Delivering Happiness

Presenters: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Zappos focus is on the customer experience, to an almost fanatical extent.  In pursuit of customer service, they’ve coined the term, “Delivering Happiness” to describe their mission.  Much like he describes in his book of the same name, Hsieh talked about how they focus on culture.  It’s their #1 priority, and he feels that if they can create the right culture and focus on customers, the results will follow.

Hsieh has done a lot of research in his own pursuit of happiness, and outlined a framework for happiness.  It requires these elements:

1. Perceived control
2. Perceived progress
3. Connectedness
4. Vision/meaning (being part of something bigger)

They use these concepts to select the right employees and focus on growing them from a job to a career, to eventually making it a calling.  Additionally, there are 3 types of happiness

1. Pleasure – chasing the next high (Rock star)
2. Engagement – time flies – flow
3. Meaning/higher purpose – being part of something bigger than yourself

Therefore, in order to build a great business, Hsieh focused on ensuring the culture provided employees with pleasure, passion, and purpose.  They hire for the culture and won’t hire someone who is great if they don’t fit in.  Many have heard of their $2000 offer, where they offer new employees a bonus for leaving the company after training if they don’t feel they are a fit.  Things like connecting employees with twitter have helped improve all of those areas, as well as a sense of connectedness.  Ultimately, the culture is about commitable core values.  It’s not just “a meaningless plaque on the wall,” it’s about being willing to hire and fire based on those values.  In fact, if you Google any one of Zappos core values, their site will appear #1 in the rankings.

Most of the presentation covered things he talked about in his book, Delivering Happiness.  At the end of the talk, Hsieh gave everyone a copy of his book.  Since I’ve already read the book  I’m giving away a copy of Delivering Happiness to 2 blog readers.  Simply click on the comments above and send us a note (be sure to include your email address), and we’ll select 2 winners to receive a copy of the book!

Also, don’t forget about my other book giveaway from the iMedia Brand Summit.

 

Leadership in a Socially Calibrated Business

Presenter: Lee Bryant, Headshift

Social media is a new world, especially for corporate executives.  Bryant started by dispelling a few myths about leadership as it applies to social media within the business world.

Myth 1. Flat structures don’t need leaders
In fact, social business opens up new opportunities for traditional leadership strengths.  Those who have strengths in communication, strategy, planning, engaging people will naturally rise to the top.

Myth 2. Distributed leadership is based on distributing process, not passion
Passion works better than process control, such as Zappos – if they don’t see a connected purpose, they’re not going to do well.  Common purpose is more important than strategic planning.  He used an example of a military exercise in which the defense had no plan, but was able to pull off a victory repeatedly.  A famous quote – “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders… instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

The question is how can we actually do this and make it repeatable.  And what to do if you don’t have exceptional leaders?  What does social business have to offer?

Connected systems and social networks allow for intimacy & presence at scale.  In the past, good leaders “walked the floor” and had a physical presence with their employees.  Social networks now allow you to virtually walk the floor as a leader.  Social media also encourages personal quests and re-invention on the edges of the organization.  Essentially it helps like-minded folks organize, encourage each other, and share information.  Leaders should open the taps on internal social media to create feeds and flows of data.  Sharing of information internally improves performance and reduces friction.

Smart leaders don’t limit employees access to, or ability to hold conversations.  Real leaders thrive in open culture with feedback.  Typically they thrive on being challenged to solve problems and improve situations.  It takes moving beyond carrot and stick thinking to connect with peoples’ intrinsic motivation and sense of purpose – and then enabling them network.  You must provide them with the tools to do so.

Harness the power of open data to evolve.  Data gives you feedback, and you can use to adjust what you’re doing based on the needs of the customer (or employees).  A social business strategy and infrastructure create the conditions for buisnesses to evolve and succeed.

