Delivering Happiness Takes High Touch, Not High Tech
Happiness is more than just a state of mind and Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, is on a mission to prove it. I had the privilege of seeing Tony speak for The American Marketing Association and after two pages of notes I examined his philosophy and realized why the businesses he’s managed have been so abundantly successful.
Even if I wasn’t quite sure about this “happiness speak” (which I am, of course, being the happy, cheesy person that I am) Tony would have received my full attention if for no other reason than the fact that he sold a business to Microsoft at the age of 24 for $265 million.
In our high-tech world we are trained to shift further and further away from live, in person interaction but doing so hurts us in the end. We have email, text messaging, social media, videos, assistants, project managers and on and on, each removing us from the core customer experience. Tony spoke about their customer call center, and how there are no “time limits” for each order, and that the record for their longest customer service call was 7 hours!
How different would your business look if you were able to authentically touch and connect with more people? In the Zappos model the telephone is key. There are no scripts, no upselling, a 365 day return policy and they’ll even recommend their competitor when they can’t fill a need themselves! Wow!
Here are the 5 key questions that they use to evaluate the customer experience:
1) What do customer expect?
2) What do customer actually experience?
3) What emotions do customers feel
4) What stories do they tell their friends?
5) How can your culture create more stories and memories?
It took a year for Tony and his team to determine their core values. Amongst them are humility, embracing and driving change, creating fun, creativity, adventure, the pursuit of growth and learning, positivity and passion. Each of these things helps them to deliver the wow factor. A company’s brand and culture are two sides of the same coin. As you look at the list above do you feel motivated, frustrated or disappointed?
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