My company, PlanetYou, has been in business since 2001. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of interesting companies and organizations from one-person start-ups to international organizations like UNESCO. Every so often, I encounter situations that remind me of the basics of customer service.
A client of mine (a great client in fact) needed updates to their website. A number of panicked emails poured through my inbox asking for help. Previously, I had given the client a tutorial on how to make these updates themselves. I was keenly aware that cost was a concern for this org as they are a not-for-profit, hence my tutorials i.e. cheaper for them to make the updates than me. Strangely, I was getting worked up about my client asking me for help. I kept saying to my wife, “Why would they ask me to do this? Don’t they want to save money? These changes aren’t that difficult to make.” In a moment of razor sharp rationality, my wife calmly replied, “Jason, what’s the big deal? They clearly don’t want to deal with the headache of updating the site, so make the changes, charge them and move on.”
So I called my client, explained to them that I was trying to save them money but I would be happy to help them with their “headache”. Their response: my client thanked me gleefully.
So, what did I (re)learn from this experience? Simply put, I was mistaken when I thought I was trying to solve the problem of helping my client make updates to their website. The problem I was actually being asked to solve was alleviating my clients’ stress. Not exactly in my job description but it did remind me of a very important question when working on any challenge: “What problem am I REALLY trying to solve?”
RockHealth Report: A glimpse into the state of digital healthcare entrepreneurship
The first start-up I joined was an ehealth company called MCard Inc. It was 1995 and we were attempting to bring consumer medical records to the smartcard. We were a bunch of young Stanford grads with big dreams of making a difference. An exciting time. Obviously, our company didn’t survive as the personal health record business was many many years away from becoming a reality. It’s great to see a new generation of entrepreneurs attempting to tackle this challenge and others in the digital health arena. The RockHealth report is a short read that provides some insight into today’s challenges, opportunities and attitudes.