Enhancing Customer Service and Brand Image: A Zappos Business Plan

This report examines Zappos' business plan with a focus on improving customer service and brand image while reducing operational costs. It explores strategies such as offshoring the call center, leveraging technology, and prioritizing customer feedback. The report emphasizes the importance of customer loyalty and outlines specific approaches to differentiate Zappos from its competitors. Key areas of focus include enhancing customer service through comprehensive FAQs, speedy email responses, detailed product pages, and easy return policies. The analysis also covers methods for reducing operational costs through technology adoption, outsourcing, and environmentally friendly initiatives, all contributing to increased revenue, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty. Desklib provides access to similar business reports and solved assignments for students.

Running head: BUSINESS PLAN
Business Plan
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1BUSINESS PLAN
Executive Summary
The aim of the report is to study the business plan of an online retailer online retailer Zappos
who has its brand value and goodwill for its great customer service and great quality products.
The company uses marketing customer service strategy, which makes them, stand out against
their competitors. Finally, the report also gives a brief report of a Business plan and with the
services and features, it will provide to its customers.

2BUSINESS PLAN
Table of Contents
Q) How can Zappos enhance its customer service and brand image by reducing the operating
costs?................................................................................................................................................3
Q) Can Zappos save more by offshoring its customer call center?.................................................3
Q) How Zappos can enhance its customer service?........................................................................4
Q) While running a business plan how would you save your operational costs and build up
customer loyalty?.............................................................................................................................4
Q) Will specific approaches to customer service will make a company stick out from its
competitors and achieve customer loyalty at the same time?..........................................................4
Reference.........................................................................................................................................6

3BUSINESS PLAN
Q) How can Zappos enhance its customer service and brand image by
reducing the operating costs?
According to Warrick, Milliman & Ferguson (2016), the online retailer shoe company Zappos is
the top online shoe retailer company which has grown its sales from year to year since1999.
Zappos focuses on delivering quality, free shipping, easy returns and choices. The company
awards the employees of the firm for building new skills. The company has a policy of same day
delivery and a real time customer feedback where the company invests a huge amount of money
in its call center. The customer loyalty teams also form a part of the call center where the
company raises the amount of reward when an employee’s learns new skills and techniques.
Since the company has a good reward and recognition policies it should focus on ties up with
different other digitalized way of delivery. Zappos should offshore its call center, and develop a
team with employee having skills in customer service so that it has to less focus and spend less
on skill development and training of its employees (A Case Study in Work Environment
Redesign, 2018)
Q) Can Zappos save more by offshoring its customer call center?
Zappos has huge number of his workforce dedicated for customer feedback and customer
services. The company spends a lot of time, effort, and money in training and developing the
employees. Yes, Zappos should look for countries which has cheaper and skilled labor and where
the labor laws are favorable. It should hire skilled workforce for the same, which could save
employers training and development cost and time.

4BUSINESS PLAN
Q) How Zappos can enhance its customer service?
Zappos is known for its best class customer service and experience via skilled workforce
and through real time feedback process. It has some of the areas where it can include customers
and the employees to make the company overcome challenges and give the best service. It could
provide comprehensive frequently asked questions, which will provide the consumers conceive
faster response in case of common query. Speedy response to email, allowing customers to
email, increasing the staffing level, detailed product pages and easy return policy could enhance
the customer experience for the retailer business. Zappos is an online retailer and it should focus
on the customer service technology where it can use web self-service interaction and other ways
to provide service to its customers.
Q) While running a business plan how would you save your operational costs
and build up customer loyalty?
According to Jiang, Jun & Yang, (2016) every Business plan has two major aspects for
its working. It should increase revenue and decrease expenditure, while aligning with growth and
prosperity and increasing customer loyalty and brand image. Every Business plan has a major
threat while managing its operational costs it can do so by embracing technology, by
outsourcing, use of telecommunications and other web developed communication services.
Certain initiatives like the Go Green to reduce operational costs and increase its focus on
delivering environmental friendly products and services to its customers (Bilgihan, 2016).

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Q) Will specific approaches to customer service will make a company stick out
from its competitors and achieve customer loyalty at the same time?
Loyal customer are the one who always keep the revenue of the firm flowing and in order to
retain the loyalty of consumers every business and business plan should come up with ideas that
are favorable to the consumers. Making customers service priority, rewarding the customers, real
time feedback and there experience from the same, offering convenience and keeping the relation
with the customers are some key strategies for making customer service which will help a
business step out from the competition it faces and achieve brand loyalty for the same.

6BUSINESS PLAN
Reference
Warrick, D. D., Milliman, J. F., & Ferguson, J. M. (2016). Lessons learned from Zappos on what
it takes to build high performance cultures. Organ Dyn.
A Case Study in Work Environment Redesign. (2018). [ebook] Deloitte University Press.
Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/zappos/DUP345_Case-
Study_Zappos_vFINAL.pdf [Accessed 28 Aug. 2018].
Jiang, L., Jun, M., & Yang, Z. (2016). Customer-perceived value and loyalty: how do key service
quality dimensions matter in the context of B2C e-commerce?. Service Business, 10(2), 301-317.
Bilgihan, A. (2016). Gen Y customer loyalty in online shopping: An integrated model of trust,
user experience and branding. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 103-113.