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THE HEART OF THE SERVICE-MINDED CULTURE

Teri McNally

Team Leader, Customer Service

I once spent my vacation living in a working lighthouse.

It’s amazing how opening your heart changes everything.

In this case, it all started with a phone call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Teri calling from Zappos.com. Is this Susan?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Hi, Susan. I believe you called into our Customer Loyalty department yesterday to let us know that most of your shoe order didn’t arrive on time as promised.”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted to call back to let you know that I reviewed that call, and I’m just so sorry for everything you and your family are going through.”

“I . . . thank you. Is there another problem with my order?”

“No, no. The rest of the shoes will arrive tomorrow. I triple-checked that they’re en route before I called you, so I just wanted to let you know that they’re definitely on the way, and I also wanted to apologize that we didn’t do more for you when you called in yesterday. I know this is a difficult time for you and your family, and I just felt like we ought to do something more, so I’ve gone ahead and credited your account for half the cost.”

“You what?”

“The shoes that were delayed will still arrive tomorrow, but I’m refunding half of your money.”

“Wow! You’re joking. That’s amazing. Why would you do that?”

“Well, after hearing why you ordered them, it seemed to me like the last thing you needed was for this shoe order to add any more stress to your life, so I just wanted to apologize for the delay and make it right if we could. So you should see that credit back on your card within forty-eight hours.”

“That’s just . . . I don’t know what to say. That’s really generous of you. I told the woman on the phone yesterday that the memorial service had to be pushed back because of the weather. So the shoes coming late isn’t even that big of a deal, so long as they get here.”

“I understand, and I’m very glad they’ll get there in time for the service. I’m just so sorry for your loss.”

Susan paused. “Thank you. I appreciate that. We’re all just so heartbroken . . .”

We’re known for striving to deliver some of the best customer service in the business, and it’s my job as a Customer Loyalty Team (CLT) lead to help make sure that continues. As such, I do spot checks of our customer service call logs to make sure that people who call in with a question or concern about something are being taken care of as they should be. I’m not sure why I happened to review that particular call that day—it truly was random—but I was immediately struck by what I heard.

One interesting challenge we have is when we hire employees with prior call center experience. We sometimes have to untrain old bad habits and encourage new employees to focus more on WOWing the customer instead of minimizing call times and costs to the company if it’s in service of a better customer experience. We have a team that audits random phone calls to look for coaching opportunities when we feel a rep provided good but not necessarily great service. One of my favorite quotes is from business author Jim Collins, who likes to say that good is the enemy of great.

Susan, this lovely woman with a Tennessee accent whom I was now on the phone with, had called in because most of her shoe order hadn’t arrived as promised. Her order was unusual: eleven pairs of Lacoste sneakers, all of them red, in all different sizes. She told our phone rep that only one of those pairs of shoes had arrived, and that this was really important to her because these red shoes were going to be worn to a funeral—a memorial service for her teenage daughter’s boyfriend, Luis.

The amazing thing is, Susan wasn’t angry about the delay. She was just frustrated—you could hear it in her voice—and rightfully so. She wanted to make sure the shoes were still coming and would be there in time for this very important day. It turned out that Tennessee, which normally doesn’t see much snow, had been hit by a major snowstorm, so a lot of planes and delivery services were shut down across the state. Our Customer Loyalty Team member explained that the shoes came from two different warehouses, and while one of the warehouses had been able to fulfill the shipment for one pair of shoes, all of the others that didn’t arrive were coming from a different warehouse that was affected by the storms. Susan understood. Things happen. She said it would be all right, and the call ended cordially.

I wanted to follow up because I felt that our representative could have been more empathetic. She was friendly. She did some research and assured Susan that her shoes were now on their way. But she didn’t offer much of an apology for the inconvenience and worry we had caused Susan and her family, and an apology certainly seemed warranted. I also thought that the shoes we had promised to deliver must’ve meant something really special to them. It wasn’t a small order. It was $845 worth of shoes! There had to be some symbolism to ordering all of those particular red shoes to wear to a funeral, right? Clearly, we weren’t just providing shoes to this family. We were providing something deeper, something that connected these people to this young man they’d lost.

Clearly, we weren’t just providing shoes to this family. We were providing something deeper, something that connected these people to this young man they’d lost.

That’s why I called Susan and made the decision to give her half of her money back.

“I’ll personally follow up in the morning to make sure those shoes arrive on time, okay? And if you have any issues with the sizes or anything, call me directly and I’ll send a UPS truck to pick up the returns at your home and overnight the new sizes as needed at no additional charge.”

