I’ve just had an extremely fortunate experience with endless.com, Amazon’s shoe and accessory supersite. Initially, I favored the site over Zappos.com because of the beautiful UI, the flexibility of search options (the filters are really top-notch), and the savvy array of manufacturers that they carry. I have become an exclusive endless.com user as a result of experiences with their customer service – one of which I had today. I have posted a link to the email they sent me verbatim, but I will highlight two major accomplishments from a customer service standpoint right here.

1. A quick response that said exactly what I wanted to hear.
I returned shoes long over a month ago and had not yet received a credit to my card. There is a good chance that they have been lost in the mail, and I understood that when contacting endless. They, within 6 hours of getting my email, agreed to credit my account and apologized for the inconvenience, which leads me to their second customer service accomplishment:

2. Empathy and a tone of voice that made me comfortable.
The response I received was written in the singular first person. The email is apologetic, and clearly states that I will be refunded, when I should expect the refund, and that they’ll let me know when it goes through. It closes with “Again, I’m very sorry about the trouble. We hope to see you again soon.” and is signed “Theresa.” I don’t care whether or not there is really a Theresa. I care that I feel listened to, and assured that I’ll get my scrilla back. Also, from a previous email on the same matter, “If you haven’t received notification of a refund by 4 weeks from the date of return, please contact us using the following URL and we’ll make this right for you;” – make it right for me? That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

This is the second time I’ve had this kind of experience with them. The first consisted of them unquestioningly sending me a new pair of shoes when a pair I’d purchased broke upon the second wear. They sent out the replacement pair the day I called them – and I actually still have the broken pair.

The great thing is that this all happened the same day that I’d been reading reviews on LG’s BD300 blu-ray player (which I’ve since purchased) on Amazon, that consistently bagged on LG’s tech support saying it “was useless and lacked any knowledge of their player.” I understand that tech support and customer service can be different things, especially depending on the sophistication of the product/service, but there should never ever be a distinction of the two from the customer’s perspective. I’ll report back if I have an experience with their tech support.

In conclusion – big ups to endless.com, and consequently to Amazon.