ZAPPOS EXPERIENCE: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow - Hardcover

Michelli

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071749586 ISBN 13: 9780071749589

Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education Ltd, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Make every day a WOW day for your customers, your staff-and your bottom line!

"In your hands is a manifesto on how Zappos completely blew away the standard of delivering a consumer-centric experience and a revolutionary company culture. Joseph helps us all understand how to achieve a little more of that Zappos magic."
-Eric Ryan, method cofounder and person against dirty

"If you're looking for an inspirational path for creating a likable, trustworthy, and wow! organization, you've hit the mother lode."
-Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist of Apple and author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

"This book provides a roadmap to a successful business by taking inspiration and examples from one of the most innovative, progressive companies of our time. Don't just read it; use it."
-Tony Hawk, professional skateboarder and author of HAWK -Occupation: Skateboarder and How Did I Get Here? The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO

"Thanks to Joseph Michelli, you can learn exactly how Zappos hit it big and how you can too. By using the five principles Joseph has distilled, you can supercharge your efforts and start down the path to legendary success."
-Mark Sanborn, President, Sanborn & Associates, Inc., and author of The Fred Factor and You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader

"Often, business owners look at media darlings like Zappos with their mouths agape, full of awe but unable to take action. For those eager to do more than watch, Joseph Michelli deconstructs the Zappos story and makes it attainable."
-Seth Godin, author of Poke the Box

About the Book:

ZAPPOS. The name has come to stand for a new standard of customer service, an amazing online shopping experience, a great place to work, and the most impressive transformational business success story of our time. Simply put, Zappos is revolutionizing business and changing lives.

Now, Joseph Michelli, author of the internationally bestselling business books Prescription for Excellence and The Starbucks Experience, explains how Zappos does it-and how you can do it in your industry.

The Zappos Experience takes you through-and beyond-the playful, offbeat company culture Zappos has become famous for. Michelli reveals what occurs behind the scenes at Zappos, showing how employees at all levels operate on a day-today basis while providing the "big picture" leadership methods that have earned the company $1 billion in annual gross sales during the last ten years-with almost no advertising. Michelli breaks the approach down into five key elements:

• Serve a Perfect Fit-create bedrock company values
• Make it Effortlessly Swift-deliver a customer experience with ease
• Step into the Personal-connect with customers authentically
• S T R E T C H-grow people and products
• Play to Win-play hard, work harder

When you enhance the customer experience, increase employee engagement, and create an energetic culture, you can't help but succeed. Zappos has woven these five key components into a seamless strategy that's the envy of business leaders.

Now that strategy is yours.

With The Zappos Experience, Joseph Michelli delivers a package for instant success right to your doorstep. All you have to do is open and use it.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D., is an internationally sought-after speaker and business consultant whose clients include Bridgestone Firestone, Nokia, The Hartford Insurance Group, and UCLA Health System. The author of the bestselling The Starbucks Experience, he has appeared on The Glenn Beck Show and CNBC's On the Money.

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THE ZAPPOS EXPERIENCE

5 PRINCIPLES TO INSPIRE, ENGAGE, AND WOWBy JOSEPH A. MICHELLI

McGraw-Hill

Copyright © 2012 Joseph A. Michelli
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-174958-9

Contents

Chapter One

ZAPPOS? WHAT IS ZAPPOS?

I saw Winnie the Pooh running through the parking lot. Yes, I work at Zappos!

—@dylanbathurst (Twitter post)

Unconventional. That's one of the first words people use to describe Zappos. Even the name Zappos befits the unconventional character of one of the most transformational business success stories of our time.

In keeping with what you will learn about the unorthodox nature of Zappos, let's get started in a manner that's somewhat different from the beginning of your average business book. I'll quiz you! Fear not; the quiz consists of only one question, there will be no grading, and I have a hunch you'll do well. Please choose the one response that reflects the best answer:

Zappos is ...

A. an Internet company that began by offering shoes online and went from virtually no sales to $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales over a 10-year period, despite minimal advertising.

B. a purveyor of a wide array of online merchandise, including clothing accessories, home furnishings, and Halloween costumes.

C. the place where newly oriented employees are offered money to leave if they perceive themselves as not fitting the culture.

D. a company where being a little "weird" is part of the core values.

E. a work environment in which every person can offer descriptions of the company's culture that are published each year in an uncensored Culture Book.

