When talking about developing customer service and relationships many believe that training and recruitment are key. However, over at Zappos.com, an internet retailer that was bought last year by Amazon for £1.2 billion, it starts before that. It starts with the company’s culture.

Founded in 1999 and focused, initially, on selling shoes they have grown incredibly fast over the last 10 years and in 2008 boasted $1 billion in sales. Phenomenal growth. But all of this, according to their CEO Tony Hseih, is built on their company culture and core values. Check out their core values and video from the CEO above.

Zappos Core Values and Culture

Zappos’ value are listed on their website as:

I would like to go on a journey with you.  My goal: to make sense of the web in a way you may not have considered before. The web is more than a random collection of websites. It has a structure and a meaning to it that, if you understand it, you can use to the advantage of your business. I would like to expose that inner structure and show you how to structure your website, and indeed your entire business.

We are no longer in a position, whether we run small local businesses or businesses that aspire to sell products and services worldwide, to merely view the web as a marketing tool, or an ecommerce site or a distribution channel. We must start thinking of it as the primary organizing principle of our business. It is more important than the “real” world it mirrors. And in the coming year or two it will become obvious to everyone that a new order of business is emerging. These will be businesses, small or large, that are large in their impact on the web. 

Currency markets range traded for most of yesterday morning as a lack of economic data releases kept focus on commodities and equities and the Euro, after initially losing ground due to weaker manufacturing data, recovered earlier losses.
The dollar received a boost in the afternoon after a drop in gold prices pushed the greenback higher, closing over 0.5% higher versus the pound.
Overnight the trend continued as the Federal Reserve Bank is currently on retreat. The Fed is expected to announce details of further quantitative easing measure aimed at ending the slowing trend in the U.S. economy and restoring the recovery.
Pressure from Asia added to dollar gains versus the euro and the pound after the Japanese government stepped up pressure on the Bank of Japan to action against the Yen’s continued appreciation. The Yen and dollar strengthened as investors began to anticipate future physical intervention by the BoJ.

I recently posted a blog (Who will you trust) about factors which should influence your decision to hire a specific coach. Similar to the coaching profession, anyone can decide to call themselves a trainer or leadership expert. An external trainer will set you back anything from £300 to £2500 a day. You may ask, what’s the difference between a trainer which charges £300 and £2500; actually not a lot. It’s all about how much you value their worth and how good they are at identifying the value of their proposed solution to you.

So, how do you go about finding a identifying a reputable external training consultant to work with your business?

1. Price is not a guarantee of success or experience