Customer Service lessons from the Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh…
Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, has become famous for creating a company culture that is centred on a great customer experience.
Tony was interviewed over at the Harvard Business Review and we’ve nabbed the four learnings that Tony parted with:
1. Company culture stems from intrinsic factors and needs to be established early rather than reverse-engineered.
2. Customer service excellence starts from a commitment from the top and must be “lived into” by every employee.
3. Core values are underutilized tools. Set them collectively, authentically, and make them committable.
4. Ultimately it’s all about the people and their own belief in themselves.
One of the common issues we face at Beyond Philosophy is when we are contacted by an employee at organisation who is keen to embrace change and promote the Customer Experience agenda within their organisation. We love to hear from this enthusiastic bunch, however we often hear that “senior management” needs to sign off the work and is the barrier to starting to build a great customer experience. We don’t see this as a barrier at all. We’re big believers that although change can be initiated anywhere in an organisation, it must be pushed through, committed to and believed in by the people at the top. Without this commitment there is no responsibility for change, no support to help build the foundations and no-one to lead the organisation from a naive to natural behaviour when they interact with customers.
It often takes an inspiring CEO, or a switched on CMO to really embrace change and move organisations into an area where they can create great customer experiences. Read a more in-depth interview with Tony over at the original Havard Business Review post here
By COLIN SHAW | Published: JULY 21, 2010