customer feedback
i am the manager of a small company that i’ve put my whole heart and brain into. beyond the numbers, the validation from seasoned business people, beyond anything else, there are two things that put a smile right across my face.
first is seeing that the people that work with me really love working on my team, at this company. they love their jobs. they don’t always tell me this, but things slip out near the end of the day, or after heated discussions and i realize that, perhaps, this place where we all work is a bright spot, a positive place. if i have control over the place where we work, i want to make sure that, after staff move on, they will remember it and miss it. i want everyone to feel like they worked at a place where the people around them really believed in them, and they actually got to make a difference.
over the past weeks, i’ve been interviewing for a new job and i decided to try something new. in the past, i’ve written formal job postings based on what i saw from other companies. this time i said, screw it, we’ll write a job posting that reflects who we really are. it was funny, positive, and i did my best to reflect our positive, caring culture. the other thing i did was that instead of interviewing people in a private office, i brought all interviewees right into the middle of our busy and messy shipping room. i told the other staff to be themselves, and we joked around and basically acted like ourselves. my theory was that this is how we really are–we talk, and tease, and have fun. why try to be anything else.
as i walked one interviewee out at the end of the interview she looked at me and said:
this looks like the best possible place to work
you have no idea how happy that makes me feel. this kind of comment feeds me and makes me proud beyond any sales target.
i said that there are two things that make me proud. the second one is positive customer feedback. if you know anything about our company, you know that we do everything we can to be as nice as possible. we don’t do this by setting specially documented standards — we do it by hiring only the kindest, most caring people in the world and we let them be themselves. it is a core spirit of kindness that drives us to be super nice to everyone that calls us, to remember people’s names. we give customers free gifts. one time, someone that works with me heard a baby crying in the background of a phone call with a customer. she asked how old the baby was and then, after the call, found a little toy appropriate for the baby’s age and put it in as a free gift to the customer. that’s the kind of people we are or try to be.
we don’t do a good job of recording all the positive feedback we get from customers. (we should). but here’s something someone said today:
You guys are impressive-very well run company.
Thanks for the updates.
Makes me proud that my dad came from [our location]
we get the kindest notes from people every week and that’s what drives us.
but part of what i want to convey to other people that have influence over a company’s culture is that the notion of being a kind, caring and fun company isn’t something that can be “planned”. it’s got to be real.
so don’t ask: “what can we do to project a more caring brand-image to our customers?”
instead, be kind and hire kind people and pull away the barriers that might block them from being the kind people they already are.