از بالا - ترزیق فرهنگ صحیح

PART II

How to Win CHAPTER FOUR

From the Top: Instill the Right Culture

I can point to the date when the Thank You Economy’s existence became a matter of public record. It was July 22, 2009, a Wednesday. That’s the day it was announced that Amazon had bought Zappos for $1.2 billion.

Jeff Bezos is a hell of a smart guy, yet I heard more than one venture capitalist insider mutter that Zappos pulled a coup. There’s just no way the online retail company was worth that much money, they said. But Zappos wasn’t overpriced, and Bezos knew exactly what he was doing.

It seems to me that anyone who knows Bezos’s track record and still criticizes this acquisition is someone for whom numbers tell the entire story. I, on the other hand, don’t care what the numbers say, because I know that no company’s whole story can be read in the black-and-white columns of a P&L statement. And I think Bezos knows that, too. I think he looked into the future, and the future was Zappos. Here was a company that, according to off-the-record sources, was outselling Amazon on some non-footwear products that Amazon sold for less. There are only two things that will convince consumers to pay more for something when they could pay less. One is convenience, and the other is an outstanding customer experience. A lot of companies can play the convenience card, but very few companies, including Amazon, do customer service like Zappos. By dominating in both categories, they were the only retail threat to Amazon, and they’re only going to get bigger and better as their customer relationships deepen and their word of mouth continues to spread. No one outcares like Zappos. This wasn’t a buy based on numbers; it was a buy based on culture and trends. That’s why Bezos is a visionary. I think he sees that culture is the next playing field, just as he saw that ecommerce was the next playing field. He wouldn’t spend almost a billion dollars on anything but the future.

He doesn’t explicitly say this in the YouTube video that he made to explain the buy. What he does say is, “I get all weak-kneed when I see a customer-obsessed company, and Zappos certainly is that.” He also makes the point that he believes Amazon and Zappos are compatible because they both obsess over customer service (though as Tony Hsieh points out in the letter he wrote to Zappos employees to announce the deal, they do it in different ways). Specifically, what he says is, “When given the choice of obsessing over competitors, or obsessing over customers, we [Amazon] always obsess over customers.”

Bezos hasn’t asked for my advice, but I’m going to give it anyway. If he or anyone else wants to dominate in the Thank You Economy, there’s one more obsession that has to take root that isn’t mentioned in his video. Success in the Thank You Economy hinges on obsessively caring about the customer, yes, but a great caring culture stems from the top of a company and cascades through it like a waterfall. If you want that culture to flow outside of the company to the customer, and then get carried even farther by word of mouth, you have to be sure that your messengers live and breathe it the same way you do. Therefore, the dominant obsession for any leader running a company in the Thank You Economy shouldn’t be the competition, nor should it be customer service. It should be your employees.

One-to-One Management

Zappos has an amazing work environment. There’s free food in the cafeteria, a library, and a lot of happy employees. I’m willing to bet that most of the companies that are praised for outstanding customer service also fall pretty high on the scale of great places to work. It’s got to be awfully hard for employees to give phenomenal customer service when they’re not phenomenally satisfied with their jobs. Zappos’ perks, however, and those that are offered at other companies, such as casual Fridays or a glass keepsake on one’s fifth anniversary, aren’t what actually lead to employee satisfaction. I think it’s safe to say that Vaynermedia is a great place to work, but we’re twenty people crammed into a tiny space, and we don’t give out free snacks or even knock off early on summer Fridays. I work my staff to the bone. Still, I know they’re happy, because while perks might make employees think harder before deciding to leave, there are only two things that make employees really, really happy and make them want to stay.

The first thing that makes an employee happy is being treated like an adult. That means that until people prove that they can’t be trusted, they should be allowed to manage their job as they see fit. The second is feeling that his or her individual needs are being met. This is rare. To achieve this kind of satisfaction among staff would require business leaders to engage at the same one-on-one level with their employees as with their customers. Until now, not many companies have been up to the challenge. It does sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s merely a matter of establishing a truly caring culture at the top, and applying Thank You Economy principles internally as well as externally.

