Customer service is a key strategic initiative

Companies today have to place customer service at the centre of everything they do. I spoke briefly about this at my TFM presentation this year, “Marketing 3.0 Push and Pull Marketing is not enough”  – yes one slide (slide 8). I could have spoken on this alone for the full 30 mins as it is so important for companies to understand in this social networked world.

The companies I mentioned as examples of this philosophy were Zappos (US shoe retailer now owned by Amazon); Apple and first direct. Well Zappos just gave me a new example to quickly illustrate the results of placing customer service first. Eric Friedman over at Marketing.fm ordered a pair of shoes for the first time from Zappos and after his (very positive) experience with them shared the experience with his friends; tweeted about it and wrote a blog post. Another win for Zappos.

Eric sums it up really well: “If the goal is to get the “wow” factor, then you have to open a dialogue with customers, deliver high quality service and support, and most importantly don’t expect anything in return. This results in customer loyalty, return customers (which in some ways is the same thing) and a powerful form of advertising you cannot buy; word of mouth.”

You can read his entire post on the experience here.

Image from: justj0000lie