"We're Already on It"

Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise that has nothing to do with business or marketing -- but the quality of human nature. Today is one of them;

It's frustrating to watch the awful scene play out along the Gulf Coast. I've written a check to the Red Cross. But what more can I do from here? I raised that question in our management meeting yesterday and the creativity was fast and definitive. "Add a banner to the home page to raise money into the McCormick Tribune Foundation - they're matching funds up to $2 million." "Add a fundraising link on the exit page at the end of a transaction," "Change the pop-under of the message boards from a MyBeachbody promo to a Red Cross link."

Management jumped at the chance to switch some of the valuable advertising and promotion real estate on the website over to help relief efforts. We stopped short at committing to send whatever high protein meal replacement bars we have in inventory, because we couldn't figure out how to get them to where they need to be (although we are making some calls).

This morning I realized that an end-of-the-week shipment of video, supplement, and other shipments were about to go out. The idea of billing and shipping continuity orders to these devastated people seemed ludicrous. So I discussed suspending those shipments with Jon Congdon, President of Product Partners/Beachbody and thought it made sense. So I walked over to Heather Hanson our Director of Operations and Saeed Gorbani in data management to ask how we stop those shipments... wouldn't you know the response; "We're already on it". Together with our customer service team, they had already, proactively taken it upon themselves to stop shipping and billing to the region!


Here's what I love about it. They never asked me for my approval! They knew that ultimately the culture of this company would want to do the right thing. THAT'S AWESOME! It's a clear indication that, no matter how many growing pains we have as a company, which we are constantly working to solve, "the horse is still in front of the cart"; We are serving people. And that is what we consider when we make business decisions.

Operations, processing, customer service, and IT; I salute you guys and your perspective on how we operate, and the underlying priority that you have to keep working to improve how we serve the customer, how you treat people with respect, and how you work with passion, enthusiasm and common sense to make it all happen!