A few days ago, I placed my first order with Zappos and they messed it up. But, I had no idea anything was wrong. I have heard for years Zappos is a great place to work and they have excellent customer service. So, I placed my ordered, shocked when my confirmation said I would get my shoes the next business day. Next to Amazon delivering on Sundays for Prime members, I thought this was pretty darn good for delivery. Yesterday, I received an email from Zappos customer service with my order number in the subject line. I assumed it was the shipping confirmation and I opened it to find this instead:
Dear Lucrecer D. Braxton-
So, this is embarrassing… behind the scenes, we had a perfect storm of things that went wrong at our warehouses and your order will arrive one day later than we originally promised. We tracked down part of the issue which was the result of human error which partly caused us to do the wrong thing. We just did the math and about 13,000 customers were affected by this, which frankly makes this completely unacceptable since we normally try to underpromise and overdeliver, but that clearly wasn’t the case today.
So, instead of your order being delivered by Tuesday, July 8th, as promised, it’s now expected to be delivered by Wednesday, July 9th instead. If this is causing you undue hardship, please call us at 800-927-7671 or email us at [email protected] and we will bend over backwards to make it right. We promise.
If this isn’t causing you undue hardship but is just extremely annoying, please call us and ask whoever answers the phone to do something weird or embarrassing, like sing “I’m A Little Teacup” or do their best audio impression of a cute little kitten.
You trusted us, and we failed this time…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPOgvzVOQig
Our goal is to always WOW our customers… while we can’t change the past and the human error, what we can do is change the present and the future.
If there’s anything we can do to get a little smile out of you, just let us know what it is and we’ll do our best to accommodate.
-Tony (Zappos.com CEO)
So, I called them, because I had to see what would happen. This was the best apology email I have ever received. I had to call. Within a few seconds, a wonderful woman answered the phone and asked how she could help me. I told her about the message I received and that I was not calling because I was pissed off. Instead, I was calling because I was intrigued by their fearless leader’s offer of someone singing to me.
She giggled and told me she is located in Mexico City and unfamiliar with the song. I sang it for her and I be darn if she was not going to sing it back to me. I told her that was alright, she did not have to sing for me, but the fact that she was willing to do it spoke volumes. She asked if I saw the video and confirmed the error in their warehouse and that I would receive my order the next day. She also thanked me for being a Zappos customer. I thought that was nice.
What this experience taught me is that when a business messes up, owns it and goes above and beyond to make it right, they can end up with a repeat customer for life. I was unaware there was a problem with my order, but they let me know before it became a problem. In a world where customer service is not always seen as the face of the business, this goes to show that customer service can save face for your business.
What a great way for them to deliver their brand experience EVEN when they’ve messed up. Thanks for sharing!!
Agreed, Katie. It is a great way to create a customer for life.
She might have known ‘Soft Kitty’…
But seriously, if every business was half so focused on customer service.
Jody! I did not even think to ask her to sing “Soft Kitty”! Darn it, missed my chance. That would have been awesome. I truly did appreciate the customer service. They could have easily let me go on thinking the order was going to deliver on time, but they did better than that.
That’s so great. Mistakes happen all the time, even to the best of businesses or people. It’s how you handle the mistakes that speaks to the character of the business or person.
To contrast Zappos’ mistake, I had an issue with a computer ordered from Lenovo. They initially promised it would ship in 2 weeks. That 2 weeks turned into 7 weeks with no e-mail from them. When I called, they vaguely referred to some supply problems, but refused to commit on a date. Then, when I asked to cancel my order, they said they’d put it a “request to cancel”, but it might be denied. Eventually, they canceled the order, but the whole experience left me not wanting to buy a Lenovo again. Had Lenovo taken a page out of Zappos’ playbook, they might have retained a customer.
What? They will put you on the “request to cancel” list? What the heck is that all about? I am sorry to hear you had to deal with that. I remember hearing that customer service is so bad in a variety of industries that you can choose to do a little bit better than average and look like a rockstar. To see a company go above and beyond to say they are wrong and offer to fix it says so much more than how awesome your shiny gadget is.
Zappos has always blown me away. I wish more companies approached business this way.
I interviewed Tony back in 2009. I asked him for a tip about marketing online and he said, “Make sure that whatever you do, you do it in an authentic way and you are truly passionate about it. For example, if you’re not passionate about Twitter for Twitter’s sake, then you’re probably not going to be very successful at using Twitter.”
That is really good advice about being passionate and authentic about what you do. I find when I am not 100% all in on something, it shows. I can tell Zappos is passionate about customer service. It really showed in this interaction.