One of my biggest growth moments as a leader came when I heard this: Whenever I called Gina, she’d see the Caller ID and mutter, “David’s calling. I wonder what I did wrong this time.”

Whoa. That was a gut punch. I was so focused on continuous improvement, I had completely forgotten gratitude, celebration and respect. I had trained her to avoid my calls.

Has your production team been trained the same way? Do they get to share in the wins? Or do they only get feedback when som/ething goes wrong? Unfortunately, we tend to focus on what needs fixing more than what works. As a result, your production team probably hears a lot more constructive feedback than celebration. Deadlines missed, mistakes, complaints about print quality: This is what most production teams hear from the customer-facing side of their company. That creates an unconscious association: sales communication = bad news.

Negative feedback carries far more weight than positive feedback. In fact, Psychology Today notes that we often weigh negative feedback about five times more heavily than positive feedback in the workplace. Which production team is more likely to work overtime to accommodate your rush request: the one that feels consistently appreciated and respected, or the one that only hears from you when they screwed up?

When your customer posts a five-star review, who do you usually share it with? With cheers and high fives, I’ve seen customer reviews passed around the sales team and the customer service department. But it’s rare to see reviews posted on the walls of the production floor. This is a missed opportunity, because everyone is in customer service.

It can be hard for non-customer-facing team members to get with the “everyone is in customer service” mindset. Every five-star review exists because production got dozens of little details right. But production workers may never set eyes on a customer. They don’t see the unboxing, they don’t see the group photos the customer shares on social media, they don’t see or hear the gratitude shown through follow-up calls (you are doing follow-up calls after every order, right?) and online reviews. And they never will, unless you bring those wins to them.

“When the production team is invited to bask in customer gratitude, they get a strong reminder of their connection to the customer experience.”

The good news is that the solution is straightforward: When customers show gratitude, include production in the celebration.

Here are four concrete ways to share customer gratitude:

1. Post five-star reviews physically on the production floor, not just the sales Slack channel.
   
   
2. When a customer shares a photo of their smiling team showing off the shirts you made, print it and post it in production.
   
   
3. In meetings, specifically call out the person and the action that led to success. “This review happened because George took the time to match the Pantone perfectly.”
   
   
4. Create a simple system and follow it. A win wall, a weekly email, a frame on the wall that gets updated weekly, whatever it is, it needs to be consistent and specific.

These ideas don’t take time, just a few minutes of consistent attention – and the impact compounds over time. When the production team is invited to bask in customer gratitude, they get a strong reminder of their connection to the customer experience. Moreover, they hear that the customer-facing side of the house recognizes that success depends on the production team.

Our team has a core value about this: We all win or lose together. In football, the offense and defense never share the field at the same time, but neither can win the game alone. In the same way, sales and production may rarely interact directly, but the customer’s experience depends on both. If even one part of the process breaks down, the whole project is in jeopardy.

The production team that feels connected to the customer through the sales team is more likely to catch mistakes, communicate proactively about deadline issues and innovate. For example, our production team created a system for sending remote sales reps close-up photos of strike prints that included a Pantone swatch and a ruler. They had learned that “wrong size” and “wrong color” are two of the biggest drivers of redos (and unhappy customers), so they gave sales the tool needed to head off these problems before they happened.

A sales team that shares customer kudos with production is investing in future benefits. Sharing wins closes the loop – team members get to see the fruits of their labor. It models the curious behavior that connects people and sparks ideas. The same curiosity that sales shows customers, they now show production. Over time, this leads production to see they’re on the same team as sales, with the shared goal of serving the customer. Production doesn’t buy into “everyone is in customer service” because someone told them to. They believe it when they see the evidence – and it’s your job to make sure they do.

Not sure how to start? Find the most recent five-star review you have. Print it. And then walk it to the production floor.