My wife found Zappos before I did. No surprise, I suppose, given her undying fanaticism for shoes. She told me about it the first time she used it, impressed with their extraordinary customer service, and has been returning periodically ever since. I was caught off guard when the company was brought up as an example in one of our lean management training sessions, and then when I was browsing Amazon one day, I noticed the CEO (Tony Hsieh) was about to release a book. I pre-ordered, and was pleasantly surprised when it arrived in my mailbox in mid-June.
Like Seth Godin’s “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable” (a quote from Seth is actually on the front cover of Delivering Happiness, which I found an interesting coincidence), this is an incredibly inspiring book. If you’re like me and they arrive within a few days of each other, don’t expect to get too much work done around the house for the next week or so.
The first third of the book is a chronology of Tony and Zappos, from his graduation to the startup of Zappos, through its many trials and tribulations, including its survival of the “internet bubble”, and eventually extraordinary success. This success, Tony argues, is mainly due to trying to satisfy all their stakeholders, starting first and foremost with their customers. He suggests that it wasn’t until they put all their focus into ensuring their customers, employees, and vendors were all “happy”, that this success came about. Many a time the company was on the edge of folding, mere days away from Chapter 11, when Tony would invest another sum of his own money into the company – selling his San Francisco condo in the final round. The story is one of perseverance, and an undying devotion to doing what needed to be done by a small core group (all of whom would definitely be considered “linchpins” by Seth Godin), who not only worked together, but also spent a lot of their off-work hours together as well (in fact, at one point in the book, because salaries had to be slashed so much, Tony put a number of the employees up in his condo).
The second third of the book is really about the company’s culture. Tony talks in-depth about each of the company’s ten value statements, broken up frequently by stories from Zappos employees, both new and those that were there from the beginning. Anyone that’s been thinking about their own organization’s culture, and/or studying Zappos’, will find this section of the book an invaluable resource.
The final leg of the journey Tony takes us on (“Profits Passion & Purpose”) is dedicated to the sale of Zappos to Amazon, including the entire text of Tony’s email to all his staff as soon as he was legally allowed to. One of my favorite moments in the book was at the “all hands” meeting after the sale, where Tony thanked everyone for all their hard work, explained the transaction to everyone, answered everyone’s questions, and presented everyone with an Amazon Kindle (purchased by Tony himself) as an acknowledgement for their long trek and hard work.
The book is inspirational, engaging, and immensely humorous. Its inspirational messages, in fact, make this book my recommendation for “the business book to read” this year. This book will strike a chord with most anyone in a customer service business – which nowadays includes virtually everyone.
