Vision statements are often a bunch of gobblygoo. I would never brag about the eloquence of ours – “To be a remarkable company first, to work for; then, to buy from; and finally, to invest in.” During one five-hour period this year, the vision was so real that it was, ahem, unreal. (Give me some rope here.)

By far the business highlight for me the first half of 2010 was the investor conference Radiant held for those who wanted to better understand our business model. Mark Haidet, Radiant’s CFO, came up with the idea to conduct a panel where several customers would present why each company chose Radiant, and then they’d field questions from the audience.

When Mark presented this idea to me and asked which customers would be ideal, we decided on three who reflected different points in the customer lifecycle. Before I left his office, I asked him one last question in preparation for an issue I felt certain would arise once we asked the customers for their help, “How many people will be in the audience?” Mark replied, “Between 5 and 500.”

He was dead right. Several dozen people showed up to a five-hour investor conference, Radiant’s first. The three speakers performed marvelously, so much so that I’ve stolen my mother’s word for the first time. It was a humbling experience for several reasons. First of all, I believe dozens of customers would have been willing to do what these three said “yes” to – invest a day-and-a-half of their time to help our company.

Trey Williams sat quietly in the back of the room. He joined Radiant eight years ago and has risen deservedly to become the vice president of customer operations for Radiant’s Hospitality division. He was there a little bit because he extended the invitations to the three customers, but much more because he deserved more than anyone to eye witness the event. Upon his arrival at Radiant, Trey has focused on turning customer service into extreme action and differentiation for our company. I am lucky to work with him and even luckier to call him one of my best friends.

The content of the customers’ messages also moved me. It is really hard to do business-to-business technology well to the point customers will speak kindly on the behalf of their vendors. So many of our customers tell us we do an amazing job. Each time I hear it, the message is the same – “Your people are the best!” It validates our vision statement which states boldly the crucial need to put our people first. The irony on this day was that that very concept was now the reason for the last part of the vision statement – to be a remarkable company, finally, to invest in. And it was all linked by the group at the center of our vision statement and our company. The group who allows our company to exist and our people to feed themselves and their families – the customer.

*A special thanks goes to John Johnson of P.F. Chang’s, Michael Furlow of Brinker International and Don Zimmerman of Wendy’s/Arby’s Group for participating on the customer panel of Radiant’s first investor conference.

Tags: Brinker International, company vision statements, customer service, financial analysts, investor conferences, P.F. Chang's, Wendy's/Arby's Group

This entry was posted by Andy Heyman on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Executive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.