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.

How to create fabulous customer experiences

According to Bain and Co. 95% of firms say they are customer focused, with 80% claiming they deliver a superior customer experience. Asking the same questions of these firm’s customers the survey found that only 8% agreed they received a superior customer experience. (Closing the delivery gap)



So what can you do to make sure you are creating great customer experiences from the point of view of your customers?

1. Think Outside In

Most people will describe their business from the inside – mapping out a service or product for the company employees to understand. If you look at your business from the outside in then you will get into the customer experience – you will see what they see when they interact with any part of your business.

To do this you need to get into your customers mind space, environment and see the world through their eyes. Literally, find ways to live a day in the life of your customer.

When I worked as a brand manager at Birds Eye Walls, many years ago, we had to spend 1 day /evening a month doing something with our target customers – this included attending a knitting circle, helping a mum prepare dinner for her 3 kids and going to bingo. It was cheap, easy to do and generated a wealth of insight into our customers’ world which would have been difficult to gain from purely formal research.

2. Know your customers’ touch points

Touch points are all the moments at which your customer interacts with your company, product or brand. Look at everything with which your customer comes into contact - from your branding, communication channels, vehicles of delivery (face to face, online, mobile), marketing materials, processes (purchasing, invoicing, delivery) communication, follow up, customer service, people, signage, physical space.

Really get into detail here. Focus on the need or desire that the customer is trying to fulfill by using your service and then map the touch points by channel (website, phone, face to face etc) and by activity or tool (brochure, customer helpline, instruction manual, packaging etc).

3. Map the experiences

Once you know where, how and when your customers are engaging with your brand (or the industry that you work in), you need to get an experience of your own business or industry through their eyes. At each touch point ask what are they thinking, feeling, doing, seeing, and hearing.

This should not be an exercise based on what you perceive your customers to experience, it should focus on what they actually experience. So you need to be honest. You need to be rigorous. And you need to involve everyone in your business. Experience the touch points yourself, as a customer not as an employee or business owner. Use qualitative and quantitative data to get the facts in relation to the experience. 

4. Tear up your business model

There is no point in doing a customer experience exercise if nothing is going to change as a result. So it’s time to tear up the existing business model and processes (for a moment at least!) and see where and how you can enhance the experience. 

Ask - What works, what doesn’t? What imperfections have been overlooked? How can we find ways to go beyond expectations and thrill our customers? What would make their day? How can you make the interactions easier, faster, safer and more engaging for them?

You should develop a clear understanding of what each touch point is for (why it is there and what it is meant to do for the customer) and know how the individual parts interact with each other to build up a complete picture of the customer experience.

5. Develop the long term game plan

It is sometimes tempting to focus on one big market event, major launch or relaunch of a product or service and believe that this is sufficient to deliver great on-going customer experiences.

Experience is built up of small moments of wow. It’s the smiley face in your coffee, an unexpected gift, a new widget, a customer care employee that goes the extra mile and memories ignited through photos shared.

Developing a pipeline of moments for your customers throughout your touch points, enables them to discover and experience your brand over time keeping it fresh, engaging and one step ahead of customer needs. 

Image by Edanly

Get your teams working brilliantly!

The success of your business is largely determined by the commitment, productivity and motivation of the people who work for you. Yet it could be that up to 60% of your employees, are underutilized in their roles at work. Creating a culture of excellence is essential to growth and achievement of your long term goals. Here's our thoughts on how to make this happen...

1. Stop demotivating people!
A research study published in Harvard Management Update (January 2006) showed that the majority of employees are very motivated when they start out and after less than a year, motivation drops dramatically. The main reason cited? The management style and overall behaviour of their managers. So as a business leader your job is not to motivate anyone - this is an intrinsic drive individual to each person. All you have to do is make sure you are not demotivating them. So here are some thoughts...

• Set a purpose which inspires people and goes beyond profit and making money
• View your employees as a group of customers
• Tell your employees what they "want" to know not just what they "need" to know
• Address poor performance - there is nothing more demotivating to someone working their pants off than a colleague who does nothing and gets away with it!
• Recognise people for a job well done - praise does not breed complacency it re-inforces success.

