Here’s a picture of a giant “Thank You” card we had made up at Zappos. It was in our front lobby for a few days so people could sign it. It’s for our local DMV. Yes, that DMV – Department of Motor Vehicles. Yes, I know the nationwide stereotype is that having to visit the DMV is up there (or should that be "down" there) with visiting that other D-word place – dentist.



Honestly, I think a case can be made for the Las Vegas DMV offices having a much better service level than the stereotypical norm. And I don’t mean that as faint praise.

Yes the lines can be long here – there are even businesses that will wait in line for you at the DMV (do other cities have these?) but once your ticket number is called, it’s been my experience that you will be helped by an intelligent, knowledgeable and even cheerful person. To be fair to the DMV here, Las Vegas has been one of the fastest growing cities Perhaps the most significant issue at the Nevada DMV was some severe computer problems that made for very slow transaction times. On the flip side of DMV computerization, they’ve got a pretty sweet online renewal system. You just type in your junk and a few days later your new sticker and registration show up in the mail.

This is a true post, not a week late April Fool’s trick. If you’re a Zappos customer you know we’ve got a strong thank you note writing tradition. (If you’re not a Zappos customer, please click HERE NOW! ) Why we’ve even presented our “local bar up the street” with a giant “Thank You” card!

Zappos, POWERED by Good Cheer!

Let’s see “Internet” is something between networks. “Intranet” is something inside a network. (never understood “intramural” though – who else thinks “inside a painting” instead of casual college sports? It seem the Latin word "murus" for wall is the link. And that leaves “extranet” as external access to a network. In this case, it is our vendors accessing our network and inhouse sales ordering system so we can have the best selection of products for you. Here’s how our intranet wiki page for extranet sums it up:

“We don’t hide any information from our vendors! We have given you access to the backdoor of our site because the more you know about our business, the more you can help us grow it!”

So once a month, representatives from new vendors (1175 brands and growing!) or new reps from existing vendors, come to Zappos for a half day extranet training class. They receive their own account login and then go through all of the reports and graphs for real-time inventory, sales, trends/history, costs and purchase orders. The name of one report caught my eye - “fill it or kill it” – it reminds me of how I felt when I filled up a car with gas this weekend. (Hey save gas, and shop online with Zappos!) This report is about filling orders/POs or canceling them by the way.

Some of our vendor reps can’t believe the Extranet is for real but they soon come around. At Zappos, we try to WOW everyone – not just you, our customers. This philosophy seems to be working out quite well for us and we’ll continue to refine and expand the extranet.

Anybody remember that Seinfeld episode where Jerry said the long drawn out "Helloooooo!" Well in a vaguely related vein the WOW Committee had a "Hello project." My friend Patrice conceived this concept and the entire group divvied up a stack of brightly colored stars and wrote funny, upbeat greetings on them. Then they passed them out to people, especially people they did not know and gave them a couple of extra ones to pass on. Zappos has about doubled in size in the past year and this was another way of breaking the ice, Zappos style!

"What's Zappening?"

"Hi! How are you!"



"Yo! Yo!"