I happen to read this beautiful testimonial about zappos, from the blog post in quicksprout, testimonial goes like this:

In May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is.

Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances – lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also. When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So…IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS. With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.

How touching is that? Here is my recent experience with other company:

I have airtel broadband internet connection, month ago it stopped working, before i go into any further details let me tell you, airtel broadband IVR is the one of the worst planned IVR i have ever used in recent time, they never let you reach customer care(?!) agent unless you are zen like patience and smart enough to understand details between prompts, every time i call this number i only end up with additional high blood pressure apart from bad service i receive, so i always prefer sending emails which is least evil, at least you will send your problem details and wait for it to be resolved(lol), back to our story, with my internet connection not working

 

Step#1: i will be sending email to airtel customer care email id
Step#2: after acknowledgement email, someone will reply saying ‘we understand your problem, we are very sorry’ please find the reference number for your complain, it will be resolved within so and so date.
Step#3: someone from their end will call and ask about the problem, sometimes they visit you, sometimes not.
Step#4: after some minutes you will receive text stating, we are delighted to inform you, the problem has been rectified.
Step#5: go home and realize problem is not really rectified
Step#6: compose a reply for the Step#2 email, stating problem is not really solved, everything starts from Step#2 again, that is new reference number will be opened as new complaint, and those who closed that complain earlier without really solving doesn’t get questioned(i guess), this is a loop goes on, after nearly 40+ days my internet is still not working, i have data card now.

 

Do you see the difference in customer service? Former is more like making love, second is like wild drunk sex with sex doll, let me explain:

Zappos really “LISTENED” when customer spoke to it, went one step ahead and provided assistance and took part in customer’s grieve.

Other hand Airtel never read the reply fully, whenever there is a complain some machine (i find it difficult to call them customer care agents) sitting in the airtel office would generate a complain number and reply back, which will have predefined canned messages between like ‘we understand your problem’, ‘we are very sorry’, ‘thank you’ i am really against the concept of canned responses to say sorry when you really don’t mean it, provide fake auto generated promise like ‘we will resolve this problem by XX date and YY hrs…’ That doesn’t sound human at all.

Solutions:
1. If you really have to use auto generated canned messages, for god sake use thesaurus and generate as much relavent canned messages as possible, at least customer feel it has canned message in first 3 or 4 email exchange itself.

2. Never say sorry, you understand the problem when you really don’t

3. Never provide auto generated meaningless dates/time and never keep promise

4. read – read – read the replies

5. When your representative says the problem is solved, have a follow-up with customer to ensure if the problem is really solved (seriously you never thought about it?)

6. You customers are okay if your customer care agent replies with ‘yo man..’, ‘sorry dude..’, ‘i told my engineer abt your prob..’ etc, customer just need solution not your pure black and while professional email format without any solution at all.