Delivering Happiness

One of the things that he found from his research was that great companies have a greater purpose and bigger vision beyond just making money or being number one in a market.

the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer’s undivided attention for five to ten minutes, and if you get the interaction right, what we’ve found is that the customer remembers the experience for a very long time and tells his or her friends about it.

I’d realized that whether in poker, in business, or in life, it was easy to get caught up and engrossed in what I was currently doing, and that made it easy to forget that I always had the option to change tables. Psychologically, it’s hard because of all the inertia to overcome. Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins.

We were religious about trying to answer every e-mail that came in as quickly as possible. Usually we were able to answer them within ten minutes, and people were amazed at our responsiveness.

Be patient and think long-term. The players with the most stamina and focus usually win.

What are things you can improve upon in your work or attitude to WOW more people? Have you WOWed at least one person today?

A lot of companies fall into the trap of just focusing on making money, and then they never become a great company.”

Our philosophy at Zappos is to WOW with service and experience, not with anything that relates directly to monetary compensation (for example, we don’t offer blanket discounts or promotions to customers).

From my button-making success, I’d thought that I was the invincible king of mail order, when all that had happened was that I had gotten lucky.

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.

It was a valuable lesson. We learned that we should never outsource our core competency.