For example, at Vaynermedia, we recently established a new vacation policy: there is none. The policy is, take as much or as little vacation as you want. At first it threw everyone off a little. What would be considered too much vacation? Then my staff figured out that I was serious, and that they would not be judged by how much vacation they took. Some have taken a solid amount; some have taken none. What matters is that they all get to decide for themselves how much time off they need in order to perform their job at the highest level when they are working, which means caring their face off for our clients, for each other, and for the brand. I don’t see how I can make that call for them. Some people have kids; others don’t. Some people have family that lives nearby; others have to travel long distances to visit loved ones. Some people just need a little more downtime to recharge than others.

I do have some basic rules. I’m passionate about team building, so I don’t hire anyone who wants to work from home on a regular basis. We need to be available when our clients are working, so project managers need to be in by 9:00 and the execution team should be in by 10:30 a.m. But within those parameters, I let my staff manage their time themselves. What difference does it make what time they leave, or how much vacation they take, so long as they are there when I, their colleagues, or their clients need them, they are doing their job 110 percent at all times, and they’re meeting their objectives?

I care more about my employees than I do about my customers, and I care more about my customers than I do about breathing. I am a naturally touchy-feely guy, and at work I’ve been like a mother hen (one with a huge competitive streak, for sure), constantly checking in on my employees, talking to them, and, when I can, making sure they have the latitude and resources to solve whatever problems they encounter. I’ve made it a priority to know what’s going on professionally, and often personally, with everyone on my staff. The constant dialogue, which helps me confirm that my employees feel they are being allowed to position themselves to succeed, has made it easy for me to see which people aren’t pulling their weight or who isn’t the right person for the job. Thanks to the communication facilitated by the open, trusting, caring culture of the company, however, it has been extremely rare for me to have to let anyone go.

Unfortunately, the employees of Wine Library have probably benefited more from this kind of attention than those at Vaynermedia. I’ve had to travel much more since launching Vaynermedia, and it’s been impossible to get as close to each individual employee, to get a true sense of who the people are and what they need. I do my best—I’m probably an All Star player right now. But at Wine Library, I was a Hall of Famer. I want to be the same way at Vaynermedia, and I have every intention of doing so as soon as possible.

So as you can see, even I, who run relatively small companies, can find it difficult to keep up with the kind of one-on-one employee service required by the Thank You Economy. How could it possibly be incorporated into a larger company? Some companies are proving that it’s possible. Zappos has done an outstanding job of creating an employee-centered company culture, and there are others who have made some smart moves and experimented successfully with giving their employees free rein, such as Best Buy, with its twittering Twelpforce. Eventually the companies in the best position to dominate will adapt many of these companies’ ideas, and then take them even farther. I predict that one day every company will have, along with a CEO, CFO, COO, and CSO, someone with a title like CCO—Chief Culture Officer—whose job will be to keep track of the needs of every single employee at the company. Not keep track of every employee; that would still be HR’s job. Keep track of their needs, and meet them to the best of the CCO’s ability, not through empty pep talks and token gifts but through individualized goal setting, strategizing for the future, and constant confirmation that the employee is satisfied. I’d love a job like this. If I didn’t want to buy the New York Jets, I’d be pestering every Fortune 500 company who would listen to let me create the position of CCO so I could show them what a major difference someone in that role could make to their bottom line. Everyone knows that turnover costs a company a fortune; a CCO’s salary could easily pay for itself just from the amount of money saved in lowered recruitment and retraining resources. What companies don’t realize is how much extra money they would earn if employees loved them so much, they took it upon themselves to work harder and longer than they would otherwise. With a CCO on staff to help make sure each worker has a reason to feel that way about his or her employer, companies could find themselves manned less by dedicated staff centered around a job, and more by passionate armies devoted to a cause.

But for a mid-to-large company, being an effective CCO would require getting to know a massive number of people on an individual level, wouldn’t it? Absolutely. It would be doable if all the other cultural building blocks to a Thank You Economy company had been established.

