The keynote at the end of day two of DevCon had three industry leaders providing very different, if parallel, visions of the future. Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s chief evangelist, talked about love: how the web loves us, and we love it right back, illustrated with photographs of his exceptionally cute baby daughter. Mozilla’s own practice of setting the information free, and making it easy for users to change platforms, leave you and come back to you, is something that all developers should hear: the days of locking people into one platform forever are gone.
Tony Hsieh from shoe company Zappos talked about creating a culture where customer service is not what the company does, but what it is. Defining your culture from day one and hiring people who have not only the expertise, but the personalities to fit, should make for a happier workforce. And companies should be transparent: “be real, you have nothing to fear”. I hope eBay’s upper management were listening.
Finally, a very short speech from eBay CEO John Donahoe made three key points:
- “You are very important to our success”: developers have in the past increased user engagement and improved the user experience, and that will remain the case going forward.
- “We’re excited about Echo.” It should drive innovation.
- “We’ve only just begun.” eBay want developers’ thoughts, ideas and feedback: “it’s a kinder, gentler form of feedback than that eBay community can be sometimes”.
There may be trouble ahead…
It’s available on listen again if you want to hear it all for yourself.
5 Responses
they can all prattle and promise about love and customer service until they turn pink
its all really about Money and profit
Indeed it is North, Mozzilla mades over $60 million a year in profit.
@North – the point being, look after the customer and the money will follow. I think Zappos is the epitome of that.
” the point being, look after the customer and the money will follow”
look after yourself cos no bugger else will
is my mantra
lol
North, I hope they were listening to Tony Hsieh yesterday – because Zappos culture is EXACTLY what eBay needs to learn, and I don’t mean just slack a thick layer of customer service paint over the top, I mean become it.