Recently our CEO responded to some policy concerns by asking us to tell him what policies we thought were stupid, so they could be fixed, or discontinued completely. He called for a “policy purge” and that very day the first policy was killed. And our CEO is NOT out of touch with employees. He sits 40 feet from me in a cubicle just like I do. With the right arc I can nearly hit him with a Nerf dart. Any employee can stop by and chat with him anytime they see him.

One of the key things I have noticed by watching Undercover Boss (and being in business a long time) is just how much valuable information is being lost between the front line troops and middle and upper management. Often the middle managers get the blame for this, but at the end of the day, the CEO runs the company, and has to set the standard for the culture. Open, or closed? Inclusive, or exclusive? Executive restrooms, or does the CEO piss in the same pot I piss in?

Undercover Boss has covered some very arrogant and extravagant CEO’s – and some very down to earth ones. The down to earth ones almost always know their businesses better.  They may not understand every employee’s personal issues, but they get the business. The arrogant ones are out of touch – probably because they are out of reach.

Being disconnected from employees is just as dangerous as being disconnected from your customers. Listening and learning seem to be lost arts in many companies.

As companies become more global and the Internet makes the world more real-time it is more and more difficult for companies to communicate internally. And at the same time we are adding in the complexity of a nearly real-time external communication channel with customers.

This is a LOT for companies to digest and adjust to. Many won’t. But those that invest  in new communication channels will probably get to know their employees and customers much better than those who do not.

Finding the right tool to talk to a lot of customers and/or employees is hard. You may pick the wrong platform, expect people to show up where they do not show up – but you must not give up.

The new world is about rapid communication – and customers and employees both expect it. How they want it delivered is something we are all still figuring out.

Maybe Ray Ozzie knows? He has been as close to getting it right as anyone. And it appears he is still working on it.

They have stuff to sell, and they want me to buy.  We all need to make a living.

I’m not focused on making money from Social Media – I am focused on saving money WITH Social media.

Every customer we help in near real time is a customer that that is exposed to Fanatical Support® – often for the first time.

And that support is important.  It is timely.  It is genuine – it is driven by an engineer with a desire to help a customer win.

Near real time support adds a lot of value because it both maintains your brand reputation and reinforces your core commitment to customers – that you are a partner, not just a vendor.  That you win and lose together.  That they are not just a number.

So we focus a lot on how Social Media can help us help customers win. That is our strategy.  Please steal it – emulate it – make all my experiences with brands better by making them more engaged with me.

But put real people behind those accounts and hashtags – people that are empowered to make a difference, and people that really give a damn.

That isn’t Marketing.

That is Social Media as a Service.

I manage Social Media.  But I am just a customer care guy that knows Social Media tools.

That does not make me a “Social Media Maven/Expert/Guru, etc” – it makes me customer guy with more tools than I had a decade ago.  Simple.

• It’s About Transparency. It’s about not lying to your customers, and thinking that a good Twitter apology will suffice when you’re caught. It won’t, and you’ll lose.
• It’s About Relevance. It’s not about tweeting every single time your company offers 10% off on a thingamabob. It’s about finding out where your customers actually are, and going after them there.
• Finally, it’s about knowing your customer, and making sure your customer thinks of you first.

The post I reference – and it is good reading.

I am very pleased to report that Rackspace has no “Social Media Experts”.  We have Rackers that care for customers and know how to use various tools. We are not, and will never become the tools.

I sent the author of that post an email and soon found myself developing a great relationship with the author – Reed Caldwell, the CEO of ServInt. Yes, some could say we compete – we are in the same business – but there is a LOT of business in this space, and there are many ways to differentiate yourself so you serve different segments.  ServInt and Rackspace have some overlap. Not a lot. Not enough that I feel either of us sees the other as “the enemy”. In fact, we’ve become online friends. Eventually we will meet in person, and I believe we will become better friends.

Today I tip my hat to Amazon Web Services – much as Reed tipped his hat to us years ago. We don’t “win more” when our competitors struggle. We “win more” when the entire industry wins more.

I have a great deal of respect for AWS. I have met Werner Vogels several times and think he is an amazingly humble, kind, and brilliant man. The type of man I cannot hope fails and that is working for a company I still do a lot of business with (just not in Cloud computing!).

