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Tony Award: Farewell to the man who set a completely different standard of service
He gave a one-year warranty on all the products he sold, ordered a lone customer and a hungry pizza to the hotel and saw consumers first and foremost as human beings.
Tony Shea, the founder of Zappos who passed away this weekend, did not provide people with shoes, he sent them happiness.
This is how he will also be remembered
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Marketing
Yotam Gutman
Monday, 30 November 2020, 01:33
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It was an unexpected end.
Tony Shea visited a friends home in Connecticut this weekend for a Thanksgiving dinner.
During the meal a fire broke out and Shea got into it.
Burns and complications from smoke inhalation led to his death shortly thereafter.
Shea, who was supposed to celebrate his 47th birthday in about two weeks, was an entrepreneur at heart and a true visionary, one who all his life went against conventions and to some extent and sadly also died that way.
He is the man who designed the highest level of customer service ever seen, one that not many have dared to emulate to this day.
He set up his first venture at age 9 - a farm for growing bait worms for fishing.
As the son of immigrants from Taiwan he was destined for a career in medicine.
His parents did not like his constant pursuit of business ventures, but Shea "rebelled" against them and refused to study medicine.
They compromised on another realistic degree and he studied computer engineering.
After graduating from Harvard in 1995, he started working for the software giant Oracle, but after a few months got bored and left to set up the Internet advertising network Linkexchange.
The network offered a revolutionary advertising model - the sites that were members of the network could display banners on its other sites, in exchange for the right to display banners (advertisements) on the site.
It is possible for sites without deep pockets to advertise and sell the advertising space on their site.
Within a short time, the platform gained popularity and numbered tens of thousands of sites, which caught the eyes of the Sequoia Investment Fund, which invested about $ 3 million in the company after a year.
The company grew rapidly, acquiring a number of other companies in the field of Internet advertising and in 1998, when it numbered 100 people, it was sold to Microsoft for about $ 256 million.
Shea, who served as the company's CEO, was not interested in working for a giant corporation like Microsoft and left to set up an investment fund called Venture .Frogs.
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Pen in all conventions.
Tony Shea (Photo: Charlie Gallay, Gettyimages)
The fund invested in a number of companies, and in 1999. Swimran approached the fund to invest in an online shoe sales venture called zappos.
Shea was not enthusiastic about the idea, but after realizing the potential of the market he agreed to invest in the venture and accepted the role of CEO of Zappos (the name is derived from the Spanish word zapatos-shoes). Shea, looking for ways to differentiate the online store, noticed that the company's customers were pleased Very much from the service they received. He decided to emphasize the quality of the service and introduced a number of innovations - fast deliveries (sometimes overnight) for free, free returns and above all - a telephone service at a level not seen in the world.
The company's motto became Delivering Happiness. To give its customers the best service, the company made logistical changes, which included moving offices from the San Francisco area to Las Vegas and recruiting dedicated and professional staff. The company prided itself on recruiting less than one percent of the candidates, passing them a training program and offering them the job. Next - if you leave now you will receive (in addition to all the compensation stipulated by law) also $ 1,000 in cash.This is a kind of test designed by Shea, designed to make sure that the employees who continue with the company are those who share its vision.Over the
years the program was more successful than expected.
The company's service representatives made them wings - including a true story about a service representative who spent 10 hours talking to a customer, a customer who called to return a pair of disassembled shoes, and instead sent her a new pair for free.
One customer who spoke to a service representative late indicated that he was at the hotel, that he was hungry and that the room service was closed.
He got a free pizza ordered for him in the room.
The main thing is that everyone will be happy (Photo: Charlie Gallay, Gettyimages)
The Company's Service Manifesto is still available on its website, and includes the following sections
We want you to call us!
Call time is not limited (service representatives are also not measured on how fast they end the call)
The representatives are helpful and friendly.
There is no telephone branding system - all representatives are trained to meet all customer needs
Representatives do not have a "script" ready to handle customers.
Each customer receives a personal answer
The service center works 24/7
Service representatives can make their own decisions and do not need to "get approval" from managers
Product return policy allows you to return a new product up to one year from the date of purchase
Shipping and Returns - Free
Service representatives are instructed to address customer needs and do not attempt to sell them additional products
Will be missing in Las Vegas.
A poster in the city in memory of Shea (Photo: Brian Steffy, Gettyimages)
Yotam Gutman
Aside from this customer service model, which at the time (and to a large extent to this day) is considered revolutionary, Shay also changed the face of the company when it moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, which suffered from those years of poverty and neglect.
Shea was the driving force behind Downtown Las Vegas 'urban renewal, and Zappos' move to the city created many jobs and helped the local economy.
In 2010 the company was sold to Amazon in a deal valued at $ 1.2 billion and enriched Shea by at least $ 200 million.
Shea combined the ideas that guide Zappos into a book called 'Delivering Happiness' which he wrote over two consecutive weeks.
The book was also marketed in a unique way - it was given away for free to dozens of bloggers in exchange for them writing a review and posting it on their blog ("influential" marketing long before it was accepted).
The book immediately entered the bestseller list, and helped spread Shea's "I believe" around the world.
He served as the company's CEO for about 20 years, retiring last August. In recent years, he has invested his best energy (and a significant portion of his money) in the Las Vegas Rehabilitation Project - or The DownTown Project (or DPT), which began trying to create an environment for Zappos employees and their families. Proper urban work and housing, and spread to the rehabilitation and promotion of large parts of urban and neglected Las Vegas.
Yotam Gutman is the VP of Marketing for the cyber company SentinelOne
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