It was a story about a computer genius Tony Hsie, a Taiwanese-American, aged 36, CEO of Zappos, the biggest shoe retailer on the Internet. I read on. His parents were from Taiwan, both graduated from Taiwan University, the top university in Taiwan. He was born in America. He was very smart especially on computer programming that when he was still at the primary school at the age of 9, he was already creating advanced programs.
At age 19, he won the championship in the world programming competition when he just graduated from Howard University, consequently, his outstanding ability attracted Microsoft's attention that the top figures of Microsoft flew to Boston from Seattle trying to invite him to be working for Bill Gates but he declined. He was more interested in building his own business that was full of the culture of his taste.
He started his business of worm farm at the age of 9 when he was still in primary school; did post shopping on stamps trade at age 12, both earned him approximately $6000 per month. During his high school days, he ran campus magazine and the revenue from advertisement earned US$200 per month for him. During his time in Howard, he rented a discarded dormitory and turned it into a Pizza restaurant.
As I read on the quite lengthy article, I extolled his achievements, particularly his spiritual aspects. The article reported that Tony's approach to money was very unusual comparing to the majority of entrepreneurs. Once he was interviewed by a program conductor. At a stage, their conversion came up to business and money issues, the program host threw a few questions related to profit, money and etc.. Tony began to become bored with the interview; he responded to the questions with short sentences and was lacking enthusiastic tone. The interviewer noticed this unique trait of his, rapidly changed the topics to his philosophy applied to his investment in business,
While almost all the businesses in the world pursue profit by reducing company spending, cutting off idling positions, Tony seems to be doing opposite way. He set many policies, such as free freight to the orders; three pairs of shoe were sent for you to choose the most preferred one and return the unwanted; No restriction on his call center staff with the time spent in conversation over the phone. The canteen of his company provides free food and drinks to the employees. He said he believed when a company had its culture that made both his customers and employees happy, then the culture will naturally develop toward prosperity.
He published a book titled "Delivering Happiness" during the end part of last year.I haven't got a chance to read it yet. But from the book reviews posted on the web, I know it covers his almost legendary business activities and what each of them had taught or inspired him.
I also watched the video which he lectured recently. It is a 85 minute long video from which I saw a matured young man. in a casual clothes, crew cut hair, serious facial expression, eloquently presenting his view, his thoughts of business, philosophy. What a decent, superior, humble and successful young man. As he is related to Taiwan-- a small country but has directly or indirectly produced eminent people like Tony, and this makes me proud of being from Taiwan too.
After I have listened Tony's speech the other day. I was impressed by the part about his call center in Zappos. He said that he asked his staff to be the caller's friend and make them happy, thus he did not set limit on time spent on any single case. I was skeptical about this instruction he gave to his call center staff. My personal experience in calling to any customer service of company impresses me that all the customer service teams are asked or are trained to minimize the talking time in their daily work. They try to get rid of you from the line when they think your question is answered; their tones are normally cold or even harsh. But Tony said the longest duration of talking with a customer recorded was over six hours, I could not believe, though I trust him. So I made a call to Zappos on the same day after I watched that video.
"Hi, there, I am calling from New Zealand" I said with mad tremor on my hands. "yes, what can I help you?" I honestly told him that I called for the reason of experiencing the so called Zappos culture by myself. "I heard from your boss that you don't set limit on the talking time with customer and that your longest single talking time was over 6 hours.". He said. "you are right. my longest record is one hour. but our longest record is not just 6 hours, that one is in the history now, and the longest record is over 8 hours."
I didn't talk with that call center over even 5 minutes, because I am not talkative and I don't mean to waste their time.
Tony is so successful in business. His business managing philosophy is so unique. But I believe whoever buys Zappos might go bankrupt soon if they copy whatever Tony does because there must be other factors involve in the overall business operation that is not possible to analyse by the worldly knowledge.
