In one of my earliest roles at a B2B startup, there were so many fires in a day, that if no “emergencies” occurred for even a couple of hours, I sensed something was wrong immediately. It got to the point where I knew hundreds of clients by name because of how frequently I needed to do damage control.
Meanwhile, new products, new features, new services, were continuously released as we aimed to stay on the ‘cutting edge’ of technology. With limited resources and a mission to stay innovative, low impact bugs and minority clients were deemed low priority. I watched clients cancel and support staff burn out.
Internally, the “importance of customer service excellence” was reiterated time and time again through every possible means — email, chat, message boards, meetings, handbooks, training workshops, etc. Pull aside any employee at random and they could mindlessly regurgitate that it was one of the company core values. In reality, we missed the mark by a long shot.
“Great technology. Shit service. That’s our reputation.”
