Tony Hsieh, the CEO of
Zappos gets it. According to him, you can't have a company without top of the line online customer service and call center. Unlike many companies that give off the feel of not caring about customers (Facebook we're looking at you),
Zappos customer call center workers actually want to engage the caller to glean as much information as possible from the customer, and make their buying experience as pleasant as possible. According to
Zappos not that many customers actually call in their orders (only 5%), but most calls are centered around returns or questions about shipping. Of those calls, 75% of the sales are repeat customers. That's a huge number. Other than fashion advice and willingly holding customer's hands through whatever questions they may have,
Zappos allows customers to return products for up to a year, and even offers shipping that will arrive by 8am on orders placed before midnight. When's the last time you saw a company do that?
What is most impressive is the company's stance on the 500 workers in the call center. They only want to employ people who want to be there and who will embrace the quirky corporate culture. As such,
Zappos offers employees who don't buy into the corporate philosophy $2,000 if they feel like quitting after the first month. That's a rather small sum for a company to pay to keep the proper personnel in place. Think about that for a second. The company is encouraging the weeding out process in order to ensure the best possible workers on handling the phones as the face of the company. We hear so many complaints daily about bad customer service attitudes from people who don't care about their job. If more companies would embrace this idea of paying workers that don't want to be there to leave, imagine the possibilities for customer service in the future. In a world where companies are trying to cut costs in call centers and in customer service,
Zappos is offering to increase costs, and the results are evident as the company continually ranks #1 in customer service surveys.
For more on the
Zappos CEO and corporate philosophy,
click here.
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Posted by GetHuman on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 2:07pm