Delivering Happiness – Video Book Review

When I heard that Tony Hsieh was writing a book about the meteoric rise of Zappos from a startup that almost collapsed to a $2 billion a year powerhouse, I was really excited to get my hands on a copy.

I have been fascinated with Zappos for the past few years because of their focus on doing right by their customers and team members which has translated into an amazing company culture and a strong base of super-fans and repeat customers. I’ve also had the opportunity to hang out with Tony since we share a lot of the same friends and he has also been gracious enough to host several awesome parties during many of the big conferences that take place in Las Vegas.

All of this built up anticipation to read the behind-the-scenes story on Zappos and this book doesn’t disappoint. I shot a video review to share my thoughts on the book.

If you can’t view this video, you can head over to my YouTube channel.

Have you read Delivering Happiness(affiliate link) yet? Thoughts?

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The Power of a Note

One of the most powerful communications tools still remains the pen and paper. While technologiespentopaper such as blogs, video and photo sharing sites, and phones that can capture and post all of that content, have helped to create a 24/7, always-on communications and news cycle, it has only enhanced how powerful a simple pen and piece of paper can be. Now, you’re probably starting to reach this post and think I’m insane. But, what I’m referring to is not writing memos, or publishing newspaper articles, capturing notes during a meeting or anything like that. I’m talking about the power that a simple hand-written note can wield. Notice, I did say hand-written.

Recently I mailed out hand-written thank-you cards to every single sponsor of our Inbound Marketing Summits and Inbound Marketing Bootcamps, all of our clients and a handful of other people who have helped us at New Marketing Labs over the past few months. I figured that a personalized, hand-written thank-you card would mean a lot more than a standard email.

Plus, who needs another email? I know I sure don’t. As I continue to see the amount of physical mail I receive decrease due to paying bills online, receiving email newsletters, and communicating mainly via email and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, when a card or note from someone arrives, it means so much more. I actually take time to sit down and read it. I save it. It means more to me because I know that everyone in my circles run their lives from digital dashboards.

When I sent the thank-you cards I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I mean, all of these people have given us money or donated their time has a cost to it as well. The least I could do is take 2 minutes out of my life to send them a thank-you. Granted, I could’ve still sent everyone a piece of physical mail but made it a lot easier by typing a standard letter, printing 120 copies, signing them and then having them mailed out. But I chose not to. Why? Because that takes away the personal nature of the thank you. As great as standardization is for effectiveness, it does not translate to being more personal.

Right after I had mailed out all of the cards I had watched a MSNBC special about President Obama and the White House. While there were many things that I found fascinating during the 2 hour special, one thing that kept sticking with me was the fact that President Obama reads 10 letters from the public every single day. Now, I know that 10 letters doesn’t seem like a lot. Especially seeing that the White House receives over 100,000 emails, 1,000 faxes, and 2,500-3,500 phone calls every single day and over 65,000 physical letters every week (real numbers, not just estimations). A mere 10 letters per day isn’t even a drop in the bucket. But, before looking at it through that lens, stop and think about this for a minute.

The President of the United States is personally reading 70 letters from the American public every week. These letters aren’t being digested for him into a quick one-pager. These letters aren’t being scrubbed (except for security reasons) before the President sees them. Here’s the real win, not only is the President reading these letters every day but he personally responds to about 15 of those letters every week. No, not his secretary, not his Director of Communications, not his personal aide, or an intern, but the President is responding to them personally. Guess what? He hand writes every single response!

Check out this video of the President talking about why it is so important to him to stay in touch with the public:

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Love him, hate him, you have to respect him for it. This is not a political debate but instead a look into a powerful tool that you can and should be employing into your businesses. Whether you’re an account executive, sales representative, manager, Director, VP or further up the structure, are you reaching out like this to your customers? I’m not talking about the obligatory holiday card or “thank you for your business” type stuff. I mean personalized, thought out, responses. How do you think a customer would feel if after calling into customer service or tech support, a few days later they received a hand-written note from that team member? Think you would win them over? Think you would create brand loyalty?  I think your chances are pretty high.

Need some other examples of people who are keeping their ear to the ground and listening to their customers?

