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They’re Snapping at Zappos

October 23, 2009


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I had a chance last week to visit the headquarters of online retailer Zappos.com, one of the world’s fastest growing companies. Over the last 8 years since inception, Zappos has grown to more than $1 billion in revenue (from a zero start). If you’ve shopped Zappos you know they have a great product strategy—allowing you to shop for shoes and other stuff with free shipping both ways. So, in effect, you can try on a pair of Hush Puppies and never leave home.

While their business model is fantastic, most impressive were the employees I met. I get to visit a dozen or more companies each year, and I’ve never seen a culture like this. As you tour the Las Vegas headquarters (wearing your mandatory crown) you quickly note that Zappos’ lives its core value of “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness.” Where do I begin to explain? There’s the fashion department that takes pictures of visitors (pretending they are paparazzi), or how about the finance department (yes those fun and crazy accountants) who were cleaning up from their soap box car race, or the customer service reps who were cracking jokes with customers on the phone (they are encouraged to), or the parking lot that had been the site of a petting zoo the day before (so employees could cuddle a goat) … I could go on and on.

We’ll get more into Zappos amazing culture and financial success in our new book next fall. But here’s something fun right now. I met with two extremely atypical call center managers, Maura Sullivan and Rob Siefker.

Rob told me about SNAP recognition that happens in their Customer Loyalty Teams. SNAP stands for Super Nifty and Positive Stuff. “We do SNAPs in our Zuddles, or Zappos huddles, and we just had one earlier,” he said.

“We like to put Zs in front of things,” Maura quipped.

Rob explained, “The lead supervisors and managers have ours Zuddles at 9:15 and 3:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s quick, what’s going on in the call center, are there any big ticket items we need to discuss, big news that we need to pass down, and then at the end we do SNAPs. There’s a little box in the call center and people write things that someone else did that was really cool. These are read during the Zuddles and then the person is publicly recognized on the spot. It’s peer-to-peer. Then we all snap our fingers. (Maura and Rob both demonstrate for me, as if I’ve never seen snapping, and are laughing like they just thought up this idea. They are so darn upbeat I can’t help laughing with them.)

Adds Maura, “It’s been a fun way to make sure we’re recognizing each other, even for the little things, the things that make a difference culturally for our environment. We have a lot of fun with it.”
Like every business Zappos faces challenges. But it’s one business that has learned how to have fun while growing and succeeding.




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