Amazon will recover from this, and they will do so quickly. And customers everywhere will learn more about geographic redundancy – at least enough to investigate it and discover the cost/complexity and make an informed decision on what is right for their business.

And the Cloud will get stronger. Every failure teaches us more. Every failure makes us stronger and our customers better informed. As an industry.

To my friends at AWS – hang in there.  This too shall pass and tomorrow will be a brighter day – for all of us, and for all of our customers.

And here is the rest of the story…

I sent an email to our Chairman tonight – Graham Weston, who I respect a great deal.

Here is part of what I told him:

What I just really, honestly love about this company – I
feel completely comfortable putting my personal “brand” on the line.
I am completely comfortable telling companies that if we screw up, I
will make it right for them. I do NOT promise what Rackspace will do.
I promise them what *I* will do – and I know Rackspace will have my
back.

I am not sure many companies get how empowering that is – that I trust
my employer enough to give my customers my personal guarantee -
because I know my company has my back.

I’ve spent two + years talking to some of the best customer support
companies on the planet – some of the largest high profile social
media adopters – and none of my peers feel that absolute sense of “my
back is covered”. It is extremely empowering and adds a level of
authenticity to what we do that we could not have planned for – or built a
program around. It is what I know of us as a company (much because I was a customer for so long) – the trust I have earned, and my knowledge of the business. I am not going to give away the farm. I am running a for-profit business. But I know when to give away a few daisies to sell a dozen roses.

This is NOT normal with the other companies I am dealing with. I think we are doing something pretty unique here – and I really appreciate it. Mostly I appreciate not having to get permission to do what is right. I am trusted to do what is right.

And empowered.

And that is very unusual. More unusual than we think, I think.

So I want to dig deeper into that, and find out how what we are doing works, and how we can extend it, and how we can even teach it to others – because we are fundamentally based on giving knowledge back. Be that OpenStack, or what we are learning in Social Media.

Knowledge is more fun when it is shared.

Every week there is a new “topic” – put in quotes because the topic is always the same – “How do those of us that love customers get the voice to speak for them, the credibility to do what is right for them, and the respect to represent them to our respective companies?”

In other words, we often bitch when we don’t feel the love and respect we think our customers deserve from our employers. Note – I did NOT say the love and respect WE expect we deserve.  Completely different things.  Which is what makes us people who truly love customers – we put them before us. We actually can’t help it.  It is just who we are.

And we are a widely disperse group – some of us (me, luckily) have a great deal of voice and leverage for my customers.  Others feel very little empowerment.  We come together to try to change it for everyone.  To try to learn enough, and teach enough – to try to just move the bar a little bit.  Every week.  Move the bar.  Just a little.

Over time, I hope the bar moves a lot.

But I don’t expect a lot today.  I do enjoy the company of like-minded people who care about more than a paycheck and to whom a customer is not a 16 digit number.

I love the fucking humanity of it.

I can’t write any of that any better than anyone else has already done (and possibly not even any worse).  At best I could come up with a smarter title and better marketing – so perhaps my book would sell better than someone else’s book. But it would not add any more real value to the conversation.

I would love to add a chapter to each of these books though.  I would call it something like, “When to (politely) tell your MGT to go to hell and do what you need to do to make things right”.

Of course, I have never, and never anticipate telling my MGT to go to hell – I’m not suicidal.  I have had lengthy conversations about which of us are correct though   But does my MGT know how far I will go, how much hell I will raise, and how many people I will wake to serve a customer?  They do.  You don’t get a title like “Chief Disruption Officer” by swimming in calm waters.

My chapter would focus on making sure that your organization had that guy or gal that cares more for customers than anything.  That isn’t afraid to get fired for fighting for them.  Because they are expected to do just that.  They are paid to raise a bit of hell, wake up a couple VPs if needed.  Call the Chairman of the Board on a Sunday, if that is what it takes.

This is a customer advocate at best. One that is unafraid, because they are expected to err on the side of the customer.

Many have discussed the notion of the employee who is “untouchable” – meaning they can’t get fired without a huge payout (hell, we do this in sports all the time, why not do the same with customer advocacy!?!).  That gets them the freedom to never sacrifice customer experience. And it is mostly a good idea.  But like everything, it is not a perfect idea.  It could be abused and used for purposes other than serving customers.

