Marketing, schmarketing. Focus on customer service first.

This morning’s first session was about leveraging customer service as one of the more effective forms of marketing. Of most interest in the session was Tony Hsieh, the founder and CEO of zappos.com and his take on their marketing strategy. The short of it is that their strategy from day one has been to take money a normal company would spend on marketing and invest those resources in exceptional customer service. The strategy is that by focusing on creating an amazing customer experience they create their own evangelists who market for them. If you’re familiar with Zappos and their story, it’s clearly working. They boast incredible growth and over 65% repeat customers. For a 3rd party take check this article from CNN . A few notes from the session on the inner-workings of Zappos:

• No measurement of call times
• No sales-based performance goals for CSRs
• They run the warehouse 24/7 (at significant expense) to ensure the fastest delivery possible
• They inventory all items and drop-ship nothing. They made this decision a while back to stop drop-ship business that cost them 25% of their overall revenue. The decision was made to ensure that Zappos could deliver on their promise of exceptional customer service
• They have a 4-week customer service and culture training for everyone in Las Vegas
• Everyone gets a culture book
• Interviews and performance reviews are 50% based on core values and culture fit