The idea of building a marketing database wasn't brand-new inside the company. Its first effort, the Capitol Concierge Request Tracking System, created in 1989, led to regular activity reports for the property managers, letting them know how many and what kinds of functions were held in their buildings. The system, designed by a local Macintosh programmer, produced great marketing reports but died out because it wasn't hooked up to accounting.
Naylor wouldn't make the same mistake twice. She considered popular off-the-shelf programs such as GoldMine, ACT, and Pack Rat but rejected them all. She needed more room and flexibility to record notes about everything from cake messages to vendors' backgrounds. She also wanted a database tied directly to her Great Plains accounting system. In the fall of 1993 she met with Dan Johnson, of Pro Systems, in Gurnee, Ill., an authorized Great Plains software developer.
In 1994 they got down to business. What, exactly, would the system track? There were two parts to it: one, historical requests -- what Naylor terms a "reactive" approach to marketing; and two, clients' preferences -- a proactive approach that uses information from Mackay's 66 questions and Naylor's executive-focus program to trigger future transactions.
Naylor wanted the system to reflect the best concierge practices, but that was easier said than done. In the course of automating, she had to ask herself hard questions. Who were the 20% of customers generating 80% of sales? Were they indeed the most valuable long-term customers? What was crucial to learn about VIP clients? What would she do with the information once it was on the computer? How would she protect personal information about individual customers? Last but not least, how could she get her de facto field sales force to buy into the new system?
Above all, Capitol Concierge desperately needed a streamlined order and invoice system. Too often, concierges called the shots, and occasionally they forgot to tell the home office about an order. Also, Naylor couldn't tell half the time whether her sales were profitable. Because vendors billed her at different times, the cost of goods sold never lined up with sales. Her new computer system was designed to solve both problems. Now concierges must call in or fax all orders to the home office, where they're entered into the computer. A confirmation is faxed to the vendor, making the order official, and to the concierge. The confirmation also prompts Naylor's accounting system to generate an instant invoice. That means Capitol Concierge pays its bills sooner but also is paid sooner, in real time, so that orders can be matched against the cost of goods sold.
Naylor's new system included another neat feature: the ability to generate a purchase order every time the computer's tickler function projects that a concierge should write an order -- on someone's anniversary, say. That would enable Naylor's team to track results. Were they getting all the sales they should, given the customer information they possessed? A mock order was attached to every tickler. Building in a tracking mechanism was crucial to measuring return on investment and repeat business.
As Naylor lurched toward a central system, she kept in mind that only 2% to 10% of a given building's population used her service, and Capitol Concierge had captured only 10% of the average person's business. Those figures underscored the opportunity the company was presented with -- and kept Naylor's attention well focused during the year-plus process of developing, testing, and tweaking the marketing database. (In the end, she'd spend $100,000 on software and hardware.) In January 1995 the company entered the first orders into the system. Soon after, property managers and vendors began asking about it. Her dry cleaner agreed to download orders directly into the system, saving Naylor painstaking labor. The system was beginning to click.
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At capitol concierge's office one Friday afternoon in June, Mary Naylor and several managers are hunched over a computer. The PC screen glows with the company's latest experiment in one-to-one marketing: an electronic storefront on the new AT&T Interchange, an America Online wanna-be cosponsored by the Washington Post. Capitol Concierge is testing its site with a Father's Day promotion. "Wow, look at how fast the graphics fill in," someone says.
The screen shows how far Naylor has come and how far she must go. In 1994 she achieved sales of $4.9 million with 98 employees. Service activity just about caught up with building fees.
Now, here she is on the forefront of interactive marketing. A page on the World Wide Web is on the drawing board. She's poised to become concierge to all of D.C. and perhaps beyond -- and she doesn't even need a concierge in every building to do it. She's seen the future, and it's home offices and something called "office hoteling," the latest catchphrase in the brave new world of outsourcing and virtual operations. Earlier this year Capitol Concierge kicked off a 24-hour program for Deloitte & Touche. The accounting firm's traveling agents use Capitol Concierge as a virtual valet, with the first $100 in services provided free by their employer. "Call x4164 and consider it done," promises Naylor's brochure.
And yet, Naylor is still racing against the clock to get the crucial information about individual clients from paper to computer. She's worked up a new information-gathering form, an ambitious four-page "service planner," but she has no idea whether lawyers and office managers will fill it out. She'll need to hold more customer roundtables and confer with her concierges. The education process continues. Wright meets Friday afternoons with small groups of concierges to bring them slowly onto the system. Naylor has the staff reading The One to One Future.
Today every new concierge receives a six-month planner, an essential 12-page blueprint for making friends and influencing people -- focusing first on the building staff, then on relationships with individual tenants, office managers, and executives. Customers for Life (see "Resources," below) is required reading. All concierges complete a monthly service-activity summary -- not unlike a sales report -- detailing how they've spent their time. The summary tallies new clients, special events held in the building, activities in progress, office presentations, key client meetings, prize drawings, and note cards sent. Also recorded: examples of going the extra mile for a client and unusual requests. "One man asked me to research hair-bulb transplants for him," a concierge recently wrote, "and a woman was interested in canine vacation kennels."