2. Be clear about what you want from people
Involve people in defining the sort of business or team they want to be and the targets they want to set for themselves. Focus on outcomes that are essential to meeting your inspiring business purpose and make sure everyone is clear on what these are. Understanding the level of performance required gives people a sense of achievement when they meet it.

Set specific goals in 90-day increments - this enables you to monitor progress and experience wins on a routine basis.

Share, share and share. You can't overcommunicate your expectations.

3. Define repeatable models
Whether looking at your sales and marketing strategy or your core business model, defining repeatable processes which people can understand and work to will improve performance. Many people shy away from processes fearing that these will kill creativity, constrain people and drown the organisation in bureaucracy. Indeed this will happen when the process becomes the end point rather than a clearly defined structure for doing what works best, and when you don't involve people in defining how they do it best.

Think about it. If you have a sales person who consistently over achieves his sales targets by 25%, would you not want to understand how he does this and get others to follow the repeatable steps?An effective process improves each individual’s performance by establishing a common base of best practice for everyone. It also enables greater visibility of activities that work and don’t work and how people are delivering against expectations.

4. Train people
Whenever I work with organisations who want to improve performance I ask the same questions - Do you know what skills and competencies are needed to meet your business purpose? Do your people have the skills, knowledge and competencies to achieve your business purpose? For many the answer is well...not really.

Many organisations don't understand the nature or purpose of training. There is a plethora of research supporting the ROI of training. A US Department of Education survey in 2003 showed very interesting results - increasing an individual’s educational level by 10% increased productivity by 8.6%; increasing an individual’s work hours by 10% increased productivity by 6.0%; and increasing capital stock by 10% increased productivity by 3.2%

Training should be used to enable people to obtain new skills and knowledge, re-enforce existing skills and knowledge, be aligned to the business purpose and be measured.

5. Build resilience through Coaching
Consider ongoing coaching to drive performance. External coaches are often used by high performance organisations to help embed behaviours and attitudes over time. There are various individual and group coaching solutions available which can help to achieve the desired skills and competencies for high performing teams.

Coaching can help push people beyond their limits, expand skills, build confidence, maintain focus and address the real barriers to achievement - e.g. limiting beliefs, motivation and commitment. Coaching enables a person to review what works and what doesn't work for them. When it comes to world-class performance, resilience and self-discipline are just as important as mastery of the technical skills in question.

Discover your business purpose

If you are setting up a business or are already in business and not sure that you have a clear purpose here are some thoughts on how to discover it. We say discover, because the "why you exist" is inherent in your organisation. You may not be aware of it or you may be painfully aware of it but have moved away from your core purpose due to market, competitive or financial pressures.

1. Involve everyone in your business

Often the pressure to make money, find new customers and stay in business can blur the very purpose of your organisation.  The people working at the coal face, who deal with customers or handle your products and services on a day to day basis can have a clearer view of what the business is about. In addition your people are an inextricable part of your current and future business. Involving them in discovering your business purpose ensures alignment, commitment and motivation to deliver it. 

2. Ask some questions

·         What do we stand for?

·         Why do we exist?

·         What change do we want to make? (to people, the market, the planet, society)

·         What problem do we solve?

·         What values inspire the way we work?

·         What do we want to be remembered for?

·         What are we proud of? 

3. Articulate it emotionally

There will be a theme that emerges from asking questions. Write it down. Make it as emotionally engaging as possible.

4. Test it

·         Does it have substance and meaning? 

·         Is it inspiring to those inside the company?

·         Will it be valid 100 years from now?

·         Is it authentic to your company/brand?

5. Make it Live!
 

Many organisations have mission statements (essentially an expression of purpose). But if your mission statement sits on the wall, in the bottom draw of people’s desks, or is plastered on mugs and screen savers without being demonstrated in all that you do, it is simply a platitude. Organisations that really embrace their purpose don’t have to write it on the wall for people to remember. It is part of the very fibre of the organisation, implicit in activities and processes of the company and the behaviour of the people.  To get to this level everyone needs to continually focus on how their decisions, activity and contribution fit with the business purpose.  

