How to Keep Customer Experience Consistent as Your Integration Business Grows
To keep customer experience consistent as an integration business grows, the owner has to stop being the bottleneck. Route every request through shared support channels, name the standards that matter most so the team can deliver them, and give clients clear service options instead of open-ended access to you.
That's the path Joseph Kolchinsky, founder and CEO of OneVision, followed from solo tech support provider to running a contact center of nearly 50 people. On episode 4 of 1NSIGHTS, he joined host Jason Griffing, OneVision's Director of Product, to talk about what changes as a company grows and what has to change with it.
Why does customer experience slip as integrators grow?
Usually because the owner is still in the middle of everything. Kolchinsky calls himself a recovering micromanager. His first great hire spent three months stuck on remote support because Kolchinsky insisted on handling every in-person visit himself.
The turning point came from a client he'd known for 25 years. When he was slow to return her call, she told him she'd happily work with his team: it didn't have to be him, she just needed help quickly. As his company grew, Kolchinsky realized something harder to admit. He was no longer the best person to solve the problem. His team worked on these systems every day.
Brad Camp, OneVision's Director of Business Development, puts the client message this way: "I'm always available to you, but I'm not always available."
Which growth stage is your business in?
Kolchinsky describes three stages, and none of them is the right one. The right stage depends on the life you want.
Stage
Kolchinsky describes three stages. The right stage depends on the life you want.
- Craftsman: The owner does everything, and clients get the owner personally. If you love it, lean in: be selective, stay small and raise your rates.
- Professionalized business: A team, shared support channels and set processes, still dependent on a few key people. The focus is a consistent client experience that doesn't depend on the owner.
- Scalable enterprise: The owner runs the company, not the day-to-day, and no role depends on one irreplaceable person. The focus is defining every role so you can hire for it.
Moving from craftsman to a professionalized business means accepting a small trade-off. Clients won't always get you. In exchange, they get a consistent experience that doesn't fall apart when someone calls out sick.
How do you make service feel professional to clients?
Present yourself as the business you're becoming. When Kolchinsky switched from personal email to a support email address, he worried clients would find it impersonal. Instead, many were relieved, because it signaled a team and a system behind the address. Matching uniforms, wrapped vehicles and an up-to-date website send the same message.
How do you train a team to deliver your standard?
Name it. Kolchinsky's early attempts to train by osmosis failed because he couldn't explain what he did intuitively. Turning that instinct into a named, defined standard makes it teachable, and the team can be held accountable to it.
His first named standard came from his brother, who was also a client. Kolchinsky had been triaging requests by urgency, and his brother pointed out that to a client, everything feels urgent. They can't tell whether a warning means nothing or means the system is about to fail. So the team committed to responding to every email and call within 30 minutes. Clients noticed, and they started calling the team first for everything.
OneVision is applying the same idea to its contact center today with a standard called "own the first minute." In the first minute of every call, the client should know they've reached the right place. That might mean recognizing their system, remembering a recent visit or acknowledging their urgency.
Where should you start?
Stop the spill before you clean the floor. Kolchinsky's sequence:
- Funnel requests into one place. Set up a support email and phone number.
- Organize what comes in. Add a ticketing system.
- Staff the channel. Assign who watches it and when, instead of everyone watching their own inbox.
- Start with new clients. Introduce a simple terms of service and one or two service options to new clients first.
- Then move existing clients. Set aside the 5% you're nervous about and work through the other 95%, starting with a few one-on-one conversations.
How should service plans be structured?
Give every type of client a path you're happy with. Some clients will wait for the next available appointment and pay by the hour. Others want priority attention for urgent problems and will pay a monthly fee for it. Kolchinsky's point is that each option should be priced so you're glad to deliver it, whichever one the client picks.
Even if no client buys a plan, every client has now made a choice. They know what to expect, and you know how to serve them. And for clients who pay for emergency-level response, most calls still don't need a same-day visit.
Kolchinsky also answered three questions from integrators in the live audience:
- Losing a key technician. Tell clients what happened and what you're doing about it. Then redefine the role so you could hire for it from outside the industry.
- Clients who still call you directly. Forward each message to support and reply from there. After a few months, offer to update their contacts so requests go to the team.
- Service takeovers. Set a standard for systems you'll support. Quote a small project to bring a system up to that standard, and consider requiring a paid plan for takeover clients.
Watch the full conversation
Joseph Kolchinsky - OneVision | Scaling the Customer Experience: Maintaining Quality as You Grow
1NSIGHTS Podcast
Building your service program? OneVision's free Service Playbook walks through how leading integrators structure service, from support channels to membership plans. Get the Service Playbook →
About 1NSIGHTS
1NSIGHTS by OneVision explores how integrators, operators and industry leaders think, build and adapt in a fast-changing custom integration landscape. Recorded live and shaped by audience questions, each episode goes past surface-level trends to the real decisions and trade-offs behind growing smarter and staying competitive. Explore all episodes →
