Zappos: Happiness in a Box Presented by: Chris Heath

Company History Zappos is an online company that sells shoes and other apparel The company was founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn and is currently run by CEO Tony Hsieh From the start Zappos has focused on great customer service and developing a culture at work that is unique

Employee Hiring and Training http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6WHAfWqX3s Zappos only hires happy people One of their questions during the interview process is on scale of 1-10 how lucky are you Found that people that consider themselves lucky performed better Passed on many well qualified and smart candidates because they were not a cultural fit Every employee must go through Customer Loyalty Team (CLT) training so they can learn how to WOW customers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6WHAfWqX3s Zappos only hires happy people One of their questions during the interview process is on scale of 1-10 how lucky are you Found that people that consider themselves lucky performed better Passed on many well qualified and smart candidates because they were not a cultural fit Every employee must go through Customer Loyalty Team (CLT) training so they can learn how to WOW customers

Happy Employees Equals Great Customer Service Employees are able to determine when they receive raises by taking classes and mastering skills Not paid based on the amount of calls they handle a day One call lasted 7 hours and 28 minutes MSN Money ranked Zappos.com in the top 10 for customer service http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwE1zb9fiVs

Repeat Customers 75% of sales on any given day are from repeat customers During period Q407 first time customers spent $123.86 while repeat customers spent $156.27 Mostly word of mouth marketing

Stories Of Success Personal Concierge A flight attendant from Qantas was in San Francisco and needed to exchange a pair of shoes She had no access to a computer and did not know where a UPS store was A Zappos CLT member found the closest UPS store and asked them to print the label for her

Stories of Success Caring For The Sick A Grandmother ordered some Lelli Kelly shoes for her four year old daughter that was going to have heart surgery The CLT member had special shoes, flowers, and a homemade card signed by team members sent to her

Stories of Success From Confusion to Mobility The women's dad had a stroke and was trying to learn to walk again The CLT member had all the shoes overnighted even though she was only going to keep one pair The shoes ended up being molded into his cast

Stories of Success Offering Praise and Gratitude A women went on the Breast Cancer 3 Day in Denver and left an auto-reply on her email A CLT member got the auto-reply email and decided to sent the woman a card to let her know what an admirable thing she was doing

Twitter Tony originally created the account as a personal search engine, but soon realized the power Twitter could have in growing the brand He now has over 1.7 million followers “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf” –Jon Kabat-Zinn “At Vegas airport. While in bathroom, I had an AMAZING revelation: Toiled seat covers are shaped exactly the same as life vests!” 499 employees are now using Twitter with the only rule being, “Use your best judgment”

Blogs and YouTube Every employee is able to blog on the website Zappos feels its better to see what every employee is thinking even if it is not positive They want to see the good, the bad, and the ugly They have two different channels on YouTube: ZTV and Inside Zappos ZTV shows the virtues of Zappos and has 187 videos with over 2 million views Inside Zappos shows the fun employees have at work Inside Zappos has 870 videos with almost 600,000 views

Amazon Zappos merged with Amazon in a stock exchange in 2009 The deal was valued at 1.2 billion dollars Though they became a part of Amazon they were kept as a separate entity and were able to maintain their culture Q1 2010 net sales were up almost 50 percent compared to Q1 2009

Summary Zappos has been able to grow their business through amazing customer service This amazing customer service is made possible by creating a culture at work that allows team members to have fun Team members constantly go above and beyond Zappos has also been able to grow its’ brand through new social media outlets such as Twitter and YouTube

Questions a. Alfred Lin b. Tony Hsieh c. Nick Swinmurn d. Matt Zappos 1. Who founded Zappos.com? a. Alfred Lin b. Tony Hsieh c. Nick Swinmurn d. Matt Zappos 2. Which is not a core value? a. Be professional at all times b. Do more with less c. Be humble d. Pursue growth and learning 3. Repeat customers accounted for what percentage of sales? a. 20 b. 45 c. 75 d. 90