Book Review: Delivering Happiness

Last week I finished reading Delivering Happiness book by Tony Hsieh. The book has also has its own resourceful website.

I work in Customer Support and plan to advance my career in this area because I love learning things, solving problems, and helping people. So reading this book made perfect sense.

Most of this book is about Tony’s personal entrepreneurial story leading to the acquisition of Zappos by Amazon.com, emphasising company culture and its importance. The action-oriented tiny chapter at the end got my thinking hat on and articulate what happiness means to me personally. I did that exercise but am not yet ready to share my happiness plan publicly. But this was an exciting exercise to do.

The wowing customers part particularly resonated with me. I would be cheeky if I claimed that I wow my customers all the time. But I try my best and be as close as possible to the utopia. So this wowing thing did not feel foreign to me. For any business that intends to be relevant, I can’t think of anything else that can take precedence over delighting customers.

Taking a cue from the book, I pinged one of the Zappos customer support team to check if they ship to New Zealand. I really felt like ordering something, if they can ship. But it seems down under is too far for Zappos to ship their “Happiness Box”. However, as I read in the book, the customer service rep offered me a visit to Zappos facilities in Las Vegas. If I ever visit Vegas, I will remember Zappos and would be glad to visit their facilities and understand their culture first-hand.

As an aside, I made a list of some companies I admire call their customer-facing teams. So far, I have listed Customer Support, Customer Experience, Customer Happiness, Customer Success, Customer Loyalty, Customer Care, Customer Service and Customer Excellence. I would be glad to know if you know any other names that can be added to this list.