Once upon a time, a small business software developer Tower Systems started selling computer systems to newsagents in Australia. They worked hard, sold a good product and soon reached 50 percent market penetration of newsagents using computer systems in Australia.
With over 1,400 Australian newsagents using the Tower Systems retail newsagency and newspaper home delivery software, the company had more active customers than all of its competitors combined.
Management looked around, exchanged a few high-fives, went down to the pub to celebrate and promptly recognized the real truth: They needed help.
Tower CEO Mark Fletcher called his company's success a "mixed blessing." On the one hand, he said, "this is a wonderful achievement -- a testament to our software developers and our support team. On the other hand it is a challenge for us to demonstrate… that we can continue to serve individual businesses well."
In other words, they got a lot of customers based on their past performance. The new customers expected what the existing customers were getting. The problem was, the company had never handled that many customers before.
So to support the customer surge, Tower decided to (hire Gen. David Petraeus and) use additional customer service personnel in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and install a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) product.
Good choice. A more foolish company would have said something like "This success validates our operating model, and we look forward to gaining more customers." Customer service performance concerns would have been brushed aside with "Oh there'll be a few glitches, but we're confident we can get things sorted out soon enough." Tower, sensibly, said "Help!"
The company has kept grounded in more ways than one -- "a turning point for us came in 1996," Fletcher said. "I bought a newsagency to provide me and my team with a live test site. We still own this business today. Every one of our staff members trains there. We also train some of our customers there (!). Owning this newsagency allows us to walk in the shoes of our customers."
And they all lived happily ever after.
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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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