5 things we can learn about WOW from Zappos

Meeting customer expectations is not enough. You need to work out how to WOW your customers, ensure you exceed their expectations and anticipate their needs before they even know they have them!

And you need to find ways to do this consistently over time.


One of the most exciting examples of WOW customer experience is Zappos (the biggest online shoe retailer – now diversified into clothing and handbags - with turnover in excess of $1bn). This is what we can learn...
 

1. Create purpose

At the heart of Zappos’ purpose is creating happiness (for both employees and customers). But this is not just printed on mousemats and coffee mugs, gathering dust on people’s desks. It is at the heart of everything that the company does, from the people it recruits to the way the service is delivered.

Chief Exec Tony Hsieh views Zappos as a service company that just happened to sell shoes. Happiness at Zappos is exemplified by free delivery, 365 day free returns policy, employees who are empowered to do whatever it takes to keep their customers happy, a culture that embraces fun and quirkiness and a happiness movement with website, books and blogs.

Delighting customers even extends to directing them to competitors if they don’t have the size, colour or style of shoe they are looking for. Why do they do all this? Because they understand that delighting people, even if you don’t make the sale today, will make people come back to you again and again in the long run. And when people are happy they tell their friends and family.

2. Really live your values
As soon as employees join the company they are involved in projects to make the core values at Zappos live. Leaders demonstrate, talk about, and structure activities that enliven values like “be humble”, “create fun and a little weirdness,” and “do more with less.”

Below are the 10 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

Every year Zappos publishes its “Culture Book” in which all employees are encouraged to write about what the culture means to them. Tony Hsieh says of culture “I can’t force the culture to happen; so part of people's job description is to display and inspire the culture.”

3. Pay people to leave!
Zappos understand that at the heart of great customer experience are employees who are motivated and committed to wowing their customers – whatever it takes. So along with the expected interview processes for skills profiling and culture fit, Zappos have another wonderfully quirky strategy.

They encourage their employees to leave. During the induction and training period (which is 4 weeks long) employees are told "If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you've worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus." Their thinking is that they want people who really, really want to work for Zappos because committed employees will deliver better customer experience.

Some people take up the offer. The rest stay and become Zappos fanatics.

4. Get the metrics right

Go to any online customer service department and you will hear talk of minimizing call times and 1st time resolution.

At Zappos call centre time and resolution is not measured. There are no scripts. Call center members do not up-sell. Zappos boasts the longest customer service call of 8hrs 23 mins! Whether this demonstrates that something is broken or that this was a particularly difficult customer is not clear. But it does demonstrate the ethos of whatever it takes to solve the customer problem.

The call metrics focus on whether customer interactions have the potential to generate more revenue for Zappos instead of how much it’s costing them. The ratings are intangible (unlike call time) so it forces employees to focus purely on customer happiness. They measure:

• How likely would you be to recommend Zappos to a friend or family member?
• How likely would you be to request the person you spoke with again?
• How likely would you be to recommend this person to a friend or coworker?
• If you owned your own business, how likely would you be to try to hire the person you spoke with?

What Zappos measures is customer happiness, and their success is demonstrated by repeat purchases (which make up 75% of daily orders) and repeat customer spend (2.5x more than 1st time buyers).

The point is not that every customer service company should have these metrics. It is more that every company should have the right metrics which measure what’s important. And what’s important has to be related to the purpose that the company is trying to fulfill for its customers.  

5. Deliver what you say you will

Zappos delivery is underpinned by a business model and associated processes which enable it to delight customers.

For instance, free shipping listed as two-to-three days is frequently upgraded to overnight. This service has to be backed by clearly defined, extremely efficient processes. To do this, Zappos trains employees in working capital principles so that they understand the impact on overall profitability. The company also seeks to eliminate paper and manual processing by working closely with suppliers to automate across the source-to-payment process. Underpinning this is a principle never to outsource their competitive advantage and to treat vendors well so that they can form long term partnerships.

Warning: If your delivery processes are broken, if communication between employees and departments is broken don't try to wow your customers. (Some companies do this a bit back to front throwing in a coupon or freebie initiative to make up for a broken service). The fundamental priority should always be to deliver what you say you will, when you say you will. So make sure you have the processes, foundations and systems to deliver before you try to wow anyone.

Get stuff done - real life tips

Do you have an ever growing to do list? Are you managing mutiple tasks at the same time and seem to take a long time to get everything done? Dr Edward Hallowell a physchiatrist and author identified a condition called "attention deficit trait". A workplace phemomenon that leads to distractibility, restlessness and impulsiveness caused by having too many tasks to do. 49% of us are interrupted by distractions every 15 minutes resulting in a third of us not being able to get our work done and 1/4 of us not being able to think creatively.

Over the past few months I decided to put into practice some new strategies, based on sound psychology and coaching principles to improve my productivity, creativity and passion for work. Here are some of the things that have worked for me which may help you too.

1. Focus on why
When you link daily tasks to something meaningful you are more motivated to make it work. Think about the purpose of your organisation or your role in the organisation. Think about what that task contributes to your purpose. If the task does not make a difference then don't do it. If it does than think about it in the context of achieving your goal. That report you are writing, that meeting you need to arrange, that data you need to mine will take on more momentum if it is seen as an important part of making your goals happen.

