Every week, each member of our team (our entire team) is encouraged to share one thing which they learned. After implementing this practice (it’s optional — as I mentioned, it’s encouraged) our team began sharing really interesting stories, lessons, and knowledge.

Then, we gave this practice a name — actually, Duchesa (a seasoned veteran on our Customer Service Concierge team) gave this practice a name: WILLW (what I learned last week).

Then, we created an internal Slack channel (#willw) for sharing these awesome nuggets of info. WILLW is now an important part of our culture — a wonderful way for our team to engage with each other, share ideas and insights, and grow together as an awesome-r team. (Seriously, it’s magical to observe.)

From time-to-time, we’ll share things we learn with you. Such as last week’s WILLWs…

  1. Odysseus’ grandfather was a thief, but an unusual one; he might steal a horse, and then, after a few days, replace it with a donkey in a costume. People would then think the original animal was not stolen, but instead just taken away for a few days, and when they realized the truth… it was way, way too late! What can we learn from this? An animal that barks is not always a dog; and the same is true of people. (In other words, never judge a book by its cover and things are not always what they seem.)
  2. The cancellation process (with any service provider) is still a very important part of the customer experience. Make it easy and pleasant. (This one actually sparked a wonderful internal conversation about why it should be easy to cancel — which then became the impetus for writing this customer service blog post about making the cancellation process easy.)
  3. The best form of advertising is word-of-mouth (WOM) advertising. (A wonderful and often forgotten customer service fact: Engage your customers, keep them happy, and make things right when they go wrong. In turn, they’ll take care of your marketing.)
  4. Excuses don’t make up for bad service. (We love accountability and one of our values is “never make excuses.” An excuse is an easy way to ruin a perfectly good apology.)

One thing we did: We acquired an Austin-based marketing agency. Hence our updated pricing page, our updated services page, and one extra reason we’re all smiling on our updated team page!