One of the best business models we’ve found that can help luxury real estate marketers distinguish their brand from the competition comes from a billion-dollar online shoe merchant who “embraces” their customers with amazing customer service. It can help you increase customer and employee/team member loyalty. So if the shoe fits you… take it from here.
Once you’ve bought your first pair of shoes from Zappos, won’t you shop at shoe stores again? Zappos is a take-off of the word zapatos, which means shoes in Spanish. They specialize in footwear, bags and niche shoes (vegan shoes and narrow and wide shoes). They have a central warehouse and two physical outlet stores. Zappos truly understands how “hugging” your customers and employees translates into big profits.
The Zappos business model is based entirely on relationship and loyalty marketing. A loyalty model means that a company focuses its resources so that customer expectations are consistently met or even exceeded. Relationship marketing is also about the long-term value of keeping customers, but focuses on the importance of activating word-of-mouth advertising as a means of acquiring new customers.
How do they do that? They hug their customers! Zappos builds company culture and promotes its brand through excellent customer service. Their motto is “Powered by Customer Service” The result is that 60% of Zappos customers are repeat customers with the rest coming from word of mouth marketing. Naturally, this business model reduces marketing costs.
Zappos puts the “WOW” in every customer interaction. They do this through free 2-way shipping (receive and return), a 365-day return policy, a 24-hour call service. Hugs!
Zappos Hugs Its Employees, Too! New employees, regardless of their position, are required to attend a 4-week customer loyalty training course. This includes two weeks of talking on the phone with clients – hug training. After the first week of training, new employees are offered a $1,000 bonus to leave the company immediately, with no strings attached. This ensures that people are there for the love of work and not just for the money. More than 90% reject the purchase.
Tony Hsieh, the CEO, is something of a celebrity in his own right. He can follow him on Twitter along with over 62,000 other people (as of this writing). If he called Zappos customer service while on vacation, it’s likely Tony himself. Personal hugs from the CEO!
In your luxury real estate marketing practice, how can you wow your clients today? Does this resonate with your brand of doing business? If the shoe fits…