jleyrer::blog

Zappos Is Awesome

If you aren’t familiar with Zappos, they are an online footwear and clothing retailer. A few things differentiate Zappos from most of their competitors: a huge selection, free shipping both ways (which in my case has always been upgraded to overnight shipping, free of charge), and a return policy that lets you send items back up to a year after you purchased them.

However, if you ask any of Zappos’ repeat customers what makes the company stand out in their minds from the rest, most will say it’s their customer service. As of late last week, I totally agree.

I’ve been battling the Michigan/Chicago winters for the past 8 years or so without a decent pair of boots, so naturally I decided that now was the time to get some. I had a pair of Sorels when I was a kid that I absolutely loved so I wanted to go with that brand again. Unfortunately, this late in the season it’s almost impossible to get the style I want in sizes 10-12 due to the high demand.

I checked Zappos.com and they were completely sold out of my size. I selected the option to have them contact me when a pair of 11s came in, and also tried a few other sites only to find that they were all out too. Bummer, but like I said – I’ve made it this long without boots, so I could probably wait a little longer.

Bootless, I (publicly) sent the following to Zappos CEO and co-founder Tony Hsieh’s Twitter account: “Rats! I was all set to order some boots but you’re out of my size. I’ll just have to be patient.” I wasn’t expecting a reply but 18 hours later I got a direct message from Tony asking me to email him the details of what I wanted so he could forward it on to his VP of Merchandising, Steve Hill. I sent this email at 3:01PM on Thursday. At 3:02, Tony sent it along to Steve (I was cc’d) and at 3:30 Steve emailed to tell me that his buyer for all things Sorel, Bill Johnson, would be in touch with me. At 3:33, he was. Over the weekend, Bill let me know that Sorel was completely sold out of my size for the season, and that I shouldn’t expect them to have any more until next fall. At this point however, he offered to start contacting other retailers on my behalf in order to hunt them down. I declined, since I could just as easily do this myself and figured he probably had more important things to do than track down a single pair of boots that I could’ve already had if I didn’t wait through two months of snow before deciding to pull the trigger.

Just to ensure there were no hard feelings, Zappos even sent me a 20% off coupon code to use on a future purchase.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never dealt with a company of this size (1500+ employees, $1+ billion in sales in 2008)  that treats one sub-$100 purchase with such importance – especially that high up the company’s organizational food chain. Having made only five or six purchases from them in the past three years, I think I’m hardly what Zappos would consider a high-priority customer. Nevertheless, they went the extra mile or two to try to make me happy.

I guess I wrote this because I think it’s important, with all the e-commerce choices out there, to relay these experiences so that someone who’s trying to decide where to spend their hard earned money has no trouble finding information that will help them make the right decision. I am certainly vocal when it comes to horrible customer service experiences (as past posts to this blog will reveal) but I also want to give credit where it’s due.