SUCCESS STORIES IN THEIR OWN WORDS

So at some point, like, I can't be a part of every customer transaction anymore. But, I still want my personality and my belief system to be a part of everything that our employees do. And that has not always been successful. We've certainly lost customers, or we've had customers walk away, or I've gotten text messages from customers that said, “You know what the heck is going on over there?” And that's super upsetting. And you have to realize that sometimes you've put someone you might've hired the greatest employee ever, but when you put them in that customer-facing role, and they're not good at being customer-facing. That is like, a huge tragedy. And you need to figure that stuff out quickly. So, what we've done over the years is tried to find the right people and put the right people in those seats. Because if you think about it, you know, that's your customer relations team. Marshall Atkinson That's the band on stage, right? Brett Bowden I'm not the band on stage anymore. I'm the sound guy or something, right? So, those people on stage are the ones that are having all the interactions with our customers and those interactions need to be fun -- or they don't need to be fun -- but they need to relate to what you set out to do in the first place. And if what we set out to do in the first place was to have fun, be a big part of our community, and help other businesses be successful, then we need to do just that. And so our customer service team needs to be fun. They need to be promoting local businesses. They need to be truly a partner to our customers' businesses. That is a hard thing to curate that we've had a difficult time over the years doing. But have been successful at in the past two years. Marshall Atkinson Can you give me an example of maybe one of your team members just knocking it out of the park for a client that just really surprised you? Brett Bowden Well, I think a lot of those things are small. Like, the things that surprised me the most are the small things. And I remember, we have a client relations person who has been a friend of ours for years and started working for us about a little over a year ago. And I remember walking into the front office and a customer was in there and the customer comes in to pick up shirts and he's kind of waiting in the lobby area and she's saying, “Hey, what's your favorite song? Or what song do you want to listen to right now?” And just putting music on in the lobby that's his favorite song, you know, and it kind of became a thing for a while where whenever our customers picked up their orders, we would play their favorite song when they walked in the door or whatever. We had customers that would email ahead of time saying, “Hey, this is what I want to hear today” when they're coming to pick up. And that kind of creates this thing where it's like, it's not just going to pick up your shirt somewhere, it's not just going to pick up your order, it's creating an experience, that your customer can be a part of.

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