The key to a successful company is the pursuit of happiness. Not just for the owner or the executives, but for employees, customers, suppliers — anyone who comes in contact with the company in any way.
This is the main idea behind author and Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh’s (pronounced “shay”) new book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. At first blush the idea of happiness as the guiding principle of a company is one that seems like a fairy-tale. As customers, we’d love it if the companies we bought from were interested in making us happy above all else. Most of us certainly wish our employers had our happiness in mind when they made decisions, too. And suppliers…perhaps the most mistreated of the groups mentioned above…is there any hope that a company would treat them well. It’s a nice dream, Mr. Hsieh. But eventually we all have to wake up to the fact that this is business and sometimes we don’t get what we want.
The incredible thing is that, at least for Tony Hsieh and Zappos.com, the happiness philosophy is working.
Anyone who’s ever purchased anything from Zappos has experienced the joy of free standard shipping, and perhaps even a free upgrade to overnight shipping (a common occurrence). Those who have had to return something to Zappos know how simple and hassle-free their return policy is (free shipping, again). Got a question or concern about your order? Call the company, send an email, click the chat button on their website, or message them on Twitter. What you’ll get is the chance to speak to some of the nicest, most helpful and fun-loving call center employees in the world. But this is just the start. The mundane, day-to-day of Zappos.
Google Zappos and it doesn’t take long to find countless stories of of customer service that’s above and beyond the already out-of-this-world treatment I mentioned above. You’ll find stories of Zappos sending customers flowers, looking up late-night pizza places for callers, and paying uncommitted employees to quit.
Despite all of these seemingly poor financial decisions Zappos did over a billion dollars in gross sales in 2008, two years earlier than the goal they set for themselves. In 2009 Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s top 25 companies to work for and was purchased by Amazon.com for $1.2 billion.
Zappos is, by all accounts, an exceptional company and Delivering Happiness is the story of how it became so. And a surprising bonus was the fact that it reads more like a novel than a business profile. As I read it, I was struck by the fact that Hsieh kept me wondering what would happen next even though I knew that Zappos succeeds in the end. I was also surprised to learn just how many times Zappos came close to failing before it became successful.
The book follows Tony from his early attempts at entrepreneurship (worm farms and a mail-order custom-button-making service) all the way through college, his first “real” job at Oracle, the founding, growth, and sale of his first company, LinkExchange, and eventually the path that led him to Zappos. As I am a relatively young man still early in my own career, I found it encouraging to hear that Tony was just a regular kid, with all the same quirks (reading the classifieds in the back of Boys’ Life), fears (leave behind a “good job” to strike out on my own?), and struggles (learning to manage a company as it grows) that I often think about. Hearing how he handled and ultimately conquered those fears and concerns gives me hope that I can learn to do the same.
Interspersed throughout the book are interesting and unusual sidebars in which Tony draws business applications from seemingly unrelated areas of his life and interests. He talks about the life and business lessons he learned from playing poker, joining the rave community, and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. While I was not convinced to take up poker or climb mountains, it was nonetheless fascinating to see how nearly all of Tony’s experiences contributed lessons that he eventually was able to apply to his work life. Isn’t that an idea all of us can benefit from?
The later chapters focus on the incredible Zappos culture and core values. In reading this section I found at least a half dozen strategies that most other companies could and should take to heart. Tony talks at great length and detail about how Zappos’ culture came about, how it influences their day-to-day decisions for the company, and how hard everyone at Zappos works to protect it. Zappos doesn’t just hang their values on the wall and then forget about them. They chose their values carefully, and use them to inform the daily decisions they make about how to operate.
Zappos calls itself a service company that happens to sell shoes. Isn’t service ultimately what most people want from a company? We ultimately hire them, buy from them, work for them with the understanding they will do something for us that we either can’t or don’t want to do ourselves. But in pursuit of selling the customer, too many companies lose sight of serving the customer. The fact that the servant approach is working for Zappos is inspiring. To think that the same attitudes might work at other organizations as well and I hope this book will persuade managers and business owners to try some of the things Tony suggests. I may not want to sell shoes, but I know I want to work for a company that acts like Zappos. Wouldn’t you?
Win a copy!
In addition to the free, advance copy of Delivering Happiness, Zappos sent me a second copy to give away here. If you’d like to have it, leave a comment below and tell me which of Zappos core values seems like the most significant to you and why. The deadline for leaving a comment is Saturday, June 12 at midnight. I’ll select the winner at random on Sunday, June 13.
For more information about Delivering Happiness, click here.
If you’re a blogger and are interested in the advance copy giveaway program, click here.
