(FORTUNE Small Business) – Donald A. Gardner architects stands on a solid foundation. Last year the profitable family business licensed nearly $10 million in off-the-shelf house plans to developers and private clients. Nonetheless, Gardner president Angela Santerini wanted to improve the Greenville, S.C., company's customer relations, refine its online marketing, and develop its strategy of publishing shelter magazines that tout the firm's house designs. So FSB arranged Makeover sessions with three top consultants: customer-service expert Donna Butler, publishing-industry veteran Greg Zorthian, and legendary tech entrepreneur Michael Dell.

One year later, Santerini says Gardner's biggest strides have come in customer service. The firm's five service reps, who field some 20,000 calls a year, were struggling to please customers who all wanted their construction problems solved right away. That was often difficult because Gardner's staff architects hated being bothered when they were immersed in design work. Butler proposed a simple but effective solution: cross-training. Architects and sales reps now spend time observing work in each other's departments. The goal is for both departments to understand how the other half lives and what its needs are.

Zorthian worried that Gardner's magazines would have a tough time luring advertisers because they didn't fit any of the magazine industry's conventional categories. Nor was he convinced that an architecture firm should invest so much time and money outside its core business. But Santerini hasn't changed her publishing strategy one bit, even though building ad revenue has been a slow process. "We still see magazines as a great vehicle for selling our house plans and services," she says. "But if you're just looking at [ad sales] numbers, it's hard to understand how important magazines are to our strategy."

Dell praised Gardner's website for its intuitive navigational aids and ability to gather extensive customer data. But he urged Santerini to try various online sales pitches and track them all carefully to see which ones produced the most sales. Thus inspired, Santorini seized direct control over the site by hosting it at the company rather than an outside service provider. But lately she's been too distracted to pursue radical e-commerce strategies. In late July, Santerini and her husband, Bill, the firm's CFO, became the parents of a baby girl.