“You’ll do all of that?”

“Yes, it’s my pleasure, Susan. And if I can help you with anything else, please don’t hesitate to call. Let me give you my direct line, and my email address . . .”

I made sure Susan knew how to get in touch with me, and she thanked me again, and I thanked her for choosing Zappos, and that was that. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Susan and her family. The moment I hung up the phone I ordered flowers to be shipped to her daughter the next day, along with a $100 gift certificate so she could buy herself something nice after all of this was over.

When I got home, I told my husband about the call. I kept talking about this woman and what she must be going through, and how awful it must be to see her daughter in pain, and I decided that I had come up a bit short on my phone call with her as well. I wanted to do something more, and I knew our company would do more. Susan and her daughter had called on Zappos to deliver in their time of need, and that is not something any company should take lightly.

As soon as I got to campus the next morning, I checked the computer, and I was happy to see that the shoes had been delivered. I glanced over at a picture of my dad on my desk, among a whole bunch of fun tchotchkes and little reminders that make my workspace so personal to me.

I picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Susan, it’s Teri from Zappos again.”

“Hi, Teri!”

“My computer is telling me that your shoes were delivered, but I just wanted to double-check that you got ’em.”

“They’re here! Thank you. And McKendree just received the beautiful roses you sent her, and that gift certificate. That was so incredibly thoughtful and generous, I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, I just wanted to do something a little extra. I didn’t mention this to you yesterday, but I lost my father to cancer a few months ago. So I know how hard it can be.”

“Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“But why the roses. How did you know?”

“Know what?” I asked.

“Luis used to send McKendree roses just like that when she was going through treatment.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I don’t know if you know this, but she and Luis met when they were in treatment.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“She’s in remission now. She’s doing great. But Luis used to send her roses just like that. Same color and everything. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I ordered a bouquet and the florist must’ve put it together. I’m not sure. Wow.”

“Wow is right. I’m just so blown away by all of this. Thank you. And my daughter thanks you.”

Susan began to cry, and I started to tear up, too.

“Hold on,” she said, “let me put McKendree on the phone.”

A few seconds later, I was on the phone with McKendree, who was just about the sweetest teenager I’d ever spoken to. She also started crying, and then I was crying even more. She told me I’d made her whole day.

When she put her mom back on the phone, Susan thanked me again and reiterated that she was sorry to hear about my father’s passing.

“Thank you. He fought for a long, long time.”

“Well, he certainly raised a good daughter.”

That was when I paused. Her comment caught me off guard.

“I mean it,” she continued. “If there was a little more of this sort of kindness and caring in the world, the world would be a much better place now, wouldn’t it? Luis was that type of kind. He used to save toys all year long to take back to kids at the hospital in Honduras, where he was from, even while he was undergoing treatment. He would’ve loved to have seen McKendree’s face when those flowers came to the door. He must be grinning ear to ear up in heaven right now. I just can’t tell you what you’ve done for us today.”

“Well, it’s my pleasure,” I said. “Look, I know you must be busy getting ready for tomorrow, so I don’t want to keep you—”

“No, no, I’m a Southerner, and a mother. If there’s one thing I don’t mind doin’ it’s talkin’.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job it’s that people, not just from the South, but people everywhere, like to talk. And they especially like to be listened to—even when the person doing the listening is a stranger on the phone who happens to work for an online retailer.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job it’s that people everywhere like to talk. And they especially like to be listened to—even when the person doing the listening is a stranger on the phone.

“Well, okay, then. I do have a question for you, if you don’t mind. I’m just so curious: Why the red shoes?”

Susan’s voice soared as she told me the love story of McKendree and Luis, two teenagers who met at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis in the fall of 2011 while undergoing treatment for cancer. It was like their own private version of The Fault in Our Stars, the way this joyful young man brought a smile to McKendree’s face during the most trying time in her life, and the way Luis lit up at the joy and music McKendree brought to him. Together, they played guitar and sang to other kids on the second floor of the cancer ward at that hospital. They became best friends, and a fixture of happiness for other kids who were fighting for their lives, along with their families. Not to mention an inspiration to the doctors and nurses who worked so hard to save children every day.

Luis had already been fighting cancer for some time before McKendree came into his life. At one point, doctors were sure they were going to have to amputate his leg to stop the cancer. Luis was crushed. To lift his spirits, his parents scrimped and saved and managed to buy Luis a pair of red shoes that he coveted: a pair of red Lacoste sneakers that he’d spied in a shop window shortly after coming to America for his treatment. He wore them right up until the very last second before his scheduled surgery—and when he woke up in his hospital room after the surgery was completed, he looked down and saw both of his legs. The doctors didn’t have to amputate after all.

