Zappos - Customer Service Redefined

I love Zappos. I discovered them a few years ago while shopping for indoor soccer shoes online. So I gave them a shot. Free shipping, decent prices, and I didn't have to create an account with them, which was great. I can't stand when a website forces customers to create an account in order to make a purchase. Yes, here is my email address so you can bombard my inbox on a daily basis with e-mails I will neve read. What a great sales model…

Zappos has it all figured out. Instead of flooding my inbox with crap, why not focus on meeting or (take a deep breath here) exceeding my expectations? That is exactly what Zappos did, just by delivering my shoes the next day. Pretty simple right? I thought so.

Zappos exceeded my expectations and in return I became a loyal customer (Zappos once reported that 60% of their customers are repeat). And for the last few years I have been singing their praises and recommending their site to countless amounts of people.

Yesterday Amazon made a very smart decision to purchase Zappos for approximately $900 million. Zappos leadership team - Nick Swinmurn - founder, Tony Hsieh - CEO, and Alfred Lin - CFO will remain in their positions and hopefully Zappos will march on to become much more than shoes.

If you haven’t bought shoes from Zappos, I suggest it. And if you haven’t read about the company, I suggest that as well. They have a very unique and admirable corporate culture that breeds success and truly realizes the power of relationships in the business world.

Here is a great interview that Inc. had with Tony Hsieh. http://bit.ly/3r8gm4