Sunrise Retail, an e-commerce startup on the rise, began managing customer support through Google Forms. It seemed like an ideal choice—affordable, straightforward, and quick to deploy. As orders increased, the team expanded their use of Google Sheets to track customer issues, with each inquiry meticulously documented in a shared spreadsheet. However, as the business scaled, so did the problems. The once-organized Google Sheet quickly turned into a disorganized nightmare. Multiple team members working on the sheet simultaneously led to errors and data being lost. Critical customer issues were overlooked, and response times grew longer. The team found themselves bogged down by the manual task of moving data from forms to sheets and then to their CRM system—a process prone to mistakes and delays. The breaking point came when a high-value customer’s issue went unresolved due to a missed entry in the spreadsheet. Frustrated by the lack of response, the customer aired their grievances on social media, damaging Sunrise Retail’s reputation. It became clear that their dependence on free tools was hindering their growth. Unfortunately, by the time they realized this, significant harm had already been done.