From that day forward, Luis loved to wear those red shoes. In fact, his wish was to go hang-gliding in his favorite red Lacoste sneakers—a wish he accomplished while wearing the biggest smile anyone had ever seen.

The thing about cancer is it doesn’t always show itself. Sometimes, what you see on the outside, the smile on someone’s face, doesn’t reveal what’s happening under the skin. In early February 2015, Luis’s health took a drastic turn for the worse. And with almost no warning at all, on Valentine’s Day, of all days, he died.

McKendree was devastated. Everyone was devastated.

Susan cried when she told me. I cried, too.

That was when she told me it was McKendree’s personal wish that she and all of their mutual friends who went through treatment together at St. Jude should wear red shoes to Luis’s funeral. That was why Susan called Zappos and placed her multiple-redshoe order. And now, here we were, on the phone with each other, in tears.

If that call had ended right there and I never spoke to Susan ever again, it would have gone down as one of the most memorable and touching interactions I’d ever had with a stranger in my whole life.

But it didn’t end there. Not even close.

When good things happen here at Zappos, we share our stories with our coworkers. And no sooner did I share the story of Susan, McKendree, and Luis with a few other members of my Zappos family that the ideas started flying.

“Let’s do something really special for McKendree. She must be so heartbroken.”

“Maybe we could bring her and her family out here to Vegas.”

“Yeah! A vacation.”

“Maybe she could bring a few friends. Like, those friends from St. Jude who knew Luis. The ones who all wore the red shoes.”

“Yes! And what if we threw them a party? A celebration of life. A celebration of Luis!”

Suddenly multiple departments within our company were collaborating on putting together a trip of a lifetime for McKendree and her friends and family. When all of the pieces were in place, we sent them a video saying, “Guess what? You’re coming to Vegas!”

McKendree and her mom couldn’t understand why we were being so nice and doing so much for them.

Our answer was—and always is—“Why not?” McKendree’s story touched us, and we wanted to honor that. To honor her. To honor Luis. To honor Susan for everything she’d done to support her daughter. They all deserved some fun, didn’t they? Plus, McKendree was graduating high school and still fighting her own battle with cancer. We thought she deserved a breather.

Why not?

“They made us feel like the most special people in the whole world,” McKendree recalls of her trip to Vegas. (McKendree is in college now. She managed to get herself a full scholarship while undergoing treatment for cancer, so she’s pretty inspiring all by herself!) “I’d never been to Vegas or anything close, and everything was thought out for us, every detail. We had so much fun. I don’t think I’d smiled and laughed that much for as long as I can remember.”

I’ll never forget the moment McKendree and Susan came walking into the office and we met face-to-face for the very first time. I had watched a video of them that St. Jude had posted, so I already knew what they looked like. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the flood of emotion. As I put my arms around these two people whom I had come to know on the phone, I started crying. It was such a moment for all three of us. A moment of pure joy. They started crying, too! I still tear up thinking about it.

My colleagues went all out for the party that night. We picked up McKendree and her friends in a limo, and we laid out a red carpet, and a large number of people from our staff stayed late just to set it all up and experience this celebration with them—including our CEO, Tony Hsieh. He found the whole thing so moving that he wound up sticking around all night. He was one of the last people to leave.

“The whole night was magic,” McKendree says. “The people at Zappos put so much preparation into it, and they projected all of my favorite pictures of Luis and me together on one of the walls. They had a mariachi band, and some the staff did choreographed dances, and this amazing local singer played a bunch of music that was so special to Luis and me, including our favorite song, “Live Forever,” by Drew Holcomb. A man named Miguel, who’s one of the artists at Zappos, gave me two red shoes that he’d painted—one with Luis’s face on it and the other with my face. I keep them in a shadow box in my room.

“It was just beyond anything I’d ever imagined happening to me in my whole life,” McKendree continues. “When I look back on it I’m like, ‘Did that really happen?’ I’ve never had anyone make me feel that special besides Luis. I hadn’t felt like that in a really long time. They somehow made me feel the way he would make me feel.”

It was emotional for me, too—for all of us who were there. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Apparently Luis had a favorite saying that he used to quote all the time: “Where there is a pulse, there is a purpose.” More than one person mentioned it at the microphone over the course of that night. And as we were reminded of that saying over and over again during the party, many of us in that room felt more inspired than ever to try to live up to our own personal purpose.

