Websites are inherently anonymous. I don’t mean unknowable in the absolute sense of the word, but rather that when your first interaction with a customer is through email you can lose sight of that person’s humanity. When you talk to them on the phone things become a bit more real. And when you meet with them in person, you see them both as a customer and as a person. 

In the words of Paul Graham, we need to do things that don’t scale. It doesn’t make any sense to talk to a single customer at scale. Except that the lessons you learn from any conversation do scale, and can be applied to your business. When things are starting, almost any customer is the most precious resource in the world. You can’t learn about their frustration, their success, and their failures until you talk to them and see the ways in which they react.

Today I met with a customer and we shared time over coffee. He learned a little bit more about the business I’m building and I learned more about his business. We both became a bit more human and continued building a relationship that started when I tried to fix a problem that happened with his order. I thought I knew a lot about his problem, and I learned new things about the solution and the problem when I spoke with him today.

Meeting a customer totally changed my day today. I left our meeting with great new ideas and a renewed sense that helping people can really matter. Whether the effort is small or large, think about the person on the other end of the conversation. When you’re sending an email, thinking about a feature, or just wondering: “what would make the customer have a good day?” you can use that experience as a guide for your next face to face customer meeting.