Olamalu was born 16 years ago. We started small, working from an office at home and taking on technical briefs - mainly websites at that time - but we developed our approach in those early days.
From the moment we decided to leave our corporate jobs and create Olamalu, our approach was central to our vision. Building brilliant technical solutions to business challenges was our reason for being, but how we delivered it was just as important.
Friendly, down to earth and dedicated support
The inspiration for our approach came from seeing where customers were struggling. We noticed that the quality of support post-go-live was poor. Once the excitement of creating a new website was over, web development agencies weren’t that interested in putting in the long-term effort to make sure that the website kept working. Customers complained that their web agency took forever to fix an issue, wasn’t around to answer questions and, when they did respond, they did so in language that the customer couldn’t understand.
That didn’t make sense to us. A solution is only a solution if it keeps on working, so we decided to put excellent customer support at the heart of our operations.
We knew what we didn’t want. When our customers had a request or an issue, we didn’t want them to feel like a numbered ticket in a queue. We wanted them to feel like a real person dealing with real people. We wanted them to feel comfortable asking any question and confident that the response they got was in language they could understand and that we would take the time to explain anything that didn’t make sense. We didn’t want our customers to feel that we had our finger on the clock, watching every minute. We wanted them to feel that we were as committed as they were to making their website work well.
With those foundational ideas in place, we set about building a technology organisation that truly valued ongoing support for the long term. We had to look outside our industry for examples of how others are doing this, bring those ideas back, adapt them to our world and experiment to see what worked.
We’ve worked hard to make sure that support work is prioritised and valued, whatever the other current demands on our time.
The dedication to supporting our customers to ensure they are getting the most from their website has improved each year and is now more important than ever. In a world where automated chatbots are increasing, we are committed to continuing to offer even more customer support in a way that is attentive, responsive and human.
Here’s to the next 16 years!
