27. I like people more than numbers. In business, people often become numbers. Order number, credit card number, and my favorite, a statistic. I always find that when people inside the company know real customers’ names, they instantly have more empathy. They automatically care.
Which is why we had letter writing as a policy.
When you joined our company, you had to send a handwritten note to a customer from our database with a personal anecdote revealing something about yourself. Companies already know a ton about the people using their products, yet customers usually know nothing about the people making them. Turnabout was only fair.
This is far from a dumb idea. It has the potential to knock someone’s socks off, and it’s unexpected for both parties—the one asked to write the note and the one receiving it. Some people even received letters back from the customers. Human contact makes us humans together.
It’s the write thing to do.*
* My editor REALLY wanted me to take this line out.