Tomorrow is Take Your Customer to Work Day. Dreamed up by marketer Sean Hazell, the “event” is meant to get companies to “open up their doors and invite customers into the workplace to meet employees and better understand how their business works.” Sounds like something that could benefit both businesses and consumers, though very few companies seem to have jumped on the bandwagon. The one marquee name: Zappos. So, if you’re in Vegas tomorrow, you can get a tour of the company’s HQ, and a meeting with some CSRs. [Take Your Customer To Work Day]
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Congress should do this.
@dohtem: In my opinion, that would be as effective as 2nd graders taking a tour of the Capitol Building. They’d walk around, shake some people’s hands, and forget everything they learned about the legislative process. You know, just like the people who work there.
Zappos is one of the few companies I can think of where I’d be happy to meet the CSRs.
@Laura Northrup: I read in an interview with the founder that they do tours of their HQ every day. They even have a shuttle that will pick you up from your hotel in Vegas.
Cynic that I am, all I can envision happening is folks showing up to bitch about stupid stuff rather than gain insight into the process of how orders are fulfilled by a company/supplier.
Well, I’m in manufacturing, and visits to vendor facilities is expected. It doesn’t matter if they offer a lunch spread or not (to me, maybe affects others?), but seeing their processes and meeting their people goes a loooong way towards making a purchasing decision.
Not sure I’d want to visit a sweatshop, though. I’d have to run around naked and without an iPod.
Hmmm. Drinking, gambling and showgirls or warehouses, computers and shoes….
Can’t decide.
I would so love to show some of my customers who yell at me over the phone about how I know nothing about how utilities work or how we sit around stroking off and letting the customer wait for 10 minutes, what my job really involves.
I’ve had people in my own company sit with fellow CSRs and myself for a whole day and they end up saying they can’t believe all the crap we put up with and have to remember to tell to customers about how utility billing works and why we didn’t read the meter because you didn’t tie your dog up.
I would love to have some of the people who spout such hatred and vitriol towards us. Show them what it sounds like on our end and show them how we do our job. My company though would never do that because of safety concerns. But it would be unique.
@Teradoc: Although it’s not your fault, I still want to send a $25 bill to DTE for loosing* my dog. Their contractors never, ever closed our gate (that they opened!) during meter reads. So the dog gets out one day, picked up by animal control, and a $25 fine results.
*Note the proper use of “loosing” unlike so many people who misspell “losing.”
On a serious note, doesn’t your company offer self-reported readings? When I started locking my gate (the one I mention above), I just reported the reading myself. It’s an excellent compromise for meter readers who are afraid of dogs.
Of course these days, all meter readings in my area are done by radio.
@balthisar:
Oh yeah, ours does self-report readings. It is just that some customer love to bitch and complain about how they won’t untie Fluffy the 200 lbs dog from the meter but they don’t want to read their meter but they love to complain about the estimation that after we send a meter reader turns out the estimation was right. Argh
Will there be pie? If there’s pie, I’ll go.
Oh that’s weird. We have a customer coming tomorrow. I had to put his name on the flannel letterboard “Welcome” sign in the foyer.
I was so tempted to put “Today’s Special:” over it.
The law firm I work at do this once a year. Granted the “customers” are clients who pay $700 an hour for attorney work, but hey, they help keep the economy going, right?!