Cultural Building Blocks

Putting those building blocks in place could occur only once the company’s leadership dedicated itself to making it happen, of course. If a leader were so inclined, here’s how it could be done:

1. BEGIN WITH YOURSELF. Since culture stems from the top of a company, one would hope that the top exec has a good sense of who he or she is. Strong self-awareness makes a strong culture possible. Remembering who you are and the qualities that have made you successful until now, whether you’re a CEO, an executive, or a mid-level manager, is extremely important as you work toward developing, sustaining, and spreading the company culture. It won’t happen if you try to wear anyone’s hat but your own. If you’re buttoned up and formal, don’t try to become hip and casual. If you’re a conservative company, be a conservative company; just be a conservative company that puts its employees first, and its customers ahead of everything else. There’s a way to do that without installing a foosball table or allowing people to wear flip-flops to the office. I hate it when companies give their offices a face lift and open a lounge or floor where employees can play Nintendo Wii and eat free Twizzlers, as if to announce, “See how young at heart we are? We know what the kids want!” Self-aware leaders don’t waste a lot of time or money trying to be something they’re not.

In addition, leaders have to commit to the Thank You Economy before they can tell others to do so. Only once it is ingrained in your overall vision and strategy can you successfully spread it through your company or department. The Thank You Economy is based in authenticity, and authenticity has to begin with you.

1. COMMIT WHOLE HOG. No one can be expected to turn over a sizable portion of the company’s marketing budget to customer service–enhancing social media initiatives overnight, but the mental commitment can be made in a millisecond. The mental commitment is probably even more important than the financial commitment, especially in the early stages of preparing a company for the Thank You Economy. After all, there are going to be speed bumps and wrong turns and flat tires along the way. But if the leaders of the company are unwavering in their determination to create a culture of supersized caring, none of those setbacks will slow the company down for long. At the same time that you’re weaving care-your-face-off cultural DNA into the company, you can closely analyze your spending so you can take a practical approach to finding the money you need to implement creative, authentic social media initiatives. Stop blindly spending, reexamine your staff, start haggling harder for the best deals, and revisit the agencies and vendors you work with. The money is there; it’s just being spent in the wrong place.

2. SET THE TONE. As soon as leaders commit to building a caring culture, they need to send a strong, direct message about their intent. Employees should be able to feel the difference immediately, and they should be able to look to their leaders for examples of the kind of care, concern, and one-on-one interaction with customers that will be expected of them.

John Pepper, the CEO of Boloco, a Boston-based burrito chain, has done this brilliantly. Internally, he and his cofounders have made it clear that the welfare and future of Boloco’s employees are paramount, from providing health care to all full-time and most hourly employees to offering English and Spanish classes to all staff in an effort to improve in-house communication and allow non–English-speaking workers to rise to roles of greater responsibility. His employees can also look to him as a role model. His engagements on social media offer plenty of examples of the kind of personal, caring interaction he expects them to engage in with customers. For example, by searching Twitter for the word “Boloco,” he caught someone sitting right outside a store located on the Boston Commons, complaining that the music was set too loud. He alerted the manager, who immediately lowered the volume and then came out to make sure the music level was set to the customer’s satisfaction.

What followed next should prove the impact of the Thank You Economy.

The happy customer sent out a new tweet praising Boloco for its customer service. Many of her followers started twittering about what had just happened. She then wrote an entire blog post about her experience, which you can read about in her post, “Music, Burritos, and the Impact of a Tweet,” on her blog, Rachel Levy: Social Media and Marketing. The story got retold in a book. A lot more people have now heard of Boloco and its awesome burritos.

Would you care to put a dollar amount on the earned media Boloco gained through one great act of customer service? (I hope it’s a lot, because that would mean many people had bought this book!)

More dramatically, Pepper sets the tone by sidestepping around the corporate-speak walls most leaders hide behind. You can see it in the way he answers customer comments from the heart. A perfect and praiseworthy example is the letter he wrote to a customer who was disappointed that Boloco had taken his favorite burrito off the menu.

–—Original Message–—

From: John Pepper [mailto:pepper@boloco.com]

Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 8:31 P.M.

To: Ben

Subject: RE: Boloco.com: customer response

Ben,

First of all, thanks for your note. We always appreciate hearing from customers…even if we’ve done something that doesn’t make them happy, it helps us a great deal.

