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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

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Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#161

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

dvt wrote: post #131
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We seem to forget that people are inherently social and need a sense of belonging. As someone who used to work at a company that also was fairly well known for its 'cultish' culture, while I agree with your statement above, I also strongly believe that the modern corporate workplace is fundamentally incompatible with the sense of social belonging that humans need. Worse, many smart people take advantage of this nee…

> As someone who used to work at a company that also was fairly well known for its 'cultish' culture, while I agree with your statement above, I also strongly believe that the modern corporate workplace is fundamentally incompatible with the sense of social belonging that humans need. Worse, many smart people take advantage of this need for a sense of belonging with the sole goal of making more money for rich people.…

>there's value in making your employees feel welcome and wanted

More like there's more value in making your employees feel welcome and wanted by feeding them Kool-Aid, rather than paying them well.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#162

Post by v77 »

obmelvin wrote: post #23
ipsum2 wrote: post #6

Does anyone know how his "The Downtown Project" (aka Vegas revitalization) is going?

I visited Detroit in May 2016 and was very taken aback by the revitalization. Granted, it was Memorial Day weekend + Movement Festival [0] so the city was certainly not in it's normal day-to-day look, but Dan Gilbert's money [1] appeared well spent to the eyes of a visitor. I learned about it from talking to my Lyft drivers, who all seemed to think positively about the effort. [0] great techno music in the genre's bi…

Unfortunately Gilbert seems to be at the end of his life. We'll see if Detroit can continue its revitalization without his money.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#163

Post by michaelhoffman »

deepGem wrote: post #119
tjr225 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't talk to me like a robot. Just pretend you're messaging a co-worker in plain-friendly-English. And be genuinely interested in solving my issues knowing that you will have higher LTV in the long term if you invest the time and resources to make me happy now. This is an easy thing to say as a customer or a customer success oriented person. I am leaving a support role just now. I am actually taking a pay cut to d…

I work closely with support teams and it's one of the toughest jobs in tech. I say toughest because it is stressful and the payoff for that stress isn't that high. I still don't understand why companies treat support as a second class function to engineering. Engineering should in fact clamor to support to better understand customer issues and get them fixed and out of the way. I also find that support teams operate…

Microsoft at least used to send engineers over to answer support phone calls occasionally and it provided a level of insight into users they wouldn't get otherwise.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030816-00/?p=42...

Even Bill Gates did this:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15...

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#164

Post by selykg »

deepGem wrote: post #119
tjr225 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't talk to me like a robot. Just pretend you're messaging a co-worker in plain-friendly-English. And be genuinely interested in solving my issues knowing that you will have higher LTV in the long term if you invest the time and resources to make me happy now. This is an easy thing to say as a customer or a customer success oriented person. I am leaving a support role just now. I am actually taking a pay cut to d…

I work closely with support teams and it's one of the toughest jobs in tech. I say toughest because it is stressful and the payoff for that stress isn't that high. I still don't understand why companies treat support as a second class function to engineering. Engineering should in fact clamor to support to better understand customer issues and get them fixed and out of the way. I also find that support teams operate…

> Engineering should in fact clamor to support to better understand customer issues and get them fixed and out of the way.

The fundamental problem is coders want to code. At least in my experience. Many are poor to terrible at talking to customers and have little desire to learn. If it isn't related to code they don't care. It's someone else's problem.

A few developers, the good ones I've worked with, know how to talk to customers and how to talk to support team members to help them.

I work in a support role now and I have worked in a development role in the past. I know both sides of it fairly well.

Finding good developers isn't trivial, but finding good developers that can communicate and work as a team, that's really hard.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#165

Post by cafard »

betocmn wrote: post #44

I grew up in Brazil, where customer service was bad-to-terrible in 90% of the companies I had to deal with. When I moved to Australia, I thought it would be a lot better. It wasn't much different. When I joined a wine subscription startup in 2016 as the technical co-founder, I wasn't just building the recommendation engine. I was also helping to pack the boxes at the warehouse. We all got fascinated with Tony's book…

In his In Love with Daylight: A Memoir of Recovery, Wilfrid Sheed wrote that a guaranteed route to success for any company would be to put its intelligent people on the phones and hide the morons in management where they can do only limited damage. I wish I could remember the context.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#166

Post by xemdetia »

user5994461 wrote: post #157
lozaning wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I used to work support in global escalations for a big multinational, my manager, nor his, ever knew what to do with me. I maintained a 100% flawless NPS/satisfaction survey rating the entire time, but my mean call time was also nearly triple that of everyone else. I helped far fewer people, but the ones that I did help I frequently ended up actually educating, resulting in nearly no repeat calls. Management cou…

I'm curious how come you didn't move to a customer if customers were offering to hire you every week?

