I thought I did a pretty good job with our series on culture. I dove into the importance of culture, mapped out the steps you can take, and cautioned against the dangers of bad culture.

And then HubSpot had to go and one-up me. Jerks.

Seriously, HubSpot’s presentation about their culture is not only something I want to replicate for our employees, but a great treatise on why culture is important and how you should embrace it wholeheartedly.

Need more culture inspiration? HubSpot may have set the bar high, but we still have some great posts about culture.

As part of our series on the importance of company culture, we’re highlighting our company values here at UserVoice. Find more posts about culture here.

From keeping a secret to “trust falls” there’s no shortage of ways to get people to trust you. Not all methods may be practical for a business (especially not trust falls) so here at UserVoice we’ve devised a very simple tool to be a trustworthy operation: transparency. To us, transparency means that when we make a mistake we swallow our pride and say so. If an idea isn’t viable we respectfully decline. It sounds easy right? It isn’t.

Even we aren’t always as transparent as we should be (yes, I realize the irony in being transparent about not being transparent). This isn’t because we are intentionally pulling the wool over our employees’ eyes but because, in startup culture, things move very quickly and there isn’t a lot of time to catch everyone up.

For instance, we have a new feature coming up that some of the team had been working on intensely but that other parts of the team only had a cursory knowledge of. The problem wasn’t that we didn’t believe in our team. We did. The problem was that when employees (and customers) know when something is being hidden. It doesn’t sit right.

It all goes to show that there’s no such thing as being too aware of transparency. It’s like relationships – it only works if everyone is honest with everyone else. Being honest doesn’t mean bringing things up when convenient, it means making the effort to come forward with the information. I’ll let our Head of Community, Evan Hamilton close us out: “Feeling like you’re out of the loop is one of the most frustrating things ever. Lack of transparency can create a lot of problems. Telling the truth almost always creates happy people and more functional relationships. It’s hard, but worth it.”

Our series on the importance of company culture has spanned two months and many posts, and it can be a little daunting to navigate through them all. With that in mind, here’s an overview of the whole series.

1. Kickoff: What would you do if your whole support team got mono? On the importance of culture.
2. [Video] Kevin Hale at UserConf 2012 – How dinosaurs got Wufoo’s investors a 29,561% return
3. Good culture (and a successful company) starts with hires. Period.
4. Company culture: warning signs.
5. Introducing new hires to the company culture
6. Why Vimeo’s demented holiday video is a business asset
7. UserVoice value #1: Have Empathy and Don’t Be a Dick
8. Defining your company values
9. Tacos & discouraging company culture
10. UserVoice value #2: Eat Our Own Dog Food (and like it too)
11. Do ALL of your departments treat customers equally?
12. [Video] Ben Congleton talks about why your whole team (even the devs) should be doing support
13. UserVoice value #4: Really Solve Real Problems
14. A culture horror story
15. UserVoice value #3: Don’t Take Ourselves Too Seriously
16. An interview with BoomTown: how everything revolves around culture
17. UserVoice value #4: Don’t Be a Yes-Man
18. Culture skepticism
19. Culture comes from the top…including bad culture.
20. You can’t pull customer delight out of thin air
21. Culture is never done

That said, we’re always posting more on the subject. Subscribe to UserCentered to make sure you never lose a post!

So, you’ve read our whole culture series. You’ve taken notes. You’ve determined your company values. You’ve led from the top. You’ve inducted new hires into the culture. You’ve let culture grow naturally. So, you’re done, right?

I hate to break it to you. I know I promised you all this would build a strong culture. But the truth is that the work of building and maintaining culture is never done.

Many a great culture has fallen. Starbucks (originally known for high-quality coffee, now reviled for terrible coffee.) Rome. Even Zappos’s legendary culture may fall someday.

So, one last to-do list for you:

Check in with staff on the state of the culture.

Once a year, or however often feels comfortable, let staff anonymously comment on how well they think you’re following company values. Find areas where you’re not and figure out ways to address them.

Iterate your values.

As more people join and your mission shifts, you may want to clarify your values (we did this last year), combine similar values, or even add new values. A recent Ask Your Target Market survey run by UserCentered said that 61% of employees don’t think they can change company culture. [Tweet this] Make it clear to them that they can. You might even consider redesigning your values page or posters to emphasize the fact that changes have been made.

Nurture great culture, and remind people about it.

Find examples of people doing a great job following your values and share them with the staff. Encourage employees to take other employees aside if they’re not following values, like BoomTown does. Call out a value when you see it being broken (I’ve posted our don’t be a dick poster into our team chat several times in the last few months.)

None of the things I’ve written about in this series are a guarantee of good culture. Nothing is…cultures rise and fall through complex, multifaceted means. But if you follow the tips we’ve laid out you’re well on your way to building something that’s more powerful than simply a paycheck. Something that can create amazing products, loyal customers, and even – in some cases – something like a family.

Good luck!

Photo courtesy of Postdlf.

As part of our series on the importance of company culture, we’re highlighting our company values here at UserVoice. Find more posts about culture here.

