# Excellence in Customer Service
**作者**: Alfred Lin
**日期**: 2026-09-22T13:49:16.000Z
**来源**: [https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127)
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There’s been a recent rise in backlash against automated customer service. Customers complain about getting stuck in useless chatbot loops, or talking to representatives employed three vendors down in the outsource chain, with incentives misaligned to solving their actual problem.
In a world where it’s easier than ever to start and scale a new business, customer service may end up being the ultimate differentiator. We worked hard to ensure Zappos was synonymous with “WOW” service. Tony shared many of our stories and lessons in Delivering Happiness, but here are some of the things I find myself most regularly reminding founders of.
1) Culture of Customer Obsession
Start by developing a culture that obsesses over the customer and their entire experience from beginning to end. Many companies believe they are customer-obsessed but only focus on their product or service. They spend little time thinking about the whole experience, especially exception handling when things go awry.
Customer obsession is about the entire experience. It is also likely your most passionate raving fans are those customers who had a bad experience, but you turned them around. Airbnb storyboarded the whole guests' and hosts' experiences. DoorDash did the same for their merchants, customers, and dashers.
Zappos' answer to customer obsession was to tie our strategy to our first cultural value: Deliver WOW through Service.
2) Your Brand of Customer Service
If we contact most companies' contact centers and if they don't mention their companies' names, we are unlikely to be able to tell them apart. Most companies think a call, chat, or email is a nuisance, and service costs need to be minimized.
At Zappos, every call, chat, or email was an opportunity to deliver a branded experience, and we wanted that experience to develop a sense of loyalty to Zappos. For this reason, we rebranded our customer service department to our Customer Loyalty Team. Thus, we measured the team's success by customer retention. Over eighty percent of our sales were from repeat customers on any given day.
This same mentality applies for your internal customers. Acquired recently [shared the story of Home Depot](https://x.com/AcquiredFM/status/2099498484667928887). One deliberate early decision was to call their central office in Atlanta the “Store Support Center,” not “headquarters,” because it exists purely to support the front-line associates who serve customers.
3) Different AND Better Experience
Customer service technologies allow sophisticated routing so an agent can specialize, focus on a small task, and ensure repeatability. Zappos noticed that routing technologies were far from perfect. Too many customers were rerouted, causing already unhappy customers to become irate.
Instead, we had minimal routing and trained and empowered every employee to answer every customer service request empathetically even if they were routed incorrectly. This differentiated generalist approach led to a very high first-contact resolution rate and a much better experience.
An important equivalent today may be meeting the customer where they’re at. The customer should be able to pick up the same conversation from whatever medium the customer wants, whether it’s app, text, phone, X, or otherwise.
4) Focus on Critical Input Metrics
Customer service metrics and dashboards are a data scientist's dream. If your team can't see the forest from the trees, focus on the most critical input metrics rather than the output metrics, such as CSAT or NPS. Your team can affect the inputs and thereby influence the outputs. Measure what is consistent with your differentiated branded experience, not what others blindly measure.
Zappos didn’t measure average handle time because it is at odds with long calls that deliver empathy and develop customer loyalty. Instead, Zappos measured response time, first-contact resolution, and customer retention, which correlate with CSAT and NPS.
5) Contextualize Customer Experience
Customer service teams have so much rich context about the customer experience. Yet, that is often lost because most customer service teams are run just by the numbers. It was no secret that every Zappos team member was trained and then spent 1-2 weeks in the contact center yearly to ensure we continue to have an understanding of and empathy for the customer. Less known was our daily context report.
Every Customer Loyalty Team member started their day with a rapid-fire huddle discussing the Good-Better-How of yesterday. Each team member would discuss what went well, what could have been better, and how they would improve from yesterday. Each team lead of approximately ten team members would summarize the huddle and send it to their supervisor. The supervisors would summarize the reports from their leads, attach the reports from their leads, and email them to their managers. The managers repeated the same process and sent it to the VP. The VP would do the same and send the full report to the company. This report was not sophisticated, but it centered our Customer Loyalty Team members on continuous improvement, shared learning across teams, and gave the entire company a pulse of the customer. This report brought context to our metrics and led to numerous product, service, and customer experience improvements from the direct feedback of our customers.
Thankfully, AI can now automate much of the identification, consolidation, and roll-up of these steps, so there is really no reason not to be doing them.
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While I learned so much about developing a differentiated and branded customer loyalty experience at Zappos, these were lessons from over a decade ago. I am eager to watch how the next generation of companies deliver WOW service, and how companies like [@SierraPlatform](https://x.com/@SierraPlatform), [@Cresta](https://x.com/@Cresta), and others will help redefine today's customer experience with AI.
