Rob Siefker, Director of Customer Loyalty, Zappos: “Obsess over your customer”
Zappos will be represented, for the first time in Romania, at the GPeC SUMMIT 16-17-18 May 2017, by Rob Siefker, the most pertinent person to share Zappos’s secrets about creating memorable experiences for the customers. Rob will speak during a 1-hour keynote on May 16: Creating Customer Experiences and Satisfaction that will ensure Word of Mouth Marketing.
We had the chance to talk a little with Rob before his visit in Bucharest.
Asked about the first challenges he encountered when he became Director of customer loyalty at Zappos in 2010, Rob said:
“It’s honestly hard to remember back that far with all of the challenges we’ve faced. One big challenge was better structuring the team in order to meet our operational goals as well as our goals with the call center employee experience. In some ways, that specific challenge is never ending.”
As Zappos is known for its credo “Delivering Happiness”, here are the 3 steps in order to deliver happiness through customer experiences, according to Siefker:
- Understand customer needs;
- Anticipate customer needs;
- Personal emotional Connections/Surprise and Delight/Go above and beyond.
But he added, two times throughout the interview: “Obsess over your customer”.
Customer service is everybody’s responsibility at Zappos
One of the most important sectors that Zappos’s CEO, Tony Hsieh, invested in, is the customer service department. The basic idea was that all employees had a common credo based on values and principles and understood that their main objective is to make and keep the customers happy, not to sell shoes.
Every Zappos employee spends two weeks in the call center as part of their training and Rob Siefker was not an exception. But, in a world full of smart gadgets and connected objects, is there a future for phone marketing and phone assistance?
“It depends on how far into the future you’re looking. Zappos didn’t invent the telephone, live chat, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or any other type of communication platform, but these are currently the major technologies used to communicate and interact with our customers from a customer service standpoint, Rob said. I worry less about whether the phone is the communication channel we use with customers, and more about being able to communicate and interact with them at all. Some of those interactions may be assisted or driven by technology (bots/AI) in the not too distant future, but at least for now those interactions will in most cases still be assisted along by a human. I don’t see there being a super long horizon for significant shifts in how companies use technology to assist in the customer experience far beyond where we are today. Does that mean the phone will gone in 3-5 years? No, I don’t think so. On a longer 10-20 year horizon, I think things will look vastly different than they do today.
The second “big thing” for Zappos’s success is holocracy.
“It’s about building a more fluid, purpose drive organization in order to provide the best experience for our customers. Yes, holocracy is still used, and it’s important that we have an organization where anyone can effectively and positively move the organization forward.”
But these gestures shouldn’t be automatic, but adaptive and transparent. That’s why sometimes Zappos is redirecting customers to other e-shops when the product they are seeking is not in stock. All employees are concentrating on the 3 C of Zappos’s culture:
- Customer service;
- Clothing;
- Company culture.
With these 3 components, Zappos is trying to do better business, to make customers and partners happy. And to shop more, obviously, as Rob sometimes does:
“I shop a lot on Amazon. It’s so easy to find products and buy them. Almost too easy. I buy everything from digital products to food to furniture. The convenience of getting exactly what you want at a great price in a short amount of time is incredible.”
So, don’t miss Rob Siefker at the GPeC SUMMIT 16-17-18 May 2017! Secure your seat now!
