This is an excellent talk by Tony Hsieh at Stanford Business School from 2010 which discusses Zappos’ unique approach to marketing and branding.
Key Takeaways from the talk:
-If you visit Las Vegas, Zappos will pick you up from the airport, give you a tour of their headquarters, and drop you off at your hotel afterwards.
-Hsieh learned at Link Exchange that if you hire the wrong people, it can lead to a very poor company culture.
-The goal was to build a brand around providing the very best customer service and customer experience, which is not just limited to shoes.
-Zappos’ philosophy was to take the money that would have been spent on advertising and put it into customer service so the customers do the marketing through word of mouth.
-The number one driver of growth has been repeat customers and word of mouth.
-They focus on how to “Wow” customers with things like surprise overnight delivery.
-Zappos offers a 365 day return policy.
-Zappos puts their phone number on the top of every page of their website.
-The telephone is one of the best branding devices because you have the customers undivided attention for several minutes.
-Zappos doesn’t up sell on the phone and doesn’t use call scripts.
-They don’t try to get the customer off the phone as quickly as possible. The longest customer call was over 8 hours.
-They found that almost every customer calls at least once during their lifetime.
-Company culture is the number one priority of the company.
-Every employee goes through call center training and is on the phone for two weeks.
-50% of employee performance reviews is based on company culture.
-They are willing to hire or fire people based on their ten core values.
-They won’t hire someone who didn’t treat the shuttle driver well.
-Zappos has a monthly newsletter where employees can ask any question.
-Companies from Good to Great have a higher purpose than making money.
-What are you so passionate about that you would choose to do it even if you knew you wouldn’t make any money for 10 years? Do that.
