Approaching customer service as a spiritual practice

One way that we make a conscious attempt to bring more joy to our customers every day is through our approach to customer service. Since we launched our ecommerce site approximately one year ago, we’ve learned that approaching customer service with feminine energy has served as a tool for our spiritual growth.

First, let’s define what we mean by feminine energy. Feminine energy is not restricted to a gender. Instead, every human exhibits feminine energy when they are in a compassionate, empathetic or intuitive energetic space. Honoring feminine energy is a core value of Little Saints.

From our outset, I have read every customer service review. Of course, that won’t be sustainable in the long term, but as a founder who cares deeply about her customers, it is important for me to listen as much as possible for as long as I can.

While most customers report that they like drinking Little Saints, a small subset – less than 0.1% of our customers – leave bad reviews. Such as, my favorite: “These drinks taste terrible. I want a refund. An absolute rip off.”

As a reformed lawyer, I am conditioned to respond to negative feedback with facts and arguments. But, because I’ve committed to practicing feminine energy, I take a deep breath and choose to put myself in the reviewer’s shoes.

In that empathetic space, I see that a bad product review is not just about the product; it’s about how a reviewer is feeling that day. They may need an outlet for self-expression, or have so much built-up anger that any small thing makes them lash out.

A bad product review is not just about the product; it’s about how the reviewer is feeling that day . . . The only thing that matters to us is that we respond in a way that reflects our values (i.e. with compassion and empathy).

It doesn’t matter to us why they wrote the negative review. The only thing that matters is that we respond to a negative review in a way that reflects our values. We treat them as a real person with whom we want to develop a relationship. We listen to them. 

Each time we’ve reacted with compassion and empathy, we’ve received compassionate response. The “your drinks are a total ripoff” reviewer responded with “How gracious, thank you so much and best of luck with your business.”

One of the most memorable “How I Built This” episodes was with the late Tony Hsieh of Zappos, who explained that Zappos was a customer service company that happened to sell shoes (as opposed to a shoe company with a customer service department). He told the story of when one of his team members stayed on the phone all night long with a woman who had lost her husband – a compassionate conversation disguised as shoe discussion.

Little Saints' customer service approach has validated a basic tenet of spirituality: love (via compassion and empathy) begets more love.

When Hsieh founded Zappos in 1999, not many people, including Hsieh himself, were talking about spirituality in a business context. Thanks to Goop (founded in 2008), and many other modern-day companies, we are starting to see more leaders injecting spirituality – via compassion and empathy – into the business world. For me, Little Saints’ customer service approach has validated a basic tenet of spirituality: love (via compassion and empathy) begets more love. And if we can agree on one thing this week, it’s that we need more of that.