“Where there is a pulse, there is a purpose.”

When McKendree’s family got home to Tennessee, the celebration still wasn’t over. Word of what happened spread everywhere. People started talking about it on social media. Someone started a hashtag using the phrase “Operation Red Shoes.”

It was remarkable. What started out in sadness was evolving through this connection we’d made. By connecting and sharing our stories we were almost magically forming a whole new tribe of support for McKendree.

“Before long,” Susan recalls, “we felt like we ought to do something for them in return, to show the folks at Zappos firsthand what Luis and what other patients at St. Jude experience. We thought it would be so much fun to turn the tables, to fly Teri and the folks who instigated the trip and the party out to Memphis. McKendree even talked about using her Make-a-Wish to fund that trip—but she didn’t have to. Once the idea got back to St. Jude, some friends there stepped up and helped fund the trip themselves.”

What can I say? The trip to Memphis was completely unexpected and completely amazing. We spent time at the hospital having a painting party with some of the kids. Susan and McKendree took us to Graceland and down to Beale Street. We felt so honored and so touched that this family and that hospital would reciprocate in that way.

Spending time together in Las Vegas and Tennessee led to something more: Susan and I had a chance to talk, a lot, and to this day Susan and I talk and text and email and keep in touch on a regular basis. We developed a friendship that I’m pretty sure will last the rest of our lives.

In the fall of 2015, McKendree, along with her sister, Bizzy, and Luis’s friends Allie and Hailey, launched a nonprofit in Luis’s memory: Operation Red Shoes (ORS). It’s a charity designed specifically to help families with teens and kids with their needs as they go through cancer treatments. A bunch of people here at Zappos made personal donations to help get it started.

“We’ve got all kinds of support, including some celebrity supporters,” Susan tells me. “David Mickey Evans, writer and director of The Sandlot (1993), gave ORS the first large donation. I really do think this is going to turn into a major nonprofit that will help with some of the unique situations teens who are battling this disease find themselves in. Our goal is that it will keep growing and continue doing good work in Luis’s honor long after all of us are gone.”

And that’s still not all! Another sort of legacy project got started around the same time, too. Luis had a dog, a Siberian Husky named Luna, that he had left to McKendree.

“At first I didn’t know what to do with her,” she says. “Luna didn’t even really like me. She was so protective of Luis that she used to wedge herself between the two of us on his couch! But she likes me now. We’re friends. And we decided to breed her, to help spread even more of Luis’s joy to others. Three of the puppies actually went into training to be service dogs for children with cancer.”

One of the puppies wound up going to Tia Zuniga, a Zappos team member who helped make Operation Red Shoes happen. She brings that dog into the office now just to hang out with her team and brighten all of their days.

Like I said earlier: Opening your heart changes everything. And what Zappos has given to me and to all of us who work here is proof that business can have a heart, too. And when that heart is open, truly open, amazing things unfold.

Christa Foley

Head of Brand Vision, Head of Talent Acquisition, and Head of External Culture Training

Avid reader. No joke, I read four to five books per week.

In Greek mythology, Cerberus (or Kerberos), often called the Hound of Hades, is a three-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. I think of Christa as the three-headed gatekeeper of Zappos’ culture and brand. She’s not afraid to put her foot down anytime someone suggests doing something that may seem minor in the moment but might be the first step of a slippery slope that compromises our values in the long run.

The “Operation Red Shoes” story didn’t happen by accident.

It didn’t happen by chance, either.

It happened by design.

The possibility for great things to happen is simply built into the corporate structure here at Zappos—a direct reflection of our core values. And it’s the kind of thing you can make happen at your company or small business, and in your life, too.

As Head of External Culture Training, I am lucky to lead an amazing team of Zapponians tasked with sharing the lessons (that is, “insights”) we’ve learned here at Zappos with other business leaders across the country and around the world. So I couldn’t be happier to see Operation Red Shoes kick off this employee-driven book, because it’s such a great example of what can happen when everything we hope to accomplish at this company comes together.

Zappos Insights is the official name of the team that provides various training and coaching programs, including culture training (“Culture Camp”), customer service training (“School of WOW”), and external speaking (“Zappos Represents!”).

Many people think that Zappos is a website that sells shoes. But that’s just what we are on the surface. What we really are, what we’ve always been, is a service company that just happens to sell shoes (and other products). We are truly a company built on putting service first. For us, it’s all about establishing and nurturing personal human connections.

Internally, we have an acronym called PEC to describe what we are trying to accomplish with each and every customer interaction: Personal Emotional Connection.

