Our Purpose
26 Aug 2019 by Dave
This post was originally an internal SimplePay memo and has been adapted to fit the blog post format
Our purpose is to pick a fight against mediocrity. Think about what it’s like to deal with companies when you have an issue. You might be phoning in and be forced to queue. Then you might end up dealing with someone who doesn’t quite know how to help you. Or it could just be against the company’s policies to solve your particular problem, tying their hands. This can be a frustrating, dehumanising process.
We need to do our part to make people feel appreciated. That we care. This starts with us and the way we interact as a team. The world is getting faster. More digital. Less time. More distraction. When did you last take the time to just appreciate what you have and the people around you? I know how often I need to remind myself of this.
Once we’ve revisited how we appreciate each other, we can return to doing so with our clients. Our clients need to feel appreciation in every interaction, whether it’s a prompt, helpful reply to an email, thoughtfully written documentation or a system that shows it was designed with all the care and attention we could muster.
Companies being bad at customer service is not some abstract thing. It’s not caused by some vicious external force. It’s people. It’s us! At SimplePay we will do our part to make this world more human, and the lessons we take away from it will be about much more than work.
And yet, despite our best intentions, sometimes we’ll stumble. We might misread a client’s email. Maybe there’s something not quite right with a new feature we released. Or there’s a serious bug or shortcoming in the system.
However, if there’s one thing that can turn a client’s opinion around after reporting a system issue, it’s fixing it promptly. Even the most serious defects may be forgiven if dealt with swiftly. In fact, clients are often so surprised when we fix an issue quickly that their opinion of us is higher than before finding the issue! Magic? No, it’s simply the feeling of being listened to, of knowing that someone cares.
This is the reason we have a robust escalation process. The customer service team is in a position to query the development team and get fast feedback on whether something is desired system behaviour. Serious issues are escalated and discussed every day in a standup between representatives from customer service and development, so we can stay on top of them. Meanwhile, the customer service team is finding ways to replicate the issue and workarounds for clients to mitigate the impact, while the analysts on the development team may be doing research. Everyone working closely together, bound by a common purpose.
Getting positive feedback for fixed issues or new features is great. But our clients will never know about all the behind-the-scenes work the development team does for them. The security and platform updates. The code refactoring that will help us deliver features faster with fewer defects. The issues we picked up ourselves and fixed before they impacted too many clients. We may not get direct credit for these things, but we do them - because we care about our team mates, our clients and our work.