Why I have joined Corso
I’m excited to announce that I’m part of Corso, a company dedicated to providing high-impact solutions to e-commerce merchants and their customers. Our immediate focus is to provide a service that solves problems with packages that become lost, stolen, or damaged during the shipping process, and to improve the environmental impact of orders being fulfilled into the hands of their customers.
My new adventure represents a big change for me since this is my first time working in the fast-paced world of e-commerce. I’ve enjoyed building and managing high-performance customer service teams in the past, and I’ve spent considerable time designing and implementing industry-leading technical solutions for those teams. Although e-commerce is new for me, the focus on providing an excellent customer experience through better technology solutions remains the same.
There are a lot of different reasons why I am excited about this opportunity. In no particular order, I wanted to share with you some of the things I look forward to doing:
Building stuff
I get immense satisfaction from building things. Whether this means handcrafting a piece of wood furniture, remodeling a house, or developing software to fulfill a particular purpose, the building process and the final product are both very rewarding for me.
Taking a company from an idea to reality or helping grow a company larger over time brings a unique level of fulfillment. There are hundreds of unique challenges wrapped up in the day-to-day operations of a startup, with never a dull moment. Each day is about building stuff – teams, processes, software, relationships, and anything else that is needed.
There’s a thrill to a blank canvas waiting for whatever work of art you want to put onto it, or an empty lot waiting for something to be constructed. Corso is already offering a world-class service, but we are just getting started with what we want to build.
Participating in the exciting field of e-commerce
I believe that e-commerce is still early in its lifecycle. Almost 30 years ago the first websites were launched for buying and selling online, with Amazon emerging as the undisputed king. While Amazon isn’t going away anytime soon, e-commerce is continually being further democratized. Now just about anybody can have an idea, turn it into a product, and make that product available online to the whole world.
It has always been possible to build a website to sell things online, but there are now countless services available to help merchants do it easier and better. Gone are the days when you needed to hand-code web pages, try to figure out how to manage inventory from your garage using a spreadsheet, or help your customers with just a cell phone and an email inbox. Now there are services, platforms, and fully-integrated software systems to assist you with every single part of the process. An entire online store for your brand is a few clicks away, and you can outsource manufacturing, warehousing, fulfillment, and returns for the handling of your actual product. You can sign up for various Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms to assist you with customer service, marketing, etc. – or even outsource those entire functions to specialist service companies.
Corso is a prime example of one of these services. We carry the burden of lost, stolen, and damaged shipments so that neither merchants nor customers need to deal with the hassle of calling carriers, filing reports, or paying out of pocket to replace items that never arrived. And we do all of this while helping reduce the ever-increasing environmental impact that e-commerce has on our planet.
Working with a first-class team
It’s rare that you truly get to choose exactly who you work with – but an early-stage startup offers exactly that opportunity.
I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to interact with my new team members on a daily basis. The company has leaders who are world-class in their respective areas of responsibility, and fun to work with too!
When smart, capable people are given the authority and autonomy to get things done, you can expect amazing results. I am confident that this describes Corso perfectly.
Directly helping merchants and their customers
To be fulfilled in a career or at a company, we need a sense of purpose. Some feel that purpose by being part of a world-changing non-profit, some people need to be a leader at a Fortune 500 company, and others are happy in any industry and company as long as there is a metrics-driven approach to defining and measuring their success.
For me, being able to help merchants better operate their brand is genuinely fulfilling. Directly improving the experience a customer has with a brand is even better – I love the responses and reactions when we can help those customers immediately recover when something goes wrong with a package in transit.
Impacting the environment for the better
Even though climate change has long been recognized in the scientific community, I can remember when the existence of “global warming” was fiercely debated by some.
The fact that humans have contributed to climate change is less controversial now, with some of the effects dramatically visible each summer. While most people agree that climate change is accelerating, the debate over how to respond is still ongoing.
Corso can’t reverse climate change all by ourselves of course, but our service does directly offset all the carbon emissions due to shipping from the fulfillment center to the customer. We are happy that we can offer a way for merchants and customers to improve their climate impact, and we believe that increasing visibility and awareness is an additional benefit to what we do.
Even though humanity has a long road ahead of us to completely solve this problem, we believe that a voluntary approach like the one Corso offers improves the environment and raises awareness with better incentives for all involved.
Loking forward
I don’t know exactly what the future holds for Corso – but I do know that the journey will be enjoyable and fulfilling. I’m sure I will learn new things and have experiences that can’t be had any other way.
I look forward to having a positive impact, and doing it with a phenomenal team!
