This story reminds me of an experience I had on a Virgin Atlantic flight between London and LA in 1999. I was flying economy class and was one of the few passengers on the flight who was awake at 4am.
Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin, walked up from the front of the plane and surprised me by asking if he could sit in the empty seat next to me and chat for a few minutes about my experience with Virgin Atlantic and how it could be improved.
I got the impression that he was genuinely interested in listening to my feedback and that he cared passionately about his airline. It made a huge impression on me and set the standard by which I have judged senior executives ever since.
Branson encourages people to write his head office with feedback.
Back in 2002 I sent them a letter because I was frustrated with the kiosks at the Virgin Mega Stores and suggested some improvements (you'd scan the barcode on a CD and it'd pull up a 30-second samples of songs on the album that you could listen to. Good idea in concept, but the implementation was horrible.)
I got a letter back several weeks later saying my feedback had been passed on to the appropriate parties and they'd get in touch.
A couple weeks later I got a phone call (!) from the VP of Product of the Virgin Mega Stores thanking me for my feedback and explaining that he knew the kiosks were sub-par, but their hands were tied by licensing arrangements.
I can't begin to explain how impressed I was that
a) Branson's address was on the Virgin website,
b) his office responded by mail to my letter,
c) they passed on my feedback to the relevant party, and
d) the relevant person himself called me to explain the situation and thank me for caring enough to write
I was pretty damn impressed by the experience, and Virgin has been a great example of a company that focuses on great products, and customer and employee happiness as I build my company.
fwiw, which very well may be nothing, it's funny that virgin came up as the second example, since you'd be damned to find one of those kiosks anywhere in the US now.
Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin, walked up from the front of the plane and surprised me by asking if he could sit in the empty seat next to me and chat for a few minutes about my experience with Virgin Atlantic and how it could be improved.
I got the impression that he was genuinely interested in listening to my feedback and that he cared passionately about his airline. It made a huge impression on me and set the standard by which I have judged senior executives ever since.