Since the hosting company was started in 2001, it has grown to about 20 times its original size. But when Torlini joined the company pretty much from the word go, in 2002 he was only its 14th employee. He says that at the time, it was a small, unknown brand a change from his previous employer, Action Computer Supplies, which was the second largest IT reseller in the UK. But in the last seven years he has seen it grow to employ 400 in the UK (and 2000 in the US).
It was a big move to make, but Rackspace seemed to have a great culture and a real buzz, he says. It was exciting to be part of a company that was growing, that wanted to invest and believed in customer service, so it was a positive move. Taken on as the MD’s right hand man Torlini’s original job wasn’t a marketing role, but within a few months, he was heading up the sales and marketing departments. Since then, marketing has grown to become a 12-strong team, with the sales team increasing from two to 80.
Torlini’s creation of the sales and marketing departments at Rackspace means that they have a strong affinity with each other and he holds a strong belief in maintaining this relationship. It’s extremely important that marketing works closely with sales. All of my team are targeted on lead generation, and the sales team are targeted on closing these leads, so we have to work hand-in-hand with them, he says. In a way, we are jointly targeted, which means we have a great relationship you don’t often find in other companies.
Not only has he managed to create a harmonious working relationship between sales and marketing, he has also been responsible for growing and developing the Rackspace brand through providing excellent customer service. Rackspace’s Fanatical Support service means its employees are available round the clock to meet its customer’s expectations. Every customer gets fast responses to critical issues, unlimited technical phone support, access to its online knowledgebase, and guaranteed 100 per cent network and infrastructure uptime.
Of course, every other hosting company claims they offer the best customer service, but we want to ensure we are constantly living up to our claim, he says. We justify this by working hard to provide proof of loyalty metrics, customer case studies and customer quotes.
He adds that he is working on how the company can utilise social media to improve on this. The business is built up from word of mouth and recommendation, and a lot of that is based on the web. We want to encourage our customers to talk about our products and service levels in the right online forums. I think this is a challenge for many B2B marketers and something they should be really looking into, he adds.
The Rackspace brand has also undergone an important change under Torlini. Although in a branding study undertaken last year, the brand came top in terms of recognition by purchasers of managed hosting services, beating IBM (three years ago, no-one knew the name at all), Torlini was keen to push for a rebrand, which came to fruition in January this year. This was a really exciting project because it was a global rebrand, which unusually, was kicked off from the UK, explains Torlini. Expansion across Europe into Holland and Germany demanded a tighter global brand offering and a change in what the company was offering was behind the move. We no longer only provide hosting services, we offer a lot more, and we felt the current brand was limited. We’ve broadened out and wanted our brand to reflect that.
Torlini says that the imagery of the old brand was very technology-focused, which gave out the wrong message. We’re not about servers, we’re about passion, about people and about delivering that service. We wanted to get our personality across like Innocent Drinks do. I admire companies that are able to do that.
A good team is also one of Torlini’s top priorities. One of the reasons we go in for so many awards is because it helps us hire talent, he says. Often featuring in the Financial Times and Sunday Times ‘Best Places to Work’ listings, he feels that to be able to support the company’s promise, it needs to recruit the right quality of people with the right attitude and who can deliver the right experience. For me, once we’ve got the right people, it’s just as important to market the brand internally as it is to our customers and prospects, he says. The whole team needs to believe in our culture because then it will be easier to get our prospects to believe in it, he adds.
For Torlini, whose parents both come from Italy, that culture has to be one founded on passion. I come from a background where passion is normal it’s part of the course. So to be able to work for a company where I can truly feel that, is great.
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