Delivering Happiness summary

Rapid growth for your company can be exciting, gaining investment dollars and hiring new employees every week. But beware of hypergrowth and take it as a warning sign. Growing too quickly and hiring the wrong people can diminish your company’s culture.

No matter how many positions you think have to be filled, always take the time to carefully consider each new hire. You have to ensure every person on your team shares your vision and wants to be a part of the company culture you’ve created.

The culture of a company is one of its most important characteristics. Your culture is your brand, your employees are your brand ambassadors.

So make it a point that each new hire joins the team for more than the skills and experience listed on their CV. Only hire people you would happily go out for drinks with.

To build a great company, you have to pursue growth and learning. Continual growth should be a goal for your overall business and for all the people that are part of it.

Create a culture that fosters both personal and professional development. Build an office library, offer classes for developing new skills. Employees should feel like their work is part of a greater purpose, and that learning and growth are not only allowed, but appreciated.

Having one thing your company aims to be the best at is helpful because it allows you to focus and specialize, and thus become really great at something rather than being merely adequate or good at several things.

Tony and the Zappos team decided that customer satisfaction and creating a WOW experience for their customers was the one thing they wanted to become great at. They wanted to focus on extraordinary customer service, and on delivering happiness to people through great service.

Attempting to create buzz around your brand is counterproductive when you could just be putting your effort into doing what you do best. Instead of stressing over how to get media attention, focus on delivering a great customer experience and service. The rest will follow, and your buzz will self generate.

The goal of your customer service should be to create positive emotional associations with your brand. Every interaction with your customers is an opportunity to further your brand. Great customer service builds your brand and drives word of mouth advertising. Let loyal customers do your marketing for you.

Having a vision of a higher purpose means being about something bigger than whatever you are selling. It means having a goal that goes beyond making profits and growing a company.

Even though Zappos is a shoe business by technicality, that’s not the real thing they’re selling. There’s a higher purpose–namely, making people happy. By delivering great customer service. WOWing people by going above and beyond their expectations. Whether this means surprising a customer by upgrading their shipping or offering free return shipping, Zappos always has the longer term goal in mind which is about more than bringing in revenue.