At Infusion we have a strong desire to remember our original roots, our original passion, and our reason for existing- caring for our small business customers, and to put this focus in the front of everyone’s face- every day, we launched a new company wide customer loyalty building program- called Riding the Trains.
Some history..For those of you who have lived in or visited a big city, and had to ride the subway to get around town you know what this experience can be like, in some cities like LA its awesome, in others like Chicago- it’s a crap shoot! Many years ago in a major US city, the subway system was in deep trouble- think back to the 80’s- I know it’s a long time ago, or before some of you were born, but trust me the subway system in this city was dirty, scary, not on time, and sometimes down right dangerous. Trouble was, the folks in charge of the transit system didn’t realize any of this.
Why you ask- because the folks in charge at the top, drove nice fancy cars to work- the Transit Authority leadership did not have to ride the trains to get to work or anywhere else for that matter. Thus, a disconnect between the riding publics experience on the subways and the leaderships view of how they were doing.
A visionary new leader was hired to solve the problem. He came in to a pretty dire situation- rider revenues were down, traffic and population growth were increasing and incidents on the subway were increasing. So, among the first things he determined was the Transit Authority leadership was out of touch with their customers- the people who ride the trains. So, he came up with a program, that required everyone who worked at the Transit Authority to “Ride the Trains” at least 2 days per week- forever! If they did not bring in their stubs and suggestions/findings they had to pay $$ into a pool.
What does this have to do with us here at Infusionsoft? We’ve started Riding the Trains to stay in touch with our customers. As we continue to grow, just like the subway system, sometimes it is easy to get farther and farther away from our customers. I bet you are thinking- hey, Kelly there are no trains at Infusionsoft- correct, what we do have is live customer contact going on every day!
Riding the Trains = listening to live customer phone calls
Here is how our program works:
- Supervisors/Managers and above are required to Ride the Trains 4 hours each month.
- Riders can listen to support calls or IM calls- you pick!
- Headset will be hanging on the wall outside my office- grab one and come on over.
- My assistan logs each session completed - riders can do these whenever they want to, and it fits in their schedules!
*From time to time we will offer other programs to fulfill this requirement- like calling customers who give us double thumbs down on surveys, calling from a list of high usage clients just to see how they are doing- more details on this to come.
Rules:
1. Rider cannot interrupt the Support rep or IM- questions must be saved to the end.
2. Riders must provide a riding the trains report- 3 things learned during each session
3. Each VP has the authority to reward or penalize their required team members at their discretion. (for example- in CL whoever does not Ride the Trains will put $25 in the Riding the Trains pool, which will be donated to a local charity every month)
Happy Train Riding! In all seriousness, this program ensures we stay in contact with our most important asset- our customers- they are the reason Infusionsoft exists.
