Is service important for an online store?

Zappos think so, Amazon think so but Kalahari.net don’t. Unfortunately it is the massive difference in service levels I have concurrently received from Zappos and Kalahari that has brought this home to me.

The Zappos story is in a previous post. suffice it to say that I sent the CEO a request for a book (his office is in USA) on a Thursday afternoon, by the following Tuesday first thing I had the book and had had personal and inspiring contact with four Zappos people.

The Kalahari.net story:

• December 3 – order two books from Kalahari.net
• December 16 – books arrive at Kalahari.net order is completed, money leaves credit card.
• December 18 – parcel completes long journey from where ever its packed to the courier. ready for 24hr delivery (although 48hrs of the 24hrs already expired.)
• December 22 call Kalahari  – long distance land line number (not toll free) hang up after 12 minutes, repeat 3 times leave message on system, send email from site no response.
• Finally get through to Kalahari reception, who put me through to agent, says that he will follow up and ensure delivery, admits that they are inundated with calls and just cant handle them
• Just before close of business (4:45pm December 22) contact Kalahari as no one has resolved query. Speak to new call center agent, she calls me back and guarantees delivery by end of today.
• December 22 @ 7:30pm – still no delivery.

Zappos understands that customer service is a culture. To be successful every person in the company has to live it. Its not something you can pass over to a junior call center agent.

• When a parcel takes longer to get down the hall between packaging and dispatch than it takes to get from the USA to SA that’s not living it.
• When a parcel takes from 18/12 to 22/12 to not yet arrive that’s not living it.
• To have a call center running only on long distance office hour phone rates (no shared call, no toll free) and forcing the customer into an expensive queue that’s not living it.
• To have an understaffed call center, with a desperate agent who says he has at least 50 calls waiting thats not living it.

When Amazon.com paid $1.2 Billion for Zappos they did it for the culture, for the service  attitude of the entire  company. Kalahari.net clearly don’t have the attitude so Amazon are not going to buy them but it also leaves the market wide open for an opposing online store in South Africa, maybe  loot.co.za and possibly even exclusive books do you think that they could learn?

Maybe its just a dream, maybe I should just forget dealing with the local incompetence and stay with Amazon.com till further notice.

Photo credit Martin Heigan from Flickr under a CC license.

UPDATE: The parcel arrived via FEDEx at 20:20 – but delivered by an under equipped driver whom I had to talk in for 10 minutes by cell phone, he didn’t have a GPS nor a map and had been driving around furiously hoping to chance onto the street address.

FURTHER UPDATE: Kalahari.net have a presence on twitter but they aren’t listening – see a screenshot from my tweetdeck. Ok I know people must take holidays but this is the busy time and they need to be able to react in fact its fundamental to new marketing that you do.

FURTHER UPDATE: My second order placed on December 12, one of the books has been removed and the order canceled on December 23, out of stock. Obvious comment: That took a while & there is no other supplier?

Amazon has it in stock Crush it

@kalaharinet has contacted me.

Final comment: Said enough about this – Kalahari.net – thinks are really not well with you guys – management issue not a support staff issue.

OK then another final comment: So the second parcel was dispatched 2 working days ago. Not arrived yet.

I created a col on tweetdeck to follow @kalaharinet – only complaints (except @jenty who won a prize.)

Zappos Culture Book

If you had to ask my students to name a company that they think I particularly admire they would unhesitatingly say Zappos, the online shoe store recently bought by Amazon for $1.2 Billion.

Well I have just had my first experience with them and I am even more stoked.

On Thursday last week I listened to a talk given at LeWeb which was being live streamed by Ustream. Tony Hsiesh the CEO of Zappos.com  was talking about thier secret weapon, company culture. Its worth clicking on the link or here and listening to him, I promise. Toward the end of the talk he offered to send a copy of the Zappos Culture Book to anyone who wanted it.

So I sent him a mail. A short while later I got a mail to give me a link to the slides and to say that they would soon send me a copy of the book. The email was from one of Tony Hsiesh’s team, Stephanie, who introduced herself like this:

Thank you for contacting Tony! He reads every email he receives and asked me to respond on his behalf so you could receive a timely response.  Tony receives over 2,000 emails each day, and I am part of a small team that assists in answering them.  He would have responded directly, but he doesn’t have the hands necessary to type up 2,000 responses at the same time. We’re currently working on replacing Tony’s arms with spider legs, so look for more responses from Tony in the future!

Today is Tuesday, and this is South Africa, well this morning a real printed book of about 350 pages arrived and in it are a whole bunch of little comments from Zappos staff and people associated with Zappos about what Zappos means to them.

Just getting it to me at that speed is impressive enough. So I sent a mail back to the “spider -man” team answering Tony’s mails and tweeted to @zappos to thank him. Interstingly enough @Zappos was on of the first 20 people whom I followed on twitter.

So within a short while I get a reply from @Zappos_service “@walterpike Cool! Look for Christine B. and my silly entry about PBJ’s ” and sure enough on page 43 is Christine B’s take on the Zappos culture – so I respond and she comes back with “@walterpike I’ve made some pretty amazing friends working here… and some pretty amazing sandwiches.”

Then I get a mail in response to mine; “Thanks for taking interest in our company. I hope you enjoy the culture book. Each employee had the opportunity to write what culture means to them. If you get a chance to check out my entry, it’s on page #70 under “Jess B.”

And sure enough I find it (see the pic above) so I respond to her and soon Jess comes back to me with “I’m so flattered! We really do try our very best to provide exception service. Thanks for the mention on Twitter. If you have any questions for the case study please let me know, I’ll do my best to answer them. Happy holidays =)”

If I was a fan before I am even more now.

• There was no reason to get me the book from the USA  in 2 working days. That is just amazing, especially since it didn’t cost me a cent.
• Zappos doesn’t even operate here, so why would they care about me.
• The  mails I got were personal and real, from people empowered to interact with me.
• Both Jess and Christine are genuinely proud that they are part of Zappos, why would they want to share their thoughts in that way and to engage with me if they weren’t.
• I have to compare with another experience I have had in the the  same 2 days with Cell C (the mobile phone company) to whom I have sent an invoice for wasting an entire afternoon of my time trying to get them to stop billing me for a contract already canceled and also an online book store who have already taken since December 3 to not yet dispatch a parcel to me.

I hope that  the folks at Zappos don’t mind me sharing this with you, but I am really impressed and I am reading the culture book with real appreciation, and I can tell you Mr Bezos you would have got Zappos at a bargain at twice the price.

UPDATE: Jon from Zappos, in a comment on this post, invites anyone who also wants a copy of the book to email him.