October 2022 Summaries

The text discusses optimizing sales strategies for SaaS companies, drawing from the experience of Mark Organ, CEO of Categorynauts and Influitive, and Sanj Bhayro, VP Sales at Intercom. Key takeaways include creating a strong champion who acts as an advocate for your solution, not being afraid to start small with successful early deals that can lead to expansion across the account. Different companies require different sales motions, and executive-to-executive engagement is crucial for building trust and alignment, which can contribute to a longer-term partnership approach and broader opportunities.

At Intercom, trust is at the core of every relationship between a business and its customers. The company prioritizes data privacy and compliance, protecting customer data with robust security practices, tailored role-specific staff training, and rigorous adherence to regulations. Intercom stores and processes customer data securely, with encryption in transit and at rest, access limited to authorized employees, and quarterly reviews of access levels. The company also provides employee security training, granular control over workspace access, identity verification, and automatic data deletion upon request or after 13 months of inactivity. Intercom maintains various industry-recognized accreditations, including SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO/IEC 27001, and ISO/IEC 27018 certifications, demonstrating its commitment to protecting customer data. The company continues to refine its data privacy and compliance standards, with a focus on transparency and customer feedback.

Intercom has announced new features to enhance its customer support product, including a ticketing system that allows customers to submit requests and receive responses in the same platform. This system, called "tickets," enables businesses to offer personalized, efficient, and effective customer support while maintaining a manageable workload. The tickets feature is designed to reduce costs, improve efficiency and response times, and enhance customer satisfaction by providing transparency into request status. Additionally, Intercom's next-generation Messenger offers a fully customizable experience for both teams and customers, allowing for enhanced customer experiences, efficient query handling, and automated bot building with its visual no-code builder.

Intercom has announced the latest releases of its customer engagement platform, which includes a reinvented Messenger, Checklists, and an email template editor. The new Messenger offers customization options to match the brand's style and content, while also providing features like tooltips for guided product experiences and News sections for announcements. Checklists aim to guide customers through onboarding processes or prompt existing users to take specific actions. The new email template editor allows non-technical users to design personalized and engaging emails without coding, with customizable templates and dynamic content options. These updates enhance customer engagement and provide more opportunities for businesses to build meaningful relationships with their customers.

A user community is a digital space designed for a software product's users where they can ask questions, share feedback, and collaborate on finding new ways to use the software. This space typically takes the shape of an online forum or portal with posts, comments, and response buttons, but also exists on instant messaging platforms such as Slack. User communities are beneficial for brands as they create a place for users to build relationships with each other, allowing them to leverage their collective brain power; extend a brand's value beyond its software by showing customers that the brand is invested in their needs; provide a means for customers to give feedback that companies can take into their product roadmap; offer a platform for prolific users to become advocates for the software; and engage directly with customers without being viewed as a sales opportunity. Successful user communities, such as those found on Asana, Slack, Duolingo, and Intercom, are characterized by their ease of use, community engagement, and opportunities for users to provide feedback and contribute to the product's development.

Eoghan McCabe, Intercom's chairman and former CEO, is returning to lead the company as CEO, replacing Karen Peacock who stepped down from her role. Eoghan had previously led the company from 2011 to 2020 before stepping down and asked Karen to take over. He has expressed a vision for Intercom to become the dominant platform in the customer support space, going head-to-head with Zendesk. Eoghan also thanked Karen Peacock for her hard work and loyalty to the company, acknowledging her significant contributions during her tenure as CEO and COO. The transition is expected to be smooth, with Karen taking on an advisory role to support the change.

At Intercom, product principles are centered around starting with the problem to achieve better solutions. This principle is crucial as it ensures that companies focus on real customer problems and avoid building solutions without a clear understanding of the issue. The company values principles over process, prioritizing problem definition and understanding over immediate progress or glamor. They recognize that people are wired to think in solutions, but emphasize the importance of taking time to break down and analyze customer problems. Intercom's engineering team uses a system view to understand how their product works or doesn't work together, and involves multiple stakeholders in researching and solving problems. By starting with the problem, the company aims to create more thoughtful and suitable solutions that meet customer needs.