I actually like almost the opposite of “untouchable” – I like the notion of “damn near fired” more

I like it when I push us.  I like it when I make us uncomfortable with finding a solution to a customer issue.  I like that I am sitting on the edge of the wall – and that I could easily be pushed off if I don’t stick to what is right, what is true, and what is fair. And do it in such a way that everyone wins – at least a little.  YOu can never succeed if your goal is to create a loser.

You become as close to “untouchable” as you can get by trying to find a way for everyone to win.  And it isn;t a balance, because it is hardly “even”.  Even is generally where you are at when you get invited into the conversation – everyone thinks they have already given too much.

Winning is getting one of them to move, just a bit.  And having them feel good about it.

It is amazing to me how seldom many of these people actually practice what they preach. I recently talked to a guy that wrote a book on caring for customers, but beyond the people that buy his book – he has no customers.  And he hasn’t talked to a customer in 15 years, he admitted.

To me he is someone that knows the name of something, but he doesn’t “know something” – he writes about customer service as a “theory”.  Sorry, you cannot know that which you do not practice.

This video kind of makes my point.

Instead of pretending to be an expert in customer service, I hone my skills almost daily – by actually talking to customers.  I’ll never write a book about it, because I will never be done learning about it.  And I’ll never be arrogant enough to think I am a “guru”.

I just care enough to learn more about it than just the name.  And I am open enough to let the real teachers teach me every day – my customers.

And sorry, dude.  I won’t be buying your book.

This Monday night I talked to a customer that wanted something I could not offer them.  I could get them close, but I just knew I could not make them really happy.  Sure – I could have “sold them”.  Taken their money for a few months until they realized that what I told them was true – they were not a good fit at our company, and we could not truly satisfy them.  And it was good money.

I could let them spend a lot of time and trouble learning that, or I could spend over an hour on the phone talking them into using another service, from another company that was just better suited to the unique way they wanted to build their solution.

Nobody is happy hearing “your money is not welcome here”, so how the message is positioned is important – that is why it took over an hour to say no.

I don’t believe this customer knows I did them a favor (yet).  They will, and soon.  I moved them to the best place for them, and that was a competitor.  And I have no problem with that  - and I know my employer has no problem with that.  First – it is rare that this comes up.  Second, when customers come and go in a short window they create “churn”.

Churn is expensive.  It is not good for us, or for the customer – there is no win with churn.  Churn is caused by selling the right customer the wrong solution, or the right solution to the wrong customer.  And a lot of things can be responsible for this – a customer that won’t listen, the wrong incentive plans for sales teams – and sometimes just a lack of real communication beween the buyer and the seller. Sometimes it is just a matter of the right solution at the right time.  Selling for “fit” is complex – but rewarding – to everyone involved in the transaction.

So I love really being able to spend enough time with customers to really figure out what they need – and if I have to send them to “the store down the street”, well, I am good with that.  As long as the store down the street will treat them well.

Don’t give up next quarter to meet your quotas today.  Sell what you do well that can help your customer well.  Don’t give in to the temptation to “just sell”.  Selling is pretty easy.  Selling the right solution, to the right person at the right time – that is kind of magical.

BTW – clarification – I am NOT in Sales, I am not on commission, and I have no quotas.  For the purposes of this post I think my point applies even if you are in Sales, you do have quotas, and you are paid on commission.  You can’t screw customers over and expect to win.  Not over time.  It is just another Ponzi scheme.

Ever since I can remember I have kept an email folder called “good news”.  I stick my wins in this folder – be it a new customer I brought in, kudos from a boss, or a thank you from a customer.  I rarely look at this folder, because I am lucky, and have created my own position, as illustrated by Hugh MacLeod:

But every now and then, I need to be re-energized.  This folder helps me remember why I fight hard for a customer, or why I push hard against big corporate BS.  Or why I am up at three in the morning trying to make someone smile.

I think we all need a “good news” folder at times.

This is a challenge to NOT be normal, not be boring, and not let life just happen.

We aim to change the world.

One URL at a time, or one customer at a time – doesn’t matter to me.  I am here to matter in a company that matters.

I am here to help other Rackers change the world.  And that is not “normal”.

