Lotame's Director of Engineering wrote an awesome piece about working at our company, and what makes this experience unique. It could be looked at as a "self-serving" piece, or misconstrued in some other way. This could not be further from the truth. The bottom line for me - and many of our people @Lotame -- is that this Wiki internal note below (and people like Craig) are the reason I started a business -- namely to spend my time doing what I enjoy, around people who are amazingly gifted -- in a effort to create value. When I look back on this experience many years from now, this type of "influence on me" is what I will remember most. The gratification, and thankfulness I want to shower upon our team of people is tremendous. Craig, thanks for working here, and thanks for putting into words the true value of any company....and most of all, our company.
*below is an internal note, that Craig posted today in our internal corp Wiki site for employees only*
My Thoughts on What Makes Lotame Different
2-17-10 - by Craig Connell
I spent some time last night thinking about what makes Lotame different. There are two different ways of thinking about this question - to illustrate this, I'll ask you to think about Lotame and our products as a product box that you might find at best buy or your local software retailer. There is the glossy outside of the box that highlights all the great features that should be contained inside the box, and then there is the actual contents of the box.
Those bullet points and features that you find outside the box are the technical points that may initially draw someone to the product. The packaging and the differentiation in the feature set is what draws the eye of the potential buyer. This is equivalent to our feature set - the way we package audiences, the profile report, ability to buy and sell in the platform, etc. All of the really cool stuff our product does.
Inside the box is where you find the things that relate to customer experience - How well does the product work? Does it deliver on the features the packaging described? Does the company answer your questions and support you? Is the company invested in you as a customer ... are they your partner?
I'll leave it to others to compare our glossy box to those of our competitors, and instead I'll focus on what is inside the box. While I think that we have a good bit of growing and improving to do (who doesn't), I think we have a fantastically solid base for the customer experience inside the box. These are some of the things that I think differentiate us (or can) in customer relationships that will not only encourage people to want to keep and extend their relationship with Lotame, but also encourage others to "pick up the box" on word of mouth alone.
- We hire smart, passionate people who work together as a team. This may seem like a small, insignificant thing - doesn't everyone try to hire smart people? Yes, but you might be surprised (or maybe not) at how little effort some companies put into hiring people and how little attention they pay to cultural fit and ability to collaborate with a team. Certainly within Technology, we work very hard to find people who are not only smart, but who fit our culture and can work together. We don't want to hire people who are just strong performers, we want to hire people who are strong 'collaborators'. Everyone has seen it, when a company hires that person that is the best at what they do ... but they can't work with anyone. You spend more time placating this usually high maintenance person, who everyone wants to keep their distance from because his ego gets in the way of working with the team. We don't hire those folks. We want a team that, even when there are stressors, is able to hang in there together to get the work done as a unit. My sense is that that is the way that we hire in general, looking for good strong people who are team players. In all my years working (I'm older than some of you probably think!) I have never worked in a company where all of the business lines of the company work so well together and have come to count on the support of each other. This is good for us internally, but it is also good for the customer. It means that they are much more likely to have an experience where the various departments and people are working together to answer their question or solve their problem.
- We are very transparent, both inside and out. What you see is what you get from Lotame. We are very upfront and honest with our employees with regards to company direction and status, both good and bad. We are also very honest with our customers. If we don't do something, or we aren't the best solution for their problem, we generally tell them. Again, within Technology we work to be as transparent as possible to the rest of the company. We publish release notes, don't hide problems / bugs, and we try to be very clear about what we are working on and how long it will take us. We are working with the rest of the company to offer that transparency outside as well. We are working on some plans to get a version of our release notes out there for the rest of the world to see and we have a plan for improving the RSS widget within Crowd Control to not just regurgitate Lotame news, but to inform users of new features or issues they might encounter. If we are upfront and honest about what we do, even about the bad, it reflects well on us and shows the customer that they can count on us for honest answers.
