"Always Open" - Customer Service & Human Availability at GigMasters

One area that continues to dominate our consciousness as an online business is in the area of customer service human availability. Recently that came in conflict with human resources -- that is, it was becoming increasingly unacceptable for our office to be completely closed on holidays. Sure the website is available 24/7, but if an event planner or bride needs human help, they need that help TODAY not tomorrow. Therefore, a new phrase has entered the GigMasters lexicon: Always Open.

To this end, we decided as a company to make a change to our holiday policy. In prior years, our office would be completely closed on these holidays:

• New Year’s Day
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• President’s Day
• Memorial Day
• Fourth of July
• Labor Day
• Columbus Day
• Thanksgiving
• Day After Thanksgiving
• Christmas Eve
• Christmas   

Certainly this was desirable for employees, but a bride/event planner needing human help on one of these days would be out of luck. That just didn't sit right for us as a company obsessed with customer service.

So we made a change. We decided as a team that going forward we would keep the office open on all holidays except for:

• Thanksgiving 
• Christmas  

To offset this change, we have given all employees 8 extra vacation days to be used on whatever days they want - holidays or otherwise. In conjunction with that, however, we now require minimum staffing levels on holidays - not just in Customer Experience - but in Tech, Sales, and Marketing.  Kudos to our employees who in accordance with GigMasters Core Value #3 have embraced this change.

[As a side note: its been an interesting filtering mechanism for job candidates - for those who prefer a more traditional, less customer obsessed work environment, this Always Open policy quickly dissuades them!]

So whether its President's Day, Labor Day or Columbus Day, you may not be able to reach a human at the bank, post office, or cable company -- but you WILL ALWAYS be able to reach a human at  GigMasters. Your event is just too important not to.