## 相关链接
- [Alfred Lin](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin)
- [@Alfred_Lin](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin)
- [1.2K](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127/analytics)
- [shared the story of Home Depot](https://x.com/AcquiredFM/status/2099498484667928887)
- [@SierraPlatform](https://x.com/@SierraPlatform)
- [@Cresta](https://x.com/@Cresta)
- [Upgrade to Premium](https://x.com/i/premium_sign_up)
- [9:49 PM · Sep 22, 2026](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127)
- [1,266 Views](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127/analytics)
- [View quotes](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127/quotes)
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*导出时间: 2026/9/22 22:21:54*
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## 中文翻译
# 卓越的客户服务
**作者**： Alfred Lin
**日期**： 2026-09-22T13:49:16.000Z
**来源**： [https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127)
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最近，针对自动化客服的反对声浪日益高涨。客户抱怨被困在毫无用处的聊天机器人循环中，或是与外包链条下游第三层供应商雇佣的客服代表交谈，而这些人的激励机制与解决客户的实际问题并不一致。
在一个创业和扩张比以往任何时候都更容易的时代，客户服务或许会成为最终的差异化因素。我们曾努力确保 Zappos 成为“WOW”服务的代名词。Tony 在《传递幸福》（Delivering Happiness）一书中分享了我们许多的故事和经验，但以下是我最常提醒创始人的几点。
1) 客户至上的文化
首先要建立一种痴迷于客户及其从头到尾整体体验的文化。许多公司自认为以客户为中心，但实际上只关注自己的产品或服务。他们很少花时间思考整体体验，尤其是当事情出了岔子时的异常处理。
客户至上关乎的是整个体验。而且，你最热情的拥趸很可能正是那些曾经有过糟糕体验、但被你成功挽回的客户。Airbnb 曾为客人和房东的完整体验绘制故事板。DoorDash 也对其商家、客户和骑手做了同样的事情。
Zappos 对客户至上的回应，是将我们的战略与我们的第一条文化价值观挂钩：通过服务传递 WOW。
2) 属于你自己的客户服务品牌
如果我们联系大多数公司的客服中心，而对方不提及公司名称，我们很可能无法分辨这通电话是打给谁的。大多数公司把来电、聊天或邮件视为麻烦事，认为服务成本应尽量压缩。
在 Zappos，每一通电话、每一次聊天或邮件都是传递品牌化体验的机会，我们希望这种体验能让客户对 Zappos 产生忠诚感。因此，我们将客服部门重新命名为“客户忠诚团队”（Customer Loyalty Team）。由此，我们用客户留存率来衡量团队的成功。在任何一天，我们超过 80% 的销售额都来自回头客。
同样的理念也适用于你的内部客户。Acquired 最近[分享了家得宝（Home Depot）的故事](https://x.com/AcquiredFM/status/2099498484667928887)。其中一个深思熟虑的早期决定是，将亚特兰大的中央办公室称为“门店支持中心”（Store Support Center），而不是“总部”，因为它存在的意义纯粹是为了支持服务客户的一线员工。
3) 既与众不同，又更加出色
客服技术可以实现复杂的路由分配，让客服人员专注于细分任务并确保可重复性。但 Zappos 注意到，路由技术远非完美。太多客户被反复转接，导致本已不满意的客户变得愤怒。
因此，我们尽量少用路由，而是培训和授权每位员工，即使接到被错误转接的客户，也能以同理心处理每一个客服请求。这种差异化的“通才”模式带来了极高的首次接触解决率，以及好得多的客户体验。
如今一个同样重要的做法，可能是在客户所处的地方与他们相遇。客户应该能够从其选择的任何媒介继续同一场对话，无论是应用、短信、电话、X 还是其他渠道。
4) 关注关键输入指标
客服指标和仪表盘是数据科学家的梦想。如果你的团队无法从繁杂的数据中看清全局，那就聚焦于最关键的输入指标，而不是诸如 CSAT 或 NPS 之类的输出指标。你的团队能够影响输入，进而影响输出。衡量那些与你的差异化品牌体验相一致的指标，而不是盲目追随别人衡量的东西。
Zappos 不衡量平均处理时长，因为它与通过长时间通话传递同理心、培养客户忠诚度的做法相冲突。相反，Zappos 衡量的是响应时间、首次接触解决率和客户留存率，这些指标与 CSAT 和 NPS 相关。
5) 让客户体验背景化
客服团队掌握着大量关于客户体验的丰富背景信息。然而，这些信息常常被丢失，因为大多数客服团队只是按数字运作。众所周知，每位 Zappos 团队成员都会接受培训，并每年在客服中心工作 1-2 周，以确保我们对客户持续保持理解和同理心。而不太为人所知的是我们的每日背景报告。
每位客户忠诚团队成员都以快速站会开始一天的工作，讨论昨天的“好—更好—如何改进”。每位成员会讨论哪些做得好、哪些可以做得更好，以及他们打算如何从昨天的基础上改进。每位带领约十名成员的团队负责人会总结站会内容并发送给其主管。主管们汇总各负责人的报告，附上原始报告，并邮件发给各自的经理。经理们重复同样的流程发给副总裁。副总裁也照做，并将完整报告发送给全公司。这份报告并不复杂，但它让客户忠诚团队成员始终专注于持续改进，促进了跨团队的学习分享，并为整个公司提供了客户动态的脉搏。这份报告为我们的指标赋予了背景，并基于客户的直接反馈促成了大量产品、服务和客户体验的改进。
值得庆幸的是，如今 AI 可以将其中许多识别、整合和汇总步骤自动化，所以实在没有理由不去做这些事情。
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虽然我在 Zappos 学到了大量关于打造差异化、品牌化客户忠诚体验的经验，但这些都是十多年前的经验教训。我热切期待看到下一代公司如何传递 WOW 服务，以及像 [@SierraPlatform](https://x.com/@SierraPlatform)、[@Cresta](https://x.com/@Cresta) 等公司将如何借助 AI 重新定义当今的客户体验。
## 相关链接
- [Alfred Lin](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin)
- [@Alfred_Lin](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin)
- [1.2K](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127/analytics)
- [shared the story of Home Depot](https://x.com/AcquiredFM/status/2099498484667928887)
- [@SierraPlatform](https://x.com/@SierraPlatform)
- [@Cresta](https://x.com/@Cresta)
- [Upgrade to Premium](https://x.com/i/premium_sign_up)
- [9:49 PM · Sep 22, 2026](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127)
- [1,266 Views](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127/analytics)
- [View quotes](https://x.com/Alfred_Lin/status/2102394801790632127/quotes)
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*导出时间： 2026/9/22 22:21:54* 
