February 2017 Summaries

Using Intercom as a tool for design helps the author base their work on data and evidence of real customer needs and problems, rather than assumptions and guesswork. The author has learned to use Intercom to better understand customer feedback by analyzing conversations and messages sent by users, identifying common themes and pain points, and gathering insights that inform product roadmap decisions. Additionally, Intercom is used to analyze user behavior, such as why users choose one messaging tool over another, and how designers can use this information to improve their designs and create a better user experience. Overall, the author emphasizes the importance of incorporating customer feedback into the design process and using tools like Intercom to facilitate this process.

The article highlights the importance of collaboration between sales and support teams in providing excellent customer experiences. By removing ambiguity about which team covers what, these teams can work together to better service customers. The article also emphasizes the need for context to be provided when passing conversations between sales and support teams, ensuring that the right person is available to help with each issue. Additionally, the article explores how feedback from support teams improves the sales process by providing insights into customer pain points and areas where sales can improve their value proposition. Ultimately, close collaboration between sales and support teams leads to better outcomes for customers and business success.

Intercom, a customer messaging platform, has reached a significant milestone with 100,000 monthly active users. This growth is accompanied by an increase in conversations with customers to over 400 million per month. The company has also seen success with its new product, Articles, which has generated $1.5M in annual recurring revenue just two months after launch. Intercom's customer base includes a diverse range of companies, from small startups to larger enterprises like Stripe and Microsoft. The company is trending towards profitability and plans to continue investing in its products and infrastructure to support future growth. With a focus on making business personal, Intercom aims to provide a simple platform for businesses to connect with their customers, while also expanding its ecosystem through third-party integrations. The company's mission is to make Intercom affordable for all, including baby companies, by offering cheaper pricing options in the future.

As a product manager, direct customer contact is crucial in tapping into their energy reserve, providing firsthand empathy and validation of convictions. This can be achieved through regular calls, usability tests, or even just observing customers' behaviors. Prioritizing time effectively to get frequent jolts of direct customer contact can help energize a PM. However, it's also important to take energy from the middle of projects, not just the beginning and end, by finding moments like scoping, where constraints can be used to make progress and drive forward. Additionally, shipping products should be accompanied by learning and gaining new confidence in what to do next, even if it means throwing out previous work. By recognizing these sources of energy, product managers can boost their motivation and drive innovation.

As an engineer, the author is puzzled by seemingly unnecessary design elements like tailfins in cars, which add no functional value but served as a competitive advantage through their aesthetic appeal. The concept of dominant design explains how one product becomes the standard and influences consumer perception, making it difficult for new entrants to compete. When a dominant design emerges, consumers have a clear picture of what the product should look like, and differentiation is achieved through branding and advertising rather than solely focusing on functionality. Understanding whether a dominant design exists, finding a niche that nobody else is serving, and embracing non-functional design elements are key takeaways for building products today.

The text discusses the importance of finding the optimal timeframe for product development and planning. The authors reflect on their own experience and research, concluding that a 6-week cycle is the "Goldilocks" timeframe - not too short, not too long, but just right. This cycle provides a balance between making commitments and giving teams enough flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. The authors argue that longer timeframes, such as 6 months, can lead to negative consequences like decreased team motivation, lack of credibility for R&D, and straitjacket-like planning constraints. In contrast, the 6-week cycle allows teams to focus on execution, prioritize goals, and make meaningful commitments without feeling too constrained. The authors propose a framework that includes goals, not plans, accountability, and flexibility within the 6-week cycle, which they believe strikes the right balance for building good software.

The article emphasizes the importance of integrating customer support with the product development process to ensure that products are improved based on customer feedback. A separate and isolated support team can lead to mediocre products, as they may not receive or understand the impact of their mistakes. The root cause of every problem has an owner, who is responsible for fixing it. The article suggests that product owners should go through five stages of grief when faced with problems, which include denial, discredit, and deflecting data before taking action. Implementing a process where customer support team members are tagged with root cases makes it easier to see the impact of their work and feed feedback back into product design.

At Intercom, hiring a great customer support representative is crucial to the company's reputation and morale. To find the right candidate, it's essential to look for core qualities such as enjoyment in helping people, a strong sense of team spirit, proactivity, resourcefulness, problem-solving skills, and a passion for technology. The interview process involves multiple rounds, including email and phone screeners, on-site interviews with various team members, and a debrief session to review feedback. It's also crucial to avoid common pitfalls such as hiring under pressure, not involving the support team in the interview process, falling into the culture fit trap, and not providing detailed feedback to rejected candidates. By taking a thorough and selective approach, Intercom is able to find exceptional talent that aligns with their values and contributes to the team's high performance.

Voice bots have emerged as a promising solution to the limitations of text-based chatbots in various contexts, particularly in customer service and personal communication. The use of voice interfaces can provide more natural and human-like interactions, allowing for better understanding of context, intent, and sentiment. Voice chatbots are drawing inspiration from offline conversations, enabling two-way, contextually aware conversations that can perform a variety of day-to-day tasks efficiently. Technology exists today to support the development of voice bots, with applications in personal and business settings, including voice-activated digital assistants on desktop computers and integration into popular platforms like Google Hangouts, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. The shift towards voice-based interactions has the potential to revolutionize communication, making it more efficient and human-like.

Conversational UI is emerging and has the potential to revolutionize app experiences, but it can also be derailed by poor design choices. To avoid numbing users to conversational UI, designers must consider seven guidelines: conversations should mirror real-life patterns, use natural language and flow; messages should fit on screen, contain complete units with white space for readability; conversations are transcripts, meaning changes or edits to past messages can be confusing and unethical; messages are fossils, and should not be changed or edited if possible; no fakery is needed, with clear attribution and distinct voices; bots should be invited to the conversation, triggered by user actions or conditions, and have structured replies for focused purposes. By following these guidelines, designers can create effective conversational UI that enhances user engagement and experience.

Supporting customers is an essential investment for any company looking to grow and retain its customer base, rather than a cost that can be easily cut. Reducing spend on support can lead to unhappy customers leaving and eroding profitability in the long run. Intercom's experience has shown that customers who require support are worth 2.5 times more in revenue compared to those who don't. To determine how much to invest in support, companies need to calculate a breakeven point by estimating factors such as acquisition cost, activation cost, retention cost, annual recurring revenue, and expansion/referral revenue. A simple formula can be used to calculate the breakeven per customer support spend and lifetime value/customer acquisition cost ratio, which can help guide investment decisions in support. For long-term success, companies should consider customer support as a key lever for growth alongside sales and marketing efforts.