Note: The lack of expletives in this post is due to an attempt to retain professionalism.  

No doubt the highlight of SXSW was seeing Gary Vaynerchuk speak today. If you ever have the opportunity to see him speak, please do so! He is energetic, honest, and brilliant….but make sure you’re ok with a lot of (ahem) frank language. Gary spent the majority of his time speaking to customer service, and how it should be the focal point for any organization.  Building up content can only go so far before one must build community around it. He went so far as to blatantly announce that any large corporation using an agency to Tweet or answer customer emails was disingenuous. Obviously, this must have really shocked the many agency people sitting in the audience! No matter the size of an organization, talking to customers directly is key to success.

This statement rang true to me since part of FeeFighters’ core values is speaking directly to our users and making sure they have a great experience. My favorite part of the day is when I reach out and call FeeFighters users to see how their experience has been, and if they have questions. Everyone at FeeFighters consciously treats our users exactly how we would expect to be treated, so hearing a successful media mogul (yes he is that) preach the same values was very fulfilling.