Wayfair, a leading website for buying home furnishings and décor, proved its dedication to customer service with a win at the 2016 Stevie Awards in the “Customer Service Center of the Year” category. The award adds to the People’s Choice Stevie Award earned by the company earlier this month for “Favorite Customer Service in Retail.”
Specialized judging committees consisting of more than 60 industry experts determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards. The awards were founded a decade ago to recognize and reward excellence in the workplace, regardless of size or type of company.
The company rose above the competition for several reasons. The customer service team is staffed entirely in-house, making the communication process significantly simpler and more effective. Especially for a company based entirely in ecommerce, customer service is only as good as the line of communication from the brand to the consumer, often hindered by third-party customer service departments.
Another issue faced by brands like Wayfair is the sheer number of products offered by the company. Customer needs are very different when dealing with the full spectrum of the company’s products, and Wayfair must be able to handle all incoming requests seamlessly. To this end, the company makes use of specialized divisions within customer service to provide assistance in specialized categories like upholstery and flooring.
“We are honored to be recognized by the Stevie Awards for our dedication to customer service,” said Niraj Shah, CEO, co-founder, and co-chairman at Wayfair. “At Wayfair, our team goes above and beyond each day to create the best customer experience in retail. We strive to repeatedly exceed our customers’ expectations through ongoing innovation and continuous improvement. As a result of our efforts, we see our customers coming back again and again with repeat orders in Q4 2015 up 96% year-over-year.”
“The Gold Stevie Award for Customer Service of the Year is a tremendous testament to our success in building a world-class customer service organization,” added Shah. “We look forward to raising the bar for service even higher in 2016.”