In most companies, the employees who spend the most time with customers are the lowest paid and least empowered. At Zappos, they’re the ones in control.
When you walk through the call center at Zappos, the Las Vegas-based online shoe and apparel company, you get the sense that there may be inmates running the asylum. Employees enjoy free lunches, a 25-cent vending machines, a company library, a nap room, and free health care. Each department has its own decor, ranging from rainforest themed to Elvis themed, and employees are encouraged to decorate their work spaces.
Halls are covered with murals and cartoons, rooms are filled with props, and workspaces are filled with personalized clutter. As one Zappos employee described it: “it looks like Whoville exploded in here.”
For decades, phone book listings were the heart of effective local advertising. Well, that heart has been broken.
For the second time in 15 years, I made the drive from Wisconsin to South Dakota. On the long, straight and open road of this 14-hour trip, one of the noticeable features of the landscape is the Wall Drug signs.
When I returned from vacation this week, I wasn’t surprised to see a chain letter waiting in my inbox with hundreds of other emails. The surprise was where the chain letter came from: The White House.