- We are looking to build relationships, not a customer list. This is apparent from the direction of the Board and our focus on the customers on the platform side. You may be impressed when you look at a customer list that this company or that company shows you, but ask them how many of them you can call and talk to. I remember sitting in a meeting with a vendor who told me about all of the great relationships they had and pulled out this big long list of customers. Well, I happened to know the CTOs at some of those "happy" customers, and let me tell you - they were not very good references. When I did ask for a reference list, it was much smaller than the customer list - and none of the people I talked to were on it. Lesson? At the end of the day, every customer can be, and is, a reference for someone else, whether we use them as a reference or not. That reference may be internal to them, it may be someone they know, or it may be a random call from someone who heard we were working with them. We should treat every customer as if we expect them to be a reference. Even the customers who leave us can serve as an important reference. If they tell someone else that we didn't do exactly what they want or what they needed, but we were honest, open, and treated them with respect, it will serve us well.
- We are looking to build a brand and a company instead of focusing on being bought or going public. Sure, it might be great to get a "big pay day" and get bought by someone else or go public. The investors certainly hope in the long run for one of those two outcomes, but companies that focus on solely on that as their strategy are long on what is outside of the box and short on substance. The people who suffer for that are the customers. They get sucked into what may look like a great product, but the company is so focused on acquiring new customers and being noticed by someone else that they rarely pay attention to the customers they have. They hope to have executed on their exit strategy before they have to worry about references or silly things like customer satisfaction. Focus on building the Lotame brand and building a good solid company is good for our customers. It makes them feel better that we care about the long term, and to do that we need to worry about what they want and need, and that we will be there for them.
- We are willing to help people, even if it doesn't add to our bottom line right at that moment.Sometimes when we are interacting with our customers or partners we hear about struggles they are having. Sometimes we can do things to directly help them with those struggles through our products, and sometimes it is just advice. This is what being a partner with someone is all about, it isn't always about some upsell. The more we do to show people that we have their best interests at heart, the more they will come to us first when they need solutions we can provide. Just the other day we noticed that Evidon (you may know them as Better Advertising) is using the same technology that we are for their Help / Documentation system. When we were on that site we noticed that it looked they might be having some problems with configuring the software (based on our own experiences with similar problems.) We fired off an e-mail and asked them if they were having a problem and if they were interested in how we solved it. They were in fact having a problem and were very happy to receive our advice ... we sent them some code they could use to resolve their issue. Did this result in a sale? Did it add to the bottom line? Not in the short term it didn't, but it did show Evidon that we are interested in helping them be successful too and that may pay dividends down the line in our partnership with them.
So, as I said, we have a great solid base to work from ... much more than many other companies out there. But we can be even better.
We need to build this idea of customer support more completely into our DNA. If we want Lotame to continue to grow exponentially, we need to be a company that is part of the decision making and execution process for our partners and customers - not a point solution. To this point on the Audience side of the business, Agencies have been able to use us for a point in time, get a report from us, and walk away. There is little incentive for them to come back to us, not even if we perform well for them. What we want is to make the information and service that we provide to them part of their daily lives. This is particularly true on the Audience side with direct sales and on the platform side (and applicable to the Agencies on the Audience side as well). If we gain an understanding the processes that companies use, then we can help them improve those processes or results with our services. Asking questions, gaining an understanding of how and why they do what they do, explaining to them best practices that we have seen - those are the things that will get us the information on what our customers really need. The most valuable information comes from putting yourself in their shoes and understanding what they are trying to accomplish and why. Without the why, we may build the wrong thing that really isn't useful to them. We may build some glossy new feature that no one uses, when all the really wanted was an Audience Cheat Sheet (See the Audience tab in CC).
My commitment to all of you is that Technology will strive to ask you (our internal customers) questions, trying to understand your needs and points of frustration. We will participate in as many sales meeting / calls and customer events as well that we can so that we can not only hear customer desires and concerns first hand, but we can show that our company is focused on providing the customer a place where they can be heard. We will use all of that knowledge to continue to build the best product out there with a kick-ass UI, great features, and an overall good product experience. On top of that, we will strive to give you the best customer support possible, answering your questions, showing and telling you about new features, and listening closely to your new ideas and concerns as we can. The best place for the inside the box experience to start is in our own house. We are inside the box!
