As a preview for Word of Mouth Supergenius on July 20 in New York, our Andy Sernovitz sat down with Zappos’ Tony Hsieh to share previews of their upcoming keynotes for the “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing” conference. A few big ideas from their discussion:
1> Create instant conversation with delightful surprises
2> Earn love with personal connections
3> Hire people that want to create love and happiness
4> Check out the live interview with Tony Hsieh and Andy Sernovitz
1> Create instant conversation with delightful surprises
Tony says the biggest triggers of Zappos’ word of mouth is when they surprise and delight their customers. It’s common, for example, for Zappos to instantly upgrade customers’ orders to overnight shipping. And when they do, you can imagine the recommendations that happen after a customer opens their door to find the shoes they had ordered at midnight the night before. Sure, a great distribution system helps with this — but it wouldn’t happen if they weren’t focused on delighting customers with amazing service.
2> Earn love with personal connections
At Zappos, reps try to create personal emotional connections (PEC’s) with customers. Zappos encourages customers to call them up, they often send personalized hand-written thank-you notes, and they often talk about more than just shoes and shirts. Their goal is to become the corporate equivalent of a friend — because they’ve found that if they can earn that relationship, the customer will remember it for a long time.
3> Hire people that want to create love and happiness
Lots of companies say they want to make customers happy and deliver amazing service, but Zappos lives it every day. It’s not because they have some rigorous motivation and evaluation program, it’s because they specifically hire people that love to make people happy. Regardless of the role — be it a customer service rep, an attorney, or an accountant — if they already have this core value, earning love and happiness from customers isn’t something you have to spend much time asking them to do.
4> Check out the live interview with Tony Hsieh and Andy Sernovitz
Hear the live preview of Word of Mouth Supergenius — and join us live in New York on July 20 to see a bunch of amazing marketers share how-to ideas like these:
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