Rob Wilkerson

I'm not Jack Welch. I don't know what it takes for a company to "make it". I don't know what makes a company great. As a customer, though, I know that accessibility matters. From even the worst company, accessible leadership can generate an awful lot of goodwill.

A few days ago, I asked a question here about Wesabe, the online financial community. Tonight I got an email telling me that some guy named Marc Hedlund had commented on that post. I recognized the name, but couldn't place it. When I read the comment, I remembered. I had seen his name when I signed up for and was navigating the Wesabe site. Turns out, he's a co-founder and the Chief Product Officer (I looked it up).

C level officers are (mostly) regular people (you know, jus' folks) who probably spend as much time hanging around the web as anyone else, but I've been blogging for less time than A Flock of Seagulls was hot. At this point, it would be a vast overstatement to say that my readership is...existent. Yet Wesabe's CPO somehow dug up my post and took the time to leave a comment. In politics, I've heard that called working a crowd. In this case, it's working the (very) outer fringes of the crowd.

I'm new to Wesabe and, although I like what I've seen so far, I honestly don't know if I'll continue to use it. I'm still evaluating its place in my daily existence. Something like this gives me every reason in the world to make sure I give it a fair chance. Sometimes it's easy to dismiss something new if it's not exactly what you think you want. A little personal experience can inspire a lot of loyalty. These guys seem to get that. And they seem sincere. Another plus.

And hour or so later, I'm checking out 37Signals and I see an entry that mentions Wesabe. The post links to this page on the Wesabe site and includes this quote from that page:

"Hi! I’m Jason Knight, the CEO and co-founder of Wesabe. Every afternoon, from 12 to 4 p.m. PST, you can reach me directly at (800) 511-8544. If you have comments about our product, questions about how it works, or just want to chat a bit about what inspired us to create Wesabe, please give me a call. Sure, I could have an intern man the phones, but I can’t think of any job more important at Wesabe right now than talking to our new members and people who are thinking of signing up. So when you call, you’ll be talking to me."

Talk about accessibility.