We worried a lot about Roasted Veggies and what the reaction would be. The reason they disappeared in the first place is because so few people actually ordered them, and the amount of prep time and waste (because they’d sit too long and we’d have to throw them out) stopped justifying keeping them on the menu years ago…but because of the few, and outspoken, customers who lived on them, we kept them in place. You are now the 7th person that has written about this loss since we took them off three months ago (not including a handful of our employees who are also quite upset).

From a purely business standpoint, it didn’t make any sense to keep the Roasted Veggies. From a customer loyalty standpoint, however, your note (and the others like it) makes me want to get them back on the menu tomorrow! The challenge we always have is balancing the two…you would be amazed at the number of requests we get on a weekly basis from our customers—obviously, we can’t accommodate everyone, but we do listen to everyone, and consider what they say carefully.

I don’t know how this will turn out in the months to come. I know I can’t promise they will return unless we start hearing overwhelming feedback that they must. We’ve taken items off in the past and had no choice but to bring them back (ie. Buffalo chicken is best example where it felt like a riot was about to take place)…so far, this hasn’t been one of those items.

I hate to even suggest trying the tofu, if you are in fact a vegetarian. My wife is, and that’s what she gets religiously. It’s not your standard tofu, it has spice, flavor, and people love it!

Other vegetarians will get the fajitas, though I agree with you [they] are far different than the Roasted Veggies.

And finally, others will just get any of the items we sell “as is,” which is to say without chicken or steak. Most of our menu items start vegetarian, and only when you add chicken or steak do they become otherwise.

I am sorry I don’t have the answer you are looking for. To try and make up for this, and to give you a few visits on us to possibly find something else that gets you excited, send me the 16 digit code on the back of your Boloco card (you can pick one up if you don’t have one, and send it to me then) and I’ll add some Burrito Bucks on there for you to use. It’s the least we can do, and maybe you’ll find something that works. If not, we will hope that something we do in the future brings you back to our restaurants—we have sincerely appreciated your business and hope we’ll find a way to earn it back soon.

Cheers,

John

This letter is:

PERSONAL Not a whiff of corporate speak. Pepper mentions his wife, offers other alternatives, and sounds genuinely sorry the customer is unhappy.

HONEST He doesn’t make any promises he can’t keep, and explains the practical and financial reasons why the unpopular decision had to be made.

ACCOMMODATING He offers a way for the customer to try some other options on the menu, free of charge.

I read this letter, and the one written by Tony Hsieh to announce the Zappos/Amazon deal to Zappos employees,* and I wonder why so many business leaders have such a hard time being real. Imagine how a customer would feel if he got a letter like this from a CEO, instead of one packed with stiff, formal, empty jargon. Pepper is walking the Thank You Economy walk, and from Boloco’s success and loyal customer following, it’s clear that his efforts to properly set the tone are flowing downhill, out the front door, and into the streets. Pepper is surely spot-on when he says, “I know people are saying, ‘I’m going to go to Boloco because I know they care about my business.’”

1. INVEST IN EMPLOYEES. If you’re a social media champion at your company, but no one is listening to you yet, take heart; your time is near. Think about all the people on staff at the television studios in the early 1990s who noted the success of MTV’s The Real World and fought to convince their companies that there was a huge opportunity in reality TV. They had to wait until the summer of 2000 to be proven right with the explosive success of Big Brother and Survivor. I doubt that you, on the other hand, will have to wait eight years to see businesses fully adopt and accept social media into their marketing strategies. The company you’re currently working for may take that long, but I would hope that if you’re a forward-thinking, ambitious person, you’ll have jumped ship long before then and taken your talents someplace where they are appreciated.

