Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:04.719 --> 00:00:11.269 Customer experience is about how a customer feels about every touch point with your company. 2 00:00:13.669 --> 00:00:16.949 You know sometimes when you hear a hot take er here, a provocative 3 00:00:16.989 --> 00:00:21.109 thought, and you think someone's just saying that for the attention or just to 4 00:00:21.230 --> 00:00:25.539 be provocative. That's not the case here with Chris Hicken, who says that 5 00:00:25.899 --> 00:00:31.620 product usage is a vanity metric. I'll say it again, product usage is 6 00:00:31.699 --> 00:00:35.770 a vanity metric. My name is Ethan Butte, chief evangelist at Bombomb, 7 00:00:36.130 --> 00:00:41.609 coauthor of Rehumanize Your Business and the host of the CX series here on BTB 8 00:00:41.770 --> 00:00:47.409 growth. Chris Hicken is cofounder and CEO of Nuff said, and prior to 9 00:00:47.490 --> 00:00:53.320 that he was the longtime president and COO at user testing. He definitely knows 10 00:00:53.399 --> 00:00:58.320 product usage. He definitely knows data and analytics, and whether you are in 11 00:00:58.479 --> 00:01:03.719 sales, marketing, customer success, product or Dev executive leadership or any other 12 00:01:03.759 --> 00:01:08.989 position, you should be interested in product usage power customers using your product or 13 00:01:10.069 --> 00:01:17.590 service. But that doesn't tell you enough. Here's Chris Hicken with more product 14 00:01:17.709 --> 00:01:21.900 usage is a vanity metric. That's right. I'll say it again. Product 15 00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:26.260 usage is a vanity metric. That's an idea today's guest brings to the conversation 16 00:01:26.819 --> 00:01:30.260 here on the customer experience podcast, and he's got the UIUX and behavior testing 17 00:01:30.340 --> 00:01:34.409 background to back it up. He brings fifteen years of experience and B Tob 18 00:01:34.569 --> 00:01:40.650 Software as a leader, investor, advisor and board member with companies like STUDYCOM, 19 00:01:40.890 --> 00:01:44.569 get prime and test rigger. Most notably, he spent eight years as 20 00:01:44.650 --> 00:01:49.519 president and chief operating officer for user testing, where he developed an expertise in 21 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:53.879 creating great experiences for customers. Now he's the CO founder and CEO of nuff 22 00:01:53.959 --> 00:02:00.040 said, a software company that's integrating all those inbound messages you get across multiple 23 00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:05.829 channels into one smart, customizable and AI driven view. Chris Hicken, welcome 24 00:02:05.909 --> 00:02:08.830 to the customer experience podcast. Thanks Ethan. An honor to be invited. 25 00:02:08.909 --> 00:02:14.550 Appreciate it. Yeah, really excited for this conversation. Obviously that that idea 26 00:02:14.590 --> 00:02:17.180 of product usage being a bit vanity, you know. I've heard vanity metrics 27 00:02:17.259 --> 00:02:22.139 applied widely, but not to that, and so I'm really interested in your 28 00:02:22.180 --> 00:02:25.580 take on it. But before we get going, you studied engineering and computer 29 00:02:25.620 --> 00:02:30.490 science, but you say on your linkedin profile that you were born and artist. 30 00:02:30.849 --> 00:02:32.610 Tell me a little bit about that and like maybe how that set you 31 00:02:32.689 --> 00:02:38.810 up for success. Well, when I was growing up as a kid, 32 00:02:38.849 --> 00:02:46.080 I was constantly drawing, charcoal painting acrilics. I was mentoring with a guy 33 00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:50.080 from industrial lite and magic for a couple of years and when it came time 34 00:02:50.120 --> 00:02:53.680 to apply for college it I had to make a choice. Was I going 35 00:02:53.719 --> 00:02:57.560 to follow, you know, kind of more of a creative art artest a 36 00:02:57.759 --> 00:03:02.229 career or what I build, more of the Engineering Route? And I applied 37 00:03:02.389 --> 00:03:07.509 to about fifty. Half the colleges I applied for an art major and half 38 00:03:07.590 --> 00:03:10.750 I apply for computer science, and I just ended up loving cow polly so 39 00:03:10.830 --> 00:03:15.340 much I ended up making the decision more on the school than on the program 40 00:03:15.419 --> 00:03:19.020 itself. So, funnily enough, I only did computer science for about a 41 00:03:19.060 --> 00:03:23.340 year coming out of college, and so I guess I'm I'm trained as an 42 00:03:23.379 --> 00:03:27.099 engineer, although I've I've worked mostly as a business leader. Awesome, what 43 00:03:27.169 --> 00:03:30.889 an interesting combination of skills and strengths. Do you still you know, from 44 00:03:30.969 --> 00:03:34.129 I guess, a hobbyist view, are you still active in creating art? 45 00:03:35.090 --> 00:03:38.250 I do, but the way it my my I would say, the outlet 46 00:03:38.330 --> 00:03:40.919 that I use the most for art is that I build and design websites for 47 00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:46.960 pro bono, generally for friends, family or nonprofit organization. So that's that 48 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:51.919 ends up being my main creative outlet. It's awesome. I look forward to 49 00:03:51.960 --> 00:03:55.069 becoming friends. So we're going to start as we always start here on the 50 00:03:55.110 --> 00:03:59.669 show, which is your thoughts or characteristics. Are Your definition when I say 51 00:03:59.750 --> 00:04:02.830 customer experience? What does that mean to you? Chris? So, I 52 00:04:02.870 --> 00:04:08.990 might have a little bit of a unique perspective on this because I was president 53 00:04:09.150 --> 00:04:15.019 of user testing, which was an enterprise software company that helped generally large companies 54 00:04:15.060 --> 00:04:20.540 improve the quality of their customer experience on their websites, mobile APPs. And 55 00:04:21.060 --> 00:04:24.970 towards the last few years that I was there, more and more in store 56 00:04:25.009 --> 00:04:29.850 experiences and I did a lot of reading and talk to a bunch of professionals 57 00:04:29.889 --> 00:04:32.649 in the space. And customer experience has a lot of different angles. You 58 00:04:32.730 --> 00:04:39.959 know some people. Is Customer experience the perception of your brand, or is 59 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:45.560 it about making interactions easy and simple? Maybe is it about customer satisfaction? 60 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:50.560 I think we're getting closer for me. For me, customer experience is about 61 00:04:51.199 --> 00:04:57.389 how a customer feels about every touch point with your company. So it really 62 00:04:57.430 --> 00:05:00.509 is both pieces. It's emotions and it's the actual experience itself. And so 63 00:05:00.629 --> 00:05:03.829 when I say touch point, I really do mean every touch point with your 64 00:05:03.829 --> 00:05:10.939 company. So that means an advertisement and newsletter, a customer support chat, 65 00:05:11.339 --> 00:05:15.180 it could be using the product, it could be browsing the website trying to 66 00:05:15.220 --> 00:05:16.819 answer a question, it could be a store visit. So that's what I 67 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:19.819 mean by touch point. And the reason why the emotions so important is that 68 00:05:21.009 --> 00:05:28.250 delighting customers is the quickest way to earn advocacy and ultimately, loyalty from your 69 00:05:28.290 --> 00:05:32.170 customers. That's why I focus on the feeling part and I think from that 70 00:05:32.370 --> 00:05:36.639 definition comes the tactics that you would use to to delight your customers. So 71 00:05:36.759 --> 00:05:43.920 that's where you would talk about things like communicating value or beautiful design or having 72 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:48.959 a very simply user experience or one touch, one touch customer support, and 73 00:05:49.189 --> 00:05:54.750 so you know, after working with you know many fortune one hundreds on their 74 00:05:54.910 --> 00:05:58.629 their customer experience programs. I think this does the best job of encapsulating what 75 00:05:58.750 --> 00:06:00.829 most companies are trying to do. And, by the way, the companies 76 00:06:00.910 --> 00:06:05.540 that are leaders in the space are the ones that are truly our customers obsessed. 