Louise has had a rare kind of kidney cancer for the last 10-11 months. She believes in prayer, and has a lot of people praying for her. Add your own prayers to the list on her behalf. She believes that with God’s help, she can beat it.
She receives chemotherapy treatments, and recently had an idea for a way to brighten her day while she was taking them: Red shoes.
“I just thought the would make me feel better to look down at my red shoes,” she explained.
So she called Zappos to place her order. She was greeted with their “usual greeting that is so comforting.” She skipped the company’s joke of the day, and soon was greeted with a customer service rep. “Gracious” was the word she used to describe this individual who helped her with her order. “We talked a little, and I explained why I wanted these shoes. She, as all of your employees, [went] out of her way to please customers. That was that.”
The next day, to her surprise, Louise received a beautiful arrangement of red tulips, in a bright red vase and a beautiful red ribbon. She couldn’t imagine who sent them. She opened the card and began to cry. The card read,
“Sending you something to match your red shoes. I hope this brightens your day. From your Zappos.com family.”
In thanking Zappos, Louise said,
I have never had anything like this happed to me from a stranger, How could I even express my gratitude for this. I will never forget what you did for me and I encourage all my friends to buy their shoes from Zappos. I am a great believer in paying it forward and I always have helped someone out unexpectedly, too. I just want to say thank you again and I hope you know what a great company you have and employees. I wish I could work for you. God Bless you all.
Since I mentioned Zappos last week, I’ve done a bit of unscientific, random polling. I figured I was the one on the Turnip truck, late to the Zappos-WOW experience.
Apparently not.
So I thought I’d let you know about Louise. Or, just to show that her experience wasn’t that random, this often-told story by Zaz Lamarr on her personal blog site.
Or I could tell you about the hundreds of people who write in utter shopping pleasure and disbelief about that “free four-day shipping” order that arrived in less than 24 hours. Donald reported getting his order in 14 hours. Lisa placed an order online, received an email confirmation, but due to a computer error, didn’t have a specific shoe order. The customer service representatives cheerfully resolved the situation, upgraded the shipping to overnight at no cost, and Lisa had shoes less than 24 hours later.
Zappos says it’s a service company that happens to sell shoes.
They get it.
They do more than they have to…
…more often than they want to…
…for less money than they deserve…
…with a larger view in mind.
Zappos is creating it’s future, one raving customer at a time.
If the only thing you get out of this is a place to shop online, you’ve missed half the point.
(photo by betsymartian)
WOW! What a great story. It is good to see that there is a company that has the caring attitude to really carry out the old addage that “The customer comes first!” If there was a Zappos in our area, I would definately buy shoes from them.
My prayers go out to Louise.
Very cool! I, too, am motivated to visit Zappos.com to check them out. (You’re not on their payroll are you, Andy?)
🙂
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