Web Awards 2000: Customer Service

Treating each customer as an individual won Ives Development second place in the Customer Service category of the 2000 Inc. Web Awards.

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First place

Sumerset Custom Houseboats (See " Web Awards 2000: General Excellence.")

Second place

Help Yourself

Company: Ives Development Inc.
Web address: www.teamstudio.com
Why it won: Robust personal-account management treats each customer as an individual.
Company revenues: $7 million
Site-launch cost: $75,000
Judge's view: "This software company has developed innovative, cost-effective ways for getting upgrades to clients and performing complex customer service." --Evan Schwartz

Individual preference is the order of the day at Teamstudio.com, the Web site for Ives Development Inc., a software vendor in Beverly, Mass. Users of Ives's software-engineering tools can elect to serve themselves in a variety of ways. Customers can send E-mail queries or get free telephone support. They can also search the Ives KnowledgeBase or post a question to one of two discussion forums, where peers as well as tech-support staffers answer questions. Customers appreciate those options -- which many software-company sites offer today -- although Ives CEO Nigel Cheshire, 41, ruefully admits that most users tend to pick up the phone the minute they have a problem.

Human nature being what it is, Ives may never succeed in training its customers to fully help themselves with support issues. So the company has managed to slash costs in other ways. All Ives software is available for downloading on the site, which dramatically reduces CD production and distribution expenses. And customers get an automatic E-mail message when new releases of their products are available, which eliminates snail-mail costs.

Personal-account management is by far the best self-service feature on the site. Customers can manage their accounts online, seeing at a glance which products they have licenses for, how many licenses they've bought, and when the maintenance agreements on their licenses are due to expire. "In the near future, our customers will be able to link to a page within an E-mail message and renew all their agreements in one place," says Cheshire. Anything to make life easier for a beleaguered software developer. --Lauren Gibbons Paul

Third place

PostNet International Franchise Corp. (See " Web Awards 2000: Community.")

Conversation with Martha Rogers

Judge: Customer Service

There's nothing Martha Rogers hates more than being treated like everyone else. And that unfortunately is how most companies treat their customers -- like peas in a pod.

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