Do enterprise companies place more focus on internal customer service than startups?
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The IT and the technology at Uber was next level—I used to complain about the engineers that would complain. You could walk up to IT and get your problems solved on the spot no matter what. We had amazing technology and I've been at a couple of companies since where that was not the case.
Some startups are not customer-obsessed from an internal aspect. They preach “we're open and then we’re closed,” but it's not really that way. If you don't understand your customer and you're not customer-obsessed, people will solve their problem in other ways. That's what's happening right now for several companies and it's just hard to reign that in unless you're really solving that problem.
The value of customer service is so broad that when we don't focus on it, we miss things that we just don't know were missing. I've had management in the past tell me, "Mark, your colleague is not your customer, they work here. Your customer is the external customer, the company's customer."
If you put a lot of pressure on growth, then you've got to remember that people are part of that growth. And that’s one of the shortcomings of hyper growth companies. Part of providing great customer service is minimizing the administrative tasks for the IT team.
Let's say internal customer service is punching keys all day—it's not really impactful, we're onboarding 100 people a day and they’re doing this over and over again. That person will get burnt out and say, "Screw it, I quit." And they could be that next up and coming tech leader. A lot of successful IT leaders started in some type of customer support and grew to where they are. It’s better to automate those non-impactful things and inspire someone starting off their career.