Escaping Mediocrity

So I am one of the lucky bloggers who received an advanced copy of Tony Hseih’s book Delivering Happiness. I talked a bit about it and even gave away a copy here.

No doubt you’ve seen all of the amazing reviews out there. If you haven’t just take a peek at the book’s Amazon page. The glowing kudos are well deserved. It is truly an amazing book with a TON of practical application (that I plan to use my very self!).

And instead of adding my own run down of the incredible content you will find in it, I’ve decided to take a slightly different tack. I know I know. Now there’s a surprise.

What I learned from the book and from my tour of Zappos HQ last fall is that Delivering Happiness is an Inside/Outside Job. And Tony lives it every day.

Inside:

First, even before the idea of Zappos entered his head, Tony understood that he had to be happy on the inside with whatever he created in the world. Having is turn a profit came second. He had to “deliver happiness” to himself before he could deliver it to others.

Second, he had to “deliver happiness” to his team before they could deliver it to anyone else. Even amid a difficult season of layoffs, Tony rose to the challenge of transparent giving and sharing that carried everyone through to the other side.

Third, his team had to “deliver happiness” to each other before they could deliver it to customers. The internal support, community and joie de vivre that exists inside Zappo’s is unlike anything I have ever seen. It makes me want to quit what I do and answer customer service phone call for them. Seriously.

Bonus: Reading the chapter on Zappo’s Culture Book should be mandatory reading for all CEO’s. #justsayin

Outside:

First, his front line call center team is totally focused on creating an extraordinary customer service experience. Did you know that there is no time limit on how long a rep can stay on the phone with a customer? This completely bucks the norm of running a stopwatch on customer service calls. And reps are encouraged to write handwritten notes to people they talk to. Sometimes they even send flowers. Think that approach “delivers happiness” to the person spending the money?

Second, his vendor relations team treats prospective vendors like top clients. Zappos pays to ship in product they are considering and takes the time to set up an attractive display for the vendor’s presentation. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of any other company who forms vendor relationships like that.

Third “If you just focus on making sure that your product or service continually WOWs people, eventually the press will find out about it..” Beats the heck out of traditional PR strategy, don’t you think?

Of course there is much much more to creating a Delivering Happiness kind of culture – but these are among my favorites.

If you want to begin your Inside/Outside job of Delivering Happiness, I highly recommend getting your mitts on the book, get a notebook and a pen so you can jot down notes and start taking happy action without delay.

Here’s where you can get yours: http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 10:42 am and is filed under Uncommon Bookshelf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.