Today’s mail call brought in two thank you notes.
One, in the form of a postcard, came from Zappos.com addressed to my son who returned a pair of shoes. He’s growing fast, but he only needed one size bigger, not two, to replace his shredded Lakai Manchester Selects.
What do you do when your shoes don’t fit?
My son, a high school sophomore, gets on the phone.
After all, Mom is for preliminary price approval, not return intervention.
When he found the shoes he ordered weren’t in stock in his correct size, the customer service rep stayed on line with him while he shopped for a new pair onsite. He wanted the ones that cost $11 more and was willing to pay. But, Zappos said no prob, we’ll upgrade your order at no charge.
Today Sarah’s postcard came in the mail: “Thanks for calling in today! I hope you like your new Lakai shoes!” The “return address” on the card is a call to action: “Put a smile in someone’s day by sending them an unexpected observation or totally random comment.”
In the past 10 years, I’m estimating I’ve purchased at least 50 pairs of skate shoes. [Please, don’t do the math.] Not one shoe or shoelace has come from Zappos. Why? We never thought of them as a skate shoe store. Do you think Zappos has a frequent skate shoe buyer club? Because if they do, I know at least a dozen dudes who’ll sign up.
And, the second thank you note came as a letter addressed to me to share with Social Media Club Chicago from Adele Hazen of GasPedal thanking us for all of our help with BlogWell. Primary credit for that goes to Tim McDonald, SMC Chicago’s communications director.
What’s our customer relationship with BlogWell? Social Media Club is a marketing partner, which means that we often get free tickets to the events in exchange for letting our members know about special discounts.
But, my personal relationship with GasPedal goes back almost two years ago when Andy Sernovitz gave me a scholarship to attend his Word of Mouth Marketing Genius event – for free. Inspired, I wrote “PR Tools: Word of Mouth Marketing – Give it Away,” and gave away the steps in my company’s marketing transformations process.
How do you show customer appreciation?
As many times as I’ve listened to Natalie Merchant sing “Kind and Generous,” the first time I saw the music video was just now when I previewed it to embed in this post. Wow!
For those of you would like a personal thank you note for reading this post, please email your address to corywestmedia @gmail.com with the message “Please Thank Me” in the subject line.
How do you or your company show appreciation?
Image credit: Thanks to Shutterstock.com for supplying images in exchange for a photo credit.
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