Clockwise: Holly from ZCLT smiles for the camera, Steven AKA Superman, Zappos Hero marshmallow pops (yum!), Rob, Director of ZCLT, fights ghosts with the Stay Puft marshmallow man!

To say thanks our wonderful Zappos Customer Loyalty Team (ZCLT), the Zappos family has been celebrating Customer Service Week all week long. Our wonderful PEACE team planned tons of fun events throughout the week, including a photo booth, hero parades, goodie giveaways, cash cube, free lunch day, root beer float day, and more!

The Zappos Wishez program was established over a year ago, and since then there have been a wide array of wishes granted by our fellow Zapponians. Sometimes, it's as simple as a cute little Gremlin doll that talks! This is what Lisette M. from the ZCLT graveyard team wished for, and a little "wish fairy" granted her wish and made her day!

This goes to show that it doesn't necessarily take a huge act of kindness to make someone smile! Every little thing counts!

The following email was sent to our employees by Chris Nielsen (our

CFO)

Thanks everyone for your patience!

Hello Zappos Family and loyal Zappos customers,

 You deserve an update on where we are with the WMS project and how things are going today.  The project officially went live last Monday, and despite everyone’s best efforts we have faced some challenges since then.

 Those challenges come in two forms: 

1)      Going through the backlog of customer orders that were built while we had the previous system offline and were transitioning to the new system.  Over the cutover weekend, we were accepting orders from Thursday through Monday but not able to process them until Sunday night.  During this time, we were doing the work necessary to change from the previous system to the new one.  That timeline meant that we needed to start quickly shipping orders with the new system.  Shipping began slower than we expected as we ran into some unanticipated mechanical, systems, process and training issues.

2)      Fixing pieces of functionality and processes that are not working as we expected them to.  As with any system transition, we are finding errors that need to be corrected, enhancements that need to be made and process changes required to maximize volume through the FC.

 The backlog challenge has been greater than fixing pieces of functionality.  Our KY team has been working incredibly hard (including extremely long hours with little or no sleep, herculean recruiting efforts to staff up, making drastic headcount realignment decisions and creatively working past every obstacle in their way) to make progress here, and we turned a corner over the weekend and Monday.  We will have over 500 temporary workers in the building this week to help us.  We are now at an outbound run rate where we are churning through the backlog.  If we continue this progress, the customer order backlog will be down to a manageable level by this weekend and cleared within days after that.

 Our tech teams are focused daily on making the changes necessary to make the system perform as we need it to and delivering efficiencies to the FC to help clear the backlog.  That process will continue indefinitely, and we are prioritizing the most important aspects for our customers and teams.

 We know that some customers have been inconvenienced as part of this transition.  Frankly, nothing disappoints us more than this.  We are addressing those individual customers and will be reassuring them that we will quickly be reverting to our previous high standards.  Our CLT team has been great at working with our customers to the best of their ability to address customer concerns.

 Over the last week, we have been inspired by your ability to Drive and Embrace Change.  Change is sometimes difficult and painful, and this transition has been both of those things at times.  Together we will work though this and come out the other side with better long-term capabilities to serve our customers as our business continues to grow. This is the biggest and most complex systems and operational transition (you might think of this as the equivalent of a heart transplant or changing the engines of a plane while in flight) in Zappos history.  Thank you for your part in making it happen!

Chris, Craig and Arun

In an effort to stay healthy and have fun during breaks, our wonderful Benefits team designed a parcourse around Zappos HQ for everyone to partake in. This is just another way we infuse a little fun into our days in the office…while getting in our exercise at the same time!

This week’s Zapponian Spotlight is on one of our newbies from Zappos Merchandising, Inc., Natalie F.

This Connecticut native is an identical twin who has a penchant for live performance. She graduated with a degree in Theatre and moved to Chicago to train and perform at Second City. She then made the big move to Las Vegas to be closer to family, including her twin sister who happens to work close to the Zappos HQ buildings!

Read on to learn more about Natalie:

Pick 3 words to describe your personal style

N: I have an old roommate that would call me “Way too Connecticut.”  I was a personal shopper for JCrew for 5 years, and used to go overboard with the cashmere and the argyle and the critter embroidery. I would just say Comfortable, Classic and Casual.

Who is your favorite musician or band?

N: I am a huge fan of Carole King and James Taylor.  The singer/songwriters of the 70s are just so passionate about their music; you can’t help but love them!

Name 3 things you never leave home without:

N: Neutrogena revitalizing lip balm in Fresh Plum, my iPhone, and a book.

If you could have dinner with one famous person, who would it be? 