2. Do what's important
You can spend your whole day engaged in busy activity without actually moving forward. You need to find a way of doing the most important. The problem, when you priorisite (as I have always found) everything can seem important and most people will end up with 25 priorities - just another to do list with a different name.

So I started putting tasks into piles -  MUST DO and NICE TO DO - and really challenging myself to ask how essential each task was in achieving my goal. When I really put the musts down on paper it helped me to gain clarity on what I needed to do - and there were far fewer musts than nice to do's. Interestingly I started getting through more of the important tasks and was able to move onto more of the nice to do's. I was also able to let go of tasks that really contributed little to the overall outcome.

3. Eat a frog for Breakfast
This comes from a Mark Twain quote. If you have to eat a frog (which may be a daunting thought for many!), have it for breakfast and the rest of the day will be free from worry. Effectively you need to do the biggest/ the scariest/ the least liked task first otherwise you will worry and procrastinate over it all day. In my own experience, though tricky to stick to, its incredibly effective. The additional benefit is that those big scary tasks, when done straight away become less onerous, less daunting and far easier.  

4. Find a place to put mental distractions
Distractions are inevitable. Whilst you can shut yourself away from colleagues and family to get stuff done, you can't get away from your own mind that easily. So here's an exercise that can help.

Think about all the distractions that you want to put aside for a period of time to get something done. Focus on them intently. Now think about where you want to put these distractions. It could be anything - a box, a room, a basket, another country! When you have a place focus on what that place looks like - what colour, shape, sound, temperature it has. When you have a clear image you can mentally move the distractions to this place. When you are ready to deal with the distractions you can let them out.

5. Keep track
Keep a log of everything you do and what distracts you. Whilst you may have a timesheet if client facing or feel you have a grasp on what you work in the week, you'll be amazed at what is really going on when you honestly track it.

6. Take a break
This may seem counter intuitive, but there is only so much our brains can handle when immersed in a project. Taking 5 minutes to do something else, change your perspective, get fresh air, go for a walk can give you much needed perspective and renewed momentum to get the task done.

7. Allocate realistic time
Often we try to snatch time inbetween meetings, late at night or whilst doing other things. We block time out for meetings but few of us schedule time for actual work and stick to it. If you have something important to do block time out in your diary. Treat it like a real meeting  - with yourself. Then only focus on the task in hand.

8. Work out how you personally get things done
There is lots of advice out there about getting stuff done. Often you have the best answers yourself. Neurolinguistic programming is all about modelling the stuctures of behaviour. It's about finding out how you uniquely do things and then repeating that model. Here's an exercise...

Think back to a time when you were the best you could be at getting a task done. Think about how you got the task done. What happened to make you start the task; what happened when you worked on the task; how did you finish the task; what helped you and hindered you in getting the task done? When you understand what it is you personally and uniquely do to get something done then you can apply it to any new task. Here's my personal model for getting big stuff done (whether I have a week or a day to do it this is what works best for me)...

• Focus on why I am doing it - the benefit
• Allocate time to start
• Do some research - get inspired
• Write down ideas
• Do something else
• Come back to the task and get 25% of it done - doing more research and ideas
• Do something else 
• Come back to the task and get 95% complete - remind myself why I am doing it
• Do something else
• Come back to the task - check the 95%, complete the 5% and check it.  

What you can learn from the best pub in England

This weekend I went out to a fairly busy, fairly well respected Bar in Didsbury. As I stood tapping my fingers on the ever so tacky (and I mean sticky rather than stylistically compromised) glass strewn bar, waiting to catch the attention of the snooty staff, who were clearly engrossed in some vital and earth shattering conversation, a few poignant questions popped into my head.

Why do I feel like an irritation to the staff? Why am I about to give some hard earned cash to a bunch of people who couldn’t care less and would rather I left? Why do people not care about doing the best they can?

I remember working in a pub, which was the runner up in the Times best pub in England competition in 1991. It was not in an exceptional location, it produced standard pub grub (though of good quality), it had no theme, no gimmicks, no celebrity endorsement. Yet Thursday to Saturday nights it would be 10 deep at the bar, and morning coffee, lunch times and dinner were always packed out.

The place was quite simply a well oiled, well managed, customer focused machine. It was run by a tyrant (well 2 actually – husband and wife combo). They had exacting standards and they insisted they be met. The customer came first no matter what else you did. The bar was exceptionally clean – if there were no customers you were expected to clean, polish, tidy and rearrange whatever you could find. They only employed people who met their exacting standards – they created a desirable place to work – people actually wanted to work here (for £1.95 an hour no less!). They protected their good customers from bad customers – if you didn’t behave appropriately you didn’t get back in, no matter how much money you spent.

You were told how they wanted things done and if you didn’t do it in the right way you knew about it.They were not afraid to challenge, to push people, to demand more and more in order to be the best. And they treated everyone like this – it was harsh but fair.

You don’t always appreciate this at the age of 19 but you certainly learn from it.

This is where I learned to be the best beer pourer, hostess and salesperson, and importantly learnt the value of knowing what you do best and caring enough to ensure you deliver it consistently and exceptionally well, every time.