77 00:06:05.579 --> 00:06:10.980 So, without going into the details, no surprise. Companies like Amazon, 78 00:06:11.740 --> 00:06:15.540 like Microsoft, I mean they have very, very advanced customer research, 79 00:06:16.100 --> 00:06:20.810 customer experience programs and you see it reflected in their products. Yeah, really 80 00:06:20.810 --> 00:06:25.810 well done there. I think the reason her so many approaches and definitions to 81 00:06:25.889 --> 00:06:30.089 it is because what you captured the essence of their that the way people feel 82 00:06:30.129 --> 00:06:32.920 across every single touch point or influenced by every single touch point. Just the 83 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:39.439 every single touch point alone creates so much complication and variants in the way different 84 00:06:39.480 --> 00:06:44.079 people in different seats in the organization view it in. So I love what 85 00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:48.069 you did there. And then these thoughts and feelings are what turn into behavior. 86 00:06:48.230 --> 00:06:54.310 For starters, repeat purchasing or expanded purchasing or positive online reviews or whatever. 87 00:06:54.709 --> 00:06:57.389 And it's the end, it's a precursor to the stories that we tell 88 00:06:57.430 --> 00:07:01.899 other people in terms of, again, online reviews and testimonials and referrals and 89 00:07:01.980 --> 00:07:05.180 things. So really well done. Before we go any farther, I would 90 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:08.860 love to spend a little bit of time talking about enough set. I think 91 00:07:08.860 --> 00:07:13.540 you all are tackling a really interesting problem and and I think what you share 92 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:16.170 here will give some context as we get more into some of these themes around 93 00:07:16.250 --> 00:07:21.410 product usage. So what is enough said and who are your customers? So 94 00:07:23.250 --> 00:07:25.449 I'm going to answer that question, but let me give you a little bit 95 00:07:25.449 --> 00:07:30.079 of context first. So the problem that I wanted to solve emerged as I 96 00:07:30.279 --> 00:07:35.160 was building user testing, and what I found consistently over time was that as 97 00:07:35.279 --> 00:07:40.319 we went from a five person company when I joined to a three four hundred 98 00:07:40.319 --> 00:07:45.470 person company when I left, people went from being able to focus one hundred 99 00:07:45.509 --> 00:07:49.110 percent of their other daily worktime on the work itself to by the time I 100 00:07:49.189 --> 00:07:53.110 left, it felt like we were doing spending only a fraction of our time 101 00:07:53.829 --> 00:07:58.579 doing the actual work that mattered. And it was because of information overload, 102 00:07:58.939 --> 00:08:01.899 communication overload. We have so many APPS, we have to deal with, 103 00:08:01.980 --> 00:08:05.339 daily reports, newsletters, text best just coming in, slack channels we have 104 00:08:05.420 --> 00:08:09.899 to follow. And so I thought, okay, how are we going to 105 00:08:09.259 --> 00:08:11.740 this problem is going to get worse in the future. So how are we 106 00:08:11.779 --> 00:08:15.810 going to make it easier for a knowledge worker to focus on work that matters? 107 00:08:16.490 --> 00:08:20.610 And so we looked at different ways that you could use ai to solve 108 00:08:20.730 --> 00:08:24.930 this problem, to not only automate the work of knowledge workers but also to 109 00:08:24.009 --> 00:08:26.639 help them focus. You know, given fifty things, you could do it 110 00:08:26.680 --> 00:08:30.199 at once. What's the one thing that you could do right now to move 111 00:08:30.240 --> 00:08:33.679 the needle in your job? And so if you ever seen the movie iron 112 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:37.879 man, he wears that suit. That's like, you know, processing the 113 00:08:37.919 --> 00:08:41.149 world's information and synthesizing it and telling the main character what he needs to focus 114 00:08:41.230 --> 00:08:45.629 on. He calls that Ai Jarvis. So how do you bring Jarvis to 115 00:08:45.669 --> 00:08:48.070 knowledge workers? So that's that's that's the vision of where the company wants to 116 00:08:48.110 --> 00:08:52.549 go in the future and obviously, you know we're relatively new company. We 117 00:08:52.629 --> 00:08:56.139 have to build baby steps to achieve that vision. And so the first product 118 00:08:56.179 --> 00:08:58.779 that we just released two weeks ago, we just announced our funding, is 119 00:08:58.860 --> 00:09:05.019 a product that centralizes all of your work communication. So pulls and anywhere we're 120 00:09:05.019 --> 00:09:11.649 communications happening, email, chat, SMS, Linkedin sales force, all these 121 00:09:11.690 --> 00:09:15.929 different places communications happening. So it allows you know, once we have all 122 00:09:15.929 --> 00:09:18.250 that communication in one place and once we know who the important people are in 123 00:09:18.289 --> 00:09:22.929 your work life, we're able to do a really good job of prioritizing the 124 00:09:22.090 --> 00:09:26.799 communication in your life that matters. And so that's that's V one of our 125 00:09:26.840 --> 00:09:31.799 product which we just released, and then later the summer were bolting an ai 126 00:09:31.320 --> 00:09:37.360 onto that product and we're bringing in data from other parts of your work life, 127 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:41.990 for example of maybe your your crm could be from your for example, 128 00:09:43.070 --> 00:09:46.750 if your customer success manager. It'll pull in your health score data, it'll 129 00:09:46.789 --> 00:09:48.950 pull and usage data. I'll pull in all these different forms data and help 130 00:09:48.990 --> 00:09:52.980 you understand which customers are must at risk and where you should be spending your 131 00:09:52.980 --> 00:09:58.620 time today to improve the health of your overall portfolio. So that's what the 132 00:09:58.700 --> 00:10:01.419 company is trying to achieve and those are first few steps to get there. 133 00:10:03.019 --> 00:10:07.289 I love two layers here in particular. The first one is the idea that 134 00:10:07.929 --> 00:10:11.970 you have a vision for using AI to put humans in their best position to 135 00:10:11.009 --> 00:10:16.610 be of highest value, and then to this idea of kind of persona based 136 00:10:16.210 --> 00:10:20.490 tweaks to this right. So when you sign up, maybe a new I'm 137 00:10:20.529 --> 00:10:22.360 imagining here out loud. will feel free to correct me, to redirect me. 138 00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:26.039 You know, as you bring on, say, a team of eight 139 00:10:26.159 --> 00:10:30.320 customer success managers, they're going to be set up maybe with a default setting 140 00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:33.440 that is different than, say, if you brought on some product folks or 141 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:39.389 some marketing folks or some engineers as a team of people in and obviously then 142 00:10:39.429 --> 00:10:45.230 the AI will not only tweak and make that persona based default, better and 143 00:10:45.269 --> 00:10:46.830 better and better, but it also probably get better and better and better by 144 00:10:46.870 --> 00:10:50.899 individual based on how they're interacting with the different messages from the different sources the 145 00:10:52.059 --> 00:10:56.220 spot on. So each ai that we develop be custom tailor to each functional 146 00:10:56.259 --> 00:11:00.220 role in the company