By Korinne Condie
At my previous job, customers would often call in with issues that were:
“High priority”
“Severity one”
“Hair on fire” or
“Needs to be fixed immediately.”
So much so that we had a common saying: “calm down, no one is dying, we can fix this.”
Except I can’t say that anymore at Kaseware.
When we get calls in the middle of the night about an issue, it very well could be that someone is dying and an officer needs to respond. Or it could be that a child is missing and the police office needs the support of multiple organizations. There is a pressing need to resolve an issue, make a software change, or walk an officer through using a new feature. And this is a different world for me.
Our law enforcement customers are different — they have unique needs that are not just “hey wouldn’t it be cool if…” but are instead “this is required for our organization to work”. And after six months at Kaseware, this difference has become not just abundantly clear, but respected and understood. This is what makes them different:
1. It is Life or Death
It really, truly could be a life or death situation in this industry. If I get a phone call at 1 a.m. from a dispatcher, it’s not because they have some innocuous question. It’s because they are trying to dispatch an officer to respond to an accident and they need guidance on how to manage that specific situation in our software. Or if I have a feature request to add additional functionality to our analytics tool, it’s not because it would look pretty. It’s because with that one feature, an officer can glean that one small piece of information he needed to arrest someone for human trafficking. It really is that important.
2. Every Organization is Truly Unique
One of the dreams of a software company is that a single tool can be developed, work for every single customer, and require no extra work, customization or time. It’s just plug and play, here’s your license key and turn it on. Let us know if you have any questions.
Law enforcement is about as far away from that as you can get. Every single organization, from the sheriff’s office in a small town that has five deputies, to a fusion center that serves an entire state, to the largest police department in the country, every organization has unique needs. So our customers will never just ask “may I have one Kaseware please.”
No, our customers will ask for our system, and then together we will spend hours customizing it, configuring it to use the exact workflows and wording they need, and sitting with the team as we roll out the new system. We will implement new feature requests and even new modules based on customer feedback.
Because we’re not an “out of the box, what you see is what you get, we have a release once a year and maybe we’ll address one feature request”. We are a platform built on the tenant that if every organization needs to be different, then so can the product we provide.
3. They Really, Really Care
Every single customer I have, without fail, truly cares about what they are doing. When I offer training for a new feature, I get at least ten responses of “absolutely, when is the earliest you are free.” When I call and talk to a dispatcher, to either help them with a question or have them help me understand a question, I routinely end up spending an extra ten minutes listening to the last interesting call for service they had and how they used our system. Or I get emails from a customer at least once a month with all of the headlines from the human trafficking victims they have identified through use of our software.
They care so much about helping their community, their fellow officers, and the people that they serve and protect. It’s not just a job. It’s a passion and a career that means something, not just to them, but to hundreds or thousands of other people that they directly impact.
In summary, law enforcement customers are different. And that is the absolute best thing about working with them.
Schedule a free demo today to learn more about us, our support offerings, and our incredible product features.
Korinne Condie is the Director of Customer Success at Kaseware. She is a former government contractor with extensive experience in system engineering, operations and customer success within both government and corporate organizations.