CX For Start-ups, Part 2

Release Date: April 26, 2022 • Episode #214

In Part 1 of “CX for Start-ups” guest Jen Batley discussed why it’s so important for new companies to really be in-tune with their customers. Knowing their needs while providing a product or service that disrupts the field is critical for start-ups. But what if you’ve been around for a while and are looking to scale-up? Are you providing what you promised to your customers? How are you listening to your customers while you grow your company? Host Steve Walker welcomes back Jen Batley of Batley Advisory to discuss companies looking to scale-up their business.

Read Jen’s article on Customer Think: “Engage, then Embed: CX for Start-Ups and Scale-Ups 🚀.”

Jen Batley
Batley Advisory
Connect with Jen

Highlights

Start with a journey map

“One of the ones that I think companies should really start with and I recommend a lot is to start here with a basic customer journey map before you start to dig in and add some of that process and systematizing or adding people to your team. Really understand what you want that path for your customer to be and take a look at where the biggest gaps or disconnects. And if I could close some of those, which ones would have the biggest impact on my customer and especially on that retention number so that you’re not bringing people in who just ultimately leave.”

Don’t go overboard on metrics

“…we know sometimes companies can go a little overboard trying to attach metrics to everything. And when we think about the startups and scale ups in particular, we need to think about the fact that they’re they’re learning, they’re experimenting. They don’t have necessarily their business model nailed down or their product nailed down. So a lot of those metrics that are more traditionally measured are going to be lumpy or squishy because they’ll reflect some of that shifting. So we don’t see smooth trend lines. We don’t see the kinds of things that that more established companies would typically see. What we do expect, though, is that these companies should be thinking about metrics and especially the customer metrics.”

Transcript

The CX Leader Podcast: "CX for Start-ups, Part 2": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The CX Leader Podcast: "CX for Start-ups, Part 2": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Steve:
In our last episode, we discussed why it's important for new companies to really understand their customers. But what about companies that are starting to scale it up?

Jen:
Start here with a basic customer journey map before you start to dig in and add some of that process and systematizing or adding people to your team and take a look at where are the biggest gaps or disconnects. And if I could close some of those, which ones would have the biggest impact on my customer? And especially on that retention.

Steve:
We'll move the conversation from start up to scale ups on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Steve:
Hello, everyone. I'm Steve Walker, host of The CX Leader Podcast and thank you for listening. It's never been a better time to be a CX leader and this podcast explores topics and themes to help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of your customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. In our last episode, I spoke to my good friend and former colleague Jen Batley on why it's so important for new companies to really be in tune with their customers. Knowing their needs while providing a product or service that disrupts the field is critical for startups. But what if you've been around for a while and are looking to scale up? How are you providing what you promised to your customers? How are you listening to your customers while you grow your company? Well, that's our topic for part two of our CX for Start-up series, and I'm definitely delighted to welcome back Jen Batley to the podcast. She is the founder and executive consultant for Batley Advisory and advisor to early stage start-ups and scale-ups. Jen, welcome back to The CX Leader Podcast.

Jen:
Great to be here again, Steve.

Steve:
Well, we left our last episode discussing the need for having the deeper conversations with customers to glean those really important insights. And for our listeners, if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend that you go back and do so. You can find it on cxleaderpodcast.com or from your favorite podcast service. But I want to move the conversation to more of the scale ups. You come through the startup phase and actually do have a viable product or service and you're starting to scale. Often a lot of these startup ventures are designed to grow very quickly. So how do you make that transition? How do you make sure that the early discipline becomes part of the mature processes that develop as you get to scale?

Jen:
Yeah, that's a really great question. And you mentioned a couple of things that really hit it. You found your product market fit. You're getting that traction with your customers. Now you want to grow and scale. And for a lot of companies, this is where a lot more investor money comes into the mix, too. So they're under feel like they're under more pressure to grow quickly. What that means from a customer experience point of view is now you need to start to think about how do I take some of the the more traditional customer listening practices and customer support practices and bring them into my company in a way that's still right sized. So we can't overburden with process to early on, but we need some and there needs to be some structure and some system in place to help make that growth manageable. Otherwise you get scale up companies who they found that fit. They're ready to go. They put the pedal down on growth. And their service falls flat. So, you know, they start to get really high churn numbers. And that's not great news either. You've got great acquisition numbers coming in. Everything looks great in practice, but the sort of layer beneath the promises isn't quite there. So it also comes back to, I think you mentioned early on this idea of are you clear on the value that you're providing. And so again, this is where the promise that you're making upfront and all that great feedback you got early on needs to translate into the value that customers were looking for so that they stick around.

