Soundscapes

Service is Key to Soundscapes’ Growth

It’s no accident that Soundscapes of Little Rock has earned a reputation as one of the best advertising sound studios in the South. According to founder Brent Walker, the company’s incredible success is based on outrageous customer service efforts and a belief that employees are “people, not assets.”

The company began when writer Jeff Hoyt left a Little Rock partnership with Walker called Hoyt and Walker to move to Seattle in 1988. Despite a geographic disadvantage, Walker believed a top-notch sound studio could be run from Little Rock, producing scripts that are written by advertising agencies.

Over the past 10 years, the company has grown from four employees to 11, and from one studio to three. Next year, two more studios will be added, and Walker plans to take his employees to Jamaica for a week to celebrate their anticipated achievement of $1 million in net annual revenue. The company has grown at a rate of 15-20 percent per year.

“This is a great place to work,” he says. “Consequently, we have no employee turnover. I can go away for two weeks on vacation and never phone in, and come back and we’ve had a record month. I feel like my job is to give them to the tools to make their lives easier.”

One of the ways Soundscapes has made a national name for itself is through heroic service efforts. A few years ago, for example, a small ad agency client in Des Moines, Iowa, was devastated by a flood.

“They had to pull boats up to the agency and take all their files and everything they could salvage out of the building,” Walker says. Workers were operating from their homes but had no access to much of the agency information they needed.

So Soundscapes, which had meticulous records of the agency’s activities, stepped in and coordinated the agency, serving as a clearinghouse of information and making media buys.

“I hire these people who are able to work minor miracles … and they don’t even make a very big deal out of it,” Walker marvels.