While this online shoe and accessory retailer has grown extraordinarily over the past five years and recently sold to Amazon, it is Hsieh's comments about delivering customer service that I find refreshing.
"The thing we realized this year that sort of ties everything together is that customer service is about making customers happy, and the culture is about making employees happy. So, really, we're about trying to deliver happiness, whether it's to customers or employees, and we apply that same philosophy to vendors as well."
It is refreshing to hear things like "create fun and a little weirdness" or "deliver wow through customer service." These are a part of Zappos's Core Values. Love that.
At one of my companies, we instituted "Wow Wednesday" when we celebrated the week's service victories...handing out magnets to be displayed on metal shelves like arrowheads on college football helmets--gold if a client recongized you, silver if a colleague recognized you. Every month, the division got together to count magnets and celebrate.
My View
When companies strive to compete by delivering superior service, they must transform their entire organization to embrace it.
You can't just perform customer service, you must be a customer service company.
It is very difficult for executives to accomplish, particularly in larger companies where each division may find itself in different competitive arenas. But it is clear that in order to be the best, the entire company's focus--from management to phone reps, from the technology department to the finance staff--has to be about delivering service.
Critical as well is having the inspirational leader like Hsieh leading the charge. This cannot be a mid-level initiative.
Can Zappos continue to prosper as a premier customer experience provider within a much larger Amazon? Time will tell, but the foundation is there.
No comments:
Post a Comment