If you’re a company leader, and you philosophically agree with Thank You Economy principles but your company is still not ready to implement social media strategies, look around. Who keeps asking you when the business is going to have a Facebook page? Who keeps forwarding blog posts and articles about companies successfully using social media to reach their customers? Even if you don’t understand the social media trend, those people do. And they not only already know your company, they already care enough to be thinking of ways to help it grow. Even if this whole social media thing were to wind up being a load of nothing (which isn’t going to happen), any person willing to put him-or herself on the line like that is one of the most valuable in your company. Do not let such employees get so frustrated by your refusal to listen to new ideas that they decide to leave. Too many leaders invest insufficiently in their employees for fear of losing out when those employees leave. Any investment you make in your employees will be safe if they believe that you really care about them and their future. Create a culture that rewards people who show that they care. Seek the input of people who have shown a tendency to take risks and share big ideas. Prove that you value your employees above all else by giving them the freedom to ask for what they want, to experiment, and to be themselves.

It’s okay if you put this effort into employees and they still choose to leave for bigger and better positions at other companies. You want ambitious people on staff, and it’s inevitable that ambitious people will be on the lookout for new opportunities. Even if they leave, your efforts will not have been wasted, for you will be developing your company’s reputation as a place where people in your field can grow their careers. That’s the kind of reputation that attracts the best and the brightest, which is exactly who you want working with you. Besides, if you’ve really built a company that values its staff, many employees will try to return, bringing with them more experience, stronger skills, and a broader perspective, because they miss their old work environment so much.

When people are happy, they want to make other people happy. Therefore, if success in the Thank You Economy is contingent on making your customers so happy they could cry, you have to do the same for your employees.

1. TRUST YOUR PEOPLE. I’m pretty good at recognizing one of my own, so the employees I hire tend to be people who share a lot of my DNA. That’s one of the reasons why I know I can give them so much freedom—most of them are built like me, and share, or at least do their best to keep up with, my over-the-top work ethic. Creating a Thank You Economy culture will become easier and easier as you begin hiring people who share your commitment to caring. It will be easy to spot the people already on staff who can’t adapt or just don’t get the concept, and as they leave you will replace them with others who share your DNA. An NBA team doesn’t hire people who can’t shoot a basketball. An exec wouldn’t hire a disorganized administrative assistant.

When you know without a doubt that you’ve made good hires, it’s easy to give employees the freedom they need to give the kind of one-on-one customer service that will resonate in the TYE. Create a culture of openness. Let your employees blog and tweet as much as they like, the way the Twelpforce does at Best Buy. And let them be themselves. Authenticity is a huge part of what makes social media initiatives work. In addition, allowing your employees to use Twitter, YouTube, Quora, Facebook, and blog posts to talk about your brand and their work not only provides them a venue for expression, it gives you, or your CCO, another window through which you can see how they do their job. Combine those observations with the ones you make about their performance on the job, and you’ll quickly know who’s a superstar and who needs some more training. In addition, you’ll know how they feel about their job, and that is no small issue. There’s a reason employees become dissatisfied or frustrated—take the time to find out what it is, and work with them to resolve the situation.

Employees have to be held accountable for their actions, of course. If someone tweets out, “I hate this job and my boss is a weasel,” well, yeah, that can’t be overlooked. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that person gets fired. He might; he might not. It would all depend on the conversation that ensued, which does not begin, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” but with a more reasonable, “Tell me why you tweeted that.”

Even if you decide it is a fireable offense, your employee should know that you understand why he did what he did. One year, the day before Christmas, I asked one of my top guys how he was doing. He looked me right in the eye and said, “I bleeping hate this place and I hate you.” Well, I hadn’t seen that coming. Did I appreciate getting cursed out by an employee? Not at all. But I knew him well, which means I knew that there were circumstances in his life that might make his already hot temper flare up. We talked, and together we figured out a way to rearrange his workload so that he didn’t feel as if his back was against a wall. He was a stock boy back then, making less than ten dollars a day; today he is one of Wine Library’s top executives.

This event happened several years ago. Had it occurred more recently, it’s possible that instead of blowing up in my face, privately, this employee might have tweeted out his frustration to the world. Totally unacceptable. But I probably would have handled the situation the exact same way. I believe in second chances, and if I have done my job and gotten to know my employees and what drives them, I should be able to work with them to make sure something like that never happens again.

Too many companies are afraid of openness, but if you’re doing everything right internally, and hiring the right people, there shouldn’t be anything to fear. We are a capitalist society, but the majority of businesses are taking a communist approach toward allowing their employees to use their voice on social media. They don’t want the wrong message to get out, but if they create the right internal culture, it’s unlikely there will be a wrong message.

