Customer Stakeholder
- Neil Emeigh
Be sure to read the parent page describing what Stakeholder mindset is.
Background
From our Founder, Neil
A business cannot survive without its customers, and so, we aim to put this stakeholder at the top of our priority list. Note, we’re not saying “profit” here, but rather “customer care”. Many times it is unprofitable to help a customer out, but we believe in the long-term it pays off.
I remember the beginning days of the company clearly: I was working 70+ hour weeks trying to learn how to grow a business, while also project managing our tech guys, managing finances, marketing, and most importantly, doing customer support. The first thing I would do every morning is immediately hop into the ticket queue so that customers who had opened a ticket when I was asleep could get a reply as soon as I could get to them. This persisted until the last waking minute of my evening.
The stories go on: I was the guy who would bring my laptop to my friends’ places during college while they were drinking and having fun, all in the name of staying on top of the ticket queue or the technical outage we may have been facing. I brought it on family vacations, and even remember having to step aside for multiple Christmases while others opened presents. I did this because I cared.
At the end of the day, a customer is us - a hard working individual that is putting their own money in the hands of another person, hoping to be treated well. Because most of my customers were consumers to SMBs, this compounded even further… they were me. I didn’t like to be treated poorly, and I didn’t feel they should be either!
Unfortunately, as the company grew rapidly, I couldn’t continue servicing customers personally. I tried though! Over a year, and 500+ customers and $1m+ in revenue, I held onto doing support myself because I wanted the control to do it perfectly. As we scaled, we’ve had some ups and downs in achieving this same level of service, and I’m grateful for all the hard work from our CS department for making it so. As of 2024, we are leaning into this more than ever before!
Our ethos for serving Customers
Fortunately that work-life balance is more normalized these days (for myself, and others), but the ethos remains: we will do whatever it takes to give the customer a good service. It is no coincidence that our BHAG is quantity of customers, not revenue. This implies something deeper: we want to help as many people as possible bring their great ideas to life (our Purpose). By having more people work with us, we believe it means we’re doing a great job servicing them.
These are the principles we live by in serving our customers:
We’re not here to only make money, and we hope you aren’t either
The customers we go the extra mile for are the ones that have a greater purpose in their work beyond ‘shareholder maximization’. No, we’re not asking for you to donate 100% of your proceeds to charity, but rather, try your best to impact the world in a positive way. Treat your customers well. Go above and beyond to help your employees. Reduce your carbon footprint a tiny bit. If we align here, the sky is our limit together 💪
The two-way Golden Rule
We aim to “treat you as we want to be treated”, but we also ask that you do the same to us. We don’t believe ‘the customer is always right’ - a lot of customers are assholes 🙂! In such a relationship, no one wins (except profit), and we go to great lengths to serve the customers that treat us with the same level of respect.
For goodness sake, have fun!
Who said business had to be serious? I’m not aware of any law requiring that, and if there were one, I’d be in jail! We want to work with customers that share in this belief that we don’t have to put on a stoic face on a call, or write like a robot in our emails. Throw a 💩 emoji in there every now and again, we’d love that!
We believe that if we do these things, then we can create win-win relationships that help both parties grow 💪. Check out some of our awesome Rayobyte Stories to see the types of customers we love working with.