Now that’s Customer Service: Win a Trip to the SEED Conference From Freshbooks

• October 17th, 2007 /
•  Chris Schultz

Freshbooks is sponsoring a “best customer service story” contest over on their blog. The winning entry gets a ticket to the sold out SEED Conference hosted by 37 Signals and Coudal Partners.

As a big fan of customer service myself, I submitted the following entry:

Hey Mike and the rest of the Freshbooks team -

I’m writing to submit to the “best customer service story” contest for the seed conference ticket.

The Internet company that I believe has the best customer service going today is Zappos.com. Having ordered from Zappos.com many times, their customer service is phenomenal, and they’re driven by creating the best experience possible for their customers. They’ve truly created a culture of service, this is hard to do within the organization but when they get it right, it’s truly amazing to witness.

Speaking of witnessing it, I had the opportunity to visit Zappos.com in January of this year. I was blown away at how welcoming all of the employees were and how as we walk through the entire building, everyone we passed stood up smiled and waved hello to us. It was a fantastic look at the behind the scenes operation of a truly focused company.

I blogged about it here. After our trip there, and we were so inspired as a company that when we rolled out our “customer service is the new marketing” initiative, we referenced our experience at Zappos:

As far as the best customer service story I’ve ever come across, actually came upon it the other day. It’s not an original story by me, but I think it’s a wonderful example of the extent to which Zappos will go to show that it cares about its customers. Here’s the post . Via Consumerist.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.

Tony Hsieh has done a fantastic job building an culture of service within Zappos. During my visit I learned the extent to which the employees are empowered to go to keep a customer happy.

• If a customer cannot find a shoe they’re looking for on Zappos.com, the customer support rep is empowered to browse competitors websites, Nordstrom.com, shoes.com, and help the customer look for the shoe that they want all the while on the phone with the customer. This is truly about keeping the customer happy.
• Zappos recently introduced an industry first free shipping both ways. This encourages people to order as many issues as they want in different sizes and try them on. Through this initiative Zappos is competing directly with brick-and-mortar high-end shoe stores.
• The story above is not the first I’ve heard of Zappos ordering flowers for customers. The culture of WOW encourages employees to go the extra distance to wow their customers with great customer service.

This is truly the company with the best customer service going today.

What’s your best story about great customer service? Submit it to Freshbooks and win.

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