Introduction: Zappos is a B2C website selling shoes in the United States. Since its establishment in 1999, it has grown into the largest website selling shoes online, surpassing Amazon. It is worth noting that the founder of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, and the co-founder of YouTube Like Chen Shijun, he is also Chinese.
Zappos founder Tony Hsieh (left) discusses the secret to success
At the age of 24, Hsieh sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. Shortly thereafter, he took a stake in a small online shoe-selling company with annual sales of just $1.6 million—the predecessor of Zappos—and later became the site’s CEO. Zappos has grown at an astonishing rate, largely due to its unparalleled focus on customers. In fact, in less than 10 years, Zappos exceeded $1 billion in annual sales and was later acquired by Amazon.com. During those days, Zappos was known by many as one of the most admired companies in the world. I recently interviewed Tony Hsieh to talk about his exceptional focus on customer service and company culture, and his success.
What’s the reason for Zappos’ rapid growth?
Zappos strives for the best customer service. We started by selling shoes online but have now expanded to include handbags, clothing, and even household items like pots and pans. We hope that in 10 years, Zappos will no longer be a website that sells shoes, but will be a representative of the best customer service.
How do you achieve this for an online store?
95% of our orders come from Zappos. It's hard to get a hold of customer service on most websites, but we're the opposite because we genuinely want to talk to our customers. Our 1-800 customer service line is displayed in the upper left corner of every page on our website and is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We find that the average customer will contact us at some point, and we take these interactions extremely seriously. When people call our sales center, our sales representatives don't follow a script or try to sell. Their work is judged on whether they go all out to serve customers and provide personalized service. , and established an emotional connection with customers. For example, if we don't have the product a customer needs, we will sincerely recommend at least three competitor websites and guide customers to these websites to find the shoes they need. While this approach may seem counterintuitive in the short term, it fully reflects our commitment to earning accolades with customer service.
For most people, buying shoes online can be quite intimidating because they are not sure whether the shoes will fit and look good with the outfits they plan to wear them with. To address both concerns, we offer free shipping and returns. Customers can return items to us any day of the year, 365 days a year, and our sales center operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The same goes for our warehouse, which isn't the most efficient way to manage a warehouse but gets shoes to customers as quickly as possible.
All of these practices come with significant costs, but we fundamentally view them as marketing investments. We redirect most of our advertising investment to improve customer experience, and then let customers "advertise" for us. Historically, our biggest growth driver has been word of mouth from our customers.
What are your main areas of focus as CEO?
Corporate culture. We are committed to ensuring a corporate culture focused on customer service. If the culture is right, a lot of truly amazing things will happen.
Our recruitment process is different from most companies. We have two different interview methods, first a standard test of the candidate's skills, experience and teamwork, and then individual interviews with HR to see if they are a cultural fit. Applicants must pass these two tests before they can be hired. We've turned down many talented people, even though we knew they would have an immediate impact on the company's revenue if we hired them. Since culture is our top priority, we would rather forgo short-term gains or revenue growth to ensure we have the best culture possible. In fact, after onboarding, we give $2,000 to some of our new employees who choose to leave Zappos, and those who stay fit our culture.
We have ten core values, and when we hire employees, we make sure they share similar values. For example, one of our values is humility. If a candidate is arrogant, even if he has excellent talents and can contribute a lot to the company's revenue growth, we will not hire him because he is not a good fit for our corporate culture.
Fundamentally, I think it doesn’t matter what the corporate culture is for any company. What really matters is that the culture should be solid enough and followed by the entire company.
What is the secret to success as an entrepreneur?
It starts with having insights that are meaningful to both employees and customers. For Zappos, it's customer service. You must also be passionate about your career. I believe the goal shouldn't just be to make money, but to figure out what you want to do, even if you're not going to make any money doing it. Companies will always have tough times, but if you are passionate about your company, it will help you get through the tough times.
Your enthusiasm is truly felt by employees, customers, and others. Your first goal should not be money, but something meaningful that you are passionate about, and then money. I always like to say, chase dreams, not money, which is why I wrote Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. In this book, I share many of the lessons I've learned in the hope that everyone can make the workplace a more enjoyable place that generates financial benefits.
What do you do when you hit a wall?
Looking back, many setbacks are actually good things. If you can't get financing, then this will force you to fend for yourself and find creative ways to keep your company afloat. At first we spent heavily on advertising to get the company's name out there, but when we couldn't get financing we realized the company couldn't afford it, so we focused on thinking of better ways to generate more repeat customers instead. By advertising. This makes us committed to providing the best customer service.