The secret of my success…

Even though I currently work for a fairly large corporation, I have always tried to maintain an entrepreneurial attitude. For me, it’s not “our customers”, they are “MY customers”. I have been with the company for several years now, though layoffs, outsourcing, reorganizations and buyouts; this is probably the main reason they keep me around ).

But I will let you in on the real secret of my success and it is so simple to implement; yet I talk with other engineers on my team, and in fact other engineers I know, and they don’t do it at all.

After every customer interaction, whether I was on site or on the phone, I send an email to my customer that does the following:

1) Tell them it was a pleasure to work with them and that I was glad I was able to help them out.

2) Solicit feedback on the interaction.

#2 is the key. I tell them flat out that after every customer interaction, I send this email so that I can get valuable feedback – good and bad – on how the interaction went and what I can do to improve the way I support my customers in future interactions, and I thank them for their candid opinion.

It’s really that simple, yet so few people ever do it.

That feedback has been pure gold, and I have learned a lot from it.