Are you considering Spindle for your business, but still not sure if you should pull the trigger? It’s probably time we talk about the elephant in the room. Spindle’s monthly license fee.
We’ve had this conversation with many of our 400+ customers at one point or another before they finally took the leap and partnered with us. Many of these same customers have come back to tell us the value they've received with Spindle is well beyond the monthly license fees they pay.
We are well past the conversations of selling you Spindle. If you’re this far you probably like what you see, but the license fee ties a knot in your stomach.
I’m writing this in an effort to provide you with more transparency into what the license fee actually goes towards and hopefully ease some of your concerns in the process, because at the end of the day – we’d love to partner with you, and we treat our partners with the respect they deserve.
MORE THAN SOFTWARE
I think it’s important to understand how our business model works at Spindle. We don’t make our money on large equipment or chemical sales. We make our money on the monthly license fees our customers pay because they receive an ongoing return on investment. In other words, we only succeed if our customers succeed.
"We only succeed if our customers succeed."
Our entire organization is set up around the sole focus of ensuring one thing: helping laundries operate better. We are a partner that our customers rely on every single day, and we’ve invested in the people and the tools (much like you evaluating Spindle for your company) to ensure that happens.
CUSTOMER SUCCESS TEAM
It’s only natural we have an entire team dedicated to customer success, given our reliance on it. After Spindle is installed in your facility, your team will be assigned a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM). In the first 30 days after Spindle is installed, your CSM will work with you to understand your business goals and customize your onboarding experience to make sure your entire team is set up for success.
After we on-board your staff, the CSM will host quarterly business review with your team to ensure you are on target to hit those goals and share industry best practices to help you succeed. This team is responsible for helping you onboard new managers as well as continually train your veteran managers on new features they should be using as we release them.
Your success is so important to our team, that we pay a monthly license fee to an external party, to help ensure your team is utilizing our software to the best of their ability. These tool allows us to proactively reach out with recommendations or possible actions to focus on if we noticed red flags in your operation.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
We believe our product is the best in the world and we intend to keep it that way. That’s why the product you originally sign up for when you begin your journey with us, isn’t the same product you’ll be using in the future (or even the following week for that matter). We are constantly releasing enhancements, new features, and bug fixes to the products your license fee already contributes towards. In 2020, we had 27 pushes to production alone – that’s more than twice a month.
Our product’s infrastructure is built in the cloud, so not only can you access your information from anywhere, but all your plants are upgraded to the same version at the same time. The entire process requires none of your IT department's time - freeing them up to focus on more pressing issues around your company.
These new features being released are not just what a product manager at Spindle wants to develop. These features are driven by the voices of our customers. That’s the power of partnering with Spindle. You not only receive a great product, but you become a part of the community and join your peers that are constantly thinking of ways to better manage their operation. Much like we invested in internal tools for our Customer Success Team, we also pay a monthly subscription fee to help us manage our own internal development pipeline based on our community's wants and wishes – not just ours. 
Our continuous improvement isn’t limited to our software. We’re constantly exploring new technology trends that empower our customers to benefit from cutting edge technologies. These new innovations, have contributed towards a 30% reduction in both installation and hardware expenses since 2017.
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Let's face it. No software is perfect and hardware breaks. That's why we have an entire team dedicated to technical support. They exist for the sole purpose of delighting our customers. This team obsesses over helping our customers solve their problems in a timely manner and the results speak for themselves, with a 98.7% Customer Satisfaction Score on completed tickets and an average response time to Urgent tickets under 35 minutes.
The reason this team is capable of providing so much support and has received such a high customer satisfaction score is because of yet another 3rd party software we use to manage tickets, communicate with our customers, and measure both success and failures. We are constantly examining new products on the market and investing in the tools that enable our teams to provide a level of support better than anyone else.
CONCLUSION
I hope this article brings more clarity around our license fee and value it brings. At the end of the day it all comes down to having the systems, processes, and people in place to help our customers succeed. It aligns your organizational goals with ours - which creates a truly meaningful partnership for the years to come.