and one by doing that, will be able to understand 147 00:11:00.299 --> 00:11:03.370 not only what you do at work, but will know what your goals are, 148 00:11:03.570 --> 00:11:07.970 how you're measured in terms of success, and then we'll be able to 149 00:11:07.009 --> 00:11:13.009 prioritize work data and communication that helps you focus on the work that actually matters, 150 00:11:13.169 --> 00:11:16.129 on moving the needle. I love it. That's another layer that we've 151 00:11:16.129 --> 00:11:18.720 been talking about on the show. I've had a couple guests where we've had 152 00:11:18.840 --> 00:11:24.039 themes of this conversation, which is adopting your customers Kpis and success metrics and 153 00:11:24.159 --> 00:11:26.960 making them your own, and it sounds like you're doing that, or aspire 154 00:11:28.039 --> 00:11:31.320 to do that through software. That's exactly right. That's the vision of the 155 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:33.429 company. It's cool. I'm excited for you. It's good. In a 156 00:11:33.509 --> 00:11:37.789 conclusion to this section and I think we can all say that slack is not 157 00:11:37.870 --> 00:11:41.990 the email killer. It's just more messages that we need to put into one. 158 00:11:41.470 --> 00:11:45.669 Well, here's what I would say. I mean we adopted slack that 159 00:11:45.830 --> 00:11:48.419 user testing, and I think slack solved a lot of problems that we had 160 00:11:48.659 --> 00:11:54.179 pre slack, including making it easier for people to collaborate in groups, so 161 00:11:54.259 --> 00:11:58.980 you could create instant channels people could collaborate around topics. I think the easy 162 00:11:58.980 --> 00:12:03.769 keyboard shortcuts and the emoticons. There's a more emotional way to express yourself in 163 00:12:03.889 --> 00:12:07.049 writing. So I think slacked a really good job of solving those problems. 164 00:12:07.090 --> 00:12:09.970 But again, the problem here that we're going after is we don't want to 165 00:12:11.009 --> 00:12:15.370 help people send more messages or connect more with each other. You've got lots 166 00:12:15.409 --> 00:12:18.799 of technologies to help you with that. For us it's about you got too 167 00:12:18.840 --> 00:12:20.960 much noise. So what are how can we help you focus on work that 168 00:12:22.039 --> 00:12:24.960 matters? It's good, yeah, same thing. It has a number of 169 00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:28.519 benefits, but again it creates some noise and distraction, just like so channels. 170 00:12:30.269 --> 00:12:33.309 I'm starting to see this, at least in in the initial launch phase, 171 00:12:33.429 --> 00:12:37.470 before you really make it Ai Laden, as really being the TAB killer. 172 00:12:37.070 --> 00:12:39.629 Enough said, being a tab killer and that, you know, when 173 00:12:39.669 --> 00:12:43.230 I think about you know what you're talking about. To think about the channels 174 00:12:43.269 --> 00:12:46.860 that I use, I think like it's multiple tabs in slack that that are 175 00:12:46.860 --> 00:12:48.779 all open at the same time. Let's get a little bit into product usage. 176 00:12:48.820 --> 00:12:54.779 Obviously you have a deep and unique per view into the way people interact 177 00:12:54.860 --> 00:13:00.490 with software. Talk a little bit about product usage and then maybe get into 178 00:13:00.529 --> 00:13:03.409 the vanity side of it, like what is the vanity aspect of it? 179 00:13:03.610 --> 00:13:13.039 So product usage was typically absent from custo under our previous understanding of customer health, 180 00:13:13.039 --> 00:13:18.320 and I'm going back probably six or seven years. This is pre gain 181 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:22.639 side or to Tang era customer success and account management. So the introduction of 182 00:13:22.799 --> 00:13:28.389 usage data in understanding customer health was really valuable. But I think as a 183 00:13:28.350 --> 00:13:33.190 as an industry, we've over indexed on the value of usage data and what 184 00:13:33.269 --> 00:13:37.590 we've what we found, and from talking to a bunch of success leaders, 185 00:13:37.629 --> 00:13:43.379 what we found is that usage data is when it's binary. So when your 186 00:13:43.419 --> 00:13:48.700 customers are not using your product, they are at risk and they're unlikely to 187 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:52.659 renew. You're gonna have some marinial challenges. If the customer is using the 188 00:13:52.700 --> 00:13:56.570 product a lot, it's impossible that that day, that insight isn't enough to 189 00:13:56.649 --> 00:14:01.210 help you make any kind of prediction. So usage is only helpful to the 190 00:14:01.250 --> 00:14:05.090 extent that it's binary. No usage, bad, lots of usage, who 191 00:14:05.169 --> 00:14:09.409 knows? And I think that for that reason it's very much of vanity, 192 00:14:09.529 --> 00:14:15.080 vanity metric, because so many health scores are driven predominantly by usage. But 193 00:14:15.320 --> 00:14:20.519 usage is one of fifteen factors that companies should be looking at to determine health 194 00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:24.429 and renewal risk. But that what we've all over indexed on, on usage, 195 00:14:24.429 --> 00:14:28.269 and so for that reason I don't I don't particularly well. It's not 196 00:14:28.389 --> 00:14:31.870 that I don't value usage data, I just think of it as one of 197 00:14:31.269 --> 00:14:37.029 many elements that need to be considered as part of a overall portfolio health assessment. 198 00:14:37.700 --> 00:14:41.100 I love it. It it. As I knew that we're going to 199 00:14:41.139 --> 00:14:43.980 talk about product usage, I started thinking about like, okay, what if 200 00:14:43.059 --> 00:14:48.820 usage correlates positively with lifetime value or MP ass or some of these other factors? 201 00:14:50.299 --> 00:14:54.090 But what you offered here just kind of unplugs that question, because the 202 00:14:54.570 --> 00:14:56.490 best follow up question now is you know if it's one of do you know 203 00:14:56.610 --> 00:15:00.970 a dozen factors or fifteen factors? What are some of the other factors that, 204 00:15:01.090 --> 00:15:03.490 if we were going to try to build a model that says likely to 205 00:15:03.570 --> 00:15:07.519 renew, what are some of those other factors that belong in the mix? 206 00:15:07.559 --> 00:15:09.759 Yeah, I won't share any any of the secret sauce, because I think 207 00:15:09.759 --> 00:15:13.600 this is some of this is the secret sauce of our company. But what 208 00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:18.279 I can do is talk about the categories that I think are leading indicators of 209 00:15:18.679 --> 00:15:22.629 health. And so the first bucket, I'm going to break it actually into 210 00:15:22.669 --> 00:15:31.870 four buckets customer maturity, the product, the experience and the pricing. So 211 00:15:31.029 --> 00:15:35.149 those are the four being buckets I would break it up into, and within 212 00:15:35.190 --> 00:15:39.100 each of those I've got a series of questions that I think are important to 213 00:15:39.100 --> 00:15:43.379 answer in order to to determine whether or not the account is at risk. 214 00:15:43.460 --> 00:15:46.899 For example, under maturity, I would say one of the most important questions 215 00:15:48.019 --> 00:15:54.210 in that bucket is who advocates for the product? What's their authority and has 216 00:15:54.250 --> 00:15:58.250 it changed? Every customer success manager would love to have the answer that question. 