Jen:
This is where I talked about bringing in more of these practices. One of the ones that I think companies should really start with and I recommend a lot is to start here with a basic customer journey map before you start to dig in and add some of that process and systematizing or adding people to your team. Really understand what you want that path for your customer to be and take a look at where the biggest gaps or disconnects. And if I could close some of those, which ones would have the biggest impact on my customer and especially on that retention number so that you're not bringing people in who just ultimately leave. So a lot of times that big disconnect is the onboarding stage. So transitioning from the end of that sales cycle to having a customer who's a real regular user of your product. So paying attention to to that transition is where a lot of companies get started. And again, if I could share an example, I've just recently started to learn more about a company called Corfix.

Jen:
They're building jobsite management software for construction companies. So again, Steve, something I know a lot about. [laughing] Shawn, who's the founder, worked in construction for, I think over ten years. So again, he's one of these founders who knows the business. He's seen the pain firsthand. He knows how the people in it work from the decision makers to the site crew. He's got the adoption to prove it. So he's built something that really works. And it really is changing almost the culture of how these job sites work. They can put the pedal down on sales, but their customer success team would be overwhelmed by that volume. So he's put a system in place that guides the process and he's looking to develop the team and the process so that every new customer has a great onboarding experience. And they have to do that in a way that isn't. Now the founder holding the customer's hand and that's not specific to this company. That's just you do things early on. They can't scale. They're much higher touch. That's great at the beginning. Now you need to look for ways to scale that, to train up a team and to bring in a little bit of discipline so that you can build that stickiness and expand the usage of your product.

Steve:
Yeah, it's actually this is pretty prevalent in the in the startup literature, the founders dilemma. And so there's lots of stuff you could just search on that. But I think in particular, as it relates to CX, you're right, you know, now you've got a product, but it can't be so dependent on on one individual or bad process that won't scale. So just one other thought on that. You know, again, in an early stage or even even if you're a more mature company, but you've just started to put in a sophisticated customer listening process. What you were talking about there is is to tie the X-data back to the O-data. So I've got a product that's starting to grow. I'm not going to, you know, for the investors, for example, I'm not going to grow so fast that I can't service it well. And again, most of these tech firms are looking for some sort of recurring revenue. And I think that's the key here, is if you can really put in the customer listening in a way that drives or supports that story, it will take you a long way with your investors and probably even with your good customers, too.

Jen:
Yeah, it definitely will. And I think when we think about the SaaS world in particular, yes, they want that recurring revenue. The companies do, the investors do, everyone does. And the closer you can get to your customers early on and bring them with you as you scale, the more successful you're going to be at getting that acquisition. And I think where we see that even more and is even more important is in companies where they're looking to benefit from network effects or growth loops or this idea of double sided marketplaces and really trying to create a flywheel within their customer base where it starts to market itself and it starts to expand because of the connections that customers have. And they'll sort of they'll tell their friends and they'll tell their friends or their colleagues, and you get this draw into your product and your growth really starts to spin. And that's again, that's that's really great. As long as you've started to think about how do you get the feedback from customers as they're going through that growth with you and make sure that you're finding the scale to support them. And a lot of times startups can start to say bridge that transition between startup and scale up and starting to bring in metrics and move from really highly qualitative to a little more quantitative. By working with a really small group, kind of a community of trusted advisors and early advocates inside their customer base, and use them almost as a sounding board for some of the new, whether it's structure or process or product features or what it might be that they're going to bring in and help to get early feedback before things start to go broad to the full base.

Jen:
And that gives you a real strong group of advocates who will help you trigger that exponential growth that everybody is looking for. And you can see it show up in your metrics and help you benefit from their feedback as you refine your product. And one example of that, if I could share, there's a company called Fictionary. This is a company who's developed AI based story editing software. They help writers and editors create better fiction faster. And they're the founder Christina is an author. So again, she's lived the problem. She understands the challenges that both writers and editors face. They had really found great traction for their product already. They had product market fit for their writers in particular. They wanted to balance that with the editors side and really drive that growth a little more because they knew if they could get more editors into the mix, that they would bring more writers with them. And so they brought a cohort of editors in. They started doing certification sessions. The editors become experts in the tool. They also get to provide input on the roadmap. They get promoted through Fictionary's channels, and then they get connected to more writers and bring writers in. And this has really let the Fictionary really refine and crystallize that offer for the editors side of their marketplace. And what they're finding now is they've got that right mix and they're starting to see really significant growth month over month. And this is a team who's really fantastic at that, listening to customers and parsing out what are the pieces that you should integrate into your business and how can you translate that to results for you?

Steve:
That's great. You've really given us a great formula for how this ought to be done and and use some real world examples.

Steve:
Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is no stranger to The CX Leader Podcast. She's been a guest, I think, three times prior, but it's Jen Batley who runs Batley Advisory, which provides great advice and advisory services to startups and scale ups early stage that are primarily technology driven. She's really been giving us a great overview of how a new company could embrace the principles of CX right from the get go and all the way through scale up. So we've talked a lot. You've had some great examples and frameworks, but you know, let's just talk specifically about the kind of metrics that you want to use at the early stage or at the high growth stage.

