Zappo\'s Case Zappo\'s Founder and CEO Tony

Zappo's Case

Zappo's founder and CEO Tony Hsieh is a visionary in online retailing and business models, as he sees the creativity, intuitive, intelligence and passion of his employees as being crucial to delivering exceptional customer experiences. While many other online retailers have come and gone out of business. Zappo's has been able to develop one of the most loyal and profitable customer bases online. Even during one of the most severe recessions in decades, Zappos' minimizes layoffs, limiting it to just 124 of the thousands of employees the company has on their payroll.

Creating a Culture of Achievement and Excellent Customer Experience

As is evident from the 10 core values of the company, Tony Hsieh has a very clear, definite vision of what kind of company Zappo's needs to be to become the online service leader. In concentrating on the value of "Deliver WOW through service" he is indicating to his employees and customers that they will do whatever it takes to excel in the delivery of an exceptional customer experience. The additional values of embracing and driving change, create fun and a little weirdness, be adventurous, creative and open-minded also underscore a critical component of transformational leadership. What Tony Hsieh is really saying throughout these values is that he sees the employee's autonomy and mastery of complex services situations as critical to the growth of the company. Mr. Hsieh emerges as a transformational leader when the ten values of the company are analyzed. He is hard at work creating a culture where the core aspects of long-term job motivation are being put into place. These three core concepts are autonomy, mastery and purpose. Taken together these anchor down employees' motivations to grow and expand the level of performance they deliver in their jobs.

What has made Zappo's so unique is that Tony Hsieh has architected the entire series of systems and processes supporting customers and employees to also reflect these values. That is very evident from the focus on allowing free shipping on returns, which encourages customers to get additional sizes if they are not sure of a given shoe fitting or not. He also has architecture his human resources and personnel policies to also reflect his stated values, with a strong focus on respect of the employee as a person, even after they are let go. With the $2,000 offer to encourage those not passionate about Zappos initially to the exceptionally generous severance packages that include healthcare, many CEOs of companies who have laid people off with little or no severance could do well to spend some time with Mr. Hsieh.