How I Did It: Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com (2006)

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060901/hidi-hsieh.html

by byrneseyeview • 17 years ago

34 12 17 years ago

aditya• 17 years ago

Thanks fluff article... now, only if he told us how he really did it. Everyone knows zappos is obsessive about customer service!

craigbellot• 17 years ago

Some things are worth repeating.

mkull• 17 years ago

I know.. I spent a non-insignificant amount of time looking/hoping for the 'next page' link

jpwagner3• 17 years ago

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so." - Gandhi

gruseom2• 17 years ago

That doesn't sound right. It's a pastiche of things Gandhi might have said, except that he would surely not have used the word "customer" in this way. That comes from the language of 20th century capitalism, which Gandhi abhorred.

cvboss• 17 years ago

Capitalism happens when the factors of production (land/capital) can be private, not necesserily owned by the goverment, "business" or "customer" are really irrelevant to the economic system :)

jpwagner3• 17 years ago

I think you are misunderstanding Gandhi's philosophy. I was just reading that this quote fits perfectly in what he calls "Seva" or service.

slpsys• 17 years ago

"We interview people for culture fit. We want people who are passionate about what Zappos is about--service. I don't care if they're passionate about shoes."

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is. Perhaps I'm used to software--in which jobs aren't [hopefully!] excessively tedious--but I'm sure lots of us participate in non-work-related forums and mailing lists, helping others for free, just because we are passionate about the subject matter.

chris11• 17 years ago

I imagine that some jobs could be tedious there, for example working at their call center. And I am sure a lot of other people would find that job tedious. But Zappos pays new employees $1000 to quit. That has to be at least 50x to 100x their hourly wage. About 10% take it. So Zappos does a fair amount to weed out the unmotivated.

If I was looking for a job, and the offer included 100x my hourly wage not to show up, I would think about it and make sure that the job was something I was passionate about.

Luc• 17 years ago

Zappos publishes a 'culture book' every year. It's meant for employees, but you can also order it on their website. They only ship it to the US though, so since I live in Europe I emailed the CEO (got his email address from some presentation slides) and asked if they would ship it to me.

The result was quite amusing. Two assistants practically fought it out to ask for my address and mail me the book. Then the CEO replied and offered the same. Two days later, I received the book, sent by courier, for free.

They're really not kidding about customer service, especially considering that I can't even BE a customer because of where I live (also, I buy shoes every 2 years).

How I Did It: Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com (2006)

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