F. one of Fortune magazine's top 10 best places to work.

G. the site of numerous spontaneous employee parades and other offbeat, playful activities.

H. a place where employees are offered classes on using Twitter.

I. a leader in social networking strategy and execution.

J. an obsession.

K. a standard-bearer for authentic and vibrant, albeit somewhat wacky, corporate culture.

L. a little start-up company that was sold to Amazon.com for approximately $1 billion.

M. a way of life.

N. a place where "happy hours" occur all day long and where shots of Gray Goose vodka are essential to celebration.

O. a company that helps other business leaders drive a service culture into their organizations through its Zappos Insights program.

P. a movement.

Q. the creator of more than 50,000 online product videos annually.

R. an innovator of enriched website "user" experiences.

S. actually ten companies in one, including training, fulfillment, and website divisions.

T. a business where the CEO makes $36,000 per year, wears jeans to work, sits in a centrally located cubicle, and has well over a million Twitter followers (@zappos).

U. a deliverer of happiness.

V. a company whose made-up name comes from a variation of the Spanish word for shoes: zappatos.

W. a place where the Headquarters and Fulfillment Centers host regular and highly sought-after tours.

X. a location where a call-center employee's longest inbound call lasted more than eight hours.

Y. a business you must study in order to achieve skyrocketing sales, an enviable culture, and a leadership position in customer service.

Z. all of the above, and so much more.

Of course the correct answer is Z, which stands for the very different and very much talked about Zappos.

Zappos is certainly different in every good sense of the word. Whether you are a customer who has been "wowed" by lightning-fast service and amazingly personal care, a social marketer who is benchmarking Zappos innovations, a business leader who wants to change a negative or sluggish workplace, or simply a student of powerful social forces, this book will offer you a chance to learn from a company that is changing the paradigm for how to deliver excellent service by embedding that service into its culture. Professor Peter Jackson, author of Maps of Meaning: An Introduction to Cultural Geography, wrote, "Cultures are maps of meaning through which the world is intelligible." At Zappos, leadership has offered a "map of meaning" that produces success powered by a culture of service.

BUZZ AND SUBSTANCE

It seems as if Zappos is popping up everywhere: articles in Fast Company, Inc., Harvard Business Review, and Psychology Today and coverage on television programs like CBS Sunday Morning and Nightline. But is Zappos really worthy of your time and study? Are the company's lessons applicable to individuals whose businesses and lives go beyond online product sales?

Having studied, consulted with, and written about amazing businesses like Starbucks, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, Washington, I daresay that the Zappos lessons are applicable not only to every business sector, but also to the personal and professional development of people at every level of an organization.

While the media image of Zappos often portrays an over-the-top playful culture that might not seem applicable in your industry or workplace, I challenge you to temporarily suspend your cynicism and explore the possibility that Zappos is neither too casual nor too weird. In fact, employees at Zappos demonstrate a commitment to hard work and excellence that the best companies in the most conservative of industries would envy. Style differences may exist; however, the underlying principles that drive success at Zappos will improve both your company and you. But before you accept my premise, let's make sure that we all understand how Zappos became the company it is today. Through the process of establishing a shared overview, I'll foreshadow some of the lessons any company can take away from spending time with Zappos.

JUST A SLIVER OF PERSPECTIVE

I am not here to give a comprehensive history of Zappos. In fact, no one can tell that story better than Tony Hsieh, the company's CEO. Fortunately, Tony has done a spectacular job of offering personal insights on the evolution of Zappos in his book titled Delivering Happiness. While I assume that many of you have picked up that book or will do so, I want to make sure that we all start with a basic understanding of several key elements that have contributed to the Zappos we are examining today. The Zappos Milestones sidebar provides a more detailed timeline of significant events in the history of Zappos.

The big idea for Zappos came from little more than the observation of a frustrated consumer. Nick Swinmurn could not find a pair of size 11 Tan Airwalk Chukka boots despite a day of searching across San Francisco. This prompted Nick to wonder whether limited retail shoe selections could be expanded by an online strategy. He posed that very question to Venture Frogs, an investment company formed by college friends Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin. But would Venture Frogs invest in Nick's idea of selling shoes online? Who would buy shoes at an Internet store without trying them on? The prevailing wisdom was that products like kitty litter (www.pets.com) would sell well online, but shoes?

Product and advertising notwithstanding, Zappos thrived, while www.pets.com became one of the premier examples of the "dot-gone" era. Despite buying a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education Ltd
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071749586
• ISBN 13: 9780071749589
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 324
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland