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Everyone who lives on Prince Edward Island knows the power of word of mouth – whether good or bad.

For businesses, word of mouth can make or break you.

Every business owner knows technology and social media has magnified the devastation of a bad review gone viral. That’s where Charlottetown company BamText comes in.

BamText allows customers to communicate feedback instantly to a company.

Whether it’s a rave review or an unforgiving pan, this mobile comment card allows a person to immediately and anonymously send a text message on a unique local number – hopefully before airing a grievance on Facebook. Ninety six per cent of text messages are opened and read within minutes.

“The majority of business owners want their customers to leave happy,” said company co-president Jordan Fraser, a 31-year-old UPEI grad. “We wanted to offer a way for businesses to rectify an issue and for customers to give feedback right away.”

Fraser and co-founder Keir Pollard started building their company 26 months ago as a sideline to their other jobs.  They didn’t want investors, they wanted to try to make it on their own.

They realized they were really onto something and were awarded a $25,000 grant from the Government of Prince Edward Island’s Ignition fund. At that point, Fraser decided to quit his day job and make a go of it.

“We were bootstrapping it,” Fraser said with a laugh.

“We knew these products were selling, but to really get off the ground we needed these (government) programs,” he said.

As business continued to grow, BamText took advantage of the government’s Graduate Mentorship Program to hire UPEI Business grad Megan Murnaghan to do sales. The program paid 70 per cent of her wage for the first year. They now have seven employees and will be up to nine by the end of the year.

The company has grown from 40 customers to 400, recently landing Irving Oil North America as its biggest client.

Irving representatives saw a BamText poster on some Northumberland Ferries Limited ferry and were intrigued.

“They called us, we didn’t call them,” Fraser said.

The deal means BamText will be offering their service at hundreds of Irving Oil and Circle K’s across Canada and the United States over the coming months.

Fraser and Pollard also just learned BamText has been chosen as a recipient of the provincial government’s Development and Commercialization Fund so they can go even further.

Their goal is to build their customer base from 400 to 4,000 in the next few years.

“The world is so small today you can do anything, it’s all so local now – (the) states, provinces, they aren’t barriers anymore.”

 

Original Story Here

Jill (Cheverie) Burridge, a Holland College grad who got an engineering degree from UNB, wanted to be closer to her family in Souris and Brian, a New Brunswicker she met at university, was game to make the move too.

They had spent nine years working for Midwest Surveys as engineers offering survey work for oil and gas, private citizens and construction companies.

In 2013 they made the move east and set up a satellite office in their Stratford home.

“We decided it was time to get back home so we proposed this to our president,” Jill Burridge said. “The big advantage the company saw was the three hour time difference.”

Now working on Island time, the Burridges would start the day at 7:00 am. Doing so gave the company a big head start on the competition in the west while everyone there was still sleeping at 4:00 a.m. In this way, Midwest Surveys could offer a quicker turnaround to beat its competitors.

Two years later, the Burridges were ready to expand and set up an office so they reached out to the Prince Edward Island government. Through the Launch Pad program, government helped them set up their office on the main strip in Stratford next to the vet clinic and offered wage subsidies to hire staff for the first year.

Officials from provincial government also visited their headquarters in Calgary, Alberta to discuss the satellite office in Stratford.

“Government’s support really attracted our company and the funding cemented the idea. They were really good and things  came together quickly.”

The expansion to PEI has gone well. One of the company’s office employees had been traveling to Fort Mac to work and spending most of his time away from his young son. He is now living and working at home on PEI.

“We are happy to get some of those guys home,” Jill said.

The Midwest Surveys office is equipped with Microsoft Link for daily conference calls from its Stratford boardroom to the Calgary one – after noon PEI time, of course, when Western colleagues arrive for work.

“Technology has made it all possible,” Mark said. “You can provide service from anywhere if you have the right setup.”

 

 

Original Article http://www.peisuccess.ca/home/peis-three-hour-time-difference-offers-daily-jump-start-for-western-company