Put everyone on the front lines

In the restaurant business, there's a world of difference between working in the

kitchen and dealing with customers. Cooking schools and smart restaurateurs

know it's important for both sides to understand and empathize with each other.

That's why they often have chefs work out front as waiters for a stretch. That

way, the kitchen staff can interact with customers and see what it's actually like

on the front lines.

A lot of companies have a similar front-of-house/back-of-house split. The

people who make the product work in the "kitchen" while support handles the

customers. Unfortunately, that means the product's chefs never get to directly

hear what customers are saying. Too bad. Listening to customers is the best way

to get in tune with a product's strengths and weaknesses.

Think about the children's game Telephone. There are ten kids sitting in a

circle. A message starts and is whispered from one child to another. By the time

it gets all the way around, the message is completely distorted--to the point

where it's usually hilarious. A sentence that makes sense at first comes out the

other end as "Macaroni cantaloupe knows the future." And the more people you

have in the circle, the more distorted the message gets.

The same thing is true at your company. The more people you have between

your customers' words and the people doing the work, the more likely it is that

the message will get lost or distorted along the way.

Everyone on your team should be connected to your customers--maybe not

every day, but at least a few times throughout the year. That's the only way your

team is going to feel the hurt your customers are experiencing. It's feeling the

hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too:

The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be

wildly motivating.

So don't protect the people doing the work from customer feedback. No one

should be shielded from direct criticism.

Maybe you think you don't have time to interact with customers. Then make

time. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark still answers support e-mails today

(often within minutes). He also deletes racist comments from the site's

discussion boards and pesters New York City Realtors who post apartments for

rent that don't exist.

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If he can devote this kind of attention to customer service,

you can too.