The Official Fluid Blog

Not too long ago I panned American Airlines for trying to cover their business’ shortcomings by charging for every checked bag. In the spirit of Ying and Yang and balance in the universe I wanted to write about an equally great ecommerce experience I had with Zappos.com.

I ordered two pairs of shoes from their site. First, they upgraded the shipping on my order for free. That was nice. Not terribly exciting but a nice thing.

More impressively, they took what could have been a negative experience and turned it into a positive. One pair of shoes I ordered turned out to, “…not pass our quality inspection and we do not have a replacement available in stock in the size and color you requested.” This was very disappointing and could have reflected badly on their brand, making me less likely to shop there in the future.

But as I kept reading I was amazed. Not only did they include a link to another retailer that had the product in stock (JC Penny in this case) but they included a link that took me directly to the product on their site! Tremendous!They knew what I wanted, that they could not help me, so they provided me a valuable service.
Not only did it turn my perception of the Zappos.com brand more positive, it virtually guaranteed that I would start there the next time I shop for dress shoes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 9:11 pm and is filed under E-Commerce, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.