<story><title>Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years</title><url>https://footwearnews.com/2020/business/executive-moves/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-steps-down-1203045974/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>betocmn</author><text>I grew up in Brazil, where customer service was bad-to-terrible in 90% of the companies I had to deal with.&lt;p&gt;When I moved to Australia, I thought it would be a lot better. It wasn&amp;#x27;t much different.&lt;p&gt;When I joined a wine subscription startup in 2016 as the technical co-founder, I wasn&amp;#x27;t just building the recommendation engine. I was also helping to pack the boxes at the warehouse.&lt;p&gt;We all got fascinated with Tony&amp;#x27;s book &amp;quot;Delivering Happiness&amp;quot; [1]. As I packed boxes, I listened to the audiobook several times. Then I read it later on again.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m still surprised how bad customer service is in most companies. Don&amp;#x27;t talk to me like a robot. Just pretend you&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;A few years later and our customers are obsessed not just about the wine we recommend. They also write love letters about how happy they are to deal with our customer service team. I&amp;#x27;m still writing code on the other side, but it makes my day to see that part of the business working so well.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.goodreads.com&amp;#x2F;book&amp;#x2F;show&amp;#x2F;6828896-delivering-happiness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.goodreads.com&amp;#x2F;book&amp;#x2F;show&amp;#x2F;6828896-delivering-happi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tjr225</author><text>&amp;gt; Don&amp;#x27;t talk to me like a robot. Just pretend you&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;This is an easy thing to say as a customer or a customer success oriented person.&lt;p&gt;I am leaving a support role just now. I am actually taking a pay cut to do so. Almost all of my customers speak to me in a rude tone.&lt;p&gt;I have no incentive to pretend to have an interest in their issues. I don’t think the issue is with customer support, but general attitudes among IT professionals.&lt;p&gt;On top of this, customer success is treated as a second class to engineering even if our problems are harder and more stressful. Imagine finding a bug and being blamed for the bug not being fixed while at the same time engineering is mad at you for wanting it fixed. Gross.&lt;p&gt;Anyway- support; never again.</text></comment>
<story><title>Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years</title><url>https://footwearnews.com/2020/business/executive-moves/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-steps-down-1203045974/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>betocmn</author><text>I grew up in Brazil, where customer service was bad-to-terrible in 90% of the companies I had to deal with.&lt;p&gt;When I moved to Australia, I thought it would be a lot better. It wasn&amp;#x27;t much different.&lt;p&gt;When I joined a wine subscription startup in 2016 as the technical co-founder, I wasn&amp;#x27;t just building the recommendation engine. I was also helping to pack the boxes at the warehouse.&lt;p&gt;We all got fascinated with Tony&amp;#x27;s book &amp;quot;Delivering Happiness&amp;quot; [1]. As I packed boxes, I listened to the audiobook several times. Then I read it later on again.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m still surprised how bad customer service is in most companies. Don&amp;#x27;t talk to me like a robot. Just pretend you&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;A few years later and our customers are obsessed not just about the wine we recommend. They also write love letters about how happy they are to deal with our customer service team. I&amp;#x27;m still writing code on the other side, but it makes my day to see that part of the business working so well.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.goodreads.com&amp;#x2F;book&amp;#x2F;show&amp;#x2F;6828896-delivering-happiness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.goodreads.com&amp;#x2F;book&amp;#x2F;show&amp;#x2F;6828896-delivering-happi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steve_adams_86</author><text>I really believe customer service this effective is worth its weight in gold.&lt;p&gt;I worked on a SaaS product that was essentially a booking engine. Vacations, rentals, tours, b&amp;amp;bs; etc. Their product was complete shit and it was so stressful to work on. Nearly a decade of terrible choices and the wrong technologies stacked up like a card house.&lt;p&gt;The only thing that kept the customers there was the insanely talented and competent customer service. They knew the app inside and out and were able to smooth out the insane number of rough edges for new and old customers alike. When gifts were sent to the company, they were typically sent to customer service.&lt;p&gt;Everyone in CS was paid terribly. It really bothered me. The software team was doing a Bad Job and getting paid well for it, and CS was really saving everyone’s asses. Since then I look at the customer support team a lot differently.</text></comment>