Turning Frowns Upside Down Zappos Style

Admit it…at one point in time we’ve all not met our customers needs.

 A change in the way we do business, a product we just can’t offer anymore, or a delivery time that is less than stellar has left them with a frown on their face.

Can You Turn a Negative to a Positive?

But what if we could take these negatives, and turn them in to long term positives for our customers, essentially turning their frown upside down?

Let me give you a story to illustrate a point, I’ll leave it to you to decide if you can do something similar in your own business.

The Story

A couple weeks ago was my birthday and my mother in law sends me a Zappos gift card – score one for mom in law!  I’m not a big shoe shopper, but when I do I use Zappos.

So, I’m looking for a pair of “dress sandals” since summer’s coming (guys, you know what I’m talking about – those are the sandals we wear for nice occasions, weddings and such. Ladies – you’d still just call them sandals). Anyway, I find a pair I like, click “buy” and all is well.

Later that night I get an email from Zappos saying “Congratulations, your order has been upgraded to overnight shipping for FREE!”

Yahoo! I’m excited I’ll be getting my sandals quick, and I feel rather special my order was upgraded for FREE!

…then it dawned on me.

Not that long ago, free overnight shipping, both ways, was standard at Zappos. And here I am a short while later getting excited over something they took away from me, and now selectively give back once in a while.

Anybody else see the brilliance in this?

They had to change the way they did business, and no longer could guarantee me overnight shipping both ways unless I paid a little more for it. Think about that, that is a HUGE negative for the customer. That free overnight shipping is the reason why many people shopped with them, and (along with stellar service) was the “thing” they were known for.

I don’t know how many orders get upgraded, 50% maybe?  But what Zappos did was brilliant. They took a service that was once standard, eliminated it, then selectively gave it back to customers and made them feel special.

Possibly Value Adding In Process

When something becomes “standard”, it is then the new normal. So while Zappos built a brand around customer service and overnight shipping, after a while that was the normal for them – it was expected. What they’ve done now is brought back the value in overnight shipping, while increasing customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Business is still booming some two years after the free overnight shipping went away. Customers still rave about the service. And now people talk about how cool they feel when they win the overnight shipping lottery and get their dress sandals 3 days quicker than they bargained for.

Think it was a coincidence that a company built around customer service figured this out and turned their biggest negative into a positive? I’m betting my new pair of dress sandals it’s not.

 Photo Credit: Phil W Shirley

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