It Is Possible To Care At Scale?

Seth Godin asked the question, I’m just stewing on it. 

Is it possible to care at scale?

When we moved last year I had to get new internet service set up at our new place. 

The company said, in my order and on my receipt, I was going to get these “signal booster” plug-ins for the house. They were a free add-on with the package I picked. Cool.  

But the boosters didn’t come with the router at first and I didn’t really think about it again after I got things up and running. 

Which is to say I didn’t think about it until a few weeks ago when I set up a wireless speaker in the kitchen and it occasionally stuttered. 

If I’m doing dishes to my music – I don’t want it to stutter. 

The De La Soul’s full catalog is streaming. I can’t have it gurgling. 

I googled what could be going wrong and the internet said “check your wifi signal, it’s probably weak.”  

Where are my signal boosters now?!

I pulled up the original receipt and read the fine print. I was entitled to up two free signal boosters if they decided I needed them, which they would know in the first month or so of me getting the service, aka over a month ago.  

So how would they know if I added a device several months after I got the service? I called them. Then I sat on hold. Then I impatiently engaged the chatbot on their website until I agreed to be connected to a live, text-only agent.

So far – you (re: internet company) can NOT care at scale. If anything, you’ve built a system that scales via not caring.  

I felt like a number. I felt like an idiot (I am normally the fine-print reading guy). I felt like… I was going to get my signal boosters – but it was now a question of if I’d get them by kicking and screaming or, my preferred method, kissing and scrapping.*

I went to work with my chat agent. I was pleasant. I was kind. I was patient. And even though the company decided against giving me the signal boosters because my usage didn’t suggest I needed them, this person overturned the company’s decision. 

So can you care at scale? 

Yes. But here’s how (back to Godin, because he says it better than I can). Emphasis added:

Caring at scale can’t be done by the CEO or a VP. But what these folks can do is create a culture that cares. They can hire people who are predisposed to care. They can pay attention to the people who care and measure things that matter instead of chasing the short term.

Large organizations have significant structural advantages. But the real impacts happen when they act like small ones.

One-to-many relationships are inherently depersonalized. The bigger the organization, the less personal the relationship you have with it, and internally – the organization has with its people. 

BUT

One-to-one relationships are purely personal. If the culture of the firm understands when to turn up the “make the non-scaling human-to-human/one-to-one right choice” – the firm can care at scale. 

My chat agent new this. And so did her company (this time at least). Bravo. 

Stew on that. 

Ps. I left a giant company to help lead a small company with exactly this concept at the core of everything I believe. Of course Godin says it *this* perfectly. I’m striving for it. What about you?

*re: kissing and scrapping. Just consider the deftness of Q-Tip persuasively saying, “now why you wanna go and do that love, huh?”