First off, everything we’d heard about the Zappos culture, attitude and employees is true.

Our plane landed in Vegas as the tour was starting, so we arrived pretty late. Nevertheless, we were whisked inside by friendly people to catch up with the tour in-progress, just in time to say “Hi” to CEO, Tony Hsieh, working away at his storied cubicle in the middle of “Monkey Row.” Zappos Culture Guides, Jon Wolske and Andi Lyn were quick to make us feel welcome with warm greetings and small talk. Everything about Zappos is genuine. With daily, free tours, it would be easy for the delivery to feel rehearsed and stale. Instead, it felt more like a first-day-on-the-job orientation with your future co-workers.

Afterwards, Rob and I were pressed for time to get to a client meeting on the Strip, about twelve miles away. We were told a cab would take too long, and that they’d be happy to give us a free ride on the Zappos Shuttle. Minutes later a Zappos-wrapped Suburban whisked us to our meeting with time to spare.

The “secret sauce” of Zappos’s success is really no secret at all. They genuinely care about their customers, and they’ve developed a unique system of catering to and connecting with their customers that flies in the face of corporate best practices. It simply comes down to empowering employees to be human in their interactions with customers, which in turn, humanizes the company.

Just watch Andi explain how they handle customer service and you’ll get what I mean.

Oh yeah. They *made* me wear a funny hat and take this picture too.

The bottom line is, it’s cheaper for corporations to lose customers and expose them to criminals than it is to retain and protect. The effects of these decisions may not appear on the balance sheet until long after the executive has been promoted for his brilliant, cost-saving strategies. And so it goes.

Call center agents are forced into sweat-shop policies at worst, or competition with their client’s directly-employed staff. Customers then take their frustrations out on the agents, instead of the managment that gets bonuses based on volume instead of satisfaction. And so it goes.

At Trustworthy, we aim to change all that. Our agents are happy = The customer is happy = Our clients are happy. If even one of these truths fail, we aren’t being Trustworthy.

Do you have any “insider” horror stories to tell? We’d love to hear them here in the comments. The more we know, the more we can help.