Jen:
Metrics is a great topic to dig into, and we know sometimes companies can go a little overboard trying to attach metrics to everything. And when we think about the startups and scale ups in particular, we need to think about the fact that they're they're learning, they're experimenting. They don't have necessarily their business model nailed down or their product nailed down. So a lot of those metrics that are more traditionally measured are going to be lumpy or squishy because they'll reflect some of that shifting. So we don't see smooth trend lines. We don't see the kinds of things that that more established companies would typically see. What we do expect, though, is that these companies should be thinking about metrics and especially the customer metrics. So when we look at across that landscape acquisition metrics, whether that's customer acquisition or revenue acquisition, along with retention and churn metrics, are really the things that are going to give early stage companies a more quantified view of how close they are to product market fit and are they getting the traction they need for growth. And I would say, especially when they start to look to raise capital, they're definitely going to be asked for those acquisition metrics by their potential funders. So starting to measure those early, even knowing that there's yep, there's going to be people falling out the bottom. That's okay. The investors know that too. But use that to give yourself information about that search for fit. Then when they hit the scale up, stage churn becomes even more important because they're you want to see that quantity falling at the bottom of your funnel shrink.

Jen:
Right. So if there's high churn, that's. A signal that there's a value gap and that's going to be a red flag. And you should be paying attention to that and refining your offer, listening to where are those triggers that are causing people to to leave you. The last one I would mention is Net Promoter Score. This one is one that investors are starting to pay more and more attention to. They're using it as a proxy for customer stickiness and future growth. So it's a good idea to start to measure that relatively early. Once you think you've got a good handle on who your ideal customers are and use it to improve the customer experience so that you're actually getting the benefits of the information, that number can tell you. Beyond that, I would say think about the metrics that are really going to best inform your success. So this might mean you focus on product measures early, it might mean you launch something like a post onboarding survey. It might be something that service triggered. Pick something that's really right for the business that you're starting because you're not going to have the resources to manage a really complex ecosystem of surveys, be more surgical in the metrics that you're going to bring in, and just measure some things that really are going to make a difference for your performance.

Steve:
Really great overview. Thanks, Jen. It's like early on you talked about we knew we could service these types of customers so we can't, but these types were not a good fit. So our whole sales process is designed to find these customers. Then they we retain their licenses. And because of that, because we have a high net promoter score for these guys. And then, you know, I think even like I think it could be a very interesting discussion with the investors to say, hey, early on we identified this was an obstacle and we overcame it. So you start to have some track record there of really understanding your customers and being able to prove it with the outcomes.

Jen:
And when you're looking for seed stage investment, in particular, those those investors, they understand…

Steve:
Oh yeah.

Jen:
…that the challenge is those businesses, they know you're not going to have perfect metrics. What they want to hear is that you're paying attention to them and you can explain why they are, what they are, and that you're making the right moves to solidify and get the growth that you're after.

Steve:
No, you're right. Those those people are very sophisticated. And they're they're usually investing in in the management team and they want to see that skill so. Great. Hey, Jen, we've reached that point of the podcast where I ask every guest to leave us with their take home value. That's their best tip or something that any of our pros who are listening today could take back and apply tomorrow, next Monday, whenever, and actually make an improvement in their program. I think with all the content you've shared, one tip may be a challenge, but I'll throw it. I'll throw down the gantlet to you anyway and ask you for your take home value.

Jen:
All right. Well, I would say I think this is one that can apply, whether you're working at a the idea stage, a startup, a scale up or in your if you're in a more established company, the tip I would leave is talk to your customers. You can learn a lot from just having a conversation with your customers and really listening to what they're telling you. And you know, Steve, I've always said your customers will tell you what you need to know. How you use it is up to you.

Steve:
That's a great tip. Yeah, we can't always get to the solution, but we can start to identify the barriers or the things that we ought to be solving for. Hey, Jen Batley is the founder and executive consultant for Batley Advisory, and she's been a delightful guest. Jen, thanks for coming on The CX Leader Podcast. It was really a pleasure to catch up with you and and have you on the show.

Jen:
Yeah, thanks for having me back.

Steve:
Well, and if anybody would like to continue the conversation, can you just refer us to your website or where they might be able to connect with you?

Jen:
Yeah, the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. So Jennifer Batley on LinkedIn or @JBatley on Twitter.

Steve:
Great. And you're very active. I know. So thank you. That's they shouldn't it shouldn't be hard to find you on social media. Hey, and if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business' customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show, find all of our previous episodes podcast series Contact Information. You can drop me a note, let us know how we're doing. Suggest a possible topic for a future podcast. We'd love to hear from you. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experienced management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader. So go forth and do it. Make your companies more customer focused. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next time.