How Zappos reached a billion dollar in sales with 0 marketing expense
In case you haven’t heard of Zappos, it is an e-commerce website that originally sold shoes online. In 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon for 1.2 billion dollars.
Selling shoes online wasn’t any kind of groundbreaking idea at the time. Nike had already started shipping their products to consumers directly via the Internet back in 1999. However, what truly set Zappos apart was its approach to customer service and its CEO Tony Hsieh’s counterintuitive methods to marketing.
Unlike most western companies that outsource their call centers, Zappos operated their entire company around their call center. In 2004, the company even moved their headquarters from SF to Las Vegas, simply to establish their own call center on American soil. Tony Hsieh had a philosophy that no matter the cost, they should always make their customers have a great time with Zappos.
Here are 3 quick tips of what you can instantly implement to make your customers happier:
Change your mindset from “let’s just get this over with😦” to “let’s make this customer happy! 😀”. Zappos had a policy that a call rep will not hang up the phone regardless of how long it takes unless the customer got what they wanted (the longest record was 6 hours). Now, I’m not asking you to spend hours with every customer. But it’s very easy for businesses to simply rush through a customer’s request and move on to the next one, leaving your customers feeling unimportant and unwanted.
You surely don’t need to build a call center with hundreds of people answering calls 24/7, but you should offer your customers upfront and simple ways to contact you. By upfront, I mean literally the most obvious spot on your website. Instead of putting your contact info at the bottom of your website, try staging them on the top like Zappos is doing.
And it’s okay to only have an Email address or a form, but the most humane and efficient way is still a phone call. So don’t be afraid to put your number up there!
Try to build an emotional connection with each of your customers. When one of the reps at Zappos learned that a loyal customer forgot to mail back a pair of shoes because of a death in the family, the agent sent her flowers; now, they are a customer for life. Try to avoid upselling your customers and instead really get to know your customers. Your customers are human too, and they are not stupid. How can your customers be loyal to you when all you care about is their money.
Zappos didn’t spend a dime on advertising, but all of their “marketing expense” was used to improve customer experience, which helped build their reputation. So before you decide to start advertising on Facebook or Google and ready to spend thousands of dollars, try to listen to your customers and work on things internally first. It may save your company a fortune and gain loyal customers organically.
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