Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Great Morale Reversal of 2009


This holiday season, I found myself in a downward morale spiral - a combination of bad weather, crowded malls and a long shopping list. Thinking it would save me some time, I ordered a pair of boots from Zappos.com but, upon reading the shipping notice, I discovered that I had ordered the women's version of the boots and not the men's. So much for saving time. I picked up the phone, lowered my expectations and called Zappos.com. This is when the great morale reversal of 2009 began.

I called at around 8:00 in the morning. Someone answered the phone on the 1st ring. A real person. A real person who wasn't in a call center on the other side of the world. I explained to her my mistake and asked her how I go about fixing it. I would need the correct boots ordered and shipped and a return of the wrong boots which hadn't arrived yet.

The customer service rep then said, "the men's boots are actually more expensive than the women's, but I'll give you the lower price".

Then she said, "I'll ship these new ones to you overnight so you don't have to wait any longer to get them."

Let me remind you that this whole issue was my fault - I ordered the wrong pair of boots - I caused this.

Anyway, Zappos didn't have to go to these lengths to make me happy, but they did. And because of this, I tell other people to shop there and I plan to shop there again in the future. That means more revenue for Zappos, plain and simple.

This isn't a new story. We've all read about and maybe even experienced customer service like this (L.L. Bean comes to mind). But what surprises me is that it's still the exception rather than the rule. Maybe because it's difficult, companies don't pursue it. Maybe because it's hard to link good customer service with increased revenue, companies don't spend the money to make it happen.

And why am I writing about this? Because technical writers create what often represents the first customer service "touch-point" for a product. When one opens a toy, one must read the directions. When one buys software, one must read the manual.

That customer is my audience so I think about these things a lot. This isn't to say that technical writers can make software users as happy as Zappos made me but, if we acknowledge that Zappos has set the bar, and we aim for it, our readers will be glad we did. Plain and simple.

Happy New Year!

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