You may be wondering - How is purpose different from value proposition? You are right in thinking they are inextricably linked. Your value proposition is the demonstration of the thing that you do best and the benefit that you deliver which solves a customer problem. The purpose of your business is the why behind your value proposition. You can therefore have 2 companies with the same or similar purpose but who deliver their value proposition in very different ways. 

Photo by: Gematrium

How to "package" what you do

I posted the following on a linked in group and had some fantastic feedback from people in the group, so thought I would blog it this week. Packaging your skills, especially when you are multiskilled and help people in a mutlitude of ways can be very tricky. Here are some tips which may help:


1. Start by thinking about "what people get" from working with you. Really spend time focusing on the benefit that you deliver rather than the "what you do". What problem do you help them solve? Ask your clients what they get from working with you. Why do they keep coming back? There is likely to be a consistent idea or theme that keeps coming up.

2. Think about what it is you do best. This is the unique thing about what you deliver, and the way you deliver it that no one else can deliver as effectively. It may be the way you put programmes together, your style of working, your values, your attitudes, other added value you give to your clients.

3. Focus on one idea. It is likely that you deliver lots of benefits, do lots of different things and do lots of things uniquely. There will however be one thought that keeps on coming through which captures the what you get and what you do best. You want to be able to give people a single idea which allows them to download the benefit very quickly. Think big!

As an example a sales development agency in my network (Ruby Star) talks about "ooomph for business" - you can immediately download that this company will help you move forward and grow. In my own business I talk about moving your business "from good to awesome" - I help people who want to be remarkable and make a difference in the world. Another company supporting young people in enterprise, career, personal development is called Striding Out - they help people stride out to success. etc.

Use a thesaurus to explore words that capture your essence. Or ask others to sum up what you deliver best.

4. You may have a number of "packages". It may be that there is not a single idea that captures everything because you have a number of different packages - because you are either targeting a different group of people, with different needs or the benefit you are delivering differs significantly. It is ok to have a number of packages if this is the case, as long as each of these packages has a single idea.

5. Don't try to win everyone. Not everyone is going to love how you package yourself and they don't have to. You want to come up with a proposition which will make the people who share your values, attitudes and world view love what you do.

Build a movement not a message

• Build communication on cultural insights (make your communication inspiring and relevant to what’s important and really happening in people’s lives).

• Focus on a one core creative idea - Bigger, Better, Fewer, Further. Take one big idea and make it stretch.

• Have conversations and make an emotional connection.

• Evoke emotions don't portray them – don’t show people your version of happiness allow them to download it for themselves.

• Tell stories.

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.

If your communication sucks it could be your fault!

When I worked in brand management for Unilever, many years ago, I learnt the importance of a great creative advertising brief. I was taught that there is no such thing as a bad creative agency (my creative contacts will be pleased to hear this), only a bad brief. That if you are not getting the creative campaign you want chances are the fault lies with you and how you have communicated what you want. So as a consequence you learn that writing briefs for any form of communication - be that advertising, web development, PR - takes time, a lot of time.

Indeed when you spend as much on advertising as Unilever does you would be foolish not to invest oodles of time in perfecting the advertising brief, in making sure that you know what you are trying to communicate and to whom. Otherwise you may be throwing a good deal of money behind a good deal of bad advertising.

Regardless of the size of your budget, the discipline of really thinking about what you are trying to achieve; how you want to be perceived; what message you want to give; and importantly putting it down on paper, will improve the impact of your marketing communication immeasurably. It will also make the job of your agency 100% easier so that they can spend time focusing on developing a great campaign for you rather than trying to work out what you want.

So we are sharing our creative briefing template, from our business toolkit, which we use with our clients to help them get the most out of their creative agencies. If you have a budget and a set timing, remember to include this in the briefing process. Download here.