Common knowledge dictates that, when you’re looking for superior service, it’s probably best to go with a company that’s been around long enough to have learned a thing or two about customer satisfaction. Although many up-and-coming companies in the adult industry certainly possess the moxie and drive to make a lasting impression, it is still an industry primarily ruled by giants. And Epoch Systems is certainly one such giant.
Founded as Paycom in 1996 by Clay Andrews, the company began as a pay site business. Andrews had started one of the first streaming feeds online – with his virtual theater sites SexCinema.com and GayCinema.com – and decided to turn that venture into a full-fledged business. However, Andrews soon found that his subscription-based billing method was limited in its capacity to provide the best customer service possible. Into the picture came Joel Hall, a software consultant and current chief executive officer, who says he “saw that a lot of needs weren’t being met and told Clay, ‘I think we can build a better mousetrap.’
“There wasn’t a biller that took care of a lot of the merchants’ needs,” Hall explains. “A lot of businesses were becoming victims of their own success.” With Hall now on board, the two men decided to circumvent the shortcomings of their billing method by building a better billing engine.
That decision led to a series of lucrative discoveries. “While working toward a solution for real-time processing online, the need for features not being addressed by current billing companies arose,” says Epoch Communications Director Rand Pate. “Soon, the ideas for real-time reporting and password management, among other features, became integrated into their billing engine.”
Co-opting the name Epoch for the purpose of adult branding (the term is traditionally used to define a marked period in time), Andrews and Hall decided to offer their services to the adult Internet community. “We basically worked from the merchant’s point of view to help create a biller that let them concentrate on their core competencies – good content at a good price – and let us concentrate on the billing and the back-end headaches,” Hall explains.
The two men attended their first webmaster convention in ’97 and presented their fledgling company to the world. According to Pate, the instant popularity of the site among webmasters managed to keep its founders on their toes. “Our services at the time we started were unique. Epoch was the first billing company to offer an affiliate program, and [the company’s] ability to pay resellers on behalf of website operators on a revshare model, and to cut checks to affiliates, ushered in an entirely new era of growth for Epoch’s business. So much so that Epoch was in a position of constantly refining its hardware and software to keep up with the demand.”
But the folks at Epoch had never really worried about not “making it” in the business. “By the time we were receiving up to 50 contracts per day for our services, there was little doubt that we had tapped into a market that desperately needed our services,” Pate says. “The challenge at that point became to effectively navigate the hurdles associated with that kind of dynamic growth and manage the increases carefully.”
Of course, Epoch did more than effectively navigate their hurdles; they annihilated them. Specializing in subscription-based billing, password management, and data security, Epoch has become – aside from chief competitor CCBill – the most trusted and revered credit card billing solution company in the industry, which is exactly what they set out to be. “As far as reputation and integrity, that’s been one of the most important things. It means a lot to hear that people trust us, because one of our functions is to shepherd the information of our clients,” Hall says. “And because of that, trust is everything.”
Pate adds that it’s important to “play by the rules, run an honest program, and take care of your clients, and they will take care of you. The lessons in this space aren’t that different from any other, but they may be even more important. One of the best lessons for anyone working in the world of online transactions is to know who you are doing business with and be able to sacrifice short-term rewards for longterm goals.”
Epoch has succeeded by offering fast and reliable transaction processing to clients, setting an industry standard in the process. As Pate boasts, “Sponsored merchants also enjoy the benefits of crossselling traffic between the vast network of partner programs. Epoch offers a number of ways to market additional products as well, as ways to increase retention and maximize conversions.” European Union solutions are also offered by Epoch, which was the first IPSP to accept Switch and Solo payment options. It was also the first billing company to offer an affiliate program.
The company continues to flourish due to its ability to adapt to changing technology and issues in the adult industry. “The technology and science behind billing in this space has been perfected over the years,” Pate says. “Although a billing company is somewhat always in development, the changes that are made are to further perfect the product and ensure that security and effectiveness are as tight as possible. Our billing systems are – by design – very flexible, which allows us to move quickly to new billing models and accommodate new marketing ideas.”
One thing that certainly sets Epoch apart, Pate says, is that it “was born from the adult space and is fully committed to supporting it,” unlike other companies that “stumbled upon” adult as a profitable venture. The reason for this is simple, says Pate. “The adult industry offers a product that will always be in demand. Not only will new consumers come online every day, but veteran surfers are always on the lookout for new content. When you have a product with that sort of demand – that can be distributed in so many ways – you have a question in search of an answer. The Internet, forward-thinking entrepreneurs, technology geeks, and online billing services have provided the answer.”
Hall says that he is impressed by web-masters that stay on top of their programs. “I would say that being in the adult business, [I’ve found that] a lot of our clients are more in tune minute-to-minute with their businesses than they are in any other industry. It’s unlike anything else out there.”
Not that the Epoch staff minds making a phone call to their clients. “We strive to constantly communicate with our clients [and relay] information that might affect their business models,” Pate declares. “We have always invited feedback and constructive criticism so that we could best understand the needs of our clients and provide the necessary flexibility to respond to their concerns and requests.”
“We’re a big company, but we try to think like a small company,” Hall adds. "We realize that our clients have choices, and that with a switch of one line of code, our clients can move off to CCBill. That keeps a lot of competitive pressure on us to try and continually improve—and to listen to what our clients have to say.”
If we’re counting the ways that Epoch has earned its success and its indomitable reputation, however, it all comes back to one thing: experience. “Epoch has more combined man hours of experience in this field than any other third-party billing company in the adult processing arena and has employed many of its staff for nearly a decade,” Pate says. “Sincerely, there is no one solution for every model, but we believe we’ve built the most flexible system available, and after 10 years of processing, we’ve also proved our reliability. Trust is earned.”
Pictured: (l to r) Rand Pate, Manish Poddar and Joel Hall