*Tony Hsieh of Zappos is a perfect example. Tony is behind the company’s main Twitter account, currently hovering around 1.1 million followers. Tony responds to as many people as possible given the crazy schedule of a CEO of a $1.2 billion company, an in-demand public speaker and someone who has been featured in 2009 in every major business magazine. While I’m not sure whether Zappos reps send hand-written notes, they are empowered to help the customer in any way possible and they believe very strongly in building culture.

*Fritz Henderson. Fritz is the recently minted CEO of General Motors. Fritz has just a few things on his plate if you ask me. But, Fritz actively listens to customers by reading and responding to blogs, monitoring what’s being talked about in the media, and taking time to learn from people like Chris Brogan.  Fritz has even launched an online community called “Tell Fritz”.  Yes, I’m sure that Fritz has a substantially sized PR and communications teams as well as multiple agencies that work with those teams. Fritz also has my friend Chris Barger working social media for GM. But, besides all of those reports that he can call upon, Fritz takes an active role in listening and responding directly to his customers.

Want to listen like Tony, Fritz or many other executives now are?  Start by growing bigger ears!

Imagine how you would feel if Tony, Fritz or the President of the United States responded directly to you whether it be digital or hand-written (more points for the hand-written!). Now take that feeling and imagine how you could provide that same feeling for YOUR customers, business partners or your employees.

It’s not always the flashy things that make the biggest impacts. Something as simple as hand-written notes or a simple message to let them know you’re listening can win you a customer for life.

Are you doing this within your company? Do you know someone who is doing this and you want to recognize them for their efforts?

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Photo by: athena

Do You Build Amazing Culture Like Zappos

Over the past 6 months or so I have become increasingly fascinated with Zappos.com.  First, it was how fast the shipping was.  Order something, go ahead.  See when it comes in and you’ll be amazed too.  Next it was that they have over 400+ employees on Twitter.  Don’t believe me? They have a subdomain set-up dedicated solely to Twitter – twitter.zappos.com.  Once I found out about the Twitter piece, I began to dig more.  The more I continued to learn, the more of a fan I became.

I didn’t start begin becoming a fan because I thought they sold cool products at good prices (which they do!) but because of the importance they placed on culture, both internally with their teams, and externally with their customers.  While in Las Vegas for CES I was given a copy of the Zappos 2008 Culture Book.  No, this is not a management book zapposculture08where Tony Hsieh, CEO, talks about all the great things he’s done or his team has done to grow the company to more than $1 billion dollars in sales in just 9 years.  This is a book that starts by asking a simple question on the first page: “What is culture, anyway?”  To answer this question, Tony sent a company wide email stating:

Our culture is the combination of all of our employees’ ideas about the culture, so we would like to include everyone’s thoughts in this book.  Please email me a few sentences about what the Zappos culture means to you…We will compile everyone’s contributions into the book.

What follows at the end of that email is over 460 pages of employees who responded to Tony’s email with what the culture of Zappos.com and what working for the company means to them.  If you had never read about the 10 core values that the Zappos.com culture is based on, you would quickly learn what they are after reading the first dozen or so responses.  Oh yeah, and the reason why you would know what those core values are is because the employees truly believe in them.  It wasn’t a PR, marketing or branding move.  It’s what these employees live, eat and breath by.  Want to know what they are?

Zappos Core Values

  1. Deliver WOW through service
  2. Embrace and drive change
  3. Create fun and a little weirdness
  4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
  5. Pursue growth and learning
  6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
  7. Build a positive team and family spirit
  8. Do more with less
  9. Be passionate and determined
  10. Be humble

So, how do they go about embodying these core values?  Instead of boring you with example after example of what I’ve read through previous interviews, presentations, or through the book, check out these 2 videos.  The first is a piece done by Nightline which goes inside Zappos.com offices in Las Vegas.  The second video is an interview Tony recently did with Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur.  I highly recommend watching both videos in their entirety.

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Do you actually live by your core values, personal or professional?  What can you learn from what Zappos.com is doing and adapt or create within your organization?  Let’s chat about it in the comments below.

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