The depth of personal connection that Teri made on the phone with Susan and McKendree is something every one of us here at Zappos strives to make with every customer we encounter every day.

There’s a lot of buzz in the business world today about creating a “customer-obsessed culture.” The idea is that customers are everything to your business, and they need to be treated like the dollar-wielding, camera-phone-touting, social-media-driving powerhouses they are if any modern-day business wants to survive, let alone make a profit.

But at Zappos we don’t look at it quite that way. Not that we don’t have what some might call a customer-obsessed culture here. We do. We think about our customers all the time. But what do we mean when we talk about “customers”? And how do we interpret the concept of being “obsessed” with them?

There’s no one formula to follow. At Zappos, customer service isn’t about following a checklist or a script. It isn’t about obsessively responding to customer Tweets in real time, or trying to act fast to quell customer complaints—although both of those things are important if done authentically and for the right reasons. It doesn’t mean that we give things away for free all the time, or that we’re putting on some sort of an act to try to get customers to like us, either. In fact, just the opposite is true.

Many people think that Zappos is a website that sells shoes. But that’s just what we are on the surface. What we really are, what we’ve always been, is a service company that just happens to sell shoes.

The heart of Zappos’ culture is that we view our customers as much more than a source of transactions. We strive to understand our customers’ needs and to recognize that, in some cases, an order of shoes or some other product can mean much more. The real magic of our business culture is that we see our customers as humans. We see them as family. We see them as our neighbors and our friends. We see them as fellow employees. We see them . . . as us. And we know that the best thing we can do for each other is to treat each other authentically, the way humans should be treated under the best of circumstances. Which means that we do our best to lead with our hearts and to try to do the right thing for all of our customers, all of the time.

We want our customers to be happy. Truly happy. And we want to keep spreading that happiness around.

That’s why our employees wanted to put this book together: We’ve been working on our service-first mentality for nearly twenty years. I’ve been here for most of those years, and I can tell you we didn’t come to this conclusion overnight. It took time for us to understand that this mindset works best when it’s genuine. What we do at work and what we do at home isn’t and shouldn’t be two different things, because putting service first matters as much in business as it does in life. It took us years to fully grasp just how possible it is for a business to act more human, to have a little more heart, and to learn that doing the right things instead of just the profitable things actually creates more “profit” for everyone. And we are still learning every day.

At Zappos, our core values are an honest part of everything we do. They are guardrails that guide our way.

We’ve heard that we have done something pretty unique at Zappos: We’ve been able to retain our brand and our culture even after a major acquisition. A decade after being acquired by one of the biggest companies in the world—Amazon—we’re still prioritizing our customers and our culture more than ever.

So how does a company grow from scratch into a business that’s worthy of a $1.2 billion acquisition, and then survive and keep its core solid, all while continuing to grow in a rapidly changing environment? How can a company develop that type of resilience?

We believe that it all comes down to two pillars.

The first is a set of core values from which everything starts and ends. These aren’t the type of “corporate values” or “mission statements” that get discussed in meetings and put on some document and forgotten. At Zappos, our core values are an honest part of everything we do. They are the guardrails that guide our way. Kind of like the Constitution, they serve as the basis of every decision we make and every venture we tackle. Our core values allow us to always know where we stand, so we can rest assured that we’re always moving forward with our compass pointed in the right direction.

Our core values were discussed at length in Tony’s first book, Delivering Happiness. But for those who’ve never seen them (and as a reminder for those who have), our core values at Zappos are:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service

2. Embrace and Drive Change

3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

5. Pursue Growth and Learning

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

8. Do More with Less

9. Be Passionate and Determined

10. Be Humble

You’ll see each of these core values in action over the course of this book. You can also take a deep dive into our Oath of Employment (see page 235). It’s a document we give to all new hires, and beyond listing Zappos’ Ten Core Values, it defines exactly what we mean by each one in detail. The oath is our signal to every employee that keeping true to our core values, our culture, is the right and responsibility of all of us.

Core values matter. When they’re present, when they’re solid, they sit at the foundation of every decision and every move you make. When they’re not there? Well, we believe that’s part of the reason some businesses might waver under pressure or struggle to make good decisions aligned with their brand and values.

The second pillar of our company? At Zappos, what we’ve found is that every ounce of our success depends on our employees. Hiring the right people and then trusting those people to have our company’s—as well as our customers’—best interests at heart matters as much as anything else we could ever hope to design into the structure of our business.

After all, what is a company made of if not its people?

And putting people first is what service is all about.