A sister retailer of shoe megastore Zappos.com confirmed on Friday that a mistake in their price engine had all products on offer capped at $49.95 for about six hours, from midnight to 6am PST. After learning of the mistake the site was taken offline for a brief period and later reestablished with correct pricing information.
What makes the story more interesting is that the online retailer in question, called 6pm.com, will be honoring all transactions in spite of the evident financial losses, which they claim amount to a staggering $1.6 million. Zappos uses customer service as one of its key differentiators and that seems to have paid off well, as it's considered to be the biggest online shoe store with over a billion dollars in sales last year (when it was acquired by a little-known company called Amazon).
Zappos claims a high percentage of its sales come from repeated customers, and that growth is being driven by word of mouth. Recently they have also received a boost from viral marketing and social mediums like Twitter. This last piece might suggest that this could be a marketing ploy, albeit to the tune of over a million dollars that sounds a bit desperate.
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Microsoft wins great place to work award
The Great Place to Work Institute has named Microsoft the best place to work in Europe. The findings are based on the '100 Best Workplaces in Europe' annual survey that the institute sends out. The institute honors companies that invest heavily in their employees well being and they analyzed around 1300 companies in 17 European countries to find the company that treats their employees the best. In the national survey, local Microsoft offices in Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and France won the best places to work. Other Microsoft offices in other countries placed near the top.
Microsoft's international senior vice president Jean-Philippe Courtois, said, "We are pleased to have been awarded the Best Workplace in Europe award from the Great Place to Work Institute for the third year running. Investing in people and creating a work environment that utilizes the latest technology has enabled staff to transform the way they work and interact with colleagues, delivering a strong work-life balance and a highly motivated and empowered team."
Jean-Philippe Courtois also said "This past year has been challenging for businesses and employees in all industries, and Microsoft is no different. That said, we continue to be optimistic especially as our industry transitions toward what we believe is the next big era in technology – cloud computing." Currently 70% of the Microsoft staff are working on projects that are cloud based, one year from now they expect 90% of staff to be working on cloud based projects.
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