217 00:15:58.610 --> 00:16:03.210 None of them do. But guess what, if you're at the advocate 218 00:16:03.330 --> 00:16:07.039 for your product is an individual contributor and there's only one of them. They 219 00:16:07.080 --> 00:16:10.720 could have all the usage in the world, doesn't matter. They could be 220 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:12.200 the happiest cups customer in the world, but as soon as that as soon 221 00:16:12.240 --> 00:16:17.320 as that champion leaves the company, Boom that account has gone. So it's 222 00:16:17.320 --> 00:16:21.269 another example of how usage is not a good indicator of risk, that the 223 00:16:21.309 --> 00:16:26.830 risk is actually quite high on a high usage individual contributor account. And so 224 00:16:26.990 --> 00:16:32.389 part of what we're you know, part of approaching solving this problem is looking 225 00:16:32.389 --> 00:16:36.659 at you know, I think I've got fifteen or sixteen different elements that I'm 226 00:16:36.700 --> 00:16:40.580 looking at saying, okay, if we can gather this information both in an 227 00:16:40.580 --> 00:16:45.179 automated way through your communication, through surveys, through integrations with your crm, 228 00:16:45.860 --> 00:16:49.529 can we build a picture of different aspects of the overall customer journey with your 229 00:16:49.570 --> 00:16:56.889 company and the customers overall engagement with your company to give you a true risk 230 00:16:56.129 --> 00:17:02.200 profile of each account? And so that's that's one of the I'll give you 231 00:17:02.200 --> 00:17:06.519 another example under the product. So I was one of the four categories. 232 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:11.240 One of the questions I want to answer is does the product solve a severe, 233 00:17:11.759 --> 00:17:15.470 ongoing problem for the customer? Shame on us that we can't answer that 234 00:17:15.549 --> 00:17:21.430 question for every one of our accounts. If one of our customers feels like 235 00:17:22.309 --> 00:17:26.950 the product, the problem that's being solved is maybe ongoing but not severe, 236 00:17:26.789 --> 00:17:30.859 you potentially have some risk there because that customer might not feel like they need 237 00:17:30.940 --> 00:17:33.700 your product in the future to solve that problem. Maybe there are a good 238 00:17:33.700 --> 00:17:38.579 alternative workarounds or maybe it's a very severe problem, but once they solve at 239 00:17:38.619 --> 00:17:42.339 once, the problem goes away and you don't need it anymore. And so 240 00:17:42.619 --> 00:17:47.490 again that's another example of a problem where if, if you can get if 241 00:17:47.529 --> 00:17:51.049 you can answer that question, you will have a much better insight into the 242 00:17:51.130 --> 00:17:55.329 actual health of that customer. Health is not a good word. The risk 243 00:17:55.450 --> 00:18:00.359 profile of that customer really really interesting. The severe thing. It just really 244 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:03.119 rings true for me here at bombomb you know, we make it easy to 245 00:18:03.400 --> 00:18:06.759 get facetoface in places. Some of your typed out text, you know, 246 00:18:06.839 --> 00:18:10.359 because it doesn't communicate, is clearly it doesn't connect with people. And and 247 00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:14.990 ultimately, whether it's a minor conversion or a macro conversion, you know, 248 00:18:15.349 --> 00:18:18.309 the more personal you can get them, more yeses you're going to get, 249 00:18:18.349 --> 00:18:22.230 ultimately, which is ongoing every time you click send there's an opportunity to be 250 00:18:22.910 --> 00:18:29.940 more effective and more personal human, but it's not necessarily felt in a severe 251 00:18:30.140 --> 00:18:32.940 way. It's interesting for our customers. It's, you know, the ones 252 00:18:32.940 --> 00:18:34.180 who make it a habit are the ones that are like I can't imagine my 253 00:18:34.220 --> 00:18:37.220 life without it. I don't even they I don't know they would call it 254 00:18:37.299 --> 00:18:41.849 severe as really interesting, as a challenge. What are a couple questions under 255 00:18:42.170 --> 00:18:48.970 the experience bucket? So, okay, there's I've got four major questions here. 256 00:18:49.490 --> 00:18:53.769 The one that I'm going to bring up today is around expectations. So 257 00:18:55.609 --> 00:19:02.960 did the product and service match or exceed the customers expectations? And this is 258 00:19:03.079 --> 00:19:07.039 really important because the customer, you know, when the customers going through a 259 00:19:07.119 --> 00:19:10.990 sales process there they have a certain expectation about the product will be able to 260 00:19:11.069 --> 00:19:14.190 deliver and the problem it'll be able to solve. A lot of times the 261 00:19:14.269 --> 00:19:18.829 actual product itself does not match what was promised or sold as part of the 262 00:19:18.869 --> 00:19:22.109 sales process. So it's really important for you to understand really very early in 263 00:19:22.269 --> 00:19:26.059 the customers engagement with you, maybe not during onboarding, but maybe within three 264 00:19:26.140 --> 00:19:30.700 months of the original contract signed date, for you to get a good understanding 265 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:34.859 of that customer, how they expect, how the customers expectations match what they 266 00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:40.210 were sold during the sales process, and that is a very early indicator of 267 00:19:40.329 --> 00:19:42.650 whether or not a come a customer is likely to renew in the next nine 268 00:19:42.690 --> 00:19:45.329 months. I love it. That also gets to a theme on the show, 269 00:19:45.329 --> 00:19:48.289 which is making sure that sales and CS are on the same page with 270 00:19:48.490 --> 00:19:52.480 regard to what's being sold, how it's being sold, how expectations are set 271 00:19:52.559 --> 00:19:56.920 and managed. And you know, a disappointment is exclusively a function of expectation. 272 00:19:57.079 --> 00:20:00.960 So if you manage it well, you know you're setting yourself up. 273 00:20:00.359 --> 00:20:07.269 It's Cliche or trite to say, but you know under promise and overdeliver. 274 00:20:07.829 --> 00:20:11.390 I might have an unusual perspective on this in that I believe that the success 275 00:20:11.430 --> 00:20:15.630 leader, Holly, is responsible for driving those conversations. The success leader is 276 00:20:17.589 --> 00:20:22.859 the main conduit, the main lifeline between company and customer and they need to 277 00:20:22.940 --> 00:20:26.980 be in a position. It doesn't happen in as much today as it should, 278 00:20:26.980 --> 00:20:30.420 but I think in the future customer success leaders need to be driving strategic 279 00:20:30.500 --> 00:20:37.289 and tact contactical conversations with their peers on eastaff around which customers do we need 280 00:20:37.329 --> 00:20:41.250 to target? What type of offering, what type of sales offering, leads 281 00:20:41.289 --> 00:20:45.210 to the best overall engagement with the customer? which products and features need to 282 00:20:45.289 --> 00:20:48.490 be developed based on what we're hearing from the customer base? And I think 283 00:20:48.529 --> 00:20:52.960 today generally, success leaders don't have the tools that they need to make to 284 00:20:53.039 --> 00:20:59.400 advocate for those positions, but I do think it is their responsibility to drive 285 00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:04.150 those decisions in organizations really really interesting and I think you're right. I feel 286 00:21:04.150 --> 00:21:10.470 like that is the leading view and it's from the status quote to a better 287 00:21:10.549 --> 00:21:12.349 future, and I think it's probably one of the reasons we're seeing a lot 288 00:21:12.390 --> 00:21:18.859 more titles in structures around revenue in general that are responsible for the full customer 289 00:21:18.940 --> 00:21:23.500 life cycle, because you obviously, in a traditional sense, cs just takes 290 00:21:23.579 --> 00:21:26.579 whatever happens and makes the best of it. You know, yeah, we 291 00:21:26.700 --> 00:21:30.819 generated this revenues, so you can do to keep it. Yeah, and 292 00:21:30.180 --> 00:21:33.690 I think actually I think the mistake, I think would be a mistake to 293 00:21:33.769 --> 00:21:40.609 put it in revenue also because revenue leaders, well, I mean revenue