Net Promoter Community

Our third guest in the "Getting Employees in the Game" track was Jim Carrillo, Customer Loyalty Team Manager from Zappos.  He oversees “ToolBox”, leadership development, Live Chat, Work-from-home and Graveyard teams.  He has been with Zappos for 6 years, and has seen the company grow into the customer service icon it is today.

The company was founded in 1999, and Tony was originally an investor.  Tony was passionate about creating a company that he actually wanted to work in, whence the culture we know and admire.  As they say, “we’re a service company that just happens to sell shoes, handbags, etc.”

Zappos Core Values were created by the employees, and are used for any decision, from hiring, to communication, to service. The secret is to actually stick to your core values, no matter what they are.

·         Deliver WOW through service

·         Embrace and drive change

·         Create fun and a little weirdness

·         Be adventurous creative and open-minded

·         Pursue growth and learning

·         Build open and honest relationship with communication

·         Build a positive team and family spirit

·         Do more with less

·         Be passionate a determined

·         Be humble

Finding the right team members is critical to get right

• Recruiting team first interviews for culture

o   What your theme song is, how lucky you feel

o   Tour of the space – what’s the look on their face?

• Managers interview for technical fit, HR interviews for culture fit – has to pass both
• Hire slowly, fire quickly

On-boarding Experience is unique

• 4 week new hire training class
• In Week 2, they get The Offer – everyone in the class gets offered $3K to quit.  Is this person committed to working with the organization?  Less than 1% take it.
• Those who do actually get $4K as a sign of good will
• 1 week of Kentucky Hero Academy (for the Vegas teams, they need to understand what it’s like on the other side)
• 3 weeks of Incubation – transitional period between training and full-time teams – extra coaching, extra help – get The Offer again.

Training is crucial

• Everyone is a customer service rep – EVERYONE goes through the initial CSR training (finance, HR, merchandising, etc.)
• Every manager at Zappos started as a CSR – the management understands the challenges, helps to inspire them to do well – they know there’s a path up

There are various elements of coaching support that the team members receive, chief among which is progression in their careers:

• Skill sets in Specialty teams (e.g. fraud, training, etc), Mentoring, Ambassador program (working with folks in Incubation)
• Culture: Culture clubs (e.g. Beautification club for decorating the office), Team building & relationship building (e.g. monthly team building events with a $100 budget)
• Growth and Learning: Pipeline classes, Tech seminars (manufacturers they deal with gives overview of brand and products), Senior rep program (via certification & training period), internships

How to support the team members:

• Workspace personalization – creating comfortable work environment
• Create an environment of empowerment
• Provide continuous feedback – lead-to-team member is about 1:10

How to WOW the customers:

• Website is what the customers see first – 1800-number is on every page!

o   Free shipping both ways

• It’s all about the experience

o   Fast, accurate fulfillment – typical time to shipment is 1 hr

o   PEC – personal emotional connection

o   Above and beyond – assist with finding item elsewhere if they don’t have it

• Inside message needs to match the outside message

o   Phone reps are not tracked on call times

§  Longest call was 8 hours and 28 minutes

o   Their only job is to deliver wow.  Period.

o   Inventory all product – no drop shipping

o   Team members empowered to create cards, send flowers – go beyond the moment

What does Zappos get out of it?

• Inspire employee happiness & engagement
• A sense of ownership and pride
• A workforce who make business decisions based on customer happiness
• Results: >75% of purchases are from repeat customers

The questions they ask in their surveys are:

• The ultimate question
• The ultimate question about the specific Customer loyalty team member
• Verbatims

We were joined for the first session of Getting Employees in the Game by Jim Parrish and Tom Graves, CEO and Director of Customer Service of Carolina Biological, respectively.  Jim took us through how Carolina uses NPS, and Tom gave us some concrete examples.

Carolina is an 85-year-old company, and creates products for science classes and curricula – microscopes, chemistry sets, frogs, insects, etc.  When Jim joined the company, it was in a state of relative disarray.  They weren’t living up to their service standards.  They ran an assessment, and understood the high level issues – but the results – percentages, numbers, etc - weren’t sharable with the front line.  That’s when they started looking into NPS.  And that’s when they started calling their detractors – that was the fuel that drove the virtuous cycle of change.  And they complimented the revolution with new metrics: delivery time rather than call time.  What gets measured gets done!

When they started focusing on the issues, they saw improvements in NPS immediately.  The customer feedback that they get has an authority and legitimacy to rally the company behind the right thing.  It’s when you read and listen to the customer, in their own voice, that you are motivated to do the right thing.

A few examples of how Carolina made the changes that made a difference:

·         Share and recover – close the loop

o   NPS surveys are done 4 times a year.  They go over every single verbatim every morning.  Each gets assigned to a CSR or supervisor.

o   They shared the verbatims with the front-line staff, and there was shock

·         Customer accolades – gets employees excited

o   The ratio of good to bad started out at 1:2, now it’s reversed

o   The best comments are shared with the entire company – from the CSRs to the president

o   Sharing is a very simple thing to do, and it makes such a difference

·         Saturday workshops – a group that shares, cares, and are passionate about each other

o   Every CSR gets handed an envelope with a negative comment, and throughout the morning everyone has the chance to read theirs

o   The CSRs have a chance to experience the products and relate to the customer – e.g. dissecting a frog

o   Tie your financial results to errors attributed to each individual CSR – unbelievably powerful moment

·         Training

o   Use the Internet!  TED Talks are inspirational.

o   Training inventory – let CSRs tell the company what they know, where they need help

o   Other resources:

§  The Power of One

§  Simple Truths

§  Telephone Doctor

·         Hiring – have to have the right people

o   Carolina takes pains in determining the right cultural fit, the right personal fit

o   The current employees are  heavily involved in hiring their future peers

o   Partnered with FurstPerson – help with assessing the candidates – first hurdle

§  Shows the likelihood that they would be successful with Carolina

o   Next is a phone screen, then a panel interview – stressful but indicative of success!

·         Rewards

o   Giving people kudos (shirts, pins, anything!)

§  Comes with the question “who else in the company helped you achieve?”

o   Send the best CSRs to customer service conferences

§  They are then responsible for integrating at least one learning from the conference

o   Incentive plan based on performance: error rates, post call surveys (each CSR has an Net Promoter Score based on the voice of the customer), etc

Employees feel empowered by the training, by the feedback.  They know that they can make a difference in the lives of their customers.  They are not held accountable for their time on the phone, only for how well they solve their customers’ problems.  They feel like a family.  And since these changes went into effect, all metrics – NPS, churn, errors, etc – have improved drastically.