About five weeks ago my outlook on business changed forever.  I decided (reluctantly) to share the following picture with you for a reason.  Although I was not even close to the first person to take a picture in this chair (as you can see the walls are lined with them) and certainly not the last, I think it demonstrates an important point:

At Zappos, regardless of if you are a guest, manager, or CSR (Customer Service Rep.) they make you feel like royalty.

The first week of September two of my colleagues and I flew down to Las Vegas to experience the “Zappos Tour” and “WOW Experience” firsthand.  For those of you not familiar with what this is, Zappos will pick you up from your hotel and take you on an extravagant tour of their very big and very fun Head Quarters.

To list a couple of the outrageous and amazing things we encountered on our tour:

• Each division we walked by greeted us in a different, yet unified, fashion.  Anything from cow bells, clappers, “Hulk Hands”, organized cheers, or even musical triangles!

• At one point in the tour our tour guide Pam (yes I still remember her name!) stopped me in front of a bell, and told me the tour would not go on until I rang the bell and yelled an announcement to the entire floor or 300+ working people.  After temporarily going into shock, I obliged and the tour continued…

• At different points in the tour I was challenged to a hoola hoop competition (which I lost), and bowled a bowling ball down a semi-real lane.  I was however luckier than our HR Manager who was forced by the Zappos HR team to take a picture in a Mullet wig (apparently HR people are allowed to haze other HR people).

Although you might be surprised to hear this, what I was most taken back with wasn’t actually the ridiculousness of the tour.  Rather how happy everyone was.  I had heard rumors of offices like this, but never truly experienced it, all of the people we interacted with legitimately seemed to ENJOY being at work.  It’s remarkable how welcome we felt even in a 600 person office, we really felt like we were part of the Zappos Team while we were there.

After spending one full 9 hour day at Zappos I could probably write five single spaced pages of things I learned, but I will spare you that.  Instead, let me share a few things I learned that truly opened my eyes, business practices that affected us all so much we are now trying to make them a part of Grasshopper:

• Empower your employees
  • At Zappos each employee has the power to come up with an idea.  They buy into the belief that things need to start from the bottom up (not the other way around, which is how most organizations assume), the grassroots approach.

  • By empowering your employees to make decisions on their own it results in real people having real conversations.  Customer service reps who are actively listening to the customer and trying to creatively find a way to make this customer a “Raving Fan”.

  • Every Customer Service Rep has the authority to do whatever necessary on the phone to help the customer.  Their managers have no additional authority.

• Launch and Learn
  • Your idea does not need to be perfect before you try it, get it out there and see what happens, learn from the mistakes and then make it better.

• Raving Fans & Brand Loyalists
  • Aside from the fact that Zappos employees enjoy their job and are hence more pleasant to talk to, they are taught to do anything in their power to make you a “Raving Fan” or “Brand Loyalist”.

  • A good example of this is if you call up and try to order a pair of shoes they do not have, instead of apologizing, they search on Google to find exactly what you were looking for, and then e-mail you the website / product #, so you can easily buy the shoes you want.

Conclusion

I will stop there for now, but want to say the following:

I came back a person who now believes, full-heartedly, he can enjoy waking up every morning and coming to work. Within 2 days of being back the 3 of us sat down with our senior management team and asked them to buy into this mentality.

We asked them to empower us, and our fellow colleagues to help make Grasshopper an even better, more productive place to work.  They did.

We have been the catalyst for a lot of change over the past month, and I expect the trend to continue as more and more people “drink the Kool-aid”.  Definitely check back in a few weeks to read more about some of the new things we are doing to spice up the life of a Grasshopper employee.

If you have any questions/comments about how you might implement something like this in your small business feel free to reach out to me – Ambassador of Buzz, jkay@grasshopper.com.