Zappos's Case
Name: Nurul Afriani
ID:108081100005
CASE 9.2
Zappos: Making Human Resources the Key to Customer Service
Introduction
Zappos.com is an online shoe retailer that has built a strong brand and has shown impressive sales growth since its founding. Zappos’s formula for success is seemingly simple. It acquires customers through word-of-mouth and search engine marketing (SEM) and then surprise them with customer service that keeps them coming back.
Why Shoes?
Zappos was founded by Nick Swinmurn. At the first time he offers this idea to investor, he was turned away by investor who thought it was impossible to sell shoes online. Swinmurn persevered; heartened by the fact that over $ 2 billion in shoes are sold via mail order catalogs every year, it show that people do buy shoes without trying it first.
Customer Service
Customer services is what make Zappos special. Call center employees don’t use scripts and aren’t pressed to keep calls short. Shipping and return are free. The warehouse is open 24/7 so customers can place an order as late as 11 P.M. and still get quick delivery.
Zappos also has a very liberal return policy. It will take returns for up to 365 days without asking questions. If Zappos warehouse is out of a pair of shoes a customer wants, Zappos will e-mail the customer links to the other website where the shoes are for sales. It also has the fastest site on the Web. According to Gomez, a Web research firm, in September 2006 Zappos’s site took 0.879sec to load on a broadband connected internet site, the fastest of the top 50 Web retailers.
What all this effort has gotten Zappos is a loyal customer base and word-of-mouth advertising. Approximately, 50 percent of Zappos’s orders come from existing customers, and an additional 20 percent are from new customers who were referred by existing customers.
Tony Hsieh
CEO Tony Hsieh is at the center of everything Zappos does. In his early 20s , Hsieh started a company called LinkExchange, which let small
ID:108081100005
CASE 9.2
Zappos: Making Human Resources the Key to Customer Service
Introduction
Zappos.com is an online shoe retailer that has built a strong brand and has shown impressive sales growth since its founding. Zappos’s formula for success is seemingly simple. It acquires customers through word-of-mouth and search engine marketing (SEM) and then surprise them with customer service that keeps them coming back.
Why Shoes?
Zappos was founded by Nick Swinmurn. At the first time he offers this idea to investor, he was turned away by investor who thought it was impossible to sell shoes online. Swinmurn persevered; heartened by the fact that over $ 2 billion in shoes are sold via mail order catalogs every year, it show that people do buy shoes without trying it first.
Customer Service
Customer services is what make Zappos special. Call center employees don’t use scripts and aren’t pressed to keep calls short. Shipping and return are free. The warehouse is open 24/7 so customers can place an order as late as 11 P.M. and still get quick delivery.
Zappos also has a very liberal return policy. It will take returns for up to 365 days without asking questions. If Zappos warehouse is out of a pair of shoes a customer wants, Zappos will e-mail the customer links to the other website where the shoes are for sales. It also has the fastest site on the Web. According to Gomez, a Web research firm, in September 2006 Zappos’s site took 0.879sec to load on a broadband connected internet site, the fastest of the top 50 Web retailers.
What all this effort has gotten Zappos is a loyal customer base and word-of-mouth advertising. Approximately, 50 percent of Zappos’s orders come from existing customers, and an additional 20 percent are from new customers who were referred by existing customers.
Tony Hsieh
CEO Tony Hsieh is at the center of everything Zappos does. In his early 20s , Hsieh started a company called LinkExchange, which let small