Interview: Jack Barmby, founder of Bury-based customer service software company Gnatta

As an avid user of social networks, I love watching how businesses use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to interact with customers - whether that’s falling prey to someone’s hilarious trolling efforts, launching a viral marketing campaign or succinctly saving face with a swift, quirky or appropriately humorous response to a comment or complaint.

My interest in the growing world of social media was the reason why Bury firm Gnatta, a customer service software provider, caught my attention as a business to watch.

To find out more about how the firm got off the ground and where it might be in the years to come, I spoke to Jack Barmby, Gnatta’s founder and the driving force behind the brand.

Can you walk me through the early days of Gnatta? How and when did you create the concept, and what obstacles did you come up against in the startup phase?

Gnatta was a university project. It was originally designed to solve one problem - letting a small team of people work on one Twitter account.

When I first started struggling with tweet volumes, I went to download a solution to help assign things intelligently. I couldn’t find anything and decided I would make something to help manage the process. It began as a solution to a problem, not a business idea, just a solution. It worked well, and after some time businesses I had connections with through family and friends began using it to solve the same problem.

After some time we began taking on larger clients, the solution was given a name, a brand, a message; since then, we have expanded the concept from a way to help people manage a single Twitter account to a way for businesses to manage and respond to conversations, proactively and reactively across any channel.

The main obstacle I came across was focus. Trying to hone in on ‘what do we want this to do?’ is very difficult. I always say to people, ‘imagine you’re telling a five year old what you do, can you explain it clearly?’ Most would struggle, and maintaining focus was definitely a challenge.

As a business grows, focus remains a challenge – I would empower anyone wanting to develop an idea to get a clear focus and not lose track of it.

What level of investment did it take to get Gnatta off the ground, and how did you obtain the support you needed?

Gnatta is proudly external investment free. There are many avenues in which to achieve funding, however we have managed up until now not to rely on external funding to push growth.

Gnatta is not a lifestyle business, it is a business here to grow and make a difference. To that end, we invest the profit back into the company, making sure the infrastructure, working environment and, most importantly, the culture is second to none.

What would you say are the biggest challenges that Gnatta faces today?

The same challenges as any startup - recognition in an industry full of competitors whilst fighting for brand awareness.

Do you have any plans to expand in the next 12 months?

We recently became multilingual, so you can now use Gnatta in English, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian and German.

We would love to expand to a global audience; be it a multinational enterprise or a local business, having all your business-to-consumer communication in one tool helps.

We have some big plans in terms of developmental growth as well as strategically. We’re currently setting up a base in the USA, with the UAE soon to follow.

With Gnatta’s concept being all about creating a connection between a company and its customers, how do you think business-to-consumer communication has changed over the years?

Business-to-consumer communication has changed because it’s become more social, more public and more about conversation across a range of channels.

The conversation belongs to the customer, not the business, showing the power has shifted from a mainly one-sided dialogue to an open-ended one. How businesses adapt to a more social public communication with multiple customers is becoming critical to their success (or failure).Gnatta is very much here to help that.

What’s the long-term goal with Gnatta? Where do you hope to see the business heading in the next 10 years?

The aim is to ensure Gnatta grows to become the defacto industry tool to enable businesses to listen and engage with their customers. Consumers are more openly vocal today than ever before and businesses that embrace what their customers are saying about them are far better able to build relationships and get closer to the people that matter.

We will of course keep investing in Gnatta so that it constantly evolves and remains the key interface between businesses and their customers, providing richer information and communication between multiple parties and platforms.