Social Media Listening
Posted by Lisa Cruz on Thu, May 20, 2010 @ 02:50 PM
I had a recent experience via social media that is a must-share. Last week online, I was searching for the next pair of red shoes. Finding red shoes can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge for me. The heel height cannot be too high or too low. They need to be a size 10 (big flippers yes I know). And, finding the right shade of red is imperative.
Of course one of my online shoe shopping behaviors is to peruse what's available at Zappos. I did find a pair that fit all of my criteria. I was in love. This dazzling pair of shoes included straps and gems -- a winning combination. So I tweeted about it, "Please tell me these shoes qualify as red shoes." And included a link to the shoes but did not identify @zappos in the post.
As tweeps comments came flying back at me via twitter, I quickly made my purchase. The time of this order was after 9 p.m. Wednesday night. In addition, the online @zappos customer service person that night also engaged in conversation with me. I'm assuming they are doing broad searches on Twitter for anyone talking about shoes and stumbled upon my tweet.
Then the @zappos customer service representative also pointed out to me that the name of the shoes is "Lisa." Yes, it was a match made in shoe heaven.
But, that's not where the story ends. The next day I got home from work around 3 p.m. Guess what was waiting for me on the kitchen counter. My precious, dazzling shoes. Zappos went above and beyond from beginning to end of my purchase. Think about how well run their processes have to be to be able to deliver those shoes by the next day. 24 hours had not even passed. I'm not even sure it was 15 hours.
The lesson here? Make sure you are listening on social media as much as you are participating in the conversation. And ... make sure you have the capabilities and processes set up on the back end to wow your customers.
Does the story end there? Absolutely not. Because now I have written this blog post and I'm going to share this experience online. Social media can really be the gift that keeps on giving. Kudos Zappos. You rocked my red shoes world.