Some time ago I was give book called Delivering Happiness by Zappos. Actually I was given two books and I have sent on of the books to my the reader of this blog. It is very generous of them to give me two books for free. I really appreciate it. What more? After I read this book I do appreciate it even more. I have learned lots and lots about the way the company culture show be set and how the business should be done.
The book starts with a personal story of the Zappos founder Tony Hsieh. He talks about his childhood, how he played with business ideas from his early age. How he build successful pizza business during the school age and at the end how he build a internet advertisement company which he sold to Microsoft for millions of dollars because the companies culture went downhill.
The Zappos story wasn’t that easy and simple as it might look now but Tony believed in success of the company and supported it from the beginning up till today. For those who do not know Zappos. It is one of the most successful companies on the web. They have started selling shoes and today they sell cloths and other stuff as well.
So you what is so special about the Zappos?
They say it’s the company culture. It is absolutely right but I would say what matters even more is that they have Tony on board. He is the one who build the company, who created the culture and who set the rules. I absolutely love the way this very smart guy works and lives. We need lot more people like him on this planet so there is more happy people in the world.
Values
I totally agree with Tony when he talks there should be no separation between work and life. It should be just one “your life” and you do not need to change when you are at work as many do. If the company has been build the right way you have people around you who share the same values and you become bunch of friends who help each other. You go to work happy because you looking forward to be with your friends. You become more productive at the same time.
Customer service
If there is one single point which puts Zappos on top of every other company on the web and perhaps not only there, it is customer service. They go their own way, the way which means to provide the biggest values for their customers. For example, the call center. They do not count how many customers each employee handled during the day XY. Why? Because, when you do so the employees will try to handle as many as they can and that basically means they will try to get rid of you as quick as possible so their counter could get quickly another one. Is that good for customer? No. It is much better if you spent as much time as you need with your customer to make him/her happy and that is only thing which matters at Zappos.
The new business
If you look at business in general you see lots of pretending, unhealthy competition, laying. People who thing that wearing suit will make their business more official and so on. I can see here a good trend which has just started. People like Kevin Rose, Tony Hsieh, Gary Vaynerchuk do not try to hide, do not try to pretend, do not try to bring officialness with suits. They bring honesty, true feelings, real caring. They bring new way of doing business and I love it. If I would be blessed enough in the future to run my own business and I would try to implement as much from their ideas as I could so the people who work with me would be truly happy.
Thanks Zappos, thanks Tony for the big inspiration!
If you wish to buy the book you can do it on Amazon.