In the September edition of Built for You, Intercom has released a series of updates and new features to enhance the support experience for both customers and support teams. The company's next-gen Inbox has been improved with four new features including language support in Spanish and keyboard shortcuts in five languages. Additionally, users can now customize conversation assignments by reordering attributes such as conversation priority and wait time. Other updates include a new search bar for Custom Bots, an overview of customer engagement by message type, and custom report filters for the first response time metric. The Intercom iOS SDK has also been updated to support iOS 16. To stay informed about future releases, customers can join Intercom's virtual launch event on October 12th at 8am PT/4pm BST.

The refreshed guide "The Customer Retention Starter Kit" aims to help businesses engage and retain more customers in the modern age, providing ongoing value that's worth sticking around for. Modern customers have high expectations for immediate value, convenient communications, personalized interactions, and proactive engagement. The guide will show how to create targeted customer retention messaging campaigns that turn struggling signups into churn-resistant power users. It provides key insights into creating effective, personalized retention campaigns, best practices, impactful messages, measuring success, and getting started with the campaign. Customer retention is critical for long-term business success, and businesses need to optimize their customer experience to build long-lasting relationships with customers.

The term customer stakeholder is often used in B2B relationships to describe a key decision maker within a business who has a stake in the relationship with the vendor. There can be multiple stakeholders, each with their own priorities and objectives, requiring tailored conversations to address their diverse interests. Successful sales teams understand the differences between each stakeholder, including the economic buyer, user buyer, technical buyer, and coach, who have varying levels of interest and goals during the procurement process. Identifying and engaging with customer stakeholders can make the sales process more targeted and efficient, giving vendors a competitive advantage and setting the stage for strong, trusting relationships that can lead to fruitful partnerships.

Customer experience management is a system of marketing strategies and technologies focused on customer engagement, satisfaction, experience, loyalty, and advocacy. It puts customers at the center of every business decision to optimize their experience, using personalization at scale and in real-time. A good customer experience has become a key differentiator for discerning customers, helping brands develop a better understanding of their target audience, drive loyalty and retention, encourage brand advocacy, increase profitability, establish a competitive advantage, and measure the success of marketing initiatives by collecting larger volumes of data. The three key building blocks of successful CXM are robust customer segments, personalized customer experiences driven by data, and surfacing the right message at the right time through the right channel. Customer experience management software is technology that helps businesses manage and measure their interactions with customers, covering functionalities such as aggregating customer contact, classifying interactions, gathering data, centralizing data around specific customers, visualizing data, democratizing access to data and insights, leveraging machine learning, prioritizing data security, and ensuring compliance with industry standards.

Customer pain points are common challenges or problems that customers face within a brand's industry or market. These can include issues with productivity, such as inefficient work processes and legacy technologies, as well as difficulties gathering customer feedback. Brands address these pain points by showcasing how their offering can solve them in a cost-friendly and effective way, often standing out against competitors who fail to understand these needs. Customer pain points can be grouped into four categories: productivity, support or experience, financial, and process issues. To identify these pain points, brands use methods such as qualitative customer research through surveys and focus groups, social listening, and input from sales and customer support teams. Understanding relevant customer pain points is a strategic initiative for any brand, as it helps them comprehend what might be causing friction with their customers and develop solutions to address these issues.

Customer support volume, also known as ticket volume, measures the total number of conversations support staff have with customers. This metric provides insight into a team's workload and how changes to products or processes affect the customer experience. It can help teams identify their optimal productivity and inform decisions such as hiring additional support staff or adopting new tools that promote efficiency. The volume is measured by counting all interactions between customer support staff and customers in a given time period, taking into account communications across multiple channels. This metric helps plan workload distribution among support staff and identify patterns in customer support requests, enabling teams to plan accordingly and mitigate any surprises. To mitigate high support volumes, teams use strategies such as offering self-service tools, identifying issues before they arise, having a clear vision of the customer journey, creating a triage system, upskilling agents, and leveraging data to optimize their processes.

