david hieatt

Time is limited. And therefore, expensive.

So companies seek to take time out of each process to save money.

That’s why we when we phone companies up we can’t speak to humans anymore.

Instead we have to Press 1 for a suckier service than before.

So we all get it. We understand why they have to do it, but none of us really like it. No one thinks it is better. It’s just more efficient.

When we try to find ‘Love’, we don’t seek efficiency. When we play some music, we don’t sing to get to the end of the song. We don’t go to bed at night and dream about one day finding efficiency.

Humans are complex critters. But also incredibly simple too: Humans like speaking to humans. We just want to speak to someone who cares. Generally speaking, someone with a pulse helps this process along.

And who’d of thought this? Giving a shit can be great for business.

Zappos has built an entire business around caring about the customer. They even spend weeks training people, and then halfway through the training, they offer people money to leave. They want people who care to stay, and people who don’t care to leave.

So if you want to build a great company, make it less efficient.

Hire humans who care about the stuff you care about.