I had heard about Zappos and their relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction, but hearing their founder Tony Hsieh speak at SXSW really brought the message home to me.
OK, so there’s the five week training course that all employees have to go through before starting work. Then there’s the $2,000 dollar ‘reward’ you get at any point during training if you decide that Zappos isn’t for you. Then there’s the insistence on cultural fit as well as talent – Zappos will turn someone down with excellent skills rather than compromise on someone that they don’t feel will fit in.
But I rather liked their interest in happiness as a goal. They like to talk about Zappos delivering “happiness in a box” – but they have clearly gone beyond sloganeering and thought hard about the science behind happiness. So one simple example – they split their promotion process into six six month modules, simply because they felt that giving their employees a regular indication of progress would make them happier.
Some great slogans as well – particularly: “Don’t chase the paper, chase the dream”, which if memory serves is Puff Daddy!
And I liked a quote of Al Gore (quoting an African proverb I think):
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
