Tony Hsieh
Starting Zappos – the company culture…
This is a video from Le Web 2009
Trust & Transparency
Trust.SalesForce.com
If you want to do business with someone online then Trust is a major conversion issue…
SalesForce.com have recognized this and have focused on trying to bring transparency to their offering, showing us their maintenance schedule and their system uptime etc. Have a look at it over on trust.salesforce.com
Customer Contact Experience – Seth Godin
Marketing Guru Seth Godin wrote a great white paper on the customer contact experience… It’s an oldie but a goodie. Sponsored by Avaya, it takes a helecopter view of the modern brand and its schizoid relationship with its customers – particulaly when it comes to call centre experiences.
I particularly like his opening gambit:
Guy walks into a bar. Orders a martini with peanuts instead of olives
in it. The bartender says, “I’m sorry, but due to unusually heavy call volume, I’m unable to make your drink.
The wait may be as long as…six…minutes.”
What are your customers saying?
Are you prepared to listen to what your customers are saying? Bandon company Louder Voice offer a powerful review tool that allows you to integrate review functionality into your website.
This is Web 2.0 in action – listen to your customers! Reviews are worth their weight in gold and have proved to be a significant factor in improving conversion to sale, moreover they are a great way to get the customers view. Naturally not everything you hear will necessarily be 100% positive – but it’s all about the conversation. Louder Voice for Business is a great way to improve your company’s offering and offer your customers another way of connecting with your brand.
Customer service hell!
Large brands are discovering that their customers won’t put up with shoddy customer service or complaint procedures any more. I suppose to be fair, what they are really discovering is that their customers are now empowered to publish their complaints to a global audience using the internet and the reach of social networking sites and that it may not be in their interest to ignore this phenomenon.
One such interaction was very embarrassing for United Airlines in the US…
A member of the public (Dave Carroll a Canadian singer) had a problem when he flew with United Airlines – he claimed they broke his guitar. He went through a protracted complaints procedure and United Airlines refused to take any responsibility or compensate him… That could have been the end of that, however he decided to voice his discontent and penned a witty song and recorded a very funny video which he posted on youtube…
His song is now a smash hit on youtube with almost 6 Million views and 30,000 comments the airline has serious egg on it’s face and is dealing with a PR disaster. The online community really embraced this complaint and the viral nature of the campaign meant that it spread like wildfire.
Whether this was a one off anomaly or represents United Airlines underlying culture and policies the company now faces a public who believe that as a company United Airlines has very poor customer service. This will be difficult and expensive to change.
In a follow up song Dave tries to take the pressure off Ms Irlwig (the customer service representative) and put the responsibility firmly where it lies on the desk of Unitied Airlines and their policies.
Sage CRM
Sage offer a wide range of CRM offerings for the SME sector from ACT to Sage CRM and now including an online version SageCRM.com
The Sage offerings are immediately of interest to companies using their accounting solutions, however it is a standalone CRM offering.
Seven steps to remarkable customer service
Joel Spolski has a great article on customer service which is based on lessons learned at Fog Creek Software during its startup phase http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html it’s well worth a read as Joel is one of those rare individuals who a) knows what he’s talking about and b) is prepared to share with others…
SalesForce CRM
SalesForce.com are the force to be reckoned with in online CRM. The posterchild of the Software as a service (SAAS) sector, this offering defines the online CRM space. Offering a free 30 day trial so that you can assess the offering…
Lessons from Amazon
When Amazon bought Zappos.com this was a message that Jeff Bezos gave to the Zappos staff…
Think long term…
Customer service masterclass
Zappos.com is a fascinating case sudy in customer service…
Here’s a fascinating insight into what makes Zappos tick by Tony Hsieh the CEO back in 2008 prior to theit acquisition by Amazon.
One of the killer lines is – Zappos is a service company that happens to sell shoes, clothes, handbags….
Some of the headline information:
1. Shoe Market size of $50Bn in the States
2. Projected turnover of Zappos for 2008 $1Bn – 2% of the market (After 9 years)
3. Powered by Service – Focus is on creating the WOW factor for the client
a. Free Shipping
b. Free Returns Shipping
c. Return for up to 365 days
d. 24 hr Freephone support
4. Scale of offering
a. 1200 Brands
b. 200,000 Styles
c. 900,000 UPC
d. 4 M items in stock (no drop shipping)
e. Every product has extensive photographic collateral (8 shots), descriptions, reviews (and analysis of reviews), sizing information.
5. Customers
a. 7.5 M people have purchase (2.5% of population)
b. 3.4 M people have purchased in the last 12 months
c. On any given day 75% is repeat custom (average order size of repeat customers is 27% more that first time buyers)