“All of these details mattered, but the key to the entire plan to make our little company appear big was to perform like the very best large companies. For us, this meant dramatically beefing up customer care (CC). In general and especially in high tech, CC had been a backwater—treated like a cost center to be minimized. Since this was arguably the most important early customer touch point, we took a completely opposite approach: we treated it like a marketing expense. With a firm belief that this was the primary catalyst for word of mouth, we invested heavily in the entire post-sale ecosystem. Our approach was to answer email inquiries instantly and telephone calls on the second ring with little to no hold time. We concentrated on how to deliver the best possible experience first and then went back and figured out how to cost-optimize it later.” - × × ×