3. Employees are at the core of Zappos customer service.

Justify this
statement.
As the case mentions, you cannot have happy customers without having happy
employees. This highlights that the company realised that for customer service
to be better the employees themselves must be happy and taken care of.
Also employees were encouraged to go the extra mile to satisfy a customer. CTC
team members were given freedom to extend the call as long so that a personal
and emotion connection was built to the customer service.
Zappos believed that the employees who are satisfied at their jobs could deliver
a superior service. Also the cross training given to the workers meant that they
could step up to fulfil a flexible number of tasks in emergency situations
4. Explain the HR initiatives by Zappos management that ensures
excellent customer service by its employees.

Hiring process itself involved a specific section for culture fit that ensured
right kind of people were hired
New recruits had to undergo call centre training regardless of department
The company had new employees attend classes such as science of
happiness
Arcade games for employees to relax
They hired a retired chiropractor as performance coach and had
confession bell practice for public contrition
Call centre employees were encouraged to personally connect with
customers and use as much time as necessary on each call
The working condition in the plant were much better than comparable
competitors
Free lunches and other perk were provided to employees

8. Create a Balanced Scorecard for Zappos.

Financial Measures
Market Value In 2009 estimated to be around
$650 million - $950 million dollars
Sales Volume

Products sold at prices at par

with retail stores, sometimes
even higher prices.
Reached target of 1 billion in
retail sales by 2008
Innovation and Learning
Perspective

Customer Perspective
Loyalty

Zapp
os
Core
Value

CLT
members
handled
5100 calls per 24 hour day
75% sales was from repeat
customers

Customer Satisfaction

CLT
members
were
appraised on the basis of
customer feedback

Training and skills

Operations Perspective
Responsiveness

The delivery always

within 24 hours

reached

Throughput time

45 minutes for single order and

up to 3 hours for multiple order

Capacity

40,000 items processed in a 24

hour shift
Zappos carrousel system held 1.5
million items
Kiva software designed for direct
to customer fulfilment doubled
efficiency of warehouse pick rate

Company culture helped

employees
learn
cross
function skills
All employees take 225
hours of core level training
Innovative
courses
like
science of happiness