Be Bold: Zappos Takes Care of Its Customers

October 16, 2007

Break out the box of tissues, I’ve got a tear-jerker of a story for you.

Zaz La Mar ordered shoes for her ailing mother. Her mother had lost a lot of weight, and only fit in 2 of the 7 pairs ordered from Zappos. The good news was that return shipping on the shoes was free.

Unfortunately, the Zaz’s mother died. And returning the shoes were no longer a priority.

Zappos has a few policies on returning shoes. Among them…

1. It must be done within 15 days.
2. Consumer must take the shoes to a UPS store in order to return them.

But Zappos broke the rules in favor of their organizational values.

Zaz received an email asking about the shoes. She replied that her mother died and didn’t have time to return them.

Zappos arranged for UPS to pick up the shoes from Zaz’s house. Then they sent her a bouquet of flowers expressing their sympathy for her loss.

And that’s how it’s done.

That’s how companies develop personal relationships with customers. But too often, companies say things like, “If we do that for her, we’ll have to do it for everyone.” As if that would be a bad thing.

When your organization’s values are intact, you don’t have to stress about crazy new marketing terms like social media, conversation marketing, and blogging. When your values are solid, your company just has to be itself. Live the values and the rest will fall into place.

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Posted in Be Bold by Nathania Johnson