But there’s still a risk, right? What if someone does say something he or she shouldn’t, something that could negatively affect you or your brand? There’s very little an employee can say to hurt your company that you can’t fix if you act with speed and good intent. Much of the negative fallout from business disasters can be traced more directly to the boneheaded way a snafu was handled than to the actual mistake, misunderstanding, or even crime. Most consumers are smart enough to know that one rogue employee doesn’t represent an entire large company, and a sincere apology from the top, one that acknowledges the harm done and that offers evidence that it won’t happen again, goes an exceedingly long way.

Best Buy normally deserves praise for the way it has empowered its staff by allowing employees to tweet, but it still has some work to do. A manager found a popular satirical animated video pitting EVO versus iPhone 4 on YouTube, and realized a store employee had created it. Though the video didn’t mention Best Buy, other less popular videos the employee created did, and the company felt that the popular video was criticizing the iPhone. Anxious to prove that they expected their employees to respect all of the brands they carried, they asked the employee to quit. He refused, so they suspended him while figuring out how to handle the situation. In the meantime, the story got out, was reported by the blogosphere, and all of a sudden Best Buy found itself looking stupid and defending itself. In the end they didn’t fire the employee, but unsurprisingly, he quit.

Were Best Buy’s actions enough to impact their stock price or the balance sheet? Not at all. But they got some negative earned media that didn’t make them look very good to their high-tech consumer base, and that’s never a good thing. You would be stunned by how many customers and employees have changed their attitude toward the Best Buy brand as a result of the poor way they handled the situation.

1. BE AUTHENTIC. Corporate execs could learn a lot from Jim Joyce, the umpire who blew a perfect game for Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga during the 2010 season after incorrectly ruling that Cleveland Indians’ Jason Donald was safe on first base. It was a mistake, a big one that must have been a terrible blow to Galarraga. And yet Galarraga himself couldn’t hold the mistake against Joyce when he saw how genuinely distraught the umpire was at having robbed the player of a historic game. “I say many times: Nobody’s perfect,” Galarraga said. “Everybody makes a mistake. I’m sure he don’t want to make that call. You see that guy last night, he feels really bad. He don’t even change. The other umpires shower, eat. He was sitting in the seat [and saying], ‘I’m so sorry.’”

As was to be expected, fans were outraged, some, unfortunately, taking their fury to an ugly extreme by threatening Joyce’s family, “but as word spread of Joyce’s admission, apology and anguish, he and Galarraga became shining examples of sportsmanship and forgiveness.”

By the next day, Detroit fans applauded the umpire crew as they arrived on the field for that day’s game against the Indians. Joyce’s humility and authenticity, his genuine remorse, and his willingness to speak from the heart—“I took something away from him…and if I could, I would give it back in a minute”—quickly turned public opinion around. For that matter, we can all take a cue from the other player in this story, Galarraga, who made a point of shaking the ump’s hand as he handed over the lineup card, behaving graciously in a situation when many would have let their disappointment get the better of them.

Only a few weeks after Joyce botched the call, he was voted baseball’s best umpire in a poll of one hundred Major League players, published by ESPN The Magazine Baseball Confidential. Over his twenty-two years in the majors, he has built such a strong, well-respected, authentic personal brand that even a massive mistake like the one he made with regard to Galarraga could not destroy his career. Legacy trumps everything. Any business, whether in business twenty-two years or twenty-two days, would be well advised to take a page from this umpire’s rule book.

People can smell BS even across an oil-slicked Gulf. With the power of social media to spread articles, images, videos, and audio recordings around the world in minutes, authenticity, and the long-term relationships that can result from authentic interaction with consumers, will almost always be the deciding factor in how a brand or company survives a false step in the Thank You Economy.

