Lawyers: What Can We Learn From Zappos?
If you love shoes like I do, you're familiar with Zappos.com, the online shoe and clothing shop. Since it was founded in 1999, it has grown to be the largest online shoe store. How did they do it? Largely, in thanks to their CEO, Tony Hsieh. According to their website:
In 1999, at the age of 24, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million.
He then joined us [Zappos] as an advisor and investor, and eventually became CEO, where he helped us grow from almost no sales to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually, while simultaneously making Fortune magazines annual Best Companies to Work For list. In November 2009, Zappos.com, Inc. was acquired by Amazon.com in a deal valued at $1.2 billion on the day of closing.
Not too shabby, huh?
But how did they actually accomplish this incredible growth?
We've been asked by a lot of people how we've grown so quickly, and the answer is actually really simple... We've aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy.
If you've ever shopped at Zappos, you know this to be true. Let's look at an example. Last year, I purchased a pair of boots from them. Shipping was, incredibly, free! That alone could make a customer happy, but after ordering them, the boots arrived on my doorstep the very next morning.
Free, overnight shipping? Unheard of.
Even more amazing? If you're not 100% happy with your purchase, you have an entire year to return it. And they'll pay the shipping both ways.
Yes, seriously.
So what does this have to do with legal marketing?
Plenty.
Zappos' philosophy is about putting the customer first. Their core value #1 is "Deliver WOW Through Service," which they describe as:
WOW is such a short, simple word, but it really encompasses a lot of things. To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means doing something a little unconventional and innovative. You must do something that's above and beyond what's expected. And whatever you do must have an emotional impact on the receiver. We are not an average company, our service is not average, and we don't want our people to be average. We expect every employee to deliver WOW.
Whether internally with co-workers or externally with our customers and partners, delivering WOW results in word of mouth. Our philosophy at Zappos is to WOW with service and experience, not with anything that relates directly to monetary compensation (for example, we don't offer blanket discounts or promotions to customers).
We seek to WOW our customers, our co-workers, our vendors, our partners, and in the long run, our investors.
This isn't just something that Zappos says they'll do; they actually deliver. And as a result, the primary source of their rapid growth is repeat customers and word of mouth recommendations.
On their website, they have almost 8,500 customer recommendations - and that's just for Zappos itself, not their products. Do your clients love you that much?
What if you put them first, differentiated yourself and did "something that's above and beyond what's expected?" Would they come back to you for all of their legal work? Would they tell their colleagues, friends, family members, social media communities?
Absolutely.
In an industry where we're regularly hearing that the law firms that clients are interviewing are already all considered to be high quality, just by virtue of being considered, and that clients hire lawyers not firms, it's essential to find a way to not only make your client happy with the results of your work, but help them to be ecstatic.
What can you do today to WOW your clients?
Lindsay
I love the Zappos values. In fact they form one of the main slides of a presentation that I do to lawyers on service, values and standing on those if your staff cannot live them.
The king of WOW for me is still Tom Peters and has written a great book on it.
WOW in legal service starts with the basics:
~ Doing what you say and saying what you do. No excuses.
~ Having a clients charter that is meaningful.
~ Having people who believe that being a lawyer means more than just solving legal problems. It means delivering such exceptional serivce to the clients, that the fees are never discussed or they are certainly not the end game all the time.
~ Going for something like Valorem Law which I take to maean pay us what you think we are worth.
~ Apologising for when things go wrong.
~ Bringing the clients with you on a deal rather than having a distant and remote feel all the time (this is not be to be confused with telling the client what they want to hear).
~ Putting your staff first who in turn will put the customer first. To become a "Life success company" as Dave Liniger of RE/MAX says.
And on and on.
It wouldn't be hard for firms to move their serive levels up a few notches by putting greater priority on customer excellence but I still don't see nearly enough of that.
Regards
Julian
I totally agree with Julian's comments. And in fact, it is really easy for lawyers to live by similar creeds provided that they are members of firms that promote flexibility as a hallmark of their practice. Things that impact the ability to deliver these service levels include:
- billing quotas
- write off/ write down committees that inhibit individual's ability to properly bill appropriate fees by requiring appovals for same.
Individual lawyers are not taught client service in law school or their firms. We individually demonstrate our self importance in many ways:
- the almost unnatural superiority complex that lawyers display
- the failure of lawyers to attempt to determine the value of the file to the client.
These things get in the way of raising the service levels to the Zappos level. And even if you don't get to "WOW", and even if we don't give away as much value in legal service as the relative perceived value of the free shoe delivery, we can certainly get to "not bad... I'll use those lawyers again."
Great post Lindsay! What must be remembered is that yes, the practice of law is a profession, and is guided by precedent, text book, court cases, judges, legal advice, etc. However, the day-to-day managing of this work, and how to relate to clients is very much a business, and must, therefore, take clients' happiness in to consideration. This is where creating the WOW comes in. When all else is equal, the WOW is going to make the difference. In this day of poor client service in so many areas, creating WOW often takes very little effort in order to stand apart from the others.