It used to be that you needed insane amounts of money or well-heeled backers to take on a well-established competitor. Today, small businesses all over the world are using inexpensive cloud-based technologies and social networks to challenge the status quo. Europe’s leading mobile payments company, iZettle, provides game-changing tools that help these small businesses increase their sales, including everything from card readers for smartphones and tablets to registers and sales analytics tools.

In this latest edition of Small Business Spotlight, we talk with Sebastian Dedering, iZettle’s Head of Customer Success, about the challenges of growing globally and the role customer service has in his company’s success.

How important is growing globally to your business?

We’re a European company, headquartered in Stockholm. One of the things that’s different when you start a company in Europe (instead of Silicon Valley) is that you have to start thinking very early in your life cycle about how you will manage expansion into different markets and how to accommodate different languages and currencies. Sweden has 10 million residents, which is only about 10% more people than live in New York City. Entrepreneurs in Sweden can push up against that boundary very quickly.

How much have you grown?

We were founded in Stockholm in 2010 and have been growing quickly ever since. Between 2012 and 2013, our revenue more than quadrupled. We’re now used by hundreds of thousands of businesses in 10 countries around the world.

What was the most important thing when you chose a customer support solution?

We knew that our customer support team would be growing very rapidly as we were about to launch in three new markets. We needed a tool we could grow with and would provide the kind of multi-lingual support that we needed for European expansion. It was also really important that we found a tool that supported all of the main channels we offer to our users — email, Facebook, and Twitter.

How is customer service helping you grow?

The most important thing, obviously, is that by offering fast, helpful service we can build loyalty and retain customers. We track every inquiry that we receive from our users. Not only can we provide a better self-service experience for users in all of our markets, but we can also optimize our products and services over time. We’ve improved our registration service and created troubleshooting guides — both of which have helped us improve our customers’ experiences with us.