Today, with technology in everyone’s hands, it’s so easy to spread the word about an experience. I had a friend of mine tweet about a terrible service experience he was having at “one of those large warehouse stores” when he was trying to rent some tools. No more than a few minutes later, did he receive a tweet back from the corporate backed Twitter account asking him if they could help. I thought that was pretty cool, that at least they were watching and listening to what was going on, even if on the ground, the local employees didn’t seem to give a crap. With all this technology though, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, etc, it makes a bad experience spread like wildfire. If you check in to a place on Foursquare, you see the Tips right there in front of you. If there’s a bad experience because someone’s chicken wasn’t cooked at a restaurant, guess what? I’m not getting the chicken!

To me, this is an opportunity for businesses though. As Gary said in the video in the link above, this is a transparent and authentic world we live in now. If someone leaves a bad tip on Foursquare about the chicken, as the company, why not turn that around and offer a free appetizer with the order of the chicken. On a bigger scale, a company such Sony, when Playstation online service was hacked, at least they came out in front of the world and apologized and said they screwed up. That I can appreciate. Transparency is key in business now. People can read when someone is a genuine person. So no point in trying to “cover up” a mistake, or give the standard “we are looking into the issue” speech. We know you are human, and humans mess up, just own up to it.

I’ve always been a pretty transparent type of person. It does carry over into my business world as well. But I do think the people I work with appreciate it. If a potential client comes to me and asks me to design something, but I’m not equipped to for that project, I say so. I try my hardest to find a solution for them though. If it’s referring them to someone else, or getting them a link to an online service, or whatever it may be, I don’t feel that leaving someone hanging in the air is the right thing to do. Sure I don’t make any money from that person directly, but I have gotten referrals back, and even clients from those potential ones that I had to pass on that gave me a good word to their friends.

I think this also applies to people’s colleagues as well. By this I mean, managers being straightforward with their teams. C-level being honest with their Directors. It filters down as the environment of a company. If everyone is out to cover their own butt, then no one reaches out to help a fellow co-worker when they have an issue, because if that issue blows up in their faces, guess who’s name gets attached to it as well. If there’s one thing that startups have going for them, it’s the atmosphere of accomplishing their goal, launch date, application release, etc. Everyone knows the end goal, they all work together to strive to achieve it, and people don’t have issues reaching out to one another to lend a hand. I’ve worked in both environments and I much rather work in a place where my superiors talk to me like a person, not a peon, and I can reach out and offer help where I can without it coming back to bite me.

So the next time you are working and something messes up, or you know that you aren’t offering your best to a customer, think about being completely honest and transparent. If there’s a better solution to the customer, offer it. See what kind of response that you get from doing so, I guarantee that you will get a smile and a “thank you” in return.

Posted via email from Jason Resnick’s posterous