I just finished reading Tony Hsieh's first book, Delivering Happiness, on my iPad. Tony is the CEO of online shoe and clothing sore, Zappos. It's a great book written by a man with a different perspective on business which is what makes him interesting.
The book begins with his tales of early entrepreneurial ventures like his worm farm. It takes him through Harvard University and his first experience with crowdsourcing at exam time. And, it goes through his startup success that lead to running the Internet incubator that lead him to becoming the CEO of Zappos.
Zappos gained fame for growing to be > $ 1 billion in about ten years which lead to Amazon.com buying Zappos for $940 million in a stock and cash deal in June, 2009. But, it's the core values that really set the company apart from most others. The company culture is a competitive advantage.
Zappos' Core Values Make Them Unique (and Super Successful!)
The company publishes a "Culture Book" annually that is made up of contributions from employees. All employees that are hired for their corporate office, regardless of position, are required to undergo a 4-week customer loyalty training course, which includes at least 2 weeks of talking on the phone with customers in the call center at full salary.
After a week of training, the new employees are offered $2,000 to leave the company immediately if they think that it's not for them. This is to make sure that employees are there because they love of the job and not the money.
As Anthony Robbins writes in the "Praise for Delivering Happiness" section, "When you focus on increasing the happiness of your employees, colleagues, vendors, and customers, you not only increase your own happiness, but you chances for success."
My Favorite Insight
Page 209 lists the "Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company". Sure, making customer service a priority for the whole company is key as is empowering your customer service reps. But my favorite insight is #6 - "Don't hide you 1-800 number. It's a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well." This just hit me as so profound because I've noticed how hard it is to find a number to call someone at a company when you have a problem. Take for example, when I was in Quicken the other day and I accidentally deleted my checking account. At that "Yikes! Somebody please help me!" moment, I didn't want to read FAQs to find the answer to my problem online, I wanted to talk to somebody...and quickly! After combing the site, I couldn't find a phone number, but I did finally find live chat and someone was able to help me quickly. While my problem got solved, I did resent that as a Quicken customer for the last 10 years, they didn't think enough of me to make it easy for me to call them with a problem. The Zappos folks have it right.
If you're looking for a good business book that will make you look at things a different way in your business, check out Delivering Happiness. And, if you'd like to meet the author, go see the Delivering Happiness bus when it makes a stop in your town. I think I'll go see it when it gets to Boston in September
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