Ecosystems + passion + active listening = transformation

Getting People to Share Information

Presenter: Philip Kaplan, Blippy
More than ever, we’re sharing private details of our lives on places like Twitter and Facebook.  Kaplan started a website called Blippy which takes the concept of sharing private information one step further.  The site  asks users to register their credit cards and then socializes your purchases from marketplaces such as iTunes, Amazon, Zappos and many more.  In essence, it tells your Blippy friends what you’ve bought, and allows them to get your feedback and review of the product.

Kaplan outright says, “the only people who care about privacy are old people.”  He goes on to show examples, such as the telephone.  When the telephone came out, there was a huge concern about lack of privacy – people could hear your calls, someone might listen in, etc.  Even more recently, as little as two years ago, people avoided Facebook, considering it “creepy.”  Today, there are over 600 million users of Facebook worldwide.

Kaplan’s feeling is that people have never shared this type of information simply because they have never been able to.  Today, over $1 million in purchases are shared every day on Blippy.  Kaplan feels that more people will share if they see value and a reason to do so.  Thus far, users of Blippy see value in knowing what their friends are purchasing, what they might endorse, if they like what they bought, or even seeing how they might be paying a different amount (like a gym membership) for the same service.

Ultimately, Kaplan feels that people will share if you give them a way to, and he feels that as “old people” move out of the space, a younger generation will be more comfortable – resulting in growth for Blippy.

Only Empowered Employees Can Serve An Empowered Customer

Presenter: Josh Bernoff, Forrester

In his new book, Empowered: Transformed by Social Technologies, he talks about the importance of enabling your HEROs, because only an empowered worker can serve and empowered customer – can’t run company top down anymore.  HERO stands for Highly empowered and resourceful operative.

The sales funnel has been extended, and it no longer ends with customers.  Here’s the new flow – Eyeballs -> Awarness -> consideration ->preference purchase -> Customers -> Supported ->Empowered -> Delighted -> Fan -> Broadcaster – the message then goes to others and starts over again.

Social participation has grown, which only highlights the importance and impact of this new model:

Year	Creators	Conversationalists	Critics	Collectors	Joiners	Spectators	Inactives
2007	18%		25%	12%	25%	48%	44%
2010	23%	31%	33%	19%	59%	68%	19%

Bernoff believes there are four technologies empowering consumers: Smart mobile devices, Social technology, Pervasive video, and Cloud computing services.

How frequently do people tell others about products and services?  They looked at various social media and counted how often people told others about a product or service they were using.  They found 500 billion impressions, and during the same time period, total advertising impressions were 2 Trillion.  That means social media had 1/4 of the total number of impressions about products and services.  Which impressions do you think had more of an impact – referrals from friends and others on social media or advertising messages?

We need to start to treat our customers as a channel – they are another group which share our message.  The process for accomplishing this is – IDEA: Identify your mass influencers, Delivering groundswell customer service, Empowering with Mobile Information, and Amplifying fan activity.  Identifying the influencers is important because a small percentage of people control 80% of the influence online.  Delivering groundswell customer service requires reaching out and engaging in social media channels, such as Best Buy’s Twelpforce.  This requires empowered employees who can directly respond to customers. Empower people with mobile information, as the use of immediate information is most important.  Amplifying fan activity means enabling your fans to share their messages with others.  He used an example of a highly regulated health industry providing a way for customers to share their own testimonials on their site.

How do you run your organization to make this work? 3 groups that have to work together:

1. HEROs – know customer needs, use tech to serve customers, operate safely
2. Managers – Make innovation a priority, support Heros, work with IT to manage risk
3. IT dept  – Support Heros with technology, scale up solutions, provide tools to manage risk

You must embrace these new technologies, because HEROs will find a way around your controls.  A recent study showed that despite blocking technologies employees said this, they:

– use smartphone for work – 8%
– Download and use apps on work comp – 12%
– use tools to find access to blocked sites while at work – 27%

Resistance is futile, spend your time empowering your employees.  This requires encouraging experimentation, committing to collaboration systems, and using tools to share best practices across the company.