later 294 00:21:40.970 --> 00:21:44.650 leaders generally have grown up within sales. So they're thinking, I've got a 295 00:21:44.690 --> 00:21:45.809 quota, I've got a number to hit. I'm going to do what it 296 00:21:45.849 --> 00:21:52.440 takes to hit the number, and they're less connected to the actual customer and 297 00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:59.039 revenue leader is more likely to make compromises in the selling process in order to 298 00:21:59.079 --> 00:22:02.349 hit their number because ultimately they're fired if they don't hit their numbers. That's 299 00:22:02.349 --> 00:22:06.230 all that matters. The customer success leader has the benefit of actually caring about 300 00:22:06.269 --> 00:22:08.190 the customer of themselves. A lot of times they don't have a number, 301 00:22:08.190 --> 00:22:11.750 or at least they're there co selling with the sales team. So they have 302 00:22:11.869 --> 00:22:17.059 the benefit of drive that. You could give them other metrics to drive towards 303 00:22:17.099 --> 00:22:19.779 that aren't about revenue. That allows them to really focus on what would help 304 00:22:19.819 --> 00:22:25.819 a customer be successful really good. So we've covered three of the four buckets. 305 00:22:25.859 --> 00:22:27.380 Might as well go for the fourth. What are what are one or 306 00:22:27.380 --> 00:22:33.210 two questions you really like around pricing? I've got three major questions that I 307 00:22:33.890 --> 00:22:41.609 ask within pricing. Probably the one that's most interesting for today's conversation is alternatives. 308 00:22:41.329 --> 00:22:48.279 So do competitors offer more affordable alternatives? And the way that I think 309 00:22:48.279 --> 00:22:53.039 about answering this question, and probably enough set is uniquely position to answer it. 310 00:22:53.680 --> 00:23:00.910 We're able to scan all communication between the customer success manager, the Customer 311 00:23:00.950 --> 00:23:04.589 Support Team and the customer. So we're able to track mentions of competitors. 312 00:23:04.990 --> 00:23:07.549 We don't have to. It's not we're not we don't require the CSM to 313 00:23:07.589 --> 00:23:11.829 document anything. This is all tracked automatically and so we can see. We 314 00:23:11.940 --> 00:23:17.140 can see when a customer is asking a question like hey, I heard you 315 00:23:17.220 --> 00:23:22.500 know x company offers this feature or x company is offering the same thing for 316 00:23:22.579 --> 00:23:27.529 x price. And so it's important for for the Product Marketing Team within a 317 00:23:27.650 --> 00:23:32.329 company, but especially for the out of csus to do the renewal, to 318 00:23:32.450 --> 00:23:37.410 know what the real competitive landscape looks looks like, where the pressures are coming 319 00:23:37.450 --> 00:23:41.440 from, whether that's pricing or feature based pressures, and then they can then 320 00:23:41.519 --> 00:23:45.200 the company can proactively react to that rather than being caught off guard when they 321 00:23:45.240 --> 00:23:49.079 lose an account to a competitor that they didn't even know that they were in 322 00:23:49.240 --> 00:23:53.799 competition with. As part of a renewal conversation, it's good. I like 323 00:23:55.039 --> 00:24:00.390 this affordable alternatives because it really sets features on the side a little bit. 324 00:24:00.430 --> 00:24:02.950 I mean parody of course, to talk a little bit. I mean you've 325 00:24:02.950 --> 00:24:06.309 been you've been in this space for years. Talk a little bit about product 326 00:24:06.349 --> 00:24:11.859 parity and maybe have you seen it at my impression is that it is dramatically 327 00:24:11.859 --> 00:24:17.339 accelerated. Would you say that that's true in your experience or observation? I'd 328 00:24:17.339 --> 00:24:19.619 say that's generally true. A lot of companies now are not trying to differentiate 329 00:24:19.900 --> 00:24:23.849 on straight features. They're trying to differentiate on quality of the experience that they 330 00:24:23.849 --> 00:24:27.890 did lover. So two companies might have identical feature sets, but one is 331 00:24:27.930 --> 00:24:32.450 much easier to use than others. Invite user testing was able to leverage that 332 00:24:33.009 --> 00:24:37.410 differentiator between itself and other competitors in the space because we invested so much time 333 00:24:37.529 --> 00:24:41.880 and building a really great experience. So even though competitors could offer the exact 334 00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:45.720 same thing at a much lower price, the user testing experience overall was so 335 00:24:45.799 --> 00:24:51.039 much easier to you. So I think there is a general trend towards looking 336 00:24:51.079 --> 00:24:56.109 for other differentiators outside of features in proddate spaces. It's good. So you 337 00:24:56.269 --> 00:25:00.029 are getting ready, even you're building this company. We're chatting a little bit 338 00:25:00.029 --> 00:25:03.309 about this before we hit record. I'd love to know your thoughts. As 339 00:25:03.349 --> 00:25:07.259 you're you know, you're in a where I'm going here is this product led 340 00:25:07.299 --> 00:25:12.740 versus sales and Marketing and growth conversation. That seems to be pretty popular to 341 00:25:12.859 --> 00:25:17.819 have these days. And obviously, if you're an established company with you know, 342 00:25:17.859 --> 00:25:19.700 let's just say, forty million R and you've been going to market for 343 00:25:19.819 --> 00:25:23.849 years and you know it'd be difficult to make a transition from one to the 344 00:25:23.930 --> 00:25:29.089 other. As an early stage and as you're putting this together, how did 345 00:25:29.130 --> 00:25:33.289 you think about about those two options? Are you doing a hybrid approach? 346 00:25:33.450 --> 00:25:37.880 Like how do you think about product led versus sales led? Yeah, I 347 00:25:37.960 --> 00:25:40.839 think a product les, sales let and marketing leaps. I wouldn't forget that 348 00:25:41.039 --> 00:25:45.920 option to and I think different types of companies are best suited for each of 349 00:25:45.039 --> 00:25:49.349 those three. The questions that I would ask before determining which strategy to go 350 00:25:49.509 --> 00:25:56.630 with our questions like how quickly can you deliver value and a self service customer 351 00:25:56.710 --> 00:26:00.190 experience? So if a customers trying it for themselves, how quickly can you 352 00:26:00.230 --> 00:26:04.940 get to value? How senior is the end user of your product? Are 353 00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:07.579 you selling into? This an obvious one. Are you selling it to SMB, 354 00:26:07.819 --> 00:26:12.059 mid market or enterprise? How quickly? How much cash runway do you 355 00:26:12.140 --> 00:26:15.299 have? How quickly do you need to grow? I think all of these 356 00:26:15.339 --> 00:26:18.609 questions factor into which decision you make, and so when I was thinking about 357 00:26:19.329 --> 00:26:23.009 enough said, I mean, ultimately we plan on selling into, you know, 358 00:26:23.049 --> 00:26:26.410 we're selling an AI product for a knowledge workers. Ultimately we're going to 359 00:26:26.450 --> 00:26:30.769 be selling into a senior executive of each of each department. But the users 360 00:26:30.250 --> 00:26:34.839 will be predominantly individual contributors, and so there's obviously a path for us to 361 00:26:36.359 --> 00:26:38.640 build a product life growth product, which is the one that we just launched 362 00:26:38.640 --> 00:26:44.039 a couple weeks ago, the inflow product. I don't like product led growth 363 00:26:44.119 --> 00:26:48.029 as the main driver of growth, and the reason why is product led growth 364 00:26:48.150 --> 00:26:52.190 takes a really long time to spool up. It can sometimes take three to 365 00:26:52.349 --> 00:26:56.589 five years before it's generating any meaningful revenue. Sometimes it could take ten years 366 00:26:56.630 --> 00:27:00.500 plus before you see, you know, all of these overnight