Lesson 6

This week I had the opportunity to learn more about customer service and developing and philosophy that drives your company.  We had the opportunity to learn about Zappos who has developed a culture or philosophy of customer service. When an employee is hired they are put through training and on the first day of training they are offered $2000 dollars to quit.  They use this as a way to eliminate those employees that are only there for a paycheck instead of serving the customers. Each employee spends for weeks of call center/customer service training followed by 2 weeks working in the call center. It doesn’t matter if they are an accountant or an IT manager, there philosophy is customer service and each employee is trained to work with and understand the importance of customer service.

I also found it really interesting to learn about different customer growth focuses. There are 2 ways to grow your customer base, the first is through marketing to gain new employees and the second is to focus on the customers you have and design offerings that meet their needs so you will gain more money from each customer. The second option is the most efficient and cost effective method and that is why customer service is so important. My dad and I were talking about this today. He works for a company that does not value their employees and does not give them the proper tools to offer great customer service. The company has been losing customers because the employees are unhappy and are not offering the customer service needed to maintain customer relations. The success of any company lies in their ability to provide service that keeps customers coming back, if you don’t treat your customers right another company will.

For my $100-dollar project I am not as far along as I wanted to be. I do not have my website completed but I did get professional pictures of all of my products. I have all of my samples done and I picked up the last of the materials I need to produce the products for sell. This weekend I will have my website completed and I will have it linked to a Facebook page I created for my company. While I have not been able to get as much done as I hoped I am happy with what I have done so far and I am excited to start selling my products next week.