A customer effort score (CES) is a metric that measures the amount of effort customers have to make to resolve an issue or achieve their goal, indicating how easy it is for them to interact with a brand. CES is important as it helps businesses identify areas for improvement and optimize customer engagement, but it should be analyzed alongside other metrics like net promoter scores to get a full picture of customer satisfaction. Customer effort scores can be measured through quick surveys asking customers about their experience, using Likert scales or visual emoticon ratings. These surveys are best deployed strategically, such as right after a purchase, interaction with the customer service team, or to supplement UI/UX testing, and should be used sparingly to avoid negatively impacting the customer experience.

The customer feedback loop is a process where customers provide feedback to a brand, and the brand responds to that feedback. The loop starts with creating an opportunity for feedback, followed by gathering information, analyzing the feedback, determining how to respond, implementing changes, and notifying the customer of those actions. Closing the customer feedback loop is crucial as it ensures customers can provide valuable feedback, builds trust with the brand, and creates a positive experience for both parties.

Downtime refers to a period of time when a system, device, or application's core services are unavailable due to updates, maintenance, safety precautions, or unexpected outages. As digital services become increasingly reliant on technology, preventing and efficiently managing downtime has become a strategic initiative to ensure customer experience priorities are met. Planned downtime can be mitigated by communicating with customers across various channels, while unplanned downtime requires timely and effective responses to address the situation. Availability is measured as the percentage of time a software or service is available for use, aiming for 99.99% uptime through methods like multiple availability zones and data backups. Best practices for responding to downtimes include being transparent, acknowledging issues, empathizing with customer experiences, setting expectations, offering alternatives, and communicating effectively across channels.

The Kano model is a system for using customer feedback to set product and feature development priorities. It was developed in the 1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano, who aimed to understand and communicate five universal categories of customer requirements that all product developers need to be aware of. The model measures product features based on two axes: satisfaction and functionality, with customers rating features across five emotional responses and a scale of best, good, basic, some, and none. Features can fall into one of five categories: must-be, performance, attractive, indifferent, or reverse, which helps teams prioritize features in their roadmap based on customer needs. The Kano model has benefits such as saving time and money, identifying priority areas, increasing customer satisfaction, and relying on immediate customer feedback, making it a strategic approach to product development that remains relevant today.

Customer experience design (CX design) focuses on creating optimal experiences for customers across all touchpoints, from the first interaction to beyond conversion. The goal of CX design is to ensure customer satisfaction and create stronger relationships with brands. While often conflated with user experience design (UX), CX design encompasses a broader scope, including brand reputation, customer service, value, advertising, marketing, and product delivery. To succeed in CX design, teams must prioritize empathy, personalization, creating memorable experiences that extend across channels, ensuring customers feel in control of the relationship, and measuring performance through metrics and customer feedback.

Average hold time is a performance metric used to evaluate the success of a call center, as it directly impacts the customer experience. It can be measured by dividing the total waiting time on hold by the number of callers during a given period. A long average hold time can lead to customers dropping calls and losing trust in the brand, ultimately affecting its image. Factors contributing to long hold times include inadequate staffing, lack of self-service options, poor omnichannel support strategies, and insufficient smart functionalities that streamline customer engagement. Proactively addressing these challenges can improve customer satisfaction and brand reputation by reducing friction for customers and enhancing their overall experience.

