Remember that old Klondike bar commercial? “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” That jingle came rushing back to me last Friday at 5:00 PM.
I was already running late, trying to get out the door for play practice, having just missed my daughter’s soccer game, when a text came in from a newer customer. Things had gotten out of control on his project, and he had ended up in my lap, which is how he had my cell number in the first place. At first, I assumed he was skipping the proper channels and texting me after hours instead of calling support. Turns out he had done everything right. He called in, followed the procedure, and was told he had a bad cable box. He was texting to see if we could send someone over. His ex-wife was staying at his house and she needed help.
I’ve been on the other side of that call. Somewhere I shouldn’t be, somebody in my life needing help, the clock working against me. It’s a frustrating place to be. So, I got over being annoyed about the Friday 5:00 PM text and I thought back to our strategic anchor for the year. We’re hellbent on building a Raving Fan Factory at Livewire.
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If that’s true, I had a choice. I could punt and tell him to call support back Monday, or I could lean in and make it happen.
I asked a few questions and figured out that YouTube TV was confusing for his ex-wife to use. I grabbed my phone, pulled out my Control4 remote, pointed it at the TV and shot a quick video of me turning on the TV and pulling up the offending app. I texted the clip back and asked if it was helpful. A few minutes later she texted back that my cinematic debut resolved the issue and she didn’t need a service call anymore.
Instead of harassing my entire company and sending people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, I took two minutes and made a customer happy.
Is that scalable? No. A lot of what we do as integrators isn’t. It requires the human touch. Some parts of our business can be automated and systematized, but the energy to make it happen after hours, go the extra mile, or exhibit lateral service — whatever it takes to create a raving fan — that’s something that has to be modeled for the entire organization. That’s what I was trying to do here.
If you’re reading this, I know you get these calls on Friday at 5:00 PM. Keep in mind I cofounded Parasol, so after-hours calls create a special kind of PTSD for me. They feel like a failure of everything I’ve built. But this guy had crashed through Parasol, crashed through our support infrastructure, and was still having issues. I managed to resolve his problem with a two-minute video. The raving fan energy is alive and well.
I wanted to share this to tell you that you’re not alone. This is what it takes to run a successful CI business, no matter what your role is. No one gets to say, “That’s not my job.” The challenge is that, if you’re the founder, doing it on Friday at 5:00 PM is natural. It’s your name on the line. The real question is how you scale that down so your employees feel the same pull.
We’re introducing our Raving Fan program in a few weeks at our all-hands meeting with a publicly available dashboard that tracks five-star reviews, clients who mention staff by name, and repeat customers. We’re hoping to use anecdotal examples like this every week by leveraging public praise during meetings. Tell us a raving fan story. Tell us what you did to go above and beyond. We’re putting prizes and incentives in place to make it fun and exciting.
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Burnout is always around the corner. How do you roll out an initiative like this without your employees thinking, “Oh great, here’s another thing to burn me out?”
I’ll be reporting back on how the Raving Fan Factory is performing throughout the year. In the meantime, what are you doing to intentionally create raving fans in your organization?
Stay frosty, and see you in the field.
