Over the weekend, you might have read about Zappos getting hacked. Specifically, some of their account information was illegally accessed. I read about it but didn’t think too much about it until this morning I got an email from them and it turns out that my account may have been one of the 24 million that was grabbed.
What I want to write about is how Zappos handled it and how it can be a great example for any business that has to deal with a problem not of its own making. As an aside, I think Zappos is a model for many things in business – customer service being quite high on the list. But let’s stick to the issue at hand.
This was the gist of the email:
First, the bad news:
We are writing to let you know that there may have been illegal and unauthorized access to some of your customer account information on Zappos.com, including one or more of the following: your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password).
THE BETTER NEWS:
The database that stores your critical credit card and other payment data was NOT affected or accessed.
Clear, transparent, and quick. No internet buzz prompted them to get out in front of this – most of the discussion has come after this email went out. Contrast that to a lot of companies that don’t react for days. When you read between the lines, the “problem” really isn’t much of one. Someone can get most of the information they might have grabbed from a telephone book. Assuming they use a pretty good encryption system, even the password should be OK (but I changed it to be sure as the mail suggested and facilitated). Zappos sent the note anyway – they got in front of the issue and preempted the usual internet rumors.
Erring on the side of transparency and honesty is no longer just smart: it’s mandatory. I didn’t close my account because I’ll continue to give Zappos my business – bad things sometimes happen to good people, and how they’ve handled this and every interaction I’ve had with them shows that they’ve earned a little slack. Can your business say the same?
Consult Keith 