That was before I came to work for Rackspace.  Recently Hugh was in San Antonio, and he toured our corporate headquarters in a once abondoned 1.2+ million square foot shopping mall.  He saw the worlds largest (certified by Guinness!) Word Search puzzle.  He saw the only known functioning escalators in a hosting company’s offices.  We had a good time, and later went out for some BBQ with a few Rackers, and guests from the community.  It was a great day.

While he was here, Hugh and I started discussing him doing something involving Rackspace.  Working with a number of other Rackers (Rackspace employees), we decided that we wanted Hugh to focus on what we are most proud of – what makes our company unique, and why the number of employees has doubled since I joined 26 months or so ago, and why our customer count has risen just as quickly – even in a down economy.

So here is his first cartoon – and I really enjoy it.  I thank Hugh for making this one special as my very own personal “cube grenade”

Our motto is “Fanatical Support” – which is based on our unique culture.

This is the first in a series of cartoons, blog posts, etc that explore why culture is important to us, and why a culture of service – to each other, to customers, and to our community is so important to our success.

I am hoping this series starts a conversation about culture, and service.  So feel free to comment!

Hugh’s original post is here.

Rob

I’ve never done a good job explaining WHAT I do on a day to day basis. I am sure some coworkers will be just as interested as anyone. In a company of over 3K employees, it is hard to know what people do. Especially people like me. Why?

I work at home most of the time. I manage a nomadic team, so they don’t need me in their faces every day. I trust them to do their jobs, and they trust me to let them. And when I work at home, I work with customers. A lot of them.

I am also part of a larger team that understands that I add a different value – one I can’t add in an office. Usually, at least . I trust them to appreciate me, and to ask me for help when they need to. And I often ask them for the same. They are amazing people to work with, and they have a ton of my respect.

I spend my days, and nights (on good days and nights) talking to customers. Or potential customers. I love what I do, and who I do it for, so I spend a lot of time and energy doing it. I honestly don’t mind talking to a customer at 2am. 6am is harder for me though .

I run Social Media for our company. And that is a pretty big job – we get a lot of mentions on Social Media. Our entire Social Media plan consists of two words though – “Be Helpful”. Not a lot of fluff there. No 37 slide PowerPoint Deck. We are singularly focused on helping our customers win. No fluff there.

I love customers – even one’s that aren’t happy with us – I spend a lot of time with them. I try to “fix” whatever we broke. A promise or a process has probably failed us. We are a big company – that happens. I want to fix it. It is not my job – it is my passion. My team has adopted it as their passion.

I’m empowered to cause change – and I empower my employees. And I have interesting employees. I have AMAZING employees, in fact:

Two Linux Senior Systems engineers that know more about hosting than I will ever know. Robert (Robot) Taylor and Robert Collazo have spent most of their technical careers helping customers.

Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica, who bring life to building43.com, and introduce us to amazing people that just need a bit of help by someone that just gives more than a shit. That’s why we do building43.com – it is helpful.

Yes – I have a team of five, and four of us are named Robert. And we have one Rocky. It DOES get confusing!

But we all have the same focus – to care for customers, share their successes, and help them build the value they deliver to their customers – that is our goal – we all win together. And it is our commitment. It is so simple.

And it is so fun! If you are not having fun, you are doing it wrong.

We have a different thought about “Social Media” than many public companies. We think we need to have a staff that knows the company and the products so well that they can actually FIX issues we see on Social Media. And we do. I am the former Director of Software Development for our Cloud. Robot and Rob Collazo are engineers that have built and supported our company for years. No fluff there either.

We also support and appear at as many events as we can possibly support. As recruiters, engineers, evangelists, speakers – it is all the same thing. We want to be where customers want to talk to us. And if that is on Twitter at 2am, you have a good chance of seeing me tweet my home phone number. Or one of my team reaching out to make sure we help, at almost any hour.

So yes – I love my role. I can touch a lot of parts of the business. But mostly, I can interact with a huge number of our customers – and help us find new ones. Mostly because I have a lot of people supporting me – from my employees, to my managers, to my coworkers.

And our Senior Leadership Team that is just willing to “think different” – and allow me to try some crazy ideas, (responsibly) and see where they take us.

