In addition to inferring customer wants and needs based on the users’ behavior, Zappos involves customers in the specifics of the website design through a process of user testing. Rafael Mojica notes, “We incorporate what we learn from analytic data into the way we design a new feature or redesign an old one. We then show our customers the new

For some positions, I’d obviously be looking for a specific set of skills. But in both cases, I am building on the recruiter’s assessment and looking for someone who has a great attitude and passion. Both of those characteristics can’t be taught, and they are necessary to fit with the Zappos culture and to get that person to the next levels of our

Alfred Lin, former COO and CEO at Zappos,

a simple telephone conversation between promising candidates and a recruiter can assess such things as whether the applicant is just trying to find any job or possibly hoping to leave an unpleasant job rather than being genuinely drawn to what makes Zappos unique.

Will you create questions that explore whether your applicants align with your core values? (For example, at Zappos, interviewees might be asked to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 as to how weird they are. This is followed by a more important question: Why did you give yourself the rating you did?

The more you assist your customers in getting what they want, the more those customers will turn to you as a trusted advisor for future products and services.

We started with three or four photo angles, and we are now up to eight angles plus video. In the beginning, it was very expensive to do it this way, but we felt it was the best and the only viable option.

Often the difference between okay service and great service is a matter of executing on the basics and offering a slight extra that makes the customer go ‘wow.’ From our point of view, the cost difference between a ‘wow experience’ and an average experience is not much, while the benefit to the customer is huge.

We have to nail every part of the customer journey, from the moment a customer gets to the website to the moment when that customer finishes the order. Every aspect must be a pleasant experience.