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Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

ceoonsupport.com

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Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#21

Post by jason_tko »

emhart wrote: post #20
seunosewa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel your CEO lacks good judgment to the extent that you are afraid to expose him/her to customers lest he/she latches on to an issue that is not so important just because the customer he/she was exposed to happened to have that problem, then I think you either have the wrong CEO or are vastly underestimating his/her decision-making skills.

Having the "wrong CEO" is a hard problem to solve as an employee.

Really? I view that as a very straight-forward problem to solve. Leave the company.

Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#22

Post by billrobertson42 »

emhart wrote: post #20
seunosewa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel your CEO lacks good judgment to the extent that you are afraid to expose him/her to customers lest he/she latches on to an issue that is not so important just because the customer he/she was exposed to happened to have that problem, then I think you either have the wrong CEO or are vastly underestimating his/her decision-making skills.

Having the "wrong CEO" is a hard problem to solve as an employee.

Not if you employ the law of two feet.

Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#23

Post by ddeck »

vidarh wrote: post #17

I think it's a fantastic idea. I've justed received a package from DHL. After more than two weeks of trying to get help from DHL support, I gave up. That is, I gave up on their support, not on getting my package. The initial problem was my fault: I'd supported a Kickstarter campaign ages ago, and the result (two Parallella computers...) finally shipped. To my old office address, where it was rejected, and returned to…

>so I'm going to take this approach whenever I get inadequate support from now on

I've used a similar approach twice, both times with positive results. Once with Lenovo for an overdue laptop and once with Cathay Pacific (airline) after having a rusty fish hook embedded in my gums after one of their meals.

I emailed the CEO and head of marketing/sales and in both cases had responses within 24 hours.

Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#25

Post by 6cxs2hd6 »

kitd wrote: post #18

Not just CEOs. Software designers and developers need to spend as much time in support as is practicable. Too much software gets written in insulated little boxes IME.

We had software engineers help 1 hour a day on support, myself included. It started out of necessity (tiny startup), but survived many years. Gave people great perspective.

Google has (had?) "20% time". This was more like "12% time".

Although developers' time is valuable, they're not "in the zone" all day; this came out of that not-in-the-zone time.

Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#27

Post by emhart »

jason_tko wrote: post #21
emhart wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the "wrong CEO" is a hard problem to solve as an employee.

Really? I view that as a very straight-forward problem to solve. Leave the company.

I can speak from immediate experience that it is frequently not that easy. There are a lot of places with very few jobs, and plenty of people tied down geographically for other reasons. I'm not saying you can't change your employment situation, but we shouldn't hand wave that away as easy. As I said, it can be a hard problem to solve, that doesn't mean the solution can't be straightforward.

Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#28

Post by laurex »

Wow, super synchronicity. At Olark, all this month we are teaching teams how to follow this model, essentially. Check out Olark.com/allhands for info. We're doing a whole day of training April 24th.

We've found that for ourselves, we are able to create a better product when our whole team has a real connection with customers and what their needs are- and our culture is better when we understand that we're all there to make things work for the customer.

Re: Supporting customers gives CEOs a reality check

#30

Post by instakill »

If you're a CEO, your company is smallish and like this idea, please consider using http://www.mybema.com/mybema-for-brands for this.

This is my project that I'm working at to try to get companies to improve their customer service offering, while at the same time try to help consumers by providing them with a platform for recommendations and issue resolution.

To the HN negativity contingent: I know it's not as beautiful, or feature-rich as the competitors, but I'm just a one man team ;)

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