Amazon and Customer Delight

I define Customer Delight as exceeding customer expectations. There have been two recent instances where Amazon did a remarkable job.

One was when I ordered the Roku box from Amazon. I spent an hour with Roku trying to troubleshoot the problem with Roku customer service - which was awful! The guy kept trying to make me reset the box, but the picture was still unclear on my TV. Now I don't have the latest 3D 1080p 240 Hz HDTV, but my TV isn't bad! It's HD enabled (aka 720p) and other players work well with it! Finally, when I gave up on Roku, I contacted Amazon.

Thats where things went uphill. Rather than call a 1800 number and wait for several minutes, they have a form on their website, where they call me! In 5 minutes, I was connected to a human being, and best of all, I spent no time waiting. They exchanged the Roku box for a new one, sent overnight. When that did not work too, I returned it - which meant clicking a link they sent me, printing the UPS label and dropping off to the UPS box.

The second instance was returning a $9.99 pair of sleep pajamas. Unfortunately the sizing on the website did not match what arrived in the email. I clicked on the return button, and it asked me for the reason code. When I entered it, that's it - the return was complete, I was refunded, and got a message 'For being a loyal customer, you don't even need to send back the item.'

It makes sense; the cost of having the item shipped back, processed for return, and then resent to someone else probably did not cover the profit Amazon.com will expect to make from the item. Additionally, they gained loyalty from me, by not making me go through the hassle of shipping the item back.

Now I am not sure if everyone will not get the same level of treatment. I order a fair amount from Amazon, and also am a prime members. Their low prices and great customer service has made me a loyal customer; I pretty much look to order almost everything from them. They must be deploying fairly sophisticated segmentation techniques to determine who they give the premium treatment to. Whatever it is, it seems to be working - I am delighted, and this instance made me an even more loyal Amazon.com customer.