Improve customer service by getting back to basics
September 15, 2010Is Nick Clegg about to learn a big lesson about leadership and partnerships?
September 18, 2010I read this book recently and it blew me away. It has taken the US by storm and made it to Number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. If you are at all interested in building better relationships with your customers, better service or just making your workplace a better place then this is a must read.
It is the story of Tony Hsieh (pronounced ‘Shay’) his life to date, the success of Zappos.com and his quest to use happiness as a central principle of running his business.
Now, some people might say that all sounds a little touchy feely and that it’s not for them. However, I would say that Tony and his team do use happiness as a central pillar in their business and they grew Zappos from zero to $1billion in sales in just ten years. That in itself demands respect and attention and I learnt a huge amount from reading the book. Some of the core things that I discovered in the book is how they:
- Have made customer service the core and the responsibility of the entire company and haven’t limited it to a department.
- Found that company culture is their number one priority and the thing that drives performance.
- Apply research from the science, and specifically the science of happiness, to running a business.
and why they
- Offer to pay every newly trained employee $2000 to quit.
I couldn’t recommend this book enough. It is available on Amazon but, if you are in the UK, you’ll have to wait til the end of the month to get it. However, for UK readers if you want to get a hardback copy there are other sellers on Amazon (UK site) that are selling hardback versions. That’s how I got mine.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
4 Comments
Delivering Happiness http://bit.ly/bFhdoR Lessons for us all in this book. Great and inspiring read
Adrian,
Wow! What caught my eye most was the $2000 to quit. All the rest is powerful and sounds like it’s a great strategy to their continuing success but now I’m really interested in reading this book.
Thanks so much for bringing it up on here.
Well, we’ll see if this comment works. 🙂
Hi Eric,
It’s a strategy that I have never heard of being used before but it certainly does measure how committed the employees are to working at Zappos. They’re recruiting for a cause rather than just recruiting people that want to collect a salary. Powerful stuff when we realise that it is a really successful way of finding the right people to drive the business forward.
Go, get the book, it’s definitely worth a read.
Adrian
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