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There are benefits to the business from good customer service, beyond word of mouth: I mostly buy things from newegg, amazon, zappos, and jcrew when given a cho

by earl 16y ago

There are benefits to the business from good customer service, beyond word of mouth: I mostly buy things from newegg, amazon, zappos, and jcrew when given a choice, and don't even bother to comparison shop, because my time has value and it's not worth dealing with crap customer service unless I'm going to save at least 20%.

donw 16y ago
These companies all have one thing in common: You can talk to a human being when you have a question or a problem. Got a problem with your Newegg purchase? Send them an email, and they respond, quickly. Ditto for Amazon. Zappos goes a step further, and lets you talk to an actual human being... for as long as you want. Contrast this to dealing with any company focused on 'efficiency' rather than 'service'; Citi is the first company that springs to mind. Citi wasted nearly an hour of my time the last time I needed to deal with them, all because they were so focused automating customer support to save on labor. Rather than making it easy for me, the customer, to get my problem fixed so that I could give them more money. Guess who I avoid like the plague now? This is why I founded my company; to make it easy for companies to connect the people with problems to the people who can solve them, without having to waste mountains of mental stamina on a support system designed by Rube Goldberg's dominatrix.
- qq66 16y ago
  If you have a bad experience at Zappos, you can buy your next shoes somewhere else pretty easily. Zappos HAS to have amazing customer service to get people comfortable with the idea of buying shoes online. To transfer all your banking away from Citi is a huge chore if you're already there, and most of the other big banks aren't measurably better. Citi has more power than Zappos in this situation - they're only being as good as they have to be (terrible).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlexBlom 16y ago
    True, but short term thinking. 6 months ago in Canada the same would be thought of cell companies, now there are 3 competitors. The same would be thought of by Air Canada, now Virgin America is also flying from Toronto. These dependencies are true but thankfully do not last forever. Eventually somebody innovates.

by earl 16y ago

donw 16y ago

These companies all have one thing in common: You can talk to a human being when you have a question or a problem. Got a problem with your Newegg purchase? Send them an email, and they respond, quickly. Ditto for Amazon. Zappos goes a step further, and lets you talk to an actual human being... for as long as you want. Contrast this to dealing with any company focused on 'efficiency' rather than 'service'; Citi is the first company that springs to mind. Citi wasted nearly an hour of my time the last time I needed to deal with them, all because they were so focused automating customer support to save on labor. Rather than making it easy for me, the customer, to get my problem fixed so that I could give them more money. Guess who I avoid like the plague now? This is why I founded my company; to make it easy for companies to connect the people with problems to the people who can solve them, without having to waste mountains of mental stamina on a support system designed by Rube Goldberg's dominatrix.

qq66 16y ago
If you have a bad experience at Zappos, you can buy your next shoes somewhere else pretty easily. Zappos HAS to have amazing customer service to get people comfortable with the idea of buying shoes online. To transfer all your banking away from Citi is a huge chore if you're already there, and most of the other big banks aren't measurably better. Citi has more power than Zappos in this situation - they're only being as good as they have to be (terrible).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- AlexBlom 16y ago
  True, but short term thinking. 6 months ago in Canada the same would be thought of cell companies, now there are 3 competitors. The same would be thought of by Air Canada, now Virgin America is also flying from Toronto. These dependencies are true but thankfully do not last forever. Eventually somebody innovates.