Social Networking at Zappos – Interview with Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO

Thanks to Twitter, I have the wonderful opportunity to interact every day with one of the most progressive CEOs I have ever met, Tony Hsieh of Zappos. Tony (I think if I called him Mr. Hsieh, he would tell me that’s his father!) kindly agreed to let me interview him on the importance of social networking to Zappos’ corporate culture.

If you haven’t heard of Zappos, the company is an online retailer who staked it’s claim to fame by selling just about any type of shoe you can think of. Zappos is to shoes what Amazon is to books. As an HR and training professional, I truly appreciate their corporate culture. Zappos is all about loving what you do and not being afraid to show your enthusiasm.

It’s no surprise that a company this progressive uses social networking in its every day life. Employees are encouraged to engage over the Internet, with each other, customers and the general public. This is not your daddy’s corporate culture!

So on with the interview:

Q) How engraved is social networking technology in Zappos’ corporate culture?

A) We have a presence on Myspace, Facebook, YouYube, but we are most active on Twitter. We have over 400 employees on Twitter, so it’s definitely part of our corporate culture: http://twitter.zappos.com/employees

And we’ve created a page that aggregates all of our employees tweets here: http://twitter.zappos.com/employee_tweets

Q) What social networking tools or platforms do you use at Zappos?

A) In addition to the social networking sites mentioned above, we also are very active in our blogs: http://blogs.zappos.com

Q) What do you use social networking technology for at Zappos?

A) We use Twitter as a way to connect in a more personal way with both employees and customers.

Q) When did you realize that using social networking technology would benefit Zappos?

A) We’ve always been interested in connection in a more personal way with both employees in customers. That’s part of the reason why we have our 1-800 number on the top of every single page of our web site. Twitter was just another great way of connecting with people, and we introduced it to the company in Spring of 2008.

Q) How do you train people to use the social networking technology?

A) Everyone hired into our headquarters goes through 4 weeks of training when they first start, where we cover customer service and company culture. Part of the training includes introducing employees to Twitter.

Q) Do you use social networking technology to train your employees at all?

A) No.

Q) Do you monitor communications sent by Zappos employees on social networking sites?

A) We don’t have a formal monitoring system in place. We just tell employees to be real and use their best judgment.

As you can see, Zappos is quite extraordinary. But I do have one remaining question for Tony: Are you hiring? I work for shoes!