Empower People

I like to imagine that midsize and large companies will open something that I would love to call the Give A Crap department (I actually have another name for it, but I try to leave the really bad curse words for my onstage talks). For the purposes of this book, I’ll call it the Social Media department, headed by a community manager, and populated by a small army of champion carers dedicated to interacting and engaging with every customer they can find. But in the Thank You Economy, big companies behave a lot more like small companies. In small companies, employees often serve multiple roles and it’s expected that they will pitch in wherever they are needed. So, like the staff of a small mom-and-pop shop, every big business competing in the Thank You Economy would empower all of their employees to provide phenomenal customer service, and not strictly relegate that task to the Social Media department. Customer service could now look like the business analyst who works in the Vitamin Water accounts payable department; at the park on a Saturday, he sits down on a bench just as a guy takes a swig from a Dragonfruit flavor Vitamin Water and says to his buddy, “I love this flavor.” The analyst whips out his card and says, “I’m so glad you like it. Email me and I’ll send you an online code for a free case. Thanks for enjoying our beverage!” If the analyst worked for a company that didn’t have the resources to offer free product, a simple “I work for Vitamin Water. I’m so glad you like our product. Thanks for drinking it.” will still knock an unsuspecting customer’s socks off. It’s still so rare for anyone to be personally acknowledged by a brand that the impact of such a simple, polite gesture on a customer’s buying habits could be huge. When it comes to customer care in the Thank You Economy, there is little difference between online and offline behavior. It’s all public. Anytime your brand or product is mentioned or used is an opportunity to say “Thank you,” as well as “You’re welcome,” “I’m sorry,” “How so?” “Is that how you really feel?” “Tell me what happened,” “How can I fix the problem?” or “Allow me.”

Now wait a minute, you’re thinking. There are a couple of obvious reasons why such a strategy would never work.

1. It’s nice for customers to feel appreciated and cared for, but how does giving away free stuff pay off?

Well, what if each employee were given his or her own marketing budget, say $200, which could be spent however the employee wished on providing fabulous moments of customer service? You could track who used their budget, and how, and then adjust. Margot is spending her budget on people who become return customers, which means one of two things: she really knows how to make a potential customer feel that she cares about their business, or she’s very good at recognizing individuals who really do need your product or service. The money Dan spends, however, seems to be bringing in friends or one-shot purchases. Now you know that you should increase Margot’s budget and decrease Dan’s. Or, if you want Dan to do a better job, offer an incentive that for every return customer, the employee who thanked the customer and brought in the business will get a percentage of the purchase, or a small bonus.

It could work.

1. Even if it did work, it could result in people staging product placement opportunities just so they could get free services and merchandise. Or, on the flip side, it could result in a horrible backlash against what could be perceived as sneaky marketing tactics.

Maybe. It’s possible that if businesses adopted such a strategy we’d all feel as though we couldn’t trust anyone’s opinions anymore, and that every time a stranger sat down next to us we’d have to worry he or she was eavesdropping. I don’t think that will happen, because I think it is an infinitesimal percentage of companies who would actually go to this extreme to prove they’re listening to their customers. But if it did happen, it would take a long, long, long time. And by the time the public started getting annoyed, you, who are always looking ahead to new opportunities to show your customers you care, would have adapted and moved on. You would have already seen what was happening and figured out a new way to interact with consumers. You’ll do the same thing with Facebook and Twitter. When those platforms stop working as well as they do now, it won’t matter to you because you’ll already have jumped onto the next social media train car, or some other yet-to-be-invented platform. The platforms you use are incredibly important to successful social marketing, but they will always be a close second to your intent and your message.

Cultures change. Societies change. An affair brought down Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign but was not enough to keep Bill Clinton out of the White House in the early nineties, only a few short years later. Clinton had to swear that he didn’t inhale, but Barack Obama’s frank admission to pot and cocaine use during his college years was practically a non-issue. Of course other factors affected the outcomes of these men’s political careers. But there can be no denial that based on the public’s response, or lack thereof, to these pieces of news that somewhere along the way our society and our culture experienced a shift. What seems radical or frightening or impossible or over-the-top one year is ho-hum the next. Perhaps the caring business culture I foresee in the Thank You Economy seems extreme. If so, it’s only for now. Those of you who think I’m dreaming too big, come back to me in a few years and we’ll talk. I’ll be polite. I won’t say “I told you so.” Well, maybe I will.