A Few Takeaways from ‘Delivering Happiness’ by Tony Hsieh

I recently read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh and I found it really interesting and informative. The book talks about Tony’s experience with developing companies, and is particularly focused on his time working with Zappos–first as investor and then eventually as the long time CEO. The two focuses of the book that most interested me were Zappos’ focus on customer service and company culture.

My Key Takeaways

Focus on customer service and company culture.
Part of culture is clear paths for growth at all levels and performance incentives based on personal effort and company success.
Many people risked a lot for a long time before success (financial stability to survive as a company) was reached.

Customer Service is so much more than minimizing returns and refunds, and in fact is probably the biggest impact on your ability to maintain and grow your sales. Delivering a great customer experience is rewarding for the people doing the work, and from a high level perspective it also increases the likelihood of retention and word of mouth lead generation. Both retaining the customer to increase their lifetime value as well as increasing the chance happy customers tell other people about your product are going to contribute to steady scalable growth. Happy customers come back when they need more of what you offer, and are happy to tell other people about their positive experience–since that is so often not the norm. Customer focus will set you apart, create loyal customers, and create a unifying mission of “doing good in the world” in the organization.

A few things that stood out about Zappos’ approach to company culture were their pipeline for growing talent internally, their single unchanged vision through a long and turbulent history, and their focus on rewarding individuals for their specific contributions when the company did well. I really liked their idea for a pipeline of internal talent, but that’s not as unique as their actual follow through on developing and growing talent from within. A lot of companies highlight the “promote within” mantra but don’t always follow through with that mentality in practice. This book, and the Zappos story, reinforced my belief that there should always be a defined path up the ladder until you get to the top of the technical or managerial paths at the organization. “Defined” can vary depending on the nature of the organization but it should include the specific boxes one should check when they can expect to be moved up when the next position is available. Waiting for that next seat to become available is hard, but it’s a lot easier if there is a single unchanged vision that you believe in and believe the company is run from. Zappos got that down, and from Tony’s perspective it seems like the people who believed in that vision followed the company’s direction–literally followed it to Las Vegas even. In addition to the vision of the company and the culture of comradery, something that stuck out to me from this book was the focus on rewards (usually bonuses) for individuals based on metrics of their individual contribution. Not necessarily tied to a specific goal from the start of the year, but a holistic view of their performance given the environment–still driven by measurable indicators. The individual measurable is an important indicator for employee and manager alike to tell how someone is doing relative to the expectations and relative to their peers.

A Salesforce Perspective

A thought on how this book relates to Salesforce partners, for any others in the ecosystem.

I couldn’t help but slip in a small bit relating this to Salesforce. People running Salesforce partners have three main kinds of relationships to worry about. The first type of relationship is with Salesforce. I put it first because as much as some don’t like to admit it the majority of deals that Salesforce partners get come through Salesforce and the connections the partner has. The second type of relationship is with their customers, which I think is fairly self explanatory from a business benefits perspective. The third type of relationship is with the employees of their own organization. The people in management steering the medium and long term direction of the company also have to consider and manage the relationship they have with the people who do the work and drive the business’ success in the short to medium term. Considering your customer service in relation to all three groups, instead of just the first two, sets you up for a good company culture and sustained growth. Retention is make or break when it comes to scaling up successfully, but also staying successful at that bigger size for the long term.