Similar to Starbucks (mentioned in my last post), Zappos has been considered a distinguished brand for quite some time, with a one-of-a-kind company culture. Zappos has been nationally recognized for their outstanding customer service, and their social efforts are a big part of their success. The company created an online community where dedicated customers are able to voice comments and concerns, interact with one another, share favorite products and foster the Zappos brand. But in Chapter 5 of Branded!, Brennan and Shafer describe how Zappos took social media and customer service one step further than most companies.
With the growth of social networks, Zappos decided to expand their brand and customer experience beyond the original website. The company expanded through blogs, Facebook and most importantly, Twitter. For Zappos, "Twitter is easy, inexpensive, and quick" (p. 89). It's also perfect for the company's word-of-mouth marketing strategy. Zappos' Twitter activity started as an outlet for employee-to-employee communication, but when customers began to see and appreciate the internal transparency, more and more customers started interacting with the brand on Twitter. Today, Zappos not only responds to customer service inquiries on Twitter, but the company proactively searches for ways to engage with customers. For example, "If someone says they are going to a wedding, someone from Zappos may send them a link for interesting wedding shoes" (p.89).
In a blog post from 2009, Zappos employee Tony Hsieh said: "At Zappos.com we decided a long time ago that we didn't want our brand to be just about shoes, or clothing, or even online retailing. We decided that we wanted to build our brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience. We believe that customer service shouldn't just be a department - it should be the entire company" (p.80).
For Zappos, Twitter is a way to share this customer-centered company culture in a transparent, real-time and fun way.
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