Book Review: Delivering Happiness By Tony Hsieh

Post written by Marlon Ribunal.
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You have to have a big capital and sound business structure. But that’s only a portion of the formula. Securing a big capital does not guarantee success in any business. Zappos very well know that. Any company like theirs would never have weathered the turmoil that almost shut them down hadn’t they turn around the idea that money alone can drive their business into success. What’s the secret formula, then, that Zappos‘ has built their success with? Tony Hsieh ( Blog | @Zappos ), Zappos’ CEO, would tell you that there is no secret.

Deliver Happiness Instead Of Delivering Shoes

This has been Zappos’ business model: Build a business driven by customer service based on happiness. The result: 1 Billion dollars in less than 10 years. Happiness is their total business philosophy that thrives within their office walls and extends into how they interact with their customers and co-workers. The model is simple: do whatever makes the customer happy and do it in a way that will make their customer say WOW at any cost, even that cost is on the range of millions of dollars. Too good to be true? It’s true.

Few weeks ago, 6PM.com, an online store run by Zappos, made a costly mistake caused by a system glitch. The glitch marked all prices on the site $49.95. The wrong prices stayed posted on the site for 6 hours. In that short period of time, Zappos lost $1.6 Million dollars. They could have gone after those that bought the items on the wrong prices and reverted the prices. That could have made perfect sense considering the total dollar value of the loss. But they chose to swallow the bitter pill. They corrected the error going forward and honor the completed transactions!

Money Is Secondary, WOW Is The Policy

The price incident at 6PM.com demonstrates that Zappos mean business when they say they are all about making the customers happy. That philosophy is not only an inscription on a plate posted above the CEO’s picture. (by the way, the CEO does not stay in a private office but he’s out in the floor where the ordinary employees are). They eat and breathe happiness. And they are taking this to the next level.

Delivering Happiness: A Path To Profits, Passion, and Purpose, a book authored by Tony Hsieh, captures all this and more. It also illustrates how Tony Hsieh fueled the success of Zappos and how the whole company developed a unique culture based on positive relationships on top of happiness. Zappos have a humble beginning. Their success, highlighted by their record-breaking 1Billion Dollars worth of sold shoes online in less than 10 years, is only an icing on the cake. The book, only 272 page thick, teaches lessons not only about making business decisions but importantly also about life in general. Most of the book’s content tells the many stories in Tony Hsieh’s life that underscore the situations and life-changing decisions that he had to make along the way. The book shows a peek of the story and history of Zappos. It also emphasizes the importance of building a culture that speaks about and represents the totality of what a company is. This book might not show the step-by-step formula for making a business successful but it clearly spells out the blueprint of what makes a company successful. Go to the book’s website for more information.

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