Manizesto

Why? Because customer service is the new marketing.

At least, that was the topic of a conference in San Francisco yesterday that discussed the power of creating a good customer experience. Scott Rosenberg, who authors the Wordyard blog and attended the conference, offered some interesting insight. On Zappos’ great customer service, he said: 

     “My anecdotal experience of great service and a generally great experience shopping online for shoes at Zappo’s— your order seems to show up at your door before you’ve even finished deciding what to buy — turns out to be the product of a fanatically service-oriented corporate culture. Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh presented the evidence. Early on the company learned that offline advertising was mostly not paying off, so it focused on growing its repeat-customer business. The results are evident in the chart of year-to-year sales increases, which are headed toward $1 billion this year” (full blog entry here).

I second Rosenberg’s comments. Clearly, Zappos’ focus on creating a wonderful customer experience is paying large dividends, producing solid, continual growth and actually saving money in the long run.

So before you go thinking you don’t have the budget for marketing campaigns, take a look at the experience you’re providing customers and remember the incredible power of word of mouth marketing.

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