My tour is led by Roberson, the former pastor, who wears jeans and a maroon polo shirt and carries a giant Zappos flag. We are joined by four consultants from Deloitte. In the lobby, Roberson points out the Reply to All Hat -- a sort of dunce cap for employees who commit that venial office sin of the inadvertent mass e-mail -- and takes us past the nap room, where three employees are stretched out on couches. At the office of the company's staff life coach, who also happens to be Hsieh's former chiropractor, we are each photographed while sitting on a throne.
But the most striking thing about the tour is the extent to which the company's long-term plan is on display. A sales chart in the lobby informs everyone in the building that the day before -- March 4, 2009 -- Zappos sold $2.5 million worth of merchandise. A computer printout in the hallway notes that there are currently 4.1 million items, mostly shoes, in stock in the warehouse in Kentucky. At the conclusion of the tour, we are invited to peruse the company library, which is filled with multiple copies of two dozen business and self-help books. We are urged to take whatever grabs our fancy, a policy that applies to employees as well. Roberson explains that one of Zappos's core values is personal growth and that books are given out to help employees grow with the company.
When I tell Hsieh that Zappos strikes me as not unlike a religious cult, he doesn't disagree. "I think there's a lot you can learn from religion," he says. "This is not just a company. It's like a way of life."
Of course, nobody except Hsieh works at Zappos to save his or her soul. It's a job -- and not a particularly glamorous one. Customer service reps start at $11 an hour, warehouse workers at $8.25. But even in its hiring process, Zappos creates wildly different expectations than do most companies. Prospective hires must pass an hourlong "culture interview" before being handed off to whatever department they are applying to. Questions include, "On a scale of 1 -- 10, how weird are you?" and "What was your last position called? Was that an appropriate title?" (The first question makes sure that employees are sufficiently weird; the second, in which the interviewer is trying to goad the applicant into grumbling about his or her title, tests for humility.)
If there is a disagreement between HR and the manager doing the hiring, Hsieh personally interviews the candidate and makes the final call. His strategy is to get the applicant into a social situation to see if they can connect emotionally. Alcohol often figures in the hiring process. "I had three vodka shots with Tony during my interview," says Rebecca Ratner, Zappos's head of human resources. "And I'm not atypical." I asked Hsieh if this wasn't exposing the company to unnecessary risks. "It's a risk," he says. "But if we're building a culture where everyone is friends with everyone else, it's worth the risk."
After my tour, I spend a few minutes sitting in the Zappos call center with Grace Hale, a bubbly young woman with dyed black hair and a lip piercing. Unlike most call center operators, Zappos does not keep track of call times or require operators to read from scripts. Hale has a penchant for offering unsolicited commentary on customers' shoe selections -- "They are beautiful," she coos during one call, as she pulls up a picture of a pair of Dr. Scholl's Asana heels that a customer found uncomfortable. Not only are reps encouraged to make decisions on their own -- for instance, offering a refund on a defective item -- they are supposed to send a dozen or so personal notes to customers every day. "It's all about P-E-C," Hale explains to me. "Personal Emotional Connection with the customer." (After a few hours at Zappos, you actually stop noticing this argot.)
All of this is designed to impress customers -- or as Hale would have it, "wow them." Last year, Zappos stopped promising free overnight shipping on its website, but not because of the cost. In fact, the company still ships almost every order overnight, but Hsieh wanted customers to be surprised when they got the item the next day. According to Patti Freeman Evans, an analyst with Forrester Research, this has helped Zappos fend off challenges from copycat sites such as Amazon's Endless.com and IAC's Shoebuy.com, which offer similar perks and even lower prices. "A lot of companies talk about service. Zappos really does it," Evans says.
During Zappos's early days, long workdays would often spill into late-night socializing. Hsieh enjoyed this so much that he formalized it at Zappos: Managers are now required to spend 10 percent to 20 percent of their time goofing off with the people they manage. "It's just kind of a random number we made up," Hsieh concedes. "But part of the way you build company culture is hanging out outside of the office."
On my last night in Las Vegas, Hsieh offers to take me out and show me what he is talking about. We are joined by a couple of his friends and six Zappos employees and bounce from a bar to a lounge to a nightclub. By the time I beg out, at 2 a.m., Hsieh and a few others are heading to a dive bar to grab a late-night bite to eat. Though Hsieh seems to enjoy himself -- and though he does indulge in a few shots of Grey Goose -- he never really lets loose. For the first half of the evening, we chat seriously about happiness. Then he withdraws, eventually sitting down, playing with his BlackBerry, and watching the party with what looks like a smile.
In his speeches, Hsieh likes to point out that Zappos does not have specific policies for dealing with each customer service situation. He claims that the company's culture allows it to do extraordinary things. I saw him make this point earlier this year in New York City, when he told a story about a woman whose husband died in a car accident after she had ordered boots for him from Zappos. The day after she called to ask for help with the return, she received a flower delivery. The call center rep had ordered the flowers without checking with a supervisor and billed them to the company. "At the funeral, the widow told her friends and family about the experience," Hsieh said, his voice cracking and his eyes tearing up ever so slightly. "Not only was she a customer for life, but so were those 30 or 40 people at the funeral."
Hsieh paused to compose himself. "Stories like these are being created every single day, thousands and thousands of times," he said. "It's just an example that if you get the culture right, then most of the other stuff follows."
Max Chafkin is Inc.'s senior writer.
