Slamdot Store updates, growing pains, and new hires Sean

Friday, March 26th, 2010 | Business | 2 Comments

We’ve already had an incredible year…and we’re still just getting started. Bragging aside, our Slamdot Retail Store has really taken off, and has impacted our business in a lot of ways, mostly positive. We’ve been experiencing tremendous growth since our grand opening in December, and coping with that growth has been somewhat of a challenge during this period.

We have a very strong reputation for customer service, and we work hard to maintain that reputation. In fact, our greatest competitive advantage has always been our customer service, and it continues to be why we do well, especially locally.

Due to our recent surge in business, we’ve had a harder time being proactive about keeping up with our customers. It’s easy to work on active projects, where customers are attentive and engaged, but it’s just as important to followup with customers who aren’t staying as involved. I think this is one of the biggest challenges we web designers face. Keeping customers engaged becomes more and more difficult with each additional project.

Although it may be easier to pass the buck and blame the customer, the reality is, it’s our fault. It doesn’t matter if we asked the customer for something and they never got back with us. We dropped the ball, because we didn’t follow back up to find out why. If a project goes stale, it’s our fault. That’s the only way to ensure we maintain a strong relationship with our customers, and lately, we haven’t been doing a good enough job.

So, here’s the deal. We’ve hired two more people, Nicole and Elizabeth. They’re trained up and ready for action. We’ve improved our processes and we’ve implemented some new ones. If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you’ll be hearing from us next week.

Starting Monday, we’ll be providing telephone technical support during our store hours of 8am until 5pm, Monday through Friday. You can also stop by the Slamdot Store for one-on-one service. Of course, email support is always available, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Growth is a good thing, but it all depends on how you handle it. We’ll be back on top of our game again next week. Thanks for sticking with us.

Business cards Sean

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 | Business | No Comments

We’ve gotten a lot of emails in response to our recent photos of the new office from people interested in seeing our business cards.

So, here’s a closeup…

Kale designed the cards, and we got them printed at OvernightPrints.com. We’ve had nothing but great service from OvernightPrints.com (they even helped with the Spot UV coating for the logo area) and we’re happy to recommend them.

Updates on the new office Sean

Sunday, October 28th, 2007 | Business | No Comments

Well, we’re all settled in now! It’s been a long couple of days, moving and hauling furniture around, but we’ve made it! We’ll be working out of the new office starting tomorrow.

Here are some new pictures of the place.

We’re moving to a new office! Daniel

Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | Business | 1 Comment

We’ve just leased a new office in downtown Knoxville! The building has a really cool feel to it, and there is a fondue restaurant – The Melting Pot – on the bottom floor, and a bar/cafe just above it on the second floor. Our neighbors are friendly and we’re excited to be moving in to the new space. Here are some pictures of the new Slamdot headquarters:

We’ll keep posting more pictures as things progress. We have quite a bit of work to do, but we’re looking forward to working out of the new location.

The Slamdot Identity Daniel

Friday, March 9th, 2007 | Business | 2 Comments

To have a successful company, we needed a couple of things. One being a name, otherwise people would walk around referring to us as “that super-awesome, ridiculously-cool hosting company,” or something similar. Secondly, we needed a logo. These were both necessary to begin building our brand identity.

Our brand represents integration. Therefore, Slamdot conveys our brand as integrating, or slamming together, all the pieces, or dots, of a web presence. It’s all things good (short, powerful, fun and meaningful) and no things evil, so what’s not to love?

Next was the logo, which needed to be a visual representation of the name. We sketched out a few ideas and then contacted our good friend, Kale Purdue to give it some love. He created a sweet logo that was bold, simple, and truly said Slamdot, with the “s” and dot forming a sort of modified exclamation point. The rounded square block is reminiscent of classic video games like Super Mario World. And thus, we have something unique and memorable that reinforces our mission – to integrate for simplicity’s sake.