Web Awards 2000: General Excellence

Sumerset Custom Houseboats earned the 2000 Inc. Web Award for General Excellence because of the innovative ways it maximizes customers' lifetime value to the company.

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Cruising for Profits

General excellence: First place in Customer Service, ROI, and Innovation
Company: Sumerset Custom Houseboats
Web address: www.sumerset.com
Why it won: The site has found innovative ways to maximize customers' lifetime value to the company.
Company revenues: $31 million
Site-launch cost: $10,000
Judge's view: "Sumerset creates a community between houseboat builders and owners that could never have existed without the Web. It has redefined the experience of buying a boat. The site transforms what might be a mundane activity into a highly engaging form of education and entertainment." --Omar Wasow

It could pass for time-lapse photography, Web-style.

Digital photo 1, August 8: Houseboat #2896 has been in production for three hours. The hull, made of gleaming aluminum sheets, is complete.

Digital photo 4, August 11: Welders lay down joists to support an aluminum subfloor.

Digital photo 8, August 17: A dark, square hole gapes out of the reflective subfloor, into which the inverter batteries will be dropped.

Digital photo 26, August 31: Carpenters erect a network of Georgia-pine two-by-fours and two-by-sixes as the interior framing.

Digital photo 68, September 20: Installation of a four-burner stove and a microwave follows the wiring of the entertainment center.

Digital photo 108, September 22: After a flurry of last-minute photo shooting, the finished 18-by-86-foot craft sets sail on a one-day test on the company pond.

In a seeming sleight of hand, houseboat #2896 has come into being right before its owners' eyes -- and before the eyes of any other visitor to the Sumerset Custom Houseboats Web site. Providing digital snapshots of each in-progress houseboat is just one way that the $31-million boat manufacturer creates customers for life.

It was also a primary reason that our judges gave Sumerset's site top marks in three categories: Customer Service, Innovation, and Return on Investment. The judges were especially impressed with how CEO Thomas Neckel Sr. planned the site using the same goals that have set the company's terra-firma operations apart in a highly specialized yet fiercely competitive field.

The digital photos, for instance, are an extension of the individualized attention that Sumerset has traditionally given its customers -- folks who are spending an average of $250,000 on their nautical escapes. The photos enable customers to stay in the construction loop after they've made their purchase -- no matter how far they live from the manufacturing plant, in Somerset, Ky. And they help current and incipient customers garner design ideas for their own boats, which speeds up the production process.

Our panel was also taken with Sumerset's efforts, both online and off, to build a houseboating community, which not only brings in new customers and benefits current ones but also helps cement a long-term bond between the company and its clientele. The combination of customized information and an accessible Web environment even led judge Evan Schwartz to dub Sumerset "the Dell Computer of the houseboat business."

Selling a lifestyle
Neckel knew from the moment he purchased Sumerset, in 1997, that the company needed to be customer focused. The staff readily agreed. "We're not really selling boats -- we're selling a lifestyle," says Cecil Helton Jr., Sumerset's chief information officer. "The boats are a hideaway that lets customers recapture time with their friends and family. Our business philosophy is to do everything we can to restore time as well."

To hear customers tell it, the company has succeeded. "I've coded two-pound babies and felt less frightened than when I walked into Sumerset to design our boat," says Debra Wollaber, a dean at a nursing college, who with her husband, Bruce, bought a three-bedroom, two-bathroom craft from Sumerset a year ago. "But Sumerset made it totally enjoyable." Another customer, Joe Nunnelley, says he too went with Sumerset because of its culture. "They were definitely the most friendly," he says. "They were persistent without being pushy, and they were always available."

For a Web site to fit in with that customer-centric culture, it would have to at least match, and ideally surpass, the company's already stellar level of service. Which made Sumerset's first foray into cyberspace a decided failure. In late 1997, Neckel invested in the company's first Web site, which he says essentially amounted to a piece of static brochureware. "It wasn't very well done," he says. "I couldn't even get page-view counts at first, and when I did, they weren't consistent."

Fortunately, at about that time, Neckel met Helton, an economic developer and former hospital administrator with an M.B.A. and plenty of Internet savvy who was looking to make a career change into Web development. "Cecil's not your typical geek," says Neckel. "He's a genius, but he actually bathes every day." Neckel took Helton on as a consultant at first and within two months persuaded him to come on board full-time.

Designing a customer-focused site
Neckel and Helton's first requirement for the new site was that it had to be interactive. "When customers look at Web sites, they don't want to just see a picture," says Neckel. "They want to have their questions answered and to get customized information." Neckel knew that for Sumerset, that would be especially important during the sales process, given the complexity of the company's product. But as he and Helton walked through the boat-building process, they realized that that kind of service was also critical after the orders were placed. "If I were building a home, I'd probably want to visit the site frequently to monitor the progress," says Neckel. Why, he wondered, should building a house boat be any different?

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