Quotes from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Money alone isn't enough to bring happiness . . . happiness [is] when you're actually truly ok with losing everything you have.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself).”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“I had decided to stop chasing the money, and start chasing the passion.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Your personal core values define who you are, and a company's core values ultimately define the company's character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“We must all learn not only to not fear change, but to embrace it enthusiastically and, perhaps even more important, encourage and drive it.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“My advice is to stop trying to "network" in the traditional business sense, and instead just try to build up the number and depth of your friendships, where the friendship itself is its own reward. The more diverse your set of friendships are, the more likely you'll derive both personal and business benefits from your friendship later down the road. You won't know exactly what those benefits will be, but if your friendships are genuine, those benefits will magically appear 2-3 years later down the road.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“It’s important to constantly challenge and stretch yourself, and not be stuck in a job where you don’t feel like you are growing or learning.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“If you have more than 3 priorities then you don’t have any.” —Jim Collins”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“The combination of physical synchrony with other humans and being part of something bigger than oneself (and thus losing momentarily a sense of self) leads to a greater sense of happiness.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. —MORPHEUS, THE MATRIX”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Act weak when strong, act strong when weak. Know when to bluff.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time. A lot of people may think it’s strange that an Internet company is so focused on the telephone, when only about 5 percent of our sales happen through the telephone. In fact, most of our phone calls don’t even result in sales. But what we’ve found is that on average, every customer contacts us at least once sometime during his or her lifetime, and we just need to make sure that we use that opportunity to create a lasting memory. The majority of phone calls don’t result in an immediate order. Sometimes a customer may be calling because it’s her first time returning an item, and she just wants a little help stepping through the process. Other times, a customer may call because there’s a wedding coming up this weekend and he wants a little fashion advice. And sometimes, we get customers who call simply because they’re a little lonely and want someone to talk to. I’m reminded of a time when I was in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago at a Skechers sales conference. After a long night of bar-hopping, a small group of us headed up to someone’s hotel room to order some food. My friend from Skechers tried to order a pepperoni pizza from the room-service menu, but was disappointed to learn that the hotel we were staying at did not deliver hot food after 11:00 PM. We had missed the deadline by several hours. In our inebriated state, a few of us cajoled her into calling Zappos to try to order a pizza. She took us up on our dare, turned on the speakerphone, and explained to the (very) patient Zappos rep that she was staying in a Santa Monica hotel and really craving a pepperoni pizza, that room service was no longer delivering hot food, and that she wanted to know if there was anything Zappos could do to help. The Zappos rep was initially a bit confused by the request, but she quickly recovered and put us on hold. She returned two minutes later, listing the five closest places in the Santa Monica area that were still open and delivering pizzas at that time. Now, truth be told, I was a little hesitant to include this story because I don’t actually want everyone who reads this book to start calling Zappos and ordering pizza. But I just think it’s a fun story to illustrate the power of not having scripts in your call center and empowering your employees to do what’s right for your brand, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation. As for my friend from Skechers? After that phone call, she’s now a customer for life. Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company   1. Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top.   2. Make WOW a verb that is part of your company’s everyday vocabulary.   3. Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service… because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare.   4. Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees.   5. Don’t measure call times, don’t force employees to upsell, and don’t use scripts.   6. Don’t hide your 1-800 number. It’s a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well.   7. View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you’re seeking to minimize.   8. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company.   9. Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service. 10. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“When you walk with purpose, you collide with destiny. —BERTICE BERRY”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“I failed my way to success. —THOMAS EDISON”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“Branding Through Customer Service Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“It starts with what customers first see when they visit our Web site. In the United States, we offer free shipping both ways to make the transaction as easy as possible and risk-free for our customers. A lot of customers will order five different pairs of shoes, try them on with five different outfits in the comfort of their living rooms, and then send back the ones that don’t fit or they simply don’t like—free of charge. The additional shipping costs are expensive for us, but we really view those costs as a marketing expense. We also offer a 365-day return policy for people who have trouble committing or making up their minds. At most Web sites, the contact information is usually buried at least five links deep and even when you find it, it’s a form or e-mail address that you can only contact once. We take the exact opposite approach. We put our phone number (1-800-927-7671) at the top of every single page of our Web site, because we actually want to talk to our customers. And we staff our call center 24/7. I personally think it’s kind of funny when I attend marketing or branding conferences and”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“hear companies talk about consumers being bombarded with thousands and thousands of advertising messages every day, because there’s usually a lot of discussion among companies and ad agencies talking about how to get their message to stand out. There’s a lot of buzz these days about “social media” and “integration marketing.” As unsexy and low-tech as it may sound, our belief is that the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer’s undivided attention for five to ten minutes, and if you get the interaction right, what we’ve found is that the customer remembers the experience for a very long time and tells his or her friends about it. Too many companies think of their call centers as an expense to minimize. We believe that it’s a huge untapped opportunity for most companies, not only because it can result in word-of-mouth marketing, but because of its”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“We must never lose our sense of urgency in making improvements. We must never settle for “good enough,” because good is the enemy of great,”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“The best leaders are those that lead by example and are both team followers as well as team leaders. We believe that in general, the best ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up, meaning by those on the front lines that are closest to the issues and/or the customers. The role of a manager is to remove obstacles and enable his/her direct reports to succeed. This means the best leaders are servant-leaders. They serve those they lead.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“key ingredient in strong relationships is to develop emotional connections. It’s important to always act with integrity in your relationships, to be compassionate, friendly, loyal, and to make sure that you do the right thing and treat your relationships well.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life. I”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“So there are no experts in what we’re doing. Except for us: we are becoming experts as we do this. And for anyone we bring on board, the best expertise they can bring is expertise at learning and adapting and figuring new things out—helping the company grow, and in the process they will also be growing themselves.”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

“It’s more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long difficult words but rather short easy words like What about lunch?” —Winnie-the-Pooh”
― Tony Hsieh, quote from Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

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