Too many companies view their workers as a means to an end without regard for what’s best for them. Too many customers are resented if they don’t use the product a company wanted them to. Here at UserVoice we’re interested in helping people achieve their goals, not creating new ones for them that only benefit us. In the same vein of really solving real problems, we know that we’re not the right product for everyone or the right company for everyone to work at. Understanding this not only helps us understand our strengths but also helps us foster a strong company culture and customer community.

As a relatively new hire myself coming up on my one year, I was shocked to learn that we will sometimes refer a customer to a competitor. “Why!? They’re money! Shouldn’t we try to convince them we’re the best?” Turns out, no. We weren’t the best for them. So we listened, evaluated their needs, and sent them off. When we say ‘customer first’ we’re not kiddng around. The same goes for our employees. If they’re not getting enough out of their role we understand and encourage them to pursue whatever their goals may be – and we’ll help them along the way.

Our Head of UI Joshua Rudd sums it all up perfectly: “Helping people achieve their goals is not about convincing them that your own goals outweigh the importance of theirs but, rather, taking the time to listen and understand what they are trying to achieve. Shared goals have a pleasant way of helping us do more, together. Having different goals is not a failure—but ignoring them can lead to unnecessary frustration and disappointment. When we help others achieve their goals, whether it be a customer or coworker, we build each other up instead of tearing each other down.”

This is admittedly one of the hardest values for any company to follow. It requires a heavy hand of humility, a dash of empathy, and a sprinkle of introspection. But once you realize that helping your customers is your primary goal, even the tough decisions will be some of the best you’ve ever made.

This is part of a two-month series on the importance of company culture. Find more posts about culture here.

A lot of folks have gotten the memo that you need to delight your customers to retain them. Unfortunately, as with any trend, they’ve ignored the advice on how to implement these programs. They see it as an “action item”, not a complex cultural shift. Too often, it looks like a memo from management that says: “Start delighting customers. Do anything they want. Good luck!”

The problem with this is two-fold:

1) The support rep is not “bought in” to the idea, and thus has no motivation for it, aside from the fear of executive retribution.

2) The support rep still has their previous requirements (answer x tickets, respond x fast, etc) that may conflict with the “delight” directive.

This recently happened at a health clinic in California, which will remain nameless to protect the innocent. Doctors and nurse practitioners were told to “delight” patients. “Fluff their pillows, get them water, ask them if there’s anything else you can do for them, etc.” That was it…no real explanation of why, no tips on how to do it, and no instructions as to how this would fit in with existing policies and practices.

The biggest issue was pretty obvious: these doctors and nurse practitioners were expected to get through X number of patients a day (a number they already felt was high.) Since this metric hadn’t changed, they were now being asked to do MORE work and still get through the same number of patients. In other words, it was basically impossible.

But moreover, they didn’t really understand why they should bother. In their minds, they were providing great medical care and that’s all that mattered. Readers of this blog know that even small parts of the customer (or in this case, patient) experience can affect whether they choose to give your organization money again, and health clinics are no different. But the employees didn’t necessarily know that.

How should this have been handled?

1. Figure out how to work this into the structure and policies of the organization. Things will have to change if you intend to spend more time (and potentially money) on customer happiness. Move away from or lower volume expectations so care can be the focus.

2. Explain to your employees why this is important. Talk about hard numbers…returning patients vs patients who went elsewhere, stats from case studies, etc.

3. Help employees ease into it. Don’t just expect them to pick it up right away…work with your employees to try different things, note what does and doesn’t work, and reassure them that the customer’s delight is more important than volume.

If you’re going to dive into delighting customers, great: it’s going to be a powerful retention tool for your business. But if you don’t plan, adjust, and educate accordingly, it’s never going to actually happen.

Photo courtesy of marsmet543.

As part of our series on the importance of company culture, we’re highlighting our company values here at UserVoice. Find more posts about culture here.

A company that doesn’t value the opinions of their workers is a company that expects their employees to be yes-men. Too many companies use their labor force as pawns to accomplish the vision of a few. Employees at those companies aren’t there to use their skills and intuition to improve processes, ideas, or products – they’re there to work and not question the decisions of their managers, like soldiers. If you ask us, it sounds extremely limiting and restricting. Wouldn’t it be magical if you could empower your employees to care, innovate, and think differently to make your company a better one? Well. It is magical. Trust us. We tell our employees to not be yes-men.

“Not being a yes-man means not automatically accepting something just because your co-worker or manager said it. It means thinking about, asking yourself if you agree and if not, explaining why. It means using your brain.” That quote was from one of our customer support agents, Claire Talbott, and we couldn’t agree more. We hire our people because we want them to use their brains. What good are they if they refuse to be aware of other options or analyze situations? To put it simply: we believe that healthy disagreements lead to better products.

What kind of feedback-collecting tool would we be if we didn’t collect feedback, the good and the bad, from our employees? What kind of company is yours if it doesn’t? If you’re a leader with a focused vision, the balance between dedicated employees and empowered employees can be tough. What’s important to remember is that it’s much more valuable to have workers to be dedicated to making the best thing possible than to serve blindly.