| In restaurants, we talk about “working the floor” — when a manager moves through the dining room, stopping by a table to top up a glass of wine or to clear an errant plate, checking in as they go: How’s your meal so far? Are you having a good time? Is there anything you need?
I was at a dinner recently, seated next to the Chief Marketing Officer of a major media technology company, and he told me that the CEO of that company calls one of their clients every single day.
This is his version of working the floor. Hey! How’s it going? What’s working? What isn’t?
You can only manage so much from the back office, and you can only glean so much about your customers’ experiences from reviews or people with the time and energy and courage to send you an email.
The best feedback comes from direct interaction.
A call from this CEO communicates that he values your business; he’s taking his most valuable resource — his time — and investing it in you. I bet he’s asking good questions, too, which means he’s learning about problems he didn’t know he had, and market gaps that may lead him to the next big idea.
Just because you don’t have a so-called floor doesn’t mean you can’t replicate the benefits of working one — this CEO figured out a beautiful way to do so, even at a company operating at a significant scale. How can you work yours?
Have a good service, |