success companies develop, 367 00:27:00.980 --> 00:27:04.740 when when really they've been building a product Lib growth engine for ten or 368 00:27:04.779 --> 00:27:07.940 more years. By the way, I think a good example of that is 369 00:27:07.380 --> 00:27:12.460 qual tricks, who you know, everyone knows the story. They exited for 370 00:27:12.700 --> 00:27:18.089 seven eight billion dollars, one of the biggest tech exits ever, and but 371 00:27:18.210 --> 00:27:22.529 the reality is, you know, Brian Smith and his dad started this company 372 00:27:22.289 --> 00:27:29.009 doing surveys for colleges twenty years ago, you know, and they've been stoking 373 00:27:29.049 --> 00:27:33.000 that product led growth engine for a really long time. So where I'm going 374 00:27:33.079 --> 00:27:36.839 with this is what I think for our company, and I would not advocate 375 00:27:37.079 --> 00:27:40.599 this for every other company, but for our company we're going to start with 376 00:27:40.680 --> 00:27:45.230 a sales led growth engine in the early days to kick start early market adoption, 377 00:27:45.589 --> 00:27:49.710 to get customer feedback, to grow the company for maybe, you know, 378 00:27:49.950 --> 00:27:56.630 from its current revenue to let's just say somewhere between thirty to fifty in 379 00:27:56.670 --> 00:28:00.180 AAR. And at that point, I'm hoping we're five or six years in, 380 00:28:00.619 --> 00:28:03.460 the product led growth engine has had enough time to Spool up and we 381 00:28:03.579 --> 00:28:07.980 can leverage the product Lib growth engine to drive future and a press sales. 382 00:28:07.019 --> 00:28:10.579 And by the way, really when we say a product like growth, all 383 00:28:10.579 --> 00:28:14.490 we're talking about is who generates the leads. Are you paying product to generate 384 00:28:14.529 --> 00:28:17.450 the leads? Are you paying marketing to generate the leads? Are repaying sales 385 00:28:17.490 --> 00:28:19.289 to generate the lead? So I'm hoping that, you know, by the 386 00:28:19.329 --> 00:28:25.089 time we get to that level of revenue, the product will be mature enough 387 00:28:25.130 --> 00:28:27.799 where it will be generating a substantial portion of the dent leads and we'll be 388 00:28:27.839 --> 00:28:33.119 able to at that point produce, or at least hold steady our investment in 389 00:28:33.200 --> 00:28:37.240 sales. It's good. Sounds healthy and balanced. I like that. I 390 00:28:37.359 --> 00:28:41.359 like the way you describe the lead growth scenario. There's a WHO generating the 391 00:28:41.400 --> 00:28:44.349 leads. I mean it goes straight to the definition of it, but I 392 00:28:44.470 --> 00:28:47.750 never thought about it that clearly before. It's interesting. I mean to your 393 00:28:47.829 --> 00:28:51.789 to your idea of like time to time to first value and can people realize 394 00:28:51.829 --> 00:28:53.430 it in a self serve way? It's interesting. In our space there's a 395 00:28:53.470 --> 00:28:59.259 lot more free and freemium than there was, say, you know, two, 396 00:28:59.460 --> 00:29:02.539 three, four years ago. But it's interesting as I talk with with 397 00:29:03.140 --> 00:29:07.380 executives that are thinking about implementing a simple personal video strategy inside their organization. 398 00:29:07.500 --> 00:29:10.769 Like yeah, I got to tell you we already tried video before. I 399 00:29:10.849 --> 00:29:12.650 was like that's interesting. Tell me more. Well, we used X company. 400 00:29:14.089 --> 00:29:15.210 I was like, how did it go? Well? Not Well, 401 00:29:15.210 --> 00:29:19.089 because we're having this conversation now and it's okay. What kind of onboarding and 402 00:29:19.170 --> 00:29:22.170 training did you get? How we didn't really get any. If you don't 403 00:29:22.170 --> 00:29:25.799 mind my asking what do you pay for this and how long was the commitment? 404 00:29:25.839 --> 00:29:27.880 I was free. So this idea of like, you know, just 405 00:29:29.039 --> 00:29:33.319 throwing it out there doesn't mean it's going to stick, and that's part of 406 00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:37.240 probably, I mean for the for where it sticks and where it doesn't stick. 407 00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:40.670 That's probably part of like the long spool up that you describe. Is 408 00:29:40.789 --> 00:29:45.029 like getting that feedback, knowing what's working, knowing why what's working is actually 409 00:29:45.109 --> 00:29:49.549 working, which is the most important thing to know. It's it's probably a 410 00:29:51.349 --> 00:29:55.660 you get you get users faster signed on, you get email address as faster 411 00:29:55.740 --> 00:29:59.380 as what I should say, maybe in a freer fremium scenario, but it 412 00:29:59.420 --> 00:30:03.500 doesn't mean that it's going to stick. Ethan. I love that example. 413 00:30:03.099 --> 00:30:07.170 It's really at the crux or the core of a successful product Lib Growth Strategy. 414 00:30:07.210 --> 00:30:12.930 Product live growth only works when you can narrow your audience to someone who 415 00:30:12.930 --> 00:30:17.849 feels the pain, the pain that you could solve. They feel the pain 416 00:30:18.049 --> 00:30:22.559 really intensely and the product does a wonderful job of alleviating that pain. And 417 00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:26.599 the problem with Fremium, of course, is the exactly what you said, 418 00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:30.039 which is that anyone can try it. Most people have a terrible experience. 419 00:30:30.359 --> 00:30:33.839 They're going to go tell on social media, they're going to go tell all 420 00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:37.589 other friends it's worthless. And now suddenly video, which is a very powerful 421 00:30:37.630 --> 00:30:42.869 tool to a lot of people, comes across as an ineffective tool when actually 422 00:30:42.910 --> 00:30:47.950 can be very effective. So I agree with you and actually, for that 423 00:30:48.029 --> 00:30:51.220 reason I'm I think for a lot of businesses, fremium does not make any 424 00:30:51.220 --> 00:30:56.420 sense, especially if they're using a product Lib growth strategy can't interesting. I 425 00:30:56.299 --> 00:31:00.779 call it bring the field before anything's been harvested. That's right, like that's 426 00:31:00.859 --> 00:31:07.210 it. Replay this whole thing, man. So before we wrap up here, 427 00:31:07.210 --> 00:31:08.769 and I really appreciate your time and your insights, I just want to 428 00:31:08.769 --> 00:31:11.609 hit one more thing, just based on your experience, especially as a board 429 00:31:11.650 --> 00:31:17.049 member, advisor and investor, and maybe even as you as you initiate this, 430 00:31:17.130 --> 00:31:19.559 this new effort. With enough said, talking about going from like down 431 00:31:19.599 --> 00:31:23.039 market to upmarket. I mean you covered like smb made an enterprise. You've 432 00:31:23.079 --> 00:31:29.519 probably seen people make transitions or start somewhere and wind up in another in another 433 00:31:29.559 --> 00:31:33.750 kind of go to market position from a from a size of customer standpoint. 