Let’s get Naked…
Keep your shirt on – I’m talking about “transparency” in businesses nowadays!
Transparency really seems to be the word of the day when talking business with any B2B, B2C, C2C, your parents, and… well anyone! OK we get it already – it’s important for your customers and partners to see behind the curtain and truly know how you do business, but also who you are, and what you stand for.
Living in a social media driven world these days, people want to see all, know all, and share all (unfortunately that last one often means having to see every meal they’re about to consume). But what does this transparency really mean in the big picture? Why does it matter?
The Consumer Knows What You’re Doing…
and Doesn’t Like It!
Recently I was lucky enough to attend the 2013 Inbound Marketing conference in Boston, where I was even more fortunate to hear Jeff Rosenblum speak about his new documentary The Naked Brand. This eye-opening documentary focuses on all the smoke and mirrors that we are exposed to on a daily basis.
As I mentioned earlier, thanks to the speed of information that social media has afforded us, the truth is reaching the masses. From Nike sweat shops in the 90’s to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the last decade, we have all become skeptical of corporations “knowing what’s best for us”. The Naked Brand and companies like The Good Guide are taking transparency into their own hands and allowing consumers to make decisions based on their values and, most importantly, knowing the whole story.
“Being a great company is the new brand,” says Alex Bogusky (Founder, Common), but on top of that you can no longer just make the claim you are ‘great’. Between Twitter, Glass Door, Amazon reviews, etc. you can’t just sweep the bad (and sometimes ugly) under the rug anymore. You have to own your bad along with the good, and the more you do to hide it, the more it will only backfire in the long run.
Here at Fpweb.net, we all sat down to watch the documentary together over lunch this past week, and as a whole we looked at it from each angle; Marketing, Engineering, Customer Support, Sales, Business Development. What a unifying feeling to know that each person in the room takes this responsibility extremely seriously, and that our core values don’t rely on just impressing the customer with our words, but from start to finish, running an ethical, honest, and moral business that customers can get excited about.
Top 5 Things You May Not Know About Fpweb.net:
We enjoy getting together to volunteer
The customer always comes first
We value “Going Green with SharePoint”
Support has nothing to hide
As a small business, we’re a family through and through
To define our business in simple terms: Fpweb.net houses the internal data that is the foundation of each and every one of the companies that we service. I would say that it is pretty important in this industry that you can stand on not only your security, redundancy and business continuity, but also and possibly more importantly being trustworthy and authentic. I personally love that we pride ourselves on having an actual human answer the phone (shocking I know!) as well as owning our outages and slip ups when they may happen.
I encourage anyone and everyone to take the 57 minutes to watch The Naked Brand and identify where you can be more transparent with your customers, coworkers, and partners. If you can’t find the time in your hectic schedule, maybe just take one minute to buy this Patagonia hat (be sure to read each products supply chain route and if the product is good or bad for the environment).
How Is Your Company Transparent?
Also, in the meantime please leave a comment below to show ways your company works to be transparent or feel free to ask any questions you may have for us to help us be more transparent! Thanks for reading!
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