Zappo’s is not your ordinary online store, as an audience gathered at the Clinton School on Wednesday afternoon learned from their “speaker of the house,” Jamie Naughton.
Following an introduction by Clinton School student Dylan Perry (Class of 2013), Naughton shared with a crowd of more than 200 the philosophy behind the success of Zappo’s and its unique corporate culture that has been dubbed, “Delivering Happiness.”
Rather than focusing strictly on sales, Zappo’s fuels a culture that is driven by a commitment to service and to building relationships, Naughton said. She illustrated this with an anecdote about a customer service representative who asked to send a bouquet of flowers to a customer whose mother had just passed away.
While on the tour to promote the book “Delivering Happiness,” written by Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh, Naughton and her team booked a tour bus and visited music festivals and children’s hospitals rather than bookstores in an effort to deliver the happiness they seek to cultivate every day in their organization.
Zappo’s is not a company interested only in making sales but rather in providing great service to all of its customers, even if it includes taking part in an 8-hour phone conversation, which is currently the standing record, Naughton said.
Naughton used PowerPoint slides to complement her presentation, allowing the audience to learn the core values and principles of Zappo’s, including a commitment to shunning corporate terms such as “networking” and “marketing” in favor of building relationships, both outside and within the company.
This post was written by Clinton School student Veena Rangaswami (’13).