434 00:31:33.990 --> 00:31:40.230 What can you share with folks that maybe want to transition well, first read 435 00:31:40.269 --> 00:31:44.910 the book crossing the Chasm, because I think it's a it's a good framework 436 00:31:45.269 --> 00:31:48.740 for how to think about the transition from, you know, smbs, who 437 00:31:48.779 --> 00:31:53.980 tend to be more entrepreneurial and their adoption of products that can make decisions very 438 00:31:53.980 --> 00:32:00.180 quickly, to more mid market or an enterprise buyer who makes decisions a very, 439 00:32:00.220 --> 00:32:02.769 very differently and the proof points that they need to make a decision are 440 00:32:02.769 --> 00:32:07.289 also different. And so I'd say first read the book crossing the Chasm, 441 00:32:07.329 --> 00:32:09.250 because that will give you a good framework to think about how you're going to 442 00:32:09.289 --> 00:32:13.890 make this jump into more of an upmarket buyer. The other thing to think 443 00:32:13.890 --> 00:32:21.279 about is enterprise. So SMB sales. If you're doing SMB sales, they 444 00:32:21.359 --> 00:32:23.440 tend to be very transactional. The deal lengths, I bet you know, 445 00:32:23.519 --> 00:32:28.240 your deal cycles are probably thirty to forty five days. You're probably selling a 446 00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:31.990 product that's five to fifteen k year. When you start talking about enterprise sales, 447 00:32:32.029 --> 00:32:37.150 it's a very different selling motion. So it's, you know, ninety 448 00:32:37.349 --> 00:32:40.069 two, hundred, eighty dight deal cycles. The deals are bigger. You've 449 00:32:40.069 --> 00:32:45.099 got three or four different key points of contact that you have to be in 450 00:32:45.180 --> 00:32:47.180 touch with. In order to get the deal done. So it really takes 451 00:32:47.259 --> 00:32:52.660 in a big investment in building a team around enterprise selling and one of the 452 00:32:52.740 --> 00:32:57.500 hardest things for CEOS to do in the early days is to make the financial 453 00:32:57.539 --> 00:33:01.089 commitment to build in the team that's necessary because in order to do true enterprise 454 00:33:01.130 --> 00:33:07.529 sales you need to have account executives, you need to have probably some kinds 455 00:33:07.569 --> 00:33:10.930 of some kind of solutions architect or sales engineer. You probably need need to 456 00:33:12.009 --> 00:33:16.000 have a legal team that's with a really sharp legal really good contract negotiator. 457 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:20.480 You're going to need to have a security team that's dealing with security audits. 458 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:24.359 And so the investment isn't twice as big to do is to sell enterprise. 459 00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:29.230 It might be eight times or ten times bigger. And so I think just 460 00:33:29.349 --> 00:33:31.630 in terms of, you know, mentally preparing for enterprise sales, it's one 461 00:33:31.630 --> 00:33:35.789 of the pieces of advice that I would give. And also you know, 462 00:33:35.910 --> 00:33:40.349 and this is another difficult thing for a generally the CEO to stomach, is 463 00:33:40.390 --> 00:33:45.859 that the team that you built in the early days to deliver well on SMB 464 00:33:45.980 --> 00:33:50.259 cells is very unlikely to be the team that's going to take int enterprise and 465 00:33:51.059 --> 00:33:54.140 that's hard because you've probably have key lieutenants, people that you really love at 466 00:33:54.180 --> 00:33:59.609 the company who have delivered great value for you, but unless they have a 467 00:34:00.650 --> 00:34:04.730 world class mentor, it's very unlikely that they're going to be able to learn 468 00:34:04.769 --> 00:34:10.000 about going from you know, for example, SMB focuses. Let's let's talk 469 00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:15.760 about marketing for a second. SMB marketing is all about content strategy and free 470 00:34:15.800 --> 00:34:21.639 trials and PR but when you start moving into enterprise you do much less content 471 00:34:21.719 --> 00:34:27.309 marketing. It's more about success stories, case studies, sales enablement for the 472 00:34:27.389 --> 00:34:32.150 sales team, account based marketing. It's a whole different set of skills that 473 00:34:32.230 --> 00:34:35.909 you need to on board into your company in order to make that transition. 474 00:34:36.030 --> 00:34:38.820 So, anyway, those are some some thoughts to you know, for for 475 00:34:38.900 --> 00:34:44.460 CEOS that are thinking of making the transition to consider before they make that decision. 476 00:34:44.940 --> 00:34:49.539 Great recommendation and great caution there, and I I'll just button that one 477 00:34:49.579 --> 00:34:52.530 up with what got you here might not get you there. It might whether 478 00:34:52.610 --> 00:34:57.130 by God and it requires a lot of a lot of training and adjustment really 479 00:34:57.170 --> 00:35:00.050 for everyone involved. This has been great, Chris, I love I was 480 00:35:00.130 --> 00:35:04.369 excited about this, this conversation. It did not disappoint in any way. 481 00:35:04.409 --> 00:35:07.039 You're just a wealth of knowledge and I really really appreciate your time. But 482 00:35:07.079 --> 00:35:10.719 before I let you go, and because relationships are our number one core value 483 00:35:10.760 --> 00:35:15.119 here at bombombing here on the PODCAST, I'd love to give you the chance 484 00:35:15.199 --> 00:35:17.320 to think or mention someone who's had a positive impact on your life, for 485 00:35:17.480 --> 00:35:21.510 your career, and to give a shout out to a company that you really 486 00:35:21.550 --> 00:35:24.869 respect for the way that they're delivering for you as a customer. H that's 487 00:35:24.909 --> 00:35:30.429 a great question. Can I ask first what the core value is? Yeah, 488 00:35:30.469 --> 00:35:35.309 it's relationships, just relationships. The dessert. Is there like a bullet 489 00:35:35.349 --> 00:35:39.139 point of or a type of behavior that that u a spouse or that you 490 00:35:39.619 --> 00:35:44.780 advocate for, you know, in order to build relationships? Yes, I 491 00:35:44.820 --> 00:35:47.500 will read you a short snippet. Relationships or the foundation of our business. 492 00:35:47.579 --> 00:35:52.530 Relationships are built about upon conversation, active listening and honest feedback. Our business 493 00:35:52.570 --> 00:35:59.010 is all about people and helping people reach their goals through building relationships. Well, 494 00:35:59.090 --> 00:36:01.650 thanks for sharing that. Our for first core value as also we build 495 00:36:01.690 --> 00:36:06.480 thirty year relationships. So good overlap there. So yeah, so let's let's 496 00:36:06.480 --> 00:36:08.480 talk about maybe I'll first talk about companies that I want to give a shout 497 00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:12.519 out to. The first one while we're doing a zoom call right now. 498 00:36:13.079 --> 00:36:15.800 So I want to give a shout out to zoom for couple reasons. One 499 00:36:15.880 --> 00:36:20.230 is, as the company has scaled rapidly on board of tons of new customers. 500 00:36:20.269 --> 00:36:23.349 They've gone IPO. The quality of their core service has not diminished at 501 00:36:23.469 --> 00:36:28.630 all and I'm just so thankful for that because we've seen other companies in the 502 00:36:28.670 --> 00:36:31.550 space go through similar transitions and it has not gone well for them. So 503 00:36:32.019 --> 00:36:37.539 many thanks to zoom, largely, I think, probably because of Eric Yuan's 504 00:36:37.019 --> 00:36:43.019 obsessive customer focus. I mean he is one hundred percent all about his customers 505 00:36:43.059 --> 00:36:45.579 all day long. He wakes up every morning and ask his senior staff to 506 00:36:45.619 --> 00:36:50.610 let him know what customers have said about zoom yesterday. That's that's what he's 507 00:36:50.610 --> 00:36:52.650 all about. So I want to say make a big, big shot out 508 00:36:52.690 --> 00:36:57.050 and thanks to zoom. That's the bigger company. The smaller company I want 509 00:36:57.050 --> 00:37:00.289 to give a shout out to is rippling. So we use them for whether 510 00:37:00.369 --> 00:37:07.119 I there. They are our HR HRIS system. They I feel like they've 511 00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:12.320 built a product in a way that has anticipated all of my needs as an 512 00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:17.190 early stage company. They you know, tax forms, insurance, asset tracking, 513 00:37:17.349 --> 00:37:21.989 payroll, all those things are built in and easy to use and integrate. 514 00:37:22.150 --> 00:37:23.630 So I want to say a big shot out and thanks to the team 515 00:37:23.670 --> 00:37:27.469 at replaying. Really appreciate what you're doing over there. And, by the 516 00:37:27.510 --> 00:37:30.539 way, it's not just in the product. They offer self help tutorials. 