War Butt

Taking a break from the startup life,I managed to finish modelling a concept truck by an artist called David(for some reason he didn’t sign his work). Then I decided to try my hand at compositing. Good attempt I’ll say 🙂

Warm, Friendly, and Fast Customer Service Wins You Happy Customers Quicker than Anything

I’m one of those people who prefers not to meddle in Customer Service Affairs. Sometimes it could be pleasant, other times I think people would prefer to get a hickey from Jabba the hut.When I do, it’s because I haven’t gotten whatever that was supposed to be shipped to me. Not seeing my package is akin to losing my luggage at the airport. All that comes to my mind is ” Nooooo!! I’ll never get my ROI (return on investment)” Usually bad customer service comes with the big companies. Their badge of honour. You have some rep at the other end of the phone sounding so depressed your phone decides to hang up on its own.Terrible. They leave you hanging for minutes or the rep is just having a total shitty day they decide to take it out on you. When the good ones come along you notice. Bought a pair of shoes from Antione and Stanley (they have really nice shoes by the way) mailing service screwed up the delivery schedule. I panicked. I tried contacting them all to no avail. I was livid. I wanted their heads. One day, I got to speak to a rep. He took his time to explain why they were unreachable for a while – website was undergoing some kind of  overhaul. He took his time to track my package and tried to calm the critters of worry jumping around in my head. Anytime I contacted them henceforth, he had details regarding my package’s whereabout. He just bought his company a customer by being nice and attentive. I’ll be wearing them as long as they remain in business. The incident that really got me writing this is the one by a company I’ve applied to work for 2 times I think but haven’t gotten the chance to give back instead I try to implement their advice/ experiences in my own startup. Hell being called a “Happiness Hero” makes you feel like you can slay any problem. Buffer. Amazing people . The stories of their customer care are legendary already but this one is all about me. The just launched a feature that enables one to schedule retweets so I took the opportunity to ask about a feature which would be of utmost benefit to me. I asked if they would ever include tagging either via facebook or twitter. Email sent. Ten seconds later, notification pops up. I was taken aback. Hell I thought it would be one of those ” Your message has been queued…” type of email. It wasn’t. Lightning fast response. I was so satisfied with the speed I had to I just had to say “Thank you!!” to Alyssa.

As companies grow big, their customer care becomes sloppy. They outsource. They put the customers in the hands of people who have no first hand experience with the products. Those Service centres focus on the volume of calls that come in but not the happiness of customers. You cannot blame Suthir all the way in bangalore when he’s unable to help you. He’ll get queried if he spends more than four minutes with you. The company begins to bleed customers. Do they solve their customer service problems? No, they spend more on marketing. They forget ads are just words and customer service is action. The face of the company. The CEO is just a big banner ad. Remember when Steve Jobs was being particularly rude to people but people overlooked it because the service from the Apple store was great? Word of mouth at work. Great customer service will always drown out bad press as I’ve come to observe. People love being taken care of and hey Buffer can have my dollar as soon as Treejump goes into the black cause I know I’ll be taken care of.

The Gideon Principle: Finding Your “A Players”

   The world of business is teeming with articles, podcast, tweets, videos, etc. on hiring “A players”. How does this help the new entrepreneur? It doesn’t. For a fact it makes life harder for beginner and intermediate level entrepreneurs trying not to make mistakes that could tank the business. Enter the “A player”. The “A player” has been billed as someone fantastic at their job. That’s all I’ve got! There seems to be an inordinate focus on recruiting from the outside. I think that’s a death knell. Recruit those whom you’ve already hired. I came across this short story while doing some research to string together methods for hiring used biblically. Let’s face it the bible has more stories about recruitment than any other book. Here’s Gideon’s recruitment story. To give a little bit of context, Gideon had thirty-two thousand men.

 “Send home any of your men who are timid and afraid”

     It does you as a business owner a lot better to list out your company’s goal and vision to the smallest detail in a comprehensive language. You can’t have the leisure of being vague. Constantly hammering it into the ear drums of your team will help them make the decision to stay or leave. It will also help them visualize better the herculean tasks ahead.

“Divide them into two groups decided by the way they drink. Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set apart by himself; likewise everyone who gets down on his knees to drink.”

    After the first test, twenty-two thousand men were sent home and the number still had to be reduced. We have those who will work long hours but are not passionate about your company’s goals and ambitions. Working for you is just a means of survival. There’s no personal stake in it. These two groups become apparent as the journey progresses. There are those who are company centred and there are those who are self-centred. You want the company centred people. Great work ethic coupled with a bad attitude is a big NO.

 

“I’ll conquer the Midianites with these three hundred”

   The soldiers got whittled from ten thousand to just three hundred. This proves that the best work is done with small teams; that’s why big corporations are constantly scared of kids from the garage. Second, congratulations if anyone has survived the axe this far. You have found those as passionate about the mission as yourself. Constantly being on the lookout in your company to retain the most passionate brings other passionate people to your business after all like attracts like. You’ll feel the energy in the office yourself and your customers will notice.