All Hands On Deck

Phones ringing steadily, emails piling up, chat bubbles popping at a quiet volume constantly, these are the sounds of the biggest shopping weekend of the year for any e-commerce company. At Tuft & Needle, this cacophonous hum is just a background static to the most interesting weekend we have, year after year.

Like most companies, we’re conscious of the numbers that Black Friday Weekend brings in. Like most companies, friendly wagers break out between teammates to see who can guess how many of a certain size mattress we’ll sell, or how many products we’ll ship to a certain zip code. Like most companies, we’ll all be a strange mix of exhausted and excited when we leave the office Monday night, ready to come back in on Tuesday and make sure everything post-purchase goes smoothly for our customers.

Unlike most companies, however, our marketing, finance and digital teams won’t be at home with their families watching football or out hunting for the best deals on flatscreen TVs. Instead, they’ll be sitting right next to our Customer Experience team, answering questions about mattress sizes and whether or not you need a protector.

Every year, we ask our entire company to set aside their projects for one weekend and give their time to the people that make all of this possible—our customers. The influx of questions and purchases means that our core Customer Experience team will need a few extra hands, and who better to help than our accountants, marketing team, product designers, and software development teams?

When anyone starts at T&N, they go through one to two weeks of CX training so that no matter where they head next, they have an understanding of not only what our customers need, but what our Customer Experience team sees on a daily basis. This training drives decisions other teams make, from roadside billboards to shipping facility locations. There’s no better time for a refresher than the busiest weekend of the year.

The benefits go far beyond our team re-familiarizing themselves with the customer experience. Working toward one common goal as a cohesive unit for four days gives us a chance to realign with one another and carry these accomplishments through the rest of the holiday season.

If you call in this weekend, you just might be talking to anyone from Brooke, who manages our PR, to Leanna who makes sure that your products get exactly where they’re going, to Ray who is a veteran Customer Experience expert. No matter who picks up—you can be sure you’ll be well taken care of!