Why The Customer Is Always Right

By Dino Di Palma, Managing Partner

In our previous blog, we talked about the importance of being with your customers to truly understand them. In the early days of Acme Packet, the overwhelming opinion of the engineering experts was that the world was transitioning to SIP and that H.323 & MGCP were quickly becoming protocols of the past. This version of the world was being presented over and over again at the then-popular VONs (Voice on the Net) shows. The Acme Packet team took this message to our customers. 

When the customers inevitably asked if we only supported SIP, the answer was “yes”, this is our strategic direction. After a few crazy months of travel to the likes of Telefonica, Brazil Telecom, China Telecom and some of our key partners, we would receive the same feedback. The customers were very clear with their message: the SBC (Session Border Controller-a product category that did not yet formally exist) had to support multiple protocols. The customers would consistently tell us that they would be moving to SIP….. just not today. This was initially received with reservation by some of my colleagues back at HQ.   

As I said in the last blog, the best way to listen to your customers is to be with your customers. So, after some respectful yet heated debates, Acme Packet made the decision to build a multiprotocol SBC. One of our early partners, Italtel, worked with us to make this integration successful. My good friend Alex Colombo spent months on the outskirts of Milan working with our engineers back home to implement these new protocols. This sage listening paid off for Acme Packet. 

One of our earliest and transitional wins was Telecom Italia. Multi-protocol support was a mandatory requirement. We implemented a multi-protocol approach in our product line and collaborated with our customers to provide a migration path into a new world of communications. This is one of many reasons for Acme Packet’s success. Twenty years later, we are finally living in an almost all-SIP world. Early on I learned that you need to listen to your customers and be willing to be their advocates back to your colleagues at HQ. You must strike the delicate balance of not taking on every customer requirement and knowing when there is a trend that requires your support. 

Stay tuned for the next blog and other key learnings.