Fanatics!

Whatever its value, fanatical customer service doesn't usually come cheap. Yet examples abound of companies that have bootstrapped their way to success. FultonStreet, for example, didn't start with a policy of round-the-clock service. The company worked its way up to it. "It doesn't take money to get good customer service," says Stratis Morfogen, CEO of FultonStreet. "It takes a commitment."

The drive to revolutionize customer service at small businesses like Morfogen's has led company leaders to blaze new paths. Among the most dramatic are what you might call the 24-7 clock, the human touch, real-time feedback, and proactive pursuit. Here is a look at how six companies have zealously put one or more of the strategies into effect -- and the results they have achieved.

Path One: The 24-7 Clock
At FultonStreet.com, Morfogen didn't have to agonize over whether the company should offer customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For him the issue was never if he should do it but how. "E-tailing is 24 hours, so customer service should be 24 hours. Otherwise, it's like having a 7-Eleven store with no one at the counter from midnight to 7 a.m," he says.

That's not to suggest that Morfogen started his online fish retail business in grand style. His original digs were about as fancy as New York City's unvarnished wholesale fish market, for which his company is named. FultonStreet had 100,000 square feet of space in an old warehouse near the 59th Street Bridge in Long Island City, on the edge of Queens. From there it's a 10-minute drive to the Fulton Fish Market, where, starting at the age of four, Morfogen spent many a morning. He would help his father, a Manhattan restaurateur, prowl the stalls to select huge quantities of lobsters, oysters, and salmon.

Filled with lobster tanks and freezers, the cavernous start-up space cost Morfogen nothing, owing to the generosity of an angel investor. The facility neatly summed up his approach to customer service: think big time but operate on a tight budget. His adoption of a 24-7 schedule didn't happen right away. At the company's launch, in late 1997, the company's only staffers were Morfogen and Tony Psaltis, an old family friend and former foreign-service officer.

Together Morfogen and Psaltis did everything, including answering customers' calls and E-mail messages. When business picked up a bit, they hired a New Hampshire call center, which specialized in CDs and books, to handle customer service. Big mistake. They found out they needed an expert in answering questions about, say, how to deal with a live lobster. So Psaltis became director of customer relations and hired a few people to cover the phones. By late 1998 the company was enjoying a steady stream of orders. At the same time, customers' requests began pouring in by telephone and E-mail (all of which FultonStreet now claims to answer within one hour).

At RMR, six customer-service reps are fair game for calls round the clock. Even the company's president invites customers to call his cell phone at all hours.

By 1999, Morfogen was living up to a vow he had made to himself on the day he started FultonStreet. He began assigning at least one employee to respond to customers' requests at all hours of the day and night. Today the customer-service staff consists of five full-time and part-time employees, who take turns on the late-night shift. And both Morfogen and Psaltis still pull late-night and weekend duty at times.

In a sense Morfogen is always on duty. The CEO recalls receiving a befuddling order in the wee hours from a man in Alaska who wanted next-day delivery. Morfogen took the call at home from his customer-service rep and advised him about how to proceed. The customer lived practically in Siberia, in an area so remote that his order would call for special shipping arrangements. The fastest possible shipment would require five days and the use of three planes. "We got it there" at no extra charge to the customer, recalls Morfogen, even though it wasn't quite next-day service.

In January, FultonStreet moved into a new facility in Westbury, N.Y., and Morfogen reluctantly cut back the customer-service hours to 10 hours a day because of technical and staffing problems. The company is to resume its usual 24-7 schedule this month, he says. Although FultonStreet receives few phone calls after 10 p.m., Morfogen says that the round-the-clock service is still worth it because most calls yield orders averaging $200 each. "Customer support is very important to closing the deal," he says. "If it were just an answering machine, we would have no orders at night."

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