I recently ordered some shoes for my four kids online from Zappos, the shoe store.

If you wear many hats in your business like I do, you might find yourself short on time when it comes to things like shoe shopping.

You might be a bit nervous about ordering shoes online without being able to try them on, make sure they fit, make sure they’re comfortable, and so forth. I really was.

What I found when I visited the Zappos website surprised me. It’s an incredible company with some really creative ideas and solutions.

Zappos must have realized that ordering shoes without trying them on first can pose some challenges to shoe shoppers. So to compete with retail locations, Zappos has made the shopping experience easy and even pleasant.

My Zappos Experience

My parents bought a set of super cute pink, white, and black Heely’s for one of my daughters and had them shipped to us. The shoes arrived for her birthday and were a bit too small.

I called up the Zappos toll-free number, and the lady that I talked with was extremely friendly. She sounded like she was having a great day at a great job.

She emailed me a return shipping label while we were on the phone together. Then she told me that she would upgrade me to a VIP customer (understand here, that I myself had never ordered from Zappos at that point — mom had done the ordering). She sent the correct size of shoes overnight to me so that my young and disappointed daughter would have them right away.

And she did that before I even sent back the shoes that were the wrong size!

All I had to do on my end was put the shoes back in the box that they came in, print out the shipping label from my email, and drop the whole thing off at the UPS store. Zappos even paid for the return shipping!

The Heely’s arrived the next day, my girl was thrilled, and I decided to buy some shoes myself for the kids.

The Power of Being a Zappos VIP Customer

When I went online to order, I still had my VIP status. That means that when I purchase anything, it’s shipped to me overnight. Free of charge. Anything that I have to return is shipped back on the Zappos nickel, and whatever exchange I need is also shipped to me overnight free of charge.

Zappos solves a problem with the free overnight shipping policy. Retail shoppers are often have an “instant gratification” mentality, meaning that shoppers want to buy something and take it home right now. Shopping online usually means that a shopper has to wait for the order. But the Zappos overnight shipping gets the product to the shopper as fast as possible.

Choosing Shoes

I picked out the shoes for the kids using the awesome selector tools on the Zappos site. You can input choices like color, size, style, heel height, etc.

They’ve really simplified the process of looking through pages and pages of so many types of shoes. I always like tools to save my time and my eyesight!

The shoes were shipped out overnight as promised, and the kids were thrilled. The only setback was that I ordered the wrong size for my littlest one.

Another Call to Zappos

I called the toll-free number for the company, and as I listened to the computerized menu choices to get to the right department for my needs, I heard the last choice, number 5. You push number 5 to hear the joke of the day! I did actually choose 5 on the first go-round, and indeed it was the joke of the day! (I did call back the next day to see whether or not they had a new joke of the day, and they did).

While chatting with the very nice and very enthusiastic customer loyalty gal, she emailed me the return shipping label and info for the pair of shoes in the wrong size. She had the correct-sized pair sent to me overnight once again, and she suggested that I wait for that pair to get to me so that I could use the box to return the wrong pair (the box the original order came in was a big box with several pairs of shoes).

I am Now a Loyal Zappos Customer

I am now a firm believer in Zappos. They have a great selection with competitive prices, an easy-to-use website, and a really great customer loyalty team (that’s their title for that department).

What’s the Real Point?

Here’s the real point of this little story: Zappos has adopted an original business approach, finding ways to create excitement and loyalty from their customers, even though they are in a market traditionally cornered by brick and mortar retail locations.

They didn’t focus on all of the reasons that an online shoe store won’t succeed; instead they have found creative solutions for those things that looked like limitations and turned them into ways to win the customer’s loyalty.

Take a Look at Zappos Core Values:

As we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the Zappos core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies. These are the ten core values that we live by:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

How’s that for a set of company core values?

Have you been listening to you clients? Do you listen to your front line staff, or do you ignore them? Do your employees have to leave their morals outside the office doors every morning? Do you care about what kind of word of mouth advertising is being spread about your organization? Do you want to separate yourself from your competition? If you want to shed the “bad customer service” stigma of your company and lead in the customer service revolution, you MUST pick up a copy of Raving Fans. It’s a quick, easy-to-read book, even with the hectic lives so many of us have. Then read it again. And then again.

This book is about how to create a vision for your organization that is so focused and so clearly defined that your whole organization is able to work towards the common goal of making that vision a reality.

If you have been aiming for “satisfied customers”, then read this book and re-define your aim. We need more than “satisfied customers”; we all need Raving Fans. The difference between a customer that is simply satisfied and a Raving Fan is that a satisfied customer will leave you. He is satisfied because he doesn’t know that he has any better options. When he is offered another option, he will take it. A Raving Fan will be your customer always. The Raving Fan is your loyal customer because you have shown him a better way of doing business. He is your loyal customer because you outshine all of the competition; in fact, you eliminate the competition by offering something unique to your customer. The Raving Fan wouldn’t dream of leaving you because he cannot find anywhere else that which he finds with your organization.

Raving Fans shows you first that you have a choice on how to take care of your customers. It will show you how to define a vision and how to implement that vision. It will show you clear examples of how creating Raving Fans has worked in business. It will show you that your organization can be better than the others in your industry and that will create Raving Fans and not just satisfied customers.

To get a copy of raving fans click here!