SavvySugar

At Zappos Your Co-Workers Could Be Robots

SavvySugar — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:05:38 -0700

The word robot always conjures an image of Dot Matrix from Space Balls for me, but the robots Zappos has introduced to its workforce don't need piggyback rides when they're tired and we can be sure they are not equipped with virgin-alarms. The orange robots reside in the company's Kentucky warehouse and are part of the assembly line that packs the boxes containing your shoes.

The robots' job is to retrieve shoes from the warehouse and bring them to a person who packs the boxes, and another robot takes the completed box to another area to be shipped. Incorporating robots is seen by some as an effective way to cut down on costs to prevent US companies from outsourcing.

Zappos Pays Its Employees to Quit

SavvySugar — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:49:53 -0700

Here I thought Zappos was just the best accomplice to indecisive shoe junkies like myself, with its generous and fast free shipping and free return policies, but it turns out there's more to this online shoe company than meets the eye. Zappos is obsessed with customer service and understands that there are several other sources online for customers to get their shoe fixes.

After an intensive four-week training period that compensates new employees with their full salary, the company presents the freshly trained group with something called The Offer: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos tests the commitment of its employees from the get-go, because it realizes the importance of a strong call-center team when that's the only customer service experience an online customer will get. Makes perfectly good business sense to me!

Source

Celebrity Apprentice: Was the Right Guy Fired?

SavvySugar — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:30:09 -0700

The celebrity candidates were challenged to channel their creative energies in last night's episode of The Celebrity Apprentice. They were tasked with designing and costuming a comic-book character to promote Zappos and had to present their storyline to the online company's CEO.

Conflict ensues on both teams, though the women (Team Athena) come around and are able to put together a more appealing package than the men (Team Kotu). It's obvious where the most friction is among the members of Kotu - project manager Scott Hamilton blames Tom Green for lacking focus and for derailing Scott from his thought process, while Tom doesn't understand why nobody is listening to him. He also doesn't understand why Scott is calling their character EEE - he says it sounds like a bra size - instead of using a name that started with the letter Z.

Kotu loses because of the illogical name for their character, while Donald Trump seems impressed with team Athena and its project manager, Khloe Kardashian. The boardroom is a jumble of finger pointing and Scott doesn't even want to bring in one of the other candidates for evaluation, he just wants to bring in Tom. Trump gives Tom a warning that he better perform next week, but Scott is fired for the decision to name their character EEE.

Did Trump make the right call?

Photos courtesy of NBC