Connecting with Customers for a Quarter of a Century

By David West
August 31, 2011

This month, Equinox celebrates its 25th anniversary as a company. So, I invited our company founders, Byron Middendorf (CEO) and Wayne Lowe (President), to share their thoughts on the business of telecom software in a quick Q&A session. Our discussion ranged from customer support to custom vs. off-the-shelf software to golf clubs. It went something like this.

David West: We're in the middle of a pretty bad recession, but in 25 years, I bet you've seen your share of tough economic times. How does it affect you?

Byron Middendorf: If Wayne and I have learned anything in 25 years it's that you have to stay grounded at all times. When sales are pouring in, we don't get too excited. When the sales are low, we don't get too concerned. We are in it for the long haul.

Besides, the company is not measured by sales alone. A better measure is how well we treat our employees. If we provide a great place to work, our employees can focus entirely on the business of supporting our customers. A great work environment sparks positive energy that ripples out to our customers. And when we serve our customers well, they continue to use and buy our software and recommend us to other people.

The most challenging thing about staying cool in tough economic times is thinking about our employees and how the bad economy is affecting them. That's where the real anxiety comes in!

Wayne Lowe: I agree. During the telecom turndown ten years ago, we had layoffs just like everybody else. Yet as much as we worried about calling someone to our office—and everyone knows what that means—fortunately, every one of those employees ended up in better situations afterward.

There is concern over what will happen to an employee that you have to lay off; like their world will end by being let go from a job. However, that is not the case. Perhaps we tend to overestimate our influence on people. But one way we can positively influence our employees is to ensure that our infrastructure is sound and able to support the business at hand. And, sometimes, that means making hard decisions.

West: How does the way you treat employees translate to how you treat and serve customers?

Middendorf: Actually, a golf analogy comes to mind here. You can go to a sporting goods store and buy a set of golf clubs off the shelf that will play well. But what if you went to your local golf course where there's a man who makes custom clubs? He would measure the way you stand at the tee to determine what length of shaft would be best for your game and what size grip makes sense. He even pays attention to how you turn the head of the club when you make a swing. Well, if you go to that professional, you'll play better golf because you have clubs tailored to you and your specific needs. I think this approach reflects our philosophy at Equinox. Our business is to please customers by responding to their unique needs.

West: For several years now, Equinox has differentiated itself on the basis of being a custom software shop. Wayne, what do you see as the fundamental difference between selling off-the-shelf software and selling custom solutions?

Lowe: The premise of off-the-shelf software is we're smarter than everybody else and have figured out a one-size-fits-all solution. But as a custom shop, we turn that around. Our Protector fraud management product is merely a reflection of what customers need. They ask for certain features, and we create what they need. We don't create what we want to create.

The idea is to get our veteran staff members involved with customers, listen to what those customers want, and deliver that. I think that's the secret of any technology company that has a heart. And, as we've seen, helping other people in this way is also a good way to grow your business.

West: Equinox's early days, we were a custom development shop, but in the 90s that changed. Now it seems the pendulum has swung back again. What caused you to change direction?

Middendorf: When we were selling off-the-shelf fraud management and reporting systems, our mindset was that our client was buying a turnkey system. We may have layered a few unique reports on top of the standard product, but it was still an off-the-shelf solution. So when we got the order, it was as if all the requirements were cast in stone. Here's what the customer wants. Now, deliver it.

More and more, when it came time to implement and install the software, our customer support people and developers got frustrated and pushed back. They realized that to deliver a really useful solution for the customer, it couldn't be pre-defined or created with a cookie-cutter approach. The solution needed shaping and customizing at every phase of the project.

Luckily this dilemma forced us to reevaluate our approach. And that's when we really saw that things had changed.

Today, our revenue assurance product, TeleLink, fully embodies our new approach to serving clients. With TeleLink, since every installation is different, the sales person merely starts the data gathering process for a client. And, the data gathering process continues through implementation and installation. In other words, the data gatherers are no longer just the sales people. We all are data gatherers, and the process never stops.

Notice how different this approach is from the off-the-shelf approach. In a world where you sell turnkey solutions, learning something new after the sale is typically considered a bad thing. Not so at Equinox! Even after the solution is installed and we are training the customer or providing post-sale support, we are still asking questions to help fine tune the application. In this way we are constantly on the lookout for more information that will service the customer better and ensure the application produces the best results for them.

We now have a new philosophy: learning new information anywhere along the process is always a good thing.

Lowe: When we say we are a "custom shop" that does not mean we're starting from a clean slate on every project. At Equinox we've amassed a vast library of software solutions and tools over the years which we leverage to create solutions without reinventing the wheel at every turn. If you're talking lines of code, we rarely have a project where even 10% of the actual code is unique to the customer. However, in terms of the final deliverable—what the customer interfaces with—probably 80% of the value the customer uses day in and day out is configured and built unique to their needs.

Middendorf: And one important lesson we've learned is that there is often a disconnect between the customer's existing processes and their ability to produce the desired business results. Whether the operator has been in business 5 years or 25 years, the person running the process is often not the same person originally tasked with creating it. Whether it's CABS verification, fraud management, or revenue assurance, several staff changes later, much of the original knowledge is often lost, or the industry has evolved in a totally different direction.

So here's where coming in as a custom shop has its advantages. It allows us to patiently and methodically diagnose the customer's issues like an old country doctor. We basically say, "We are going to understand what you do, and it may seem a bit painful because we need to ask you a lot of questions and do some thorough research. But in the end, we'll give you a clean bill of health in the form of a great system that is targeted at addressing your current business needs and process."

West: Byron, the business models, technology, and services we have in U.S. telecom today are very different from 25 years ago. Any final perspective on how these changes affect B/OSS software?

Middendorf: Technology comes and goes with the times, and you adapt. While staying current with technology is important, we've found that the skill sets that are most in demand for meeting our customers' needs are social skills and customer service skills. That's the sort of knowhow that's remained with us over the years, no matter what software functionality we were asked to deliver at the time. The true value lies in combining great people skills with the technical skills needed for the job at hand.

Our core business is and always has been to help carriers run their business more efficiently. Our success in this venture is due to the simple, yet powerful principle of 'people working with people.'

We've been truly connecting with our customers for the past quarter century, and we plan to say the same thing at our 50th anniversary.

About the Author

David West is Executive Vice President of Equinox Information Systems, responsible for developing and implementing the company's long-term strategic plan including product design and marketing. West works directly with the company's hundreds of customer sites across the United States, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, call (615) 612-1200.