You’ve been Faced at the Bathroom Blogfest 2011

How fun is this?  Another year participating in the Bathroom Blogfest! For more on this week of blogging on bathroom and customer experience related themes check out http://www.bathroomblogfest.com/

Now, faster than you can hit the “flush lever” let me “plunge” into my content…

I was standing at a urinal in Zappos Headquarters (probably more information than you needed) reading a flyer that had been posted at my eye level.  The headline on the flyer read “have you been faced?”  With that tease, I had to read on….

The flyer essentially was alluding to a culture enrichment game that was created by a group of new hires at Zappos.  The “you got faced” concept was an extension of a prior community building concept called the “face game.”  I talk about both the face game and “you got faced” in my recently released book The Zappos Experience here’s an excerpt:

An example of how Zappos facilitates personal connections between staff members is the “face game.” In essence, the game begins each time an employee logs into the Zappos intranet.  Upon login, before an employee can get to work, he or she is presented with a picture of a random fellow Zapponian.  The individual is then provided four employee names along with a “don’t know” option.  After the employee chooses a name, the screen indicates if that choice was correct and then the full bio of the actual individual is shown.

Noel Cusimano, Buyer for the clearance and discount site 6pm.com, which is operated by Zappos Development Inc., shares how the biographical information in the face game has additional value: “People can click on you and see your journey in the company.  It gives them something to relate to or to talk to you about. You can also select things like, ‘I’d love to have people job shadow me’ or ‘I’m really interested in this topic,’ so you can search for people in the company with similar interests to yours. That idea came from our Speaker of the House who wished for a database where she could tag people and could pull up everyone, for example, who love doing face paintings or who are artists.”

The face game has been taken to yet another level thanks to a final project completed by participants in a Zappos culture class.  That class developed the “you got faced” project in support of the Zappos value to build a positive team and family spirit. According to Rachael Brown, Zappos Pipeline Manager, “You got faced encourages Zapponians to send an email to someone whose face popped up on their screens but who they didn’t know well enough to name correctly. The class suggested the email carry the subject line ‘you got faced’ and that the email invite the person to lunch or to do something to get to know one another.  That culture class came up with the you got faced campaign, splashed it everywhere, and marketed it throughout the company. That’s an example of how we are always looking for opportunities to build the Zappos family connection.”

If you would like to try a sample of the “face game” check out this link….

However, if you can’t wait to connect with the community of other Bathroom blogfest bloggers, I’ve provided that list below.