Smilebox Blog

Howdy.  It’s Paul again, director of technology at Smilebox.  It’s time for another installment of Inside the Box.  In my last post, I introduced our company values:  “Consumer Centric,” “Creative and Technical Excellence,” “Family Oriented,” “Accountable,” “Transparent,” “Collaborative” and “Fun.”  I promised to discuss each value in more detail, why we feel the value is important and how that value is reflected in both our work and in our service.

Today I’d like to tell you about our “Consumer Centric” value.  When we first started Smilebox, we knew we needed to build a service that was friendly and easy to use.  How would we measure success against that goal?  The answer was clear:  We’d ask our customers!  We rely on our customers to help us create new features and designs that will excite them.  We ask them questions on our regular survey and in frequent focus groups about what we could do to improve the service.  We regularly bring in our “review board” of customers in our office to show them our latest thinking and get their feedback.  When we create a mock-up of an important new feature we invite customers in to play with it and watch closely to make sure it’s really easy and intuitive to use.

Every company, to some degree, values their customers.  But we try to take it a little further. “Consumer Centric” is reflected everywhere in our work.  It’s in the color of our office walls, in the layout of our desks, in our strong customer support team and in the design and content of our newsletter.  When we moved in our office space a few years ago, we wanted to make sure we had a place that would welcome the many customers we would invite to visit us.  We made sure we painted our office in the bright and cheery colors that reflect our Smilebox character so our visitors felt welcome.

Our work environment is very open.  There are no cube walls and our disco ball reflects at least 20 heads (more about that in “Fun”).  When we laid out our office we made sure our customer support team was conveniently located right next to our program management and development teams.  The three groups who are best capable of identifying and then either addressing a customer issue or implementing a customer request sit right next to each other.  Our investment in a high-quality, local customer support team — instead of one based offshore — is very “Customer Centric.”

I love our newsletter.  Every week we feature one of our customer’s Smilebox creations.  It’s really amazing how people have used Smilebox to share their gifts with us and the Smilebox community.  They’re constantly giving us new ideas on how to push our creative and technical envelopes.  Hopefully they provide all of you with some ideas as well. 

Being so customer centric not only makes Smilebox a lot better, but it also energizes and drives our team.  It makes creating a product all the more interesting and fulfilling.  These are just a few examples of how we bring our values to life.  There are plenty of others (look for my upcoming post on our new slideshows!).  As you can see, we take our “Consumer Centric” value seriously.  Can you think of other ways we could keep our customers top of mind?  Leave me a comment below.Until next time, happy Smileboxing….