In today’s competitive markets, sales cycles do not end with signing of a contract. The client has to be sold continuously on the value of a product or technology. The support organization is the epicenter of that ongoing process.
When venture capitals qualify business opportunities, they carefully review the sales and marketing strategies of a company. Also the experience of the management team is scrutinized before placing an investment. The envisioned support strategy, however, is hardly ever a subject of discussion. Investors are apparently not interested whether the support function will be outsourced or kept in-house, or whether a case- or client-centric approach will be taken.
Yet, excellent support is crucial for the survival for start-ups. Clients of start-ups may recognize that the product or technology is superior over the offering of the large players in the market. At the same time, there is always the looming fear that the fledgling company will disappear from one day to another. Nobody got fired for buying IBM, but many people were forced to update their resume for trying out a groundbreaking technology that never worked.
It is the task of the start-up to continuously reassure the client that it did not make a mistake by putting faith in this new kid on the block. The support team plays a very important role in doing so. Slow response times from the support organization as well as incomplete or lazy responses will have the client quickly turn his back on the start-up.
Cyota’s CEO Naftali Bennett understood the importance of customer support. Prior to running Cyota he served in an elite commando of the Israeli army. He applied some of the military drills from the army to his support force. He used to call the support hot-line at the most unusual hours (4:00 AM for instance) and would check how courteous, professional and helpful the response was.
Usually technical support is the least glamorous position one can hold in the field of technology. The tech support guys are the blue collar workers of the IT industry. They only get calls when things don’t work. And they should not expect a compliment if they fix something; after all the system is now simply running as it is supposed to.
Bennett in contrast succeeded to turn the support team into a true client relations team. He made budget available for support team members to meet regularly with the clients. Support team members often joined sales meetings. He also made sure the support function served as a fruitful source of input to the sales, marketing and product teams.
Just to show how successful that approach was: Cyota never lost a client, realized many repeat sales and was ultimately sold to RSA Security for $145M.
The lesson for investors, CEOs and managers alike: support should be regarded as a valuable source of information, rather than as a cost center. In today’s competitive markets, sales cycles do not end with signing of a contract. The client has to be sold continuously on the value of a product or technology. The support organization is the epicenter of that ongoing process.