Having been in a similar position usually being on the 'inside' with access to code/tools/etc was more interesting than being some consultant who didn't have sufficient access and was saddled with the job responsibility of actually using the product for it's intended goal in an ordinary business setting. Playing troubleshooter for the real hard problems that nobody expected or thought about and delivering a solution in one in a hundred calls can be more rewarding than just turning the crank on a business system.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#167

Post by dfxm12 »

Gracana wrote: post #121
CarbyAu wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the biggest issue was authority/power on the Service Desk. The worse cases are when the Customer Rep gets a problem from a customer they have little power to resolve. When you are: - logging tickets to a black hole of "higher tier" support with no communication back to you. - "chasing them up for the customer" aka by putting notes in a ticket ...you feel powerless. Then when the next call comes in from the cus…

As a customer, it's a painful experience when you realize the support people are in this position. I can't be mad at them, they're friendly and personable and they at least pretend to want to help, but it's obvious that they're unable to do anything useful. At a certain point (around the third three hour phone call, in my experience) it feels like they're mocking you with their saccharine lies, and I begin to loathe…

I can't be mad at them, they're friendly and personable and they at least pretend to want to help, but it's obvious that they're unable to do anything useful.

I wonder if companies are relying on your empathy. They want you to realize this and just close tickets before they're resolved. Like the service desk's primary directive is to get customers off their employer's backs. If they happen to fix an issue along the way, that's a nice bonus.

For example, I've had to call Amazon 4 times recently over the same issue. I've been lied to each time that they fixed it. I was promised evidence that I was never given. I really don't know what to do about this...

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#168

Post by asdasfasdfasdf »

rimliu wrote: post #153
asdasfasdfasdf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered that you might be the problem? When I was younger I may have written a very similar comment about some places I've worked... and while I still agree that the environment wasn't my cup of tea... my intolerance of others was a bigger problem.

Have you considered that he may not be the problem? It is known by now that too much sugar is bad for you. And for someone not raised on American diet of the dumb smiles and constant fake positivity that diet is indeed vomit-inducing. That comment may simply reflect the experience and frustration felt in such a place, it bears no indication how the op was acting there.

Why are talking about sugar and diets? Why are you equating smiling with stupidity? This is an equally odd comment.

The commenters reaction was so crass and off-putting that it's hard to believe that type of attitude didn't play a factor. To say we should ignore an extremely negative attitude that's criticizing positive attitudes seems hypocritical.

If OP was trying to make a point against the concept of positive thinking, they utterly failed because of how they chose to word it... to the point that there are multiple other commenters pointing this out.

You can make a reasoned argument against positive thinking without resorting to demeaning other people (and if you can't, then positive thinking might not be the problem).

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#169

Post by deepGem »

selykg wrote: post #164
deepGem wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work closely with support teams and it's one of the toughest jobs in tech. I say toughest because it is stressful and the payoff for that stress isn't that high. I still don't understand why companies treat support as a second class function to engineering. Engineering should in fact clamor to support to better understand customer issues and get them fixed and out of the way. I also find that support teams operate…

> Engineering should in fact clamor to support to better understand customer issues and get them fixed and out of the way. The fundamental problem is coders want to code. At least in my experience. Many are poor to terrible at talking to customers and have little desire to learn. If it isn't related to code they don't care. It's someone else's problem. A few developers, the good ones I've worked with, know how to tal…

Agreed, I don't imply that developers should talk to customers but they should at least work with support team in a more cohesive manner.

I have seen the flip side also where the developers are very accessible, support pushes every minor issue over to engineering. This is like super rare though.

Re: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years

#170

Post by SeerKlein »

tjr225 wrote: post #98
betocmn wrote: post #44

I grew up in Brazil, where customer service was bad-to-terrible in 90% of the companies I had to deal with. When I moved to Australia, I thought it would be a lot better. It wasn't much different. When I joined a wine subscription startup in 2016 as the technical co-founder, I wasn't just building the recommendation engine. I was also helping to pack the boxes at the warehouse. We all got fascinated with Tony's book…

> Don't talk to me like a robot. Just pretend you're messaging a co-worker in plain-friendly-English. And be genuinely interested in solving my issues knowing that you will have higher LTV in the long term if you invest the time and resources to make me happy now. This is an easy thing to say as a customer or a customer success oriented person. I am leaving a support role just now. I am actually taking a pay cut to d…

Amen, I work in IT support and when I try to provide good customer service that is empathetic and customer-centric, which takes time, I get seen as worse than other agents who get the customer off the phone as soon as possible. After a while, I changed to be more "results-oriented", which does not help for customer focus.
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