N: I would love to split a nice bottle of Pinot Noir with Alex Trebek, and then start quizzing each other with random trivia!

What’s the weirdest thing to ever happen to you?

N: A year and a half ago, I had to go under general anesthesia to have some surgery.  When I woke up in recovery, my doctor was standing over me shaking her head. Of course I expected the worst, but she just burst out laughing- she explained to me that I kept coming to in the middle of the surgery and asking what the score of the Villanova game was- the NCAA basketball tournament had started that day, and I had ‘Nova going to the Championship game in my work pool.

What’s your favorite part about working at Zappos HQ? 

N: String Cheese Friday!!  Just kidding, although that is pretty rad!  I love the family spirit and positivity.  Everyone is so supportive of each other, coming from other corporate environments, we all know that is a rarity.

This week’s Zapponian Spotlight is one of our fabulous ZCLT reps, Ranielle! This Southern California girl loves the beach and recently took up painting as a hobby.

She actually honed her creative talents by drawing and painting murals in one of our Zappos HQ buildings! In the photos above, Ranielle poses in front of a couple of her works of art.

Read on to find out more about this budding Zapponian artist!

Pick 3 words to describe your personal style.

R: Classic, feminine, comfortable

Who is your favorite musician or band?

R: Bon Jovi

Name 3 things you never leave home without?

R: Keys, driver's license, and cell phone

If you could have dinner with one famous person, who would it be?

R: Jack Kerouac. He had the innate ability to turn the simplest moments into something beautiful, sad and inspiring with his words. I would love for him to teach me to see life through his eyes.

What’s the weirdest thing to ever happen to you?

R: I can't think of the weirdest thing that's ever happened, but I can share one of the weirdest things about me. My toes are freakishly flexible.  While I have no rhythm and cannot  move to the beat of the music if my life depended on it, my toes can dance... It's a little hard to explain but if you want to see it please feel free to stop by and I'll show you my moves!

What’s your favorite part about working at Zappos?

R: The randomness of it all… On any given day you can find yourself in the midst of a parade, engage in a water balloon fight, or wave to a fellow co-worker in a mascot-like costume.  It's more reminiscent of a grade school environment then a working one. I like to think of Zappos as a magical little place where people go to have fun and just happen to get work done along the way.

“There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives.”  --French Literary Historian Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Your action for this week is to spend some time to identify where you have grown in the last year.  Are you more self aware?  A better communicator?  More patient?  Have you grown as a person or has your clock stopped?

Core Value #2.  Embrace and Drive Change

Core Value #5.  Pursue Growth and Learning

Core Value #9.  Be Passionate and Determined

Yours in "the clock is still ticking",

Augusta

This week’s spotlight is on Ned F. from the Direct Marketing team of Zappos Development. Ned has been with Zappos since the San Francisco days and he holds the revered title of best Richard Simmons stunt double around the Halloween season.You really have to see it to believe it. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to witness it in all its glory once again this October…?

Read on to learn more about Ned!

Pick 3 words to describe your personal style.
N: Irresistibly charming, plaid, open-toed

Who is your favorite musician or band.
N: GWAR

Name 3 things you never leave home without.
N: "Mandals" (man sandals), pens clipped to the shirt, Ocean Pacific Velcro wallet

If you could have dinner with one famous person, who would it be?
N: Elvis.  I’m convinced he’s living with John Candy and Kurt Cobain down in Argentina.

What’s the weirdest thing to ever happen to you?
N:  So I’m rappelling down Mount Vesuvius when suddenly I slip,…and I start to fall.  And I’m just falling.  And I keep falling.   I’ll never forget the terror. Never.  Suddenly I realize, “Holy crap, Ned, haven’t you been eating taco Tuesday in the bistro for six straight days, and Ned, couldn’t some of this maybe be in your head”….And it was.  I was totally fine. I’ve never been to Mount Vesuvius.

What’s your favorite part about working at Zappos HQ?
N:  The energetic atmosphere. I’ve been here for quite a while and I’ve witnessed the amazing growth of the company at Zappos along with the organic growth of our unique culture. There’s a certain amount of pride trying to explain to vendor clients on the other end of the phone line why there is a Christmas in July parade strolling through the office at 10am in the morning. The energy of the office makes it fun to wake up, strap on the morning mandals, and stroll into work.  I have to give props to Tony - back in the early days of Zappos when we were about 40 people deep company wide, he set big hairy ambitious goals to be accomplished by 2010: Making one billion dollars in revenue and being one of the top companies to work for in the US.  Thanks to the company’s hard work, many sales of mandals, and taco Tuesday,….we did it! (revisionist history included)