Zappos CEO talks company culture at marketing conference

By Amanda Finnegan

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Make company culture a first priority and the rest — including marketing and customer service — will fall into place.

That was the message Zappos Chief Executive Officer Tony Hsieh hoped to drive home with entrepreneurs and marketing executives at Tuesday’s keynote address at PubCon 2009, an annual social media and search marketing conference.

Hsieh walked executives though Zappos’ humble beginning to the company’s $1.2 billion acquisition by Amazon last week and discussed the company’s corporate culture.

Hsieh’s ventures began with a pizza business in college, and he became a millionaire in 1998 at 24 when he sold an online advertising company to Microsoft.

After starting with Zappos as an investor, Hsieh joined the company as CEO in 2000. Since joining the company, Hsieh said, sales have grown from $1.6 million in 2000 to $1 billion in 2008.

The company’s set of core values, including the pursuit of growth and learning and creating “fun and a little weirdness,” garnered Zappos a spot on Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For List this year, a goal of Hsieh’s from the start.

For a glimpse into Zappos’ corporate culture, log onto the company’s aggregated Twitter site. Every Zappos employee is trained and encouraged to use the social media tool, Hsieh said.

Tuesday’s employee tweets included talk of a potluck, free flu shots and a “Zappos Idol” karaoke competition. The site also includes comments from customers about their experiences with the company.

Hsieh said the company publishes a Zappos Culture Book, a collection of short essays from employees and vendors about what makes the Zappos culture so unique. The book available for purchase on Zappos.com.

At the top of Zappos’ core values is one for which the company is most known — customer service.

“Rather than spending money on marketing, we put it into the customer experience with things like training our employees and free shipping, and then let our customers do the marketing for us,” Hsieh said.

All employees, from higher-ups to stock employees, go through a customer service training program.

Hsieh’s reasoning, aside from having extra call center representatives during the busy holidays, is to build lifelong relationships with customers, even if it means directing the customer to a competitor’s site.

“If we want to build the Zappos brand to be about customer service, then customer service is not just a department,” Hsieh said. “It’s the entire company.”