The Internet is pretty cool. You can use it to learn about things happening all over the world. You can start your own blog or social media account to share your views and speak up about the things you care about. You can stay in touch with people that live far away. It’s really all about connecting people, and it’s changed how people live their lives.
The odd thing about all this connecting is that it’s surprisingly easy to become disconnected from actual people. Spending time in front of a computer screen, especially when working in roles that involve lots of engineering or programming, can put people out of the picture. All too often, things get reduced to bits and pieces of information.
People are what’s important to companies. Not just employees, but all the people involved with a business. And many companies say that the customer is #1, but they’ll have employees who never interact with the people they’re serving. So in this era of hyper connectivity, it’s easy for companies and employees to lose touch with the people that are actually paying their salaries.
So Donal Crotty, F-Secure’s Director of Customer Advocacy, started a new tradition in 2015 to celebrate how we feel about customers, give them an opportunity to candidly share their views on the company with the Fellows that work here, and learn more about the company and the people that help make it a success. It’s called Customer Day.
“Not everyone at F-Secure has the pleasure of actually meeting the people they’re trying to help,” says Donal. “It’s just the nature of some jobs. But it’s a real shame, because all the metrics and analytical tools companies use to gauge how happy or unhappy customers actually are simply aren’t enough. Numbers and data are no replacement for people, and that’s what Customer Day is for.”
So today is the 2nd annual Customer Day at F-Secure (#fscustomerday16 on Twitter). And here at our Helsinki headquarters, as well as several of our regional offices around the world, Fellows and customers are coming together to connect with each other and learn more about the people and products. And have a bit of fun too.
“IT companies will often say that they’re about people and not technology. But I’m not sure how many of them actually make the effort to put the people that build products and provide behind the scenes services in front of customers” says Donal. “We, as in people in companies, talk about customer experience, but it takes something more than just talking about it to make it meaningful. I like to think of it as a type of feeling. Our technology enables, but the feeling we give to customers is what we want them to live with.”
Images provided by Bret Pulkka-Stone.
Categories