phone companies, finance companies, all sorts…) they still ask who in the world does digital customer experience the best. So, often they ask “who is the best in our industry online?” and often ask us the same question more generally, looking to find examples to follow from other industries who do a good job online.
Unfortunately when asked “who does it well?” I tend to answer that nobody, in my humble opinion, has really got everything right. There are loads of sites that do a small number of things, or even just one thing really well, but nobody has the whole package. So as part of our Experience Planning offering, we’ll collate companies, sites and brands that have relevance to our customer or their customers.
And because we’re using our philosophy of Total Experience Design, that aims to draw out the magic things you do to make a complete customer experience, regardless of the channel in which it is executed it happens that quite often, we’ll also pick up on the fact that the best thing some companies do on the web isn’t their website. It might be a product, an innovation, a service, or even simply an attitude. When we designed and built www.virginmobile.com in the UK for example, I always look back and say that the best thing that site did, wasn’t done by the site itself. It was the fact that you got your phone the next morning.
Zappos is one of those that does at least one thing exceptionally well; and that’s customer service. The Zappos story is well documented, and we often talk about the number of blogs, Facebook groups and Twitter comments that laud their attitude to their customers and the things they do to make their customers’ experience much, much more delightful than their competition.
The most poignant story is that of a woman whose mother had died. Consequently she needed to return some shoes to Zappos and because she was obviously much more concerned with her mother’s death, was going to be late returning them. How did Zappos respond? They sent a UPS truck to pick up the shoes at their expense (normally you have to take them to a depot), and shortly after, sent her a bouquet of flowers.
The blog post in which she documented this ends:
“IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.
With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.”
So, I was asked this same question by the guys from the Windows Live team at Microsoft as we were hanging out on the roof of Tao nightclub in Las Vegas at MIX09 (you meet all the best people there). “So what’s a really great website?” I think it was John, asked, and I wheeled out my Zappos story for them. They looked at me like I was kinda weird, and got me another beer, so it was interesting when I got an email from Angus the other day titled “Zappos really is the bomb” – apparently this is some quaint Australian or American phrase for “Really jolly good”.
This is the story as it unfolded on Twitter, that I tell here for three reasons: a) how good are we at finding ‘world class’ and predicting the brands to succeed! (Ha!) b) exactly how that service promise translates into everyday life, other than the big stories that get told over and over, and c) to show how a company uses Twitter well also!
@jsenior posted this to Twitter:
@anguslogan, who is known for having rather tasty taste in shoes responded:
@jsenior, knowing how important and influential Angus knows himself to be speculated on whether Zappos might source said shoes for him? Either that, or he really wasn’t looking forward to walking into a store to actually buy them to take back to Redmond for Mr Logan. Or maybe it was the thought of the TSA opening his luggage and finding them there… anyway, he responded:
And it was at this point, that @zappos_service waded in with this:
Which linked to the offending, er I mean, inspirational shoes, on a site pointing at them being for sale at another store, and not at Zappos.
To which, Angus’ response was naturally:
Quickly followed by an email to me, and two others to re-tell the story.
When you get things right in creating a relationship with customers, this is what happens. They respond emotionally in a way that out-does logic and rational thinking any day. When it comes to choosing where to look for (admittedly rather crazy) shoes online? Where is Angus going? Even if the delivery is a bit pricey (which it’s not by the way – they do free delivery too!)
So, if you’re a bit shoddy at keeping the website up to date, or you can’t quite beat the competition at delivery prices, but you can do service like this, customers will forgive you. Why? Because they love you!
How does Zappos do this? Again, it’s well documented, but they ingrain customer service right from the start in everyone that works there and they empower staff to make decisions, and use budget to help customers – which is presumably money they divert from above the line advertising, due to the serious word of mouth marketing they get as a result. To make sure they get the right people working for them, they even offer to ‘buy out’ new trainees. They offer them a bribe to leave on the spot after a week or so of training. Those that survive are the ones they want.. those that take the bribe are equally happy, but not ‘Zappos material’.
So the challenge is, to look at the overall customer experience; end to end, and to plan experiences that delight throughout, not constrain yourself to an interface.
Ok, next question: “What’s the best checkout process in the world?” – and no, it’s not Amazon… yawn.