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Lesson #1: “There’s no genius behind it. It’s persistence and listening to people.”

Article Overview: From its onset, Craigslist was born from the ideas and suggestions of its users. When Newmark began sending out his email list in 1995 to a small group of interested subscribers, almost immediately, he began receiving emails back with suggestions for job and apartment listings they hoped Newmark would add to his list.

Lesson #1: “There’s no genius behind it. It’s persistence and listening to people.”

From its onset, Craigslist was born from the ideas and suggestions of its users. When Newmark began sending out his email list in 1995 to a small group of interested subscribers, almost immediately, he began receiving emails back with suggestions for job and apartment listings they hoped Newmark would add to his list.

"From the very beginning, I was involved in talking to people, listening to people. And it hasn't stopped," says Newmark. "The idea was that people send me information; I'd ask them about it, listen, try to do something about it - and then ask for more feedback." Recognizing the importance of a feedback loop has been crucial for the success of the small company. In fact, it has come to represent one of its founding corporate values, and one of the reasons why millions of people the world over continue to turn to their local Craigslist for help in making many of their most important life decisions.

To this day, Newmark spends six hours of every working day on customer service, responding to the needs and requests of his users. "People can see that when they report a problem to us, we take it seriously," he says. "We want life to be fair, even though it's not."

One group of users that continually caused flags to be raised by the community policing system of Craigslist's users are apartment brokers in Manhattan, says Newmark. "They can be very aggressive. We get complaints that they'll list apartments on Craigslist as having no fees, then try to extract a fee when people show up. That's a difference of two months' rent."

Instead of simply blocking their ads, Newmark takes it one step further. "I call them. I say this is Craig from Craigslist," he says. "They say, ‘Oh yeah, and I'm the Easter Bunny.'"

"I reason with them. And if that doesn't work, we block their listings. Since we're the most popular listing service there - 800,000 listings a month in the New York metro area - it's effective."

Newmark spends most of his day personally dealing with user complaints, enforcing his company's motto of "Give people a break." After all, he says he owes his career to his early subscribers, who told him he needed to make a change. "Community people let me know that the volunteer operation was failing, and helped me get out of denial."

When people turn to Craigslist, they know they can trust the transactions they make because of this culture of responding that Newmark has instilled in his company. The layout and design of the site may be simpler than others, but its reputation speaks louder than flashy graphics.

Newmark, himself, says his biggest gripe with other companies is that they do not listen to their customers.

As an Amazon.com user, Newmark says, "I'd like Jeff (Bezos) to listen to customers a little more. I'm a sucker for mystery series, but I still can't get a straightforward list of my favourite stuff. Ninety percent of the function of our site is based on suggestions from users."

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Article Tags: apartment brokers, apartment listings, apartments, corporate values, craig, craigslist, customer service, email list, feedback loop, flags, genius, interested subscribers, job, lesson 1, life decisions, manhattan, newmark, persistence, six hours, small group



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