And where they take me – which is to places I would not have imagined just 2 years ago when I went from a customer to an evangelist.

Find a company you love. Then find a job there. Then find a way to help them win. It is an amazing feeling.

You really can’t hire people that have the dedication my team has. You can inspire them, and empower them – trust them, and have fun with them. The right people weren’t looking for a job when they found you though.

They were looking for a mission.

Create one.

More than I wanted a J.O.B. – I wanted to change the world.

And here I find myself, at 4am, not being able to sleep – even though I need to be on a flight to Boulder in 4 hours.  I’m too excited to sleep – oh, I tried!  But every few minutes I would find myself peeking once more at the OpenStack Twitter Account (@OpenStack) – wondering if the hits were still coming in (they are) – and assuring myself this is real (it is!).

We’ve been hard at work for the last several years – working towards that end. Today, I think we have helped change the world.

By open-sourcing the second most popular Cloud Computing platform on the planet, I think we’ve just changed the world. Hell, by partnering with NASA, we may actually be changing more than this world. (I can imagine OpenStack running on the Moon, and on Mars!)

The list of partners is impressive – go look at http://openstack.org. There are a lot of forward thinkers on that list – and they are company I am proud to be in.

Mostly though, I am proud of the company I work for. This is a bold move by a Leadership team that has demonstrated exceptional thought leadership in our space. In the two short years I have been with the company we have more than doubled our customer count, drastically increased the number of servers and data-centers we have, and made bold moves in many other areas.

I’m sure there will be a lot of discussions and a lot of questions about our decision (there were plenty of internal ones!) – but I am confident that at the end of the day, a truly open cloud that is already in production will better serve the world – a cloud that has proven its ability to scale and serve real customers.

It is a great day to be a Racker. I’m very proud of what we have done, and what we will continue to do to change the world – one (open) code drop at a time!

Come join us at OpenStack – change the world with us.  Change your world!

Now I am not suggesting any of you go out there and become dicks at work – that’s reckless.  I am suggesting that careful is career-limiting in some cases.

Don’t go tell your bosses they are idiots and then come back and blame me if you find yourself on the street – that is not what this blog post is about.

So what is it about?  It’s about risk and reward.  It is about knowing where the line gets drawn in the sand.  It is about knowing how and when to hold your company, your co-workers, and your contemporaries up to a simple standard.  Simple Standard? Yeah – it is not so simple – it is different for everyone.

I have a few very basic standards that I will not tolerate us (and by “us” I mean anyone I work with or for) abusing:

1. Never lie.  Not to employees, and not to customers.
2. Tell as much truth as you can as soon as you understand what the truth is.
3. Admit failure.  We all suffer from it.  It only seriously hurts us when we try to hide from it.  Or lie about it (see #1)
4. Never put your company ahead of your customers.  Unless you do not care about your company.

So the worst advice I still get is always about “being careful”.  “That VP is powerful – you better not piss them off – be careful”.  “Everyone loves this marketing campaign, don’t tell them why it sucks – you better be careful”.  “You aren’t making any friends by admitting we handled that poorly – you better be careful”.

Whatever.

I find that keeping the customer’s best interests ahead of mine, and ahead of the company’s is the only way to honestly advocate what is right for the company.  If I keep customers first and foremost, even when it causes short term pain for the company (and me), the company wins in the long term.  And I build credibility within the company, and with customers.

You can’t effectively advocate for customers if you are more concerned with keeping your job.

And if you work for a company that expects you to be the customer voice, but tells you to “be careful” with your internal communications – well, you are in the wrong position, and at the wrong company.

I can be a total ass at work when I think we are doing customers wrong.  And yes – that does not please everyone.  But it pleases my customers – and that pleases me.

My job isn’t to make the company happy, after all.  My job is to make customers happy.

And I am “careful” – I am careful to make sure we actually tell customers the truth.  I am careful that customers trust me because I have earned their trust.  I am careful that the arguments I am making internally actually matter to customers – that I am fighting the right fights.

But I am not careful to keep my job – that would render me ineffective at my job.

Over the last two years I have accidentally discovered a way to both listen to a customer, and remember who they are, and what they need – days later, when I have traveled back home.

