Run By Humans

Seesmic loves its users!

RBH reader Andrew sent in this story about super-responsive customer service from Seesmic. As in, Seesmic responded to this complaint posted to Twitter in three minutes, and fixed it in an hour.

Pete Cashmore wonders if other companies are listening like Seesmic is listening to its customers:

Startups: are you using tools like Tweet Scan (or Terraminds) plus blog search engines like Technorati or Google Blog Search to track emergent conversations around your brand? Can you meet the 3 Minute Twitter Challenge, answering a user complaint in real time?

More about Seesmic

Seesmic company blog
Seesmic company profile

Virgin America loves its customers!

RBH reader Jon Feldman pointed us to this story about Virgin Airlines properly setting Diego’s expectations and showing some real empathy in doing so:

I was a happy guy: happy to be on a clean airplane with an enthusiastic crew, happy to get something I didn’t think was going to happen, and happy that Virgin knew how to reach me with the right message at the right time.

See what Virgin did to make Diego’s flight (increasingly important in a time when the airline experience is becoming increasingly customer-hostile).

More on Virgin:
Virgin’s website can be improved
Every aspect of the customer experience matters

Pixar loves its Fans!

Pixar is the most successful animation studio ever, having made movies like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and most lately, Wall-E. And Pixar is clearly run by humans.

This wonderful, touching story about Wall-E fan Courtney blew my mind and showed just how awesome the people at Pixar are:

Here’s a true story about how awesome Pixar is.

As some of you know, when the trailer first came out, my girlfriend, Courtney, burst into tears at the trailer. She was emabrrassed but somewhat amused by this, as so she made a video of herself watching the trailer on her computer, knowing she would start crying every time that little robot said his own name.

After a few months, she started to get trickles of emails from people at Pixar who said they had seen her video and really appreciated it. It was all sort of under the radar — mostly code monkeys, and they were sort of circumspect about the subject.

Then she got an email from one of the film’s producers, saying they wanted to send her something for Christmas. She received a Crew Jacket at a nice note saying that the folk at Pixar had appreciated the film.

[See what else the amazing folks at Pixar did to make Courtney's day]

More about Pixar

Hello Luxo: My Pixar Adventure (Courtney’s blog post about the event)
Pixar Rules - Secrets of a Blockbuster Company
Inside Pixar - A Photo Tour
Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation
The Pixar Blog
Luxo: A Blog About Pixar
How Pixar Adds a New School of Thought to Disney

The Minneapolis Library loves its patrons!

Reader Alana R. sent along this gem about a boy, a stolen bike, and some rockin’ Minneapolis Library security guards.

The other night, I got a call from a dejected Seven. My 12-year-old nephew, who’s been living with us for a few months, was at the library, and his bike had been stolen. I drove down to get him and sincerely thanked the security guards who had helped him: they let him use the phone to call me, got a description of the bike, and said they’d check out their security camera tape to see if they could spot the theft.

But then on Saturday, we got a call from the library: “We’ve got Seven’s bike.” A quick drive, all high-fives and woo-hoos, and we were at the Central Library to fetch the prodigal bike.

That’s not the end of the story, though… See what the Minneapolis Library security guards did to make Seven’s day and make this a story I had to share on RBH!

Per Se loves Ed Levine!

Ed Levine started Serious Eats, a food community based in NY. Ed is also a hot dog fanatic, publishing his guide to NY’s best hot dogs.

So what happens when Ed goes to Per Se, Thomas Keller’s ultra high-end restaurant (and one of the best in the world)? Well, first, he wasn’t so sure about the price:

I had posted shortly before I left the house about my doubts about spending $210 on lunch when I knew I could eat at Gray’s Papaya [home of delicious hot dogs] every day for 2 1/2 months for the same tariff.

So off he goes, a bit skeptical. The experience is good, until…

About eight courses in, halfway through the meal, our waiter brought out a beautiful silver tray… I started to crack up, as did our waiters. Someone in Keller’s organization had obviously been reading my blog, somebody with a sense of humor…. a world-class fancy-pants restaurant with the ability to laugh at itself is a rare find indeed.

[See what the folks at Per Se did to make Ed's experience so awesome]

Ed has a followup about meeting Thomas Keller on the Per Se kitchen tour after they finished the meal.

More about Per Se

Per Se on Wikipedia
Reserve a table at Per Se
Service Included is a book about the culture of service at Per Se written by Phoebe Damrosch, a former server there

Dylan Schiemann loves Photojojo!

Dunno if you know about Photojojo. It shows you how to do awesome photography-related things, and arrives in your inbox a couple of times a week. PJ is run by my friend Amit, who brings empathy in business to a whole ‘nother level.

So it was no surprise to read this story about Photojojo’s awesome customer service. Says PJ customer Dylan Schiemann:

I was recently looking for the new Eye-fi Card, and all other online retailers were sold out or did not yet have the card in stock. I contacted Photojojo and asked if they had any in stock as I wanted to get the access early to show it off… Photojojo was out of stock, but then wrote back that they had received more cards and would be able to ship one overnight.

Unfortunately, we just missed the cut-off time for overnight shipping…

[See what Photojojo did to make Dylan fall in love with them...]

Photojojo is one of the friendliest companies I know. Check the Photojojo newsletter for cool photography tips, and for neat, practical photography products too.

It’s a sad story about a hospitalized mom and several pairs of shoes ordered from Zappos.

One bright, extraordinary note in all of the sad stuff of the last few weeks - in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free.

The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances - lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also. [Continue reading this awesome Zappos story here]

More about Zappos’ unique culture:
Zappos wants you to return those shoes
Zappos: Getting to $1 Billion
Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

RunByHumans tells stories of truly exceptional customer experiences. These stories highlight companies where employees are allowed to act like real human beings. The employees go above and beyond the call of duty to wow customers with their common sense and empathy.

RunByHumans is like your frequent dose of Faith in Humanity. Corporate America is full of rapacious, soulless companies, but there are diamonds in the rough, and they deserve to be recognized.

It was inspired by this brilliant Zappos customer service story, which made me tear up the first time I read it. How can you not love a company that has such thoughtful, empathic employees, and that lets them act on those feelings? Those are the types of companies I want to give my money to!

So, enjoy! And the next time you hear of an amazingly thoughtful customer experience story, please share it!