Yesterday, I had the privilege to give the luncheon keynote at the National Conference on Operations and Fulfillment (NCOF) held in Orlando, FL. The audience mostly runs call center, distribution, and fulfillment operations for a wide range of companies, some small, some large, and some very large. My talk was about "Delivering the WOW Customer Experience" and I basically amended (ripped off) Tony's "Top Ten Lessons" presentation. Given the audience, I presented more metrics and gave more examples and stories relating to the operations and fulfillment side of Zappos. The core message was still about the importance of company culture and the impact of customer service. There were a number of questions during the Q&A and then a number of people came up after the presentation to thank me for giving them so much insight into the inner workings of Zappos. What was good to hear was how many organizations were learning similar lessons or facing similar issues, no matter how large they are or how long they have been in existence.

In business, we are judged by our ability to delivering great long-term results. What we sometimes forget is that great long-term results are delivered by engaged employees. That is why at Zappos, we spend so much time, energy, and resources to continuously improve our company culture and keep our employees engaged.

For a copy of the presentation, please email: culturebook "at" zappos.com, or me directly: alfred "at" zappos.com.

P.S. I began my talk with something fun and a little weird. Right before my talk, over the PA system the conference organizers were nice enough to gently remind everyone to "please silence all cell phones and pagers". When I got to the podium, I told the audience that they should feel free to turn their cell phones back on because what their customers have to say is far more important than what I have to say. I was serious, but everyone laughed. That helped lighten the mood.