When I receive a business card I hold it in my hand as my conversation continues. I hold it face up, right-side up. If I am talking to a current customer, I bend over the upper right corner. If I am talking to a potential customer, I bend over the upper left corner. A current customer that wants to buy more gets both upper corners bent.

I have a lot of variations of how I bend business cards. A card folded in half means someone wants to talk to me ASAP. A card folded diagonally belongs to a competitor that I feel I can talk to.

Each fold can include the components of the other folds. Happy customer, wants to buy more, and do it ASAP. Upper left and right corners folded over, card folded in half.

If I am talking with someone that is not happy, I fold the bottom right or left corner – depending on if they are a customer or not.

How you fold business cards, or if you do – is up to you. What each fold means to you, is up to you. And if you can somehow manage all these contacts without having to resort to “memory games” – then good for you. I can’t. So I use something that is easy for me to figure out even a week later. And each fold helps me remember more of the conversation I had with that person – which makes me better suited to respond correctly to them after the conference.

It doesn’t matter how you remember people, but you DO need to remember them – and the context in which you met them. If folding business cards turns out to be useful for you, please let me know. I know it has made me much more effective in my follow up conversations.

It is an easy “trick”, and I like easy.

Today I woke up very early (for me) and drove ~90 miles to meet with a customer that wasn’t 100% satisfied with us. I had talked to him on the phone, and he wasn’t even really sure why he wasn’t happy. So at 9:30 this morning I met him in his office and we talked, briefly. It took all of 30 minutes to understand he did not have a problem with our service, but with how he perceived we perceived him. He thought we had grown too big for him to be important to us.

Until I showed up. The fact I just drove 90 miles changed his mind.

Showing up is the number one thing you can do for your customers. Show up where they need you – in their office, on Twitter, Facebook, or comments on a blog post. Just show up. Showing up is 60% of selling, my dad says. Another 10% is knowing your customer and the other 30% is just caring. You may not agree with the math, but my dad was a top sales producer for decades. I trust his math.

Show up, know your customer. Give a shit. This is really a simple game we tend to make overly complex.

This is Social Media, New Marketing – whatever you want to call it. But it is the same old game, with the same set of rules – we just have better playing fields than my dad did. It is actually easier for us to demonstrate that we care, and that we are listening – and that we are learning. But you still need to occasionally actually be there – in person, with breakfast tacos and a smile.

And they almost all hate “dealing with” a pissed customer.

I actually like talking to disappointed customers – it gives me a great opportunity to learn what is important to them, and where our weaknesses are.

It is also an excellent opportunity to make real change happen. If you are empowered to drive it back into the company.

Talking to customers that you haven’t completely satisfied is empowering. They tell you where you have failed them, and why.

If you are only interested in talking to customers you have pleased, you are missing out on both a great educational opportunity and a customer satisfaction opportunity.

Pissed customers are very honest – you can learn more from them than from surveys, I think.

What you are empowered to do with that information is critical. If all you can do is listen, that sucks. But if you are empowered to use that feedback to drive change – well, you have a great job.

So why do I hate “Social Media”? Because I hate what we’ve made it seem like – like a light touch, semi support, mostly marketing, lead generation tool.  And by “us” I do not mean my company – I mean most of you/us.

Why do I run our “social media” then, if I don’t like it all that much?

Because if I do not run it, I do not have a voice in it.  I can care, or not.  I can be involved, or not.  But if I do not care and am not involved I have little right to complain.  I like to complain, so I need to be involved to maintain some credibility:)

So I “run” our SM efforts because I want to make sure they have the right focus.  I want to make sure we focus on customers – and not marketing, lead-gen, sales, etc.

I want to do it “right” – or at least what I consider to be right.

To me Social Media is just a new name for “loving customers”.

So I don’t care all that much about “measurement”, or “analytics” or “any of that BS”.

To me I want to know that we are first helping customers.  And that is NOT Social Media.  That is customer support.  Which I really love.  Something Rackspace loves.

I am Rob La Gesse and I work for Rackspace.  My home number is 210-370-3861.  My cell is 210-845-4440.

And I love customers.  Social Media helps me find them. I may run Social Media, but it is really all about support.

We use Social Media to find new ways to talk to customers – and give them new ways to find us. That is pretty much it. So far.  I hope to keep it that way.