Five Ingredients of Customer Centricity
Customer focus as a strategy
The crash of a big dream
Tony Hsieh was a dreamer. He believed he could build a customer-oriented yet profitable business.
His book Delivering Happiness inspired countless entrepreneurs.
He founded Zappos—once a paragon of customer centricity and holacracy. Hsieh treated customers like friends and employees like family.
Amazon aquired Zappos in 2009, but it continued to operate independently with Hsieh staying at the helm.
Unfortunately, holacracy and exceptional customer service could only do so much. Zappos hasn’t become an international business. Few companies managed to replicate its experience.
What works for a passion project doesn’t cut it in a global giant. Customer service is hard to build, but painfully hard to scale.
Tony Hsieh tragically died in 2020. His brainchild, Zappos, has outlived its founders, but this is not the Zappos as it was in 2009. Now, it’s just another company, one of many.
This story is yet another reason not to buy into Silicon Vall…