$500 Referral

A great way to ensure a company hires the best people is to have a wide network of candidates and people willing to refer. 

Case in point. Today I'm sending off a thank you card to someone who referred a recent hire we made to our sales department. The hire has turned out to be exceptional, and as a thank you we are sending a card and $500.

The past few years at Lykki we have heavily focused on learning and improving our hiring practices. We feel one bad hire can cause significant damage to our unique culture. One technique is to build a deep bench of people who want to come work for us and referrals so when we need to add a new position we can pull from this valuable bench, instead of just posting jobs on Craigslist like we used to do.

Cheers

Calvin

We love our customers

Last week we launched all new software to run Lykki.

This has been an 18 month project that was integral to our continued dedication to customer service and innovation. We had outgrown our existing infrastructure and needed to invest in the best that new technology had to offer.

So, did our launch go smooth?

Well, that depends who you ask.

I am happy to say we are up and running with a few bumps that we are quickly solving. The real success is that we have been able to make the conversion!!

If you have ever been involved in a big technology roll out in your company you probably can relate to the statistic that over half of all corporate tech upgrades fail. And the bigger the company, the bigger the fail, like AVON's $125 million dollar 4 year roll out where they started introducing it in Canada before a global roll out and the sales people hated it so much they started leaving the company in droves. AVON shut the project down in 2013.

If you ask me if the conversion when smooth I need to answer no.

I must admit my expectations are exceptionally high though. My only test is the customer. Did we inconvenience even ONE customer the past few weeks? Will we inconvenience customers over the next month? Unfortunately the answer is yes and that rips my heart out. We never want to break the trust our customers have in us.

Our customers are busy doing other things and our job is to uphold our end of our service - customers really don't need to know what we are doing behind the scenes with our software. I am sorry to any customers who may feel some bumps along the way as we roll out.

What is so exciting though is the incredible team we have at Lykki that is responsible for our technology - they have put in thousands of hours on this project with the single focus of building a strong foundation to take Lykki the next 25 years.

Customers can expect to see some amazing features and tools rolled out to make our service faster, easier and help reduce costs.

I am so excited to bring our customers these features - stay tuned and thanks again for everyone's ongoing support.

Cheers

Calvin

We sell it cheap - customers stack it deep.

Here was a picture from Mo - one of our awesome Lykki drivers.

He snapped this great pick showing an order he delivered where the customer ordered many cases of copy paper. What was special is how the customer needed the paper taken out of the boxes so they could use the empty boxes for file storage.

What a great way re-purpose the boxes, he thought, and wanted to share.

Thanks Mo - keep sharing the cool ideas you see from our customers.

Cheers

Calvin

One extra day.

How can we spend more time with the ones we love? Especially on a day like today- valentines day. I love this short film - possibly it's the solution.

What would you do with an extra day?

Cheers,

Calvin

Where's the potatoes and veggies?

I'm not usually a fan of White Spot food, but I was online looking for some comfort food takeout. I wanted to order and pick up so I could take a few meals over to my Mom who still lives on her own.

The website seemed pretty good, and I could choose a time to pick up. When I arrived at the restaurant, they even had a special entrance for pick up, and my order was in a large brown bag ready to go. Very efficient.

So when I got to my Mom's house, she was happy to have a few meals ready to go for the next few days. The disappointment was when we opened one of the meals and all there was inside was a chicken breast. Hmm, where's the potatoes and veggies?

Since we gave my Mom an iPad this Christmas, I wanted to show her how to use the Internet if she wanted to complain. Mom is famous for writing letters when she receives bad service and still does. So I pulled up the White Spot customer feedback page and we sent in a complaint.

To my amazement, I received a call from the restaurant manager within 24 hours! 

He apologized, took responsibility and took my address to send out an apology card and a gift certificate. I say - to my amazement, because in this connected world online, I rarely see companies doing a great job of monitoring their customer feedback pages and social media. 

Kudos to White Spot.

Cheers

Calvin