517 00:37:31.059 --> 00:37:37.219 Their website experiences very intuitive. So that team is doing a really great job. 518 00:37:37.940 --> 00:37:40.019 Sounds incredibly valuable and probably, I mean this gets to the other, 519 00:37:40.260 --> 00:37:43.940 the other key factor. They're, in addition to product, party, and 520 00:37:44.099 --> 00:37:47.050 we've been talking a lot about hyper competition and how much easier it is and 521 00:37:47.130 --> 00:37:52.210 how much faster companies can go starting today. I just think about you know, 522 00:37:52.289 --> 00:37:54.809 you starting this company today, versus our cofounders starting our company, you 523 00:37:54.889 --> 00:37:59.079 know, and in two thousand and six and what it took just to organize 524 00:37:59.119 --> 00:38:01.400 some of that legal stuff, that the TA tax documents and all that. 525 00:38:01.480 --> 00:38:06.400 It's like this idea that you can build a company to solve a very specific 526 00:38:06.440 --> 00:38:09.519 and acute problem like that helps all the other companies that sign on with them 527 00:38:09.880 --> 00:38:14.030 get to their market, get to their customers, get to their value faster 528 00:38:15.190 --> 00:38:20.510 and and unlike your founders, I probably have spent a grand total of forty 529 00:38:20.590 --> 00:38:24.030 five minutes dealing with all these tax and other forms. So very thankful that 530 00:38:24.309 --> 00:38:28.579 rippling has solved all that for me. That's awesome. That's great, Chris. 531 00:38:28.619 --> 00:38:30.980 I'm going to let you go, but before I do, if people 532 00:38:30.980 --> 00:38:32.739 enjoyed this conversation, they want to follow up with you. They want to 533 00:38:32.780 --> 00:38:36.860 follow up with enough said, like where would you direct people if they want 534 00:38:36.860 --> 00:38:38.860 to learn more about what you're up to? The easiest thing is just too 535 00:38:38.860 --> 00:38:45.050 good enough. Saidcom and you ffsaidcom tells you a little bit about the product. 536 00:38:45.289 --> 00:38:49.289 It's where you can go sign up for our current rook early access list. 537 00:38:49.889 --> 00:38:53.449 If you sign up now, we're basically committing to giving you a lifetime 538 00:38:53.730 --> 00:38:59.960 price point of ten bucks per person per month. So when we launched it'll 539 00:38:59.960 --> 00:39:02.320 be a higher price point prior higher price point than that, but you can 540 00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:06.880 lock it in at a lower price for being an early and early a doctor 541 00:39:06.920 --> 00:39:09.909 of the product. And actually, I feel like I feel like I should 542 00:39:09.909 --> 00:39:14.510 also you asked about someone who who had an impact in my life. Do 543 00:39:14.949 --> 00:39:16.829 have time to yeah, it's I feel like I need to give a shout 544 00:39:16.829 --> 00:39:22.030 out to Ken well Er. Ken was the SVP of sales at best by, 545 00:39:22.989 --> 00:39:27.420 and especially during their big growth here. So that's when they went you 546 00:39:27.500 --> 00:39:30.019 know, they grew to twenty billion plus and sales. He was also the 547 00:39:30.139 --> 00:39:34.219 CEO of a company called the good guys. I don't know if you remember 548 00:39:34.260 --> 00:39:38.250 that business, but they were kind of like a electronics retailer. He ended 549 00:39:38.289 --> 00:39:43.809 up selling that business to Carlos Slim. But when he would do what he 550 00:39:43.929 --> 00:39:47.170 would visit stores. You know, you'd take this the head of sales would 551 00:39:47.170 --> 00:39:52.119 be one hundred percent focused on sales and sales improvement. But when Ken walked 552 00:39:52.159 --> 00:39:57.159 into the stores he would judge the quality of the store by the number of 553 00:39:57.239 --> 00:40:00.119 lights that are out on the ceiling. You Know Big Buye. Best buy 554 00:40:00.199 --> 00:40:06.480 has these big warehouse like offices with no natural light, and so they took 555 00:40:06.519 --> 00:40:08.429 the time to invest in really a really nice lighting system. So felt very 556 00:40:08.469 --> 00:40:13.110 bright inside the store. And so when he walked into a store and saw 557 00:40:13.190 --> 00:40:15.469 that a light bubbles out, he knew that the manager of that store was 558 00:40:15.550 --> 00:40:21.349 not obsessing about the quality of the customers experience. And so, anyway, 559 00:40:21.389 --> 00:40:25.260 I always thought I was fascinating that a guy like Ken was so focused on 560 00:40:25.340 --> 00:40:30.340 customer experience and so detail oriented that he noticed lights being out, and I 561 00:40:30.380 --> 00:40:34.820 felt like that was a good lesson for me about what true customer obsession actually 562 00:40:34.860 --> 00:40:37.289 looks like. So thank you again. I really really appreciate that. Yeah, 563 00:40:37.289 --> 00:40:39.610 it's really good. It's a great story and it is. I mean 564 00:40:39.690 --> 00:40:44.969 it's like overlooking the blocking and tackling I mean it's another thing we've had on 565 00:40:45.050 --> 00:40:49.329 the show is just being slightly better than average almost all of the time. 566 00:40:50.199 --> 00:40:52.559 Is it gives you a great experience and so when you start making exceptions, 567 00:40:52.679 --> 00:40:57.079 like I maybe will get to that light sometime, you know, as soon 568 00:40:57.119 --> 00:41:00.320 as you start making exceptions, you're immediately out of the running for being slightly 569 00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:04.829 above average almost all the time. That's a great way to summarize it and 570 00:41:04.949 --> 00:41:08.429 a wholeheartedly agree. Cool, Chris Hicken. Thank you so much for spending 571 00:41:08.469 --> 00:41:12.989 time on the podcast today. Folks check out. Enough said. I assume 572 00:41:13.110 --> 00:41:16.949 that everyone listening to this faces some version of the problem that they're tackling out 573 00:41:16.989 --> 00:41:21.340 of the gate. Ai will just make it even smarter and better and I 574 00:41:21.659 --> 00:41:22.139 hope you have a great rest of your day and I hope you have a 575 00:41:22.179 --> 00:41:24.980 great rest of your week. Many thanks you than I appreciate the invite to 576 00:41:24.980 --> 00:41:30.619 join the show. Product usage. It's binary. It isn't enough. I 577 00:41:30.699 --> 00:41:35.530 hope you enjoyed that conversation with Chris Hicken. If you want to check out 578 00:41:35.610 --> 00:41:45.690 video clips of this episode or other episodes, visit bombombcom podcast. Bomb Bombcom 579 00:41:45.969 --> 00:41:52.199 podcast. There you can see every episode of the customer Experience Podcast, more 580 00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:58.320 conversations like this one, again with video clips, Short write ups, embedded 581 00:41:58.400 --> 00:42:04.309 audio and links to listen and subscribe in Apple podcasts, Google podcast, spotify 582 00:42:04.469 --> 00:42:09.349 and other podcast platforms. My name is Ethan, but check out Bombombcom podcast 583 00:42:09.750 --> 00:42:16.460 and thanks for listening to betb growth. Gary v says it all the time 584 00:42:16.940 --> 00:42:22.940 and we agree. Every company should think of themselves as a media company first, 585 00:42:22.940 --> 00:42:27.579 then whatever it is they actually do. If you know this is true, 586 00:42:27.659 --> 00:42:30.289 but your team is already maxed out and you can't produce any more content 587 00:42:30.449 --> 00:42:34.929 in house, we can help. We produce podcasts for some of the most 588 00:42:35.050 --> 00:42:38.130 innovative bb brands in the world and we also help them turn the content from 589 00:42:38.130 --> 00:42:43.929 the podcast and the blog posts micro videos and slide decks that work really well 590 00:42:43.969 --> 00:42:46.280 on Linkedin. If you want to learn more, go to sweet fish Mediacom 591 00:42:46.840 --> 00:42:51.280 launch or email logan at sweet fish Mediacom
