To say that a company “eats its own dog food” means that it uses the products that it makes.
It is used in the software industry, for example, Microsoft emphasises the use of its own software products inside the company. Dogfooding improves software quality, because the developers best able to fix bugs are likely to be personally confronted with them. It’s also a means of conveying the company’s confidence in their products, imagine the public relations nightmare if emerged that Apple’s iPod team all used Zunes, or if the Google Search team used Yahoo! for their personal surfing.
I believe that every employee should eat the dog food of its employer. I used to work in a Hotel and sometimes guests would ring the front desk asking how to make the air conditioning quieter. Many of the staff has no idea, but I eat the dog food and knew the minutae of the system and which buttons to push. This sort of information is not demonstrated on induction days, or printed in manuals, it only comes from practical experience, we are all familiar with the cliche “practice makes perfect”, well gosh darnit its true after all.
Yet so many employees have only a basic knowledge of their employers products and services. Years ago, of course, when companies were smaller an employee was likely to be the owner, and so he made sure to know about all his products and services because his income depended on it.
Recently I renewed a domain with an unnamed Irish company, I logged into the control panel and saw the amount due, and clicked pay, as the company does not accept my favourite credit card (American Express) I elected to pay by a bank transfer instead. I then emailled the accounts@companyname.com telling them the narrative and invoice number. But it soon became obvious that the employee who replied did not eat his own dog food. He sent my username and password for the contol panel and said there is where I could renew the domain. Yawn, it made me want to “walk away” to the company, the only thing that made me write the long email explaining what he needed to do was the fact that I had already paid. In bricks and mortar stores people can actually walk away.
If your employees do not eat your own dog food then how can you make it more palatable? Well it dependes on the product, if you make cars then offer them a company car, if you sell suits then given them a staff discount, but in all industries there is one sure fire way, its called commission. If your employees have an actual stake in your business, via if their pay packet depends on how successful your business is then they will have an incentive to perform. Continue reading ‘Eat your own dog food’
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