Lessons Learned from Zappos

I’m a little late on this. The headline of the day that I should be discussing is Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, but my mind is still focused on the news of Amazon’s purchase of Zappos for a cool $800M. I’ve never made a secret of my admiration of what these guys have accomplished – Zappos and Crispin Porter + Bogusky references have become commonplace at my agency. Now this broke about a month ago and has certainly been heavily discussed, but I’m that guy at the end of every meeting who asks the question, “what are the takeaways?” or “what are our action items?” (you can imagine the look of disdain I get from my wife when I tell her we’ll have to “sync-up” later or take this conversation “offline” – oh what have I become?)

First, I think it’s important to mention, briefly, that Amazon purchased a brand for $800M. They didn’t need the fixed assets or the shipping relationships…they wanted a brand. An $800M brand. A brand defined by uncompromised customer service and a strong internal culture. What’s new about that? Is it really that simple? I believe the answer is yes. What makes Zappos unique is its unwavering commitment to these values. CEO Tony Hsieh put a stake in the ground. For some it pays off, in a BIG way. Here’s what I take away from Zappos’ success:

Obvious alert: Every interaction with your customers matters. If you’re not committed to ensuring every touchpoint is a positive one, you may not only lose a customer, you may find him writing a song about his negative experience with your brand that gets millions of views on YouTube.

You can win with the best tech or product; you can also win by actually caring. Zappos sells shoes. Shoes! But they’re passionate about their business model from the top down. My guess is they’ve passed on some brilliant people that weren’t necessarily passionate about what they were trying to do.

It’s important that the best want to work for you. I’ll be singing songs about the importance of internal culture when I retire. These guys got that and were committed to implementing it.

A strong internal culture is a pre-condition to a true customer service commitment. This one is my favorite. I’ve seen it reaffirmed over and over again, and Zappos is just the current poster child. Starbucks is another huge brand that has always been committed to this idea. How many times have you been shocked at how much those baristas seem to love their job? It’s not because they went through a class teaching them how to smile and interact when they were hired. It’s because Starbucks has created a culture those baristas are proud to be a part of (all employees referred to as “partners”, benefits for part-time, etc.). I’m not going to do the search, but I’ll venture to say there aren’t many profiles on Monster or CareerBuilder that show current employment by Zappos.

Great investments are often immeasurable. Hold back the verbal assaults digital marketers; this just isn’t going to change.

Good people > good processes…EVERYTIME.

Great leaders have to be willing to commit and make decisions consistent with that commitment. Enough said.

This is obvious but rarely emphasized:

Strong culture leads to happy employees who fit into that culture leads to higher productivity, better customer service and better ideas. Not a bad end result.

Am I overstating? Not taking enough variables into account? Being idealistic?