Case Study: Fast, Simple Open-Source IT - ' Keep the Information Flowing '

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Keep the Information Flowing

Because Zappos thinks of itself as a customer-service business above all else, the company is finely attuned to customers' thoughts and preferences. Customers can talk to live reps around the clock—the 1-800 number is on every single Web page—in addition to submitting questions or requests through the Web site itself. And everyone at Zappos is trained to deal with customers: Every employee spends their first four weeks at Zappos in a customer-loyalty training program. To stay responsive to those desires, Zappos keeps information flowing so that everyone—from the merchandising team to coders working on new aspects of the site—knows what they need to know. A report is run every morning that shows which brands customers have searched for the previous day. If Zappos hasn't heard of a brand, the company's merchandising team follows up.

More important, the company keeps a dialogue channel open between its customer-service reps and development team, so the IT crew hears directly what customers are saying, without that information getting lost in bureaucratic pathways. Weekly meetings are held, not between higher-level managers, but between actual coders and frontline customer-service supervisors. A wiki-style collaboration tool lets everyone in the company post to a central repository any information they think is worth sharing—from the addition of new brands to good places to eat near the office. "It's that kind of focus on service that differentiates them," says Angelique Dab, an equity analyst who covers the footwear and specialty apparel industry at Nollenberger Capital Partners Inc., based in San Francisco. "Zappos has managed to bring a top-notch, Nordstrom-like feel to an online store, which is quite an achievement."

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