A power user is a customer who uses a company's software more often and in more effective ways than other users, typically identifying them with usage and engagement metrics. These customers are highly engaged segments of monthly active users, providing valuable feedback that influences product development and can become product advocates or ambassadors. The qualities of a power user include being repeat users, open to sharing regular feedback, early adopters of new features, and often discovering new ways of using the product. Power users bring value to businesses through multiple avenues, including offering a continuous revenue stream, acting as organic advocates, providing actionable feedback, and contributing to the product roadmap. Software companies should aim to foster their communities of power users and tap into their potential to maximize the benefits.

A support ticket is a mechanism used by brands to document the interaction between customers and their support representatives. It's often created when a customer submits a query or an issue that needs to be resolved, with the goal of centralizing all support tickets in one place for easier collaboration among teams. A modern support ticket system focuses on requests that require time for business teams to resolve, providing features like auto-generated emails, ticket tracking, and team collaboration tools. This approach aims to streamline the process, help customers find answers themselves, enable better collaboration between teams, and enhance customer satisfaction by providing a personalized experience with real-time updates and self-serve opportunities. In the future, support ticket systems may integrate internal and external teams, automate workflows, and become even more contextual to each customer's needs.

Business SMS is text-based communication between businesses and their customers, allowing for two-way conversations and enabling brands to engage with customers in a personalized manner. Businesses use SMS for various purposes such as marketing, customer service, transactional messages, and sales, providing an additional channel to reach customers with higher engagement rates than email. SMS enables real-time conversations and allows brand representatives to interact with customers from a centralized system, making it part of the omnichannel customer experience. By adopting a business SMS strategy, brands can enhance customer engagement and meet customer expectations for personalized experiences.

In the context of businesses and their customers, churn refers to the number of customers that don't renew their subscription or stop buying from a certain brand. Churn can be considered a cost of doing business, with lower churn rates indicating more recurring revenue and a healthier bottom line. The churn rate is calculated as the percentage of total customers that dropped off in a given time period, such as annually, quarterly, or monthly, and is typically reviewed alongside customer acquisition rates to understand the customer journey. Customer churn can be classified into two main categories: voluntary, where a customer chooses to end their contract, and involuntary, where a customer drops off through no direct action on their part. Monitoring churn rates provides insights into the effectiveness of marketing and customer retention efforts, helps identify what influences customer behavior, positions businesses to reduce churn, lowers costs by retaining existing customers over acquiring new ones, and is crucial for companies operating under subscription models.

A service desk is the main point of contact between users and service providers, supporting users by addressing service requests, providing solutions to issues, issuing refunds, and more. It can be internal or external, structured in layers to escalate complex issues to the appropriate individuals. A service desk differs from a help desk, which tends to be more tactical and reactive, while a service desk is strategic, focused on delivering services that align with business goals. The role of a service desk includes addressing service requests, monitoring for IT incidents, troubleshooting problems, planning changes, providing self-service tools, monitoring effectiveness, and incorporating AI automation to optimize processes. Service desk software facilitates the delivery of service desk offerings, enabling self-service functionalities and providing omnichannel support, making it easier to provide personalized service to each individual.

AHT measures the average length of customer service calls, including hold time and transfer time. It's a key performance indicator for call centers, providing insight into customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and agent effectiveness. AHT can be calculated on an individual or team basis and is used to evaluate call center performance, compare channels, assess changes, and identify areas for improvement. Low AHT indicates efficient handling of customer queries, but it's essential to consider it in the context of other metrics to ensure a well-rounded view of customer engagement and potential issues within the call center.

A customer self-service offering empowers customers with information while reducing the burden on customer service professionals. It takes various forms, including help centers or knowledge bases, customer portals, FAQ pages, mobile apps, AI-powered chat and messaging services, and customer communities. A customer self-service portal is a branded website where customers can access useful information and complete actions to resolve issues. The benefits of a customer self-service strategy include providing convenience, flexibility, and always-on support to customers, making customer service teams more efficient and effective, and helping companies lower costs. Best practices for a customer self-service strategy include including multiple self-service channels, automation, an integrated omnichannel approach, key performance indicators, proactive outreach, and in-app product tours.

