"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared" -BUDDHA
I've listened Tony during LeWeb conference in 2009 in Paris.
I'm not american and my english is bad. I know that. I apologize for that. The funny thing is Tony do the same at the beginning of his book: "I'm not a professional writer, and in many cases I purposely chose to do things that would probably make my high school English teachers cringe, such as ending a sentence with a preposition".
Let me introduce Tony.
In 1996, he co-founded LinkExchange which was sold to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million.
In 1999, he got involved with Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. He grew the company from almost no sales in 1999 to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales, annually.
In 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion.
Respect.
So, what is the book about?
First I have to say: I enjoyed it. Tony explains his life, his experiences and his way of life. He gave us all the elements to understand his path to a sustainable success.
I won't summarize the book, Amazon does it great. I just want to share with you some key sentences, and I hope they'll convince you to read the book.
"In business, one of the most important decisions for an entrepreneur or a CEO to make is what business to be in. It doesn't matter how flawlessly a business is executed if it's the wrong business or if it's in too small a market.
Imagine if you were the most efficient manufacturer of seven-fingered gloves. You offer the best selection, the best service, and the best prices for seven -fingered gloves - but if there isn't a big enough market for what you sell, you won't get very far".
"They were expensive lessons, but I guess what I ended up learning was that it's a bad idea to invest in industries you don't understand, in companies you don't have any control or influence over, or in people you don't know or trust."
"Looking back, a big reason we hit our goal early was that we decided to invest our time, money, and resources into three key areas: customer service, culture, and employee training and development."
"There's a lot of buzz these days about social media and integration marketing. As unsexy and low-tech as it may sound, our belief is that the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there [...] I can tell you that my mom has zero buzz, but when she says something, I listen."
"Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company:
- Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top.
- Make WOW a verb that is part of your company's everyday vocabulary
- Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service... because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare.
- Realize that it's okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees.
- Don't measure call times, don't force employees to upsell, and don't use scripts.
- Don't hide your 1-800 number. It's a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well.
- View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you're seeking to minimize.
- Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company.
- Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service.
- Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors."
Happiness Frameworks
At the end of the book, Tony gives 3 types of "Happiness Frameworks" which I recommend to read. I like this one:
Customers: Meets expectations -> Meets desires -> Meets unrecognized needs
Employees: Money -> Recognition -> Meaning
Investors: Transaction Alignment -> Relationship Alignment -> Legacy
Links:
Liked it too! Great book
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