The freedom and autonomy we give to our employees isn’t frivolous. It’s purposeful. We want everyone here to know that they are allowed to use their best judgment, to do things on their own without asking permission.
That’s not to say that we don’t have any rules here. We have guidelines. I mean, you don’t let cars drive on the left side of the road, right? There are speed limits. There are definitely guidelines in life that help everyone enjoy their freedom without getting run off the road and wrecking each other’s cars. And those guidelines change and shift and adapt over time, for sure. When I started on the phones fourteen years ago, there was a slight bit more freedom to give stuff away, or the feeling of, “Man, if they have the slightest issue, let’s comp those shoes!” Our volume is so big now, we’ve had to pull back slightly on that one particular freedom we give to our CLT workers. But the last time I was back on the phones for a couple of hours, I gave a lady a pair of shoes during one conversation because it was the right thing to do. It’s just that not every customer service call warrants that big of a response. A coupon or a simple replacement-exchange, or even just some kindness and understanding, goes a long way. But I can’t think of a single time or a single way in which we’ve pulled back our employees’ freedom to make choices and “do the right thing” themselves in any major way, in all these years.
As long as we stick to our core values and keep service first in everything we do, everything works out. Truly. Everything. Even if something goes wrong in the short term, in the long run? This formula works, and it works really well.
Kelly Smith
Experimental Marketing and Brand Strategy
I once got to hold a human brain! It was one of the strangest and coolest experiences I’ve ever had.
I like to think of responsibility as “response-ability”—the ability to respond. We give each of our employees true decision-making power, allowing them to lead with their hearts and show empathy by engaging with customers as trusted representatives of our company. There truly is no script. When it comes to making the right decision, we encourage our employees to go with their gut and to always “do the right thing,” without having to ask a manager or go through some committee before they do it. On the phones, that means giving customers free or reduced-price merchandise to make up for unforeseen errors, or sometimes just to put smiles on their faces. It could mean sending cards or flowers to customers who need a pick-me-up. We budget for all of that because we know it’s important. Not just because it feels good and makes our customers feel good, but because it’s good for the business.
A little empathy goes a long way, and our customer loyalty numbers bear that out. We track comments across all sorts of social media to measure Zappos promotors versus detractors online, and while our industry usually gets around 60 percent positive responses, we routinely score around 90 percent positive. We have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, too. And in our own internal surveys, we routinely find that more than 98 percent of customers “feel that the Zappos family member you interacted with genuinely cares about you and your reason for contacting us.”
Genuinely! We look for employees who genuinely care, who want to make the world a better place—and providing positive customer experiences actually does make the world a better place.
Somewhere along the line, customer service departments developed a bad reputation. In my opinion, far too many companies made the poor decision to chase short-term profits instead of the long-term gains of treating customers the way they themselves would want to be treated. And the result is that people all across America are ready for a fight every time they have to pick up a phone and ask for help, even when they paid good money for something and the company on the other end of the line is clearly at fault for not delivering what was promised. (Is there anyone who hasn’t had a lousy customer service experience with the cable company, or an airline, or some other big industry we depend on to deliver services we need to function at home and at work?)
A lousy customer service call can ruin your whole day. We all know that.
Lauren Pappert
Customer Loyalty Team
I once got a call from a customer who mentioned he was a comedian performing in Washington, DC. Before jumping into the order, I asked him, “Are you funny?” I was trying to be the lovable heckler–type but I don’t think my delivery was on point. He laughed it off and said he hoped he was funny because he was going onstage soon. As he placed his order, I soon realized he was a famous comedian who has starred in many of my favorite movies. Awkward! Turned out he couldn’t get an order delivered to the hotel in time for his Saturday show, so he wanted to cancel the order. In true Zappos fashion, I let him know we would find a way to get them there. We searched high and low and found the exact same shoe available on Amazon with Saturday delivery. He was ecstatic and placed the order online before we even hung up! Zappos may not have delivered his shoes, but we delivered a lighthearted conversation, a solution focused around his needs, and happiness.
I’m hoping he put on a really good show that night and made a whole lot of people smile—and I love imagining that maybe our exchange played a tiny role in that.
But a great customer service call? With someone who genuinely cares and who’s empowered to take care of you the way you ought to be taken care of? That can make your whole day better. And people who are treated right usually let their family and friends know about it. They come back as repeat customers, in a big way. (That’s not conjecture. We’ve measured it. In the next chapter, our COO will explain just how big that return on investment is.) And they often find themselves paying it forward.
No joke: Kindness is contagious!
Check out these stories (in the blue boxes) from actual calls with Zappos customers to get a sense of what I mean.
Hollie Delaney
Chief Human Resources Officer
I’m a huge Vegas Golden Knights hockey fan! I go to all the home games and lots of the away games.
It all goes back to trust. At Zappos, we manage the 95 percent of people who are going to do things right. In other companies, HR is all about managing the 5 percent who are going to do things wrong, and making sure you’re covered for that 5 percent, which means you’re automatically assuming that basically everyone is going to do things wrong.
It’s a totally different approach here. We actually trust that people are going to do the right thing. We start out assuming positive intent, which means we don’t have to put many rules and policies in place at all. And guess what? I don’t see any more issues or any more complaints here than I did in a company with all sorts of traditional rules in place. I’ve done the metrics to compare, like “How many complaints have I gotten?” or “How many issues did I have in the old world of HR versus how many issues have I had here?” And there are actually fewer issues here than when we had all of the policies and procedures in place in my old jobs.
Jeff Espersen