In text message marketing, marketers send promotional campaigns and other marketing communications via text messages to reach customers almost immediately on their mobile devices. This approach is primarily used for time-sensitive communications and adds a direct line of contact to customers that isn't competing with a high volume of emails. Marketing text messages are typically sent from short codes, which can be linked to a specific sender or shared by multiple senders using the same service. Brands use text message marketing for short-term promotions and sending important updates around events customers have signed up for, such as changes, cancellations, and real-time updates. The benefits of text message marketing include providing an additional communication channel that adds maturity and breadth to a brand's omnichannel strategy, offering higher open and engagement rates than email, being a direct line of communication with most customers, helping build trust and personal relationships between brands and customers, and being an important feature of a successful omnichannel marketing strategy.

Marketing automation is the use of software and technology to manage marketing processes and campaigns automatically across multiple channels, aiming to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows. Marketing automation software automates repeatable and data-driven marketing tasks, including email distribution, social media posting, campaign performance measurement, lead generation, lead nurturing, account-based marketing, customer segmentation, retention efforts, and more. By analyzing data from various digital touchpoints, marketing automation tools help create targeted and effective experiences that are more likely to lead to sales. Email marketing automation is a key use of marketing automation, allowing brands to send the right email, to the right person, with the right message, at the right time, and measure results against performance metrics such as open rates, click through rate, and A/B testing.

SMS customer service refers to support provided by businesses via text messaging. This approach is often used as part of an omnichannel strategy, allowing for real-time, personalized, and conversational experiences with customers on their mobile devices. The benefits of SMS customer service include reaching customers more frequently due to the widespread use of SMS, providing personalized interactions, offering convenient two-way communication, reducing response times, being cost-effective and scalable compared to phone calls, and enabling real-time support. To maximize the effectiveness of SMS customer service, businesses can send timely and personalized messages, have real-time conversations, automate certain conversations with scheduled messages, utilize bots to answer frequently asked questions, use SMS for appointment reminders and alerts, collect customer feedback through polls and surveys, and carefully plan out their message strategy to avoid overwhelming customers.

A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service or specific product, designed to allow individuals to find the information they need without reaching out to a help desk or customer support agent. Companies typically have two types of knowledge bases: internal and external, with internal ones used for sharing relevant information with employees and external ones supporting customers. An external knowledge base can include various resources such as FAQs, manuals, video demonstrations, glossaries, and troubleshooting guides, which serve both existing and potential customers, positioning the company as a thought leader in its industry. To be successful, a knowledge base should be built using the right software, offering features like hosting, content management, smart filtering, and integration with other tools. A knowledge base is important because it enables self-service, empowers customers to solve their own issues, lowers support volumes, supports different learning styles, and provides 24/7 access, ultimately building trust and engagement with customers and prospects.

A changelog is an essential tool for software companies to document and share updates made to their product, providing historical context and keeping customers informed of new changes. It serves as a centralized location to share concise updates with customers, promoting transparency and customer support, while also showcasing the growth and progression of a brand's product. The best format for a changelog depends on the target audience, but common practices include being concise, including key details such as date, change description, benefits, and next steps, linking to more detailed release notes, using visuals like gifs, and maintaining consistency. By having a changelog, software businesses can provide clarity around their product evolution and make it easier for users to find the information they need.

Escalation in customer service refers to the process of transferring a customer's issue to a more senior or experienced agent, often due to a lack of specific skills or knowledge required to resolve the query. Brands typically have established workflows and processes in place for managing escalation, which can be automated through service level agreements (SLAs) that trigger automatic escalation if issues are not resolved within a certain timeframe. Effective escalation management is crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction and building trust with customers, as it enables teams to quickly resolve issues and transfer customers to the right individuals at the right time, ultimately reducing resolution times and improving the overall customer experience.