让员工开心当然需要付出代价，但鉴于它能够带来巨大的回报，你完全值得为之努力。

　　Creativity at Sailthru is most often inspired by our customers. Connecting with our customer base, listening to their challenges and getting outside of our own daily tasks and deliverables, has allowed creativity to flow in awesome and unexpected ways. But making your customers the heart of your creative process takes time and effort. First, we had to enact customer feedback studies, which regularly gave us insight into how we were doing, what our customers wanted, and whether or not we were meeting their expectations. We also began inviting customers in on a monthly basis to present at our New York City headquarters so that we all (other offices watch via video) can hear directly from the source on goals, KPIs, and challenges in a rapidly evolving landscape of channels and customer demands. This is a role-agnostic experience as customer-centricity is only as good as your most siloed or self-aggrandizing link.

　　Sailthru公司的创意往往来自我们的客户。接触我们的客户群，倾听他们的质疑，跳出我们日常工作的窠臼，推动大量好创意以意想不到的方式不断涌现。不过，想让你的客户成为创新过程的核心，需要时间和努力。首先，我们需要研究客户反馈，这能让我们定期发现自己做得如何，客户需要什么，我们是否满足了他们的期望。我们每月还会邀请客户光临我们的纽约总部，以方便我们所有人（其他办事处会通过视频观看）都能在这个渠道和客户需求迅速演变的大环境下，直接从这个消息源了解我们的目标、关键业绩指标和挑战。这是一种角色不可知的体验，因为以客户为中心，是一种最有利于公司自我扩张的联系方式。

　　Through this approach, I’ve discovered that by giving employees the opportunity to truly listen to customers — without feeling forced to do so — they’re experiencing personal and professional growth. The “bigger picture” is being seen as the impact of each of their actions, which is visible on the faces of the marketer successfully scaling and retaining their own customer base with our software. The curiosity I’ve seen and breadth of employee pursuits has evolved dramatically since we committed to customer-centricity. As employees consider the customer perspective, new thinking emerges.

　　通过这种方式，我发现让员工有机会去真正倾听客户——而不是感到被迫如此——他们就能在个人和职业发展有所增益。这种“大局”正在影响每一个人的行为，在一点在那些通过我们的软件成功扩大和留住客户群的营销人员的脸上表现得特别明显。自从我们开始以客户为中心，员工的好奇心和他们所追求的广度都在惊人地增长。一旦员工开始从客户的角度考虑问题，新的创意就会源源不断。

　　Sometimes, taking a step back is the best way to allow creative thinking to take center stage. Give individuals the freedom to approach any given situation in their own unique way. We’ve tapped into this with a coffee roulette program which pairs employees at random for coffee dates, paid for by the company. This increased connectivity among customer facing teams and our engineering team has been crucial in increased creativity across the company. Without the knowledge of customer input into development, every business runs the risk of needlessly bringing irrelevant products to market and overlooking a simple feature or improvement. Our goal is to make it easier for marketers to retain customers, so their pain points and opportunities must be understood across all departments.

　　有时候，后退一步，是让创意思维登上舞台中央的最好方式。我们让员工自由地使用他们独特的方式来应对任何既定的情况。公司为此推行一个咖啡轮盘赌项目，随机配员工，让他们一起去喝咖啡，费用由公司承担。这加强了面对客户的团队与工程团队之间的联系，并在增加公司内部创造力方面起到了重要作用。如果不在发展中多听取客户意见，任何公司都可能画蛇添足地制造出一些无关痛痒的产品，而不理会那些简单的功能或改善。我们的目标是让营销人员更容易留住客户，因此，所有的部门都必须了解客户的痛点和机遇。

　　Another way we encourage creativity at Sailthru is through our Talent Development Stipend, which provides every employee with up to $1,500 each year to learn and challenge themselves outside of the office — whether that be taking a coding class or cooking class. This personal development carries over into professional development as new skills enable new perspectives. By ensuring that our employees have what they need to think about customers; think about other employees who aren’t sitting directly to the right or left; and think about their own life experience through a new lens we create the foundation for every individual to identify new opportunities, solve challenges, and impact our company.

　　在Sailthru，另一个鼓励创新的方式是发放人才发展津贴。这项津贴计划每年为每位员工1500美元，供他们在办公室之外学习和挑战自我——无论是去参加编码培训还是烹饪培训都可以。这种个人发展也会对职业发展产生影响，因为新的技能会带来新的视角。通过确保我们的员工掌握了所需技能，以全新的角度思考客户和不在他们身边的同事的需要，思考自己的生活经验教训，我们能够让每位员工都能发现机遇，应对挑战，并反过来为公司的发展带来积极的影响。（财富中文网）

　　本文作者尼尔?卡博尔（Neil Capel）是Sailthru公司创始人兼董事长。