đ How to value âcustomer delightâ, nailing customer first impressions, design thinking....
There is no shortage of tech review sites (Hubspot shares over 30 here), but weâve yet to find one specific to investors⊠until recently. Landscape is a UK startup that is helping founders do their diligence on potential VC and Accelerators by offering free to view, anonymous reviews. The investors are the client, having to pay for features like the ability to reply to reviews or advertise. Weâre guessing theyâll run into the same issues in review authenticity that restaurant review platforms have, but we give them an A+ for creativity.
đ âYou never get a second chance to make a first impression,â is more than grade school advice, itâs relevant when thinking about your customer interactions. There's a big risk in screwing those first impressions up â 40-60% of people who sign up for a SaaS app only open it once and never come back. If you want to nail first interactions, you have to make sure you know where they really start. Most assume that a customerâs journey begins when they sign up for your product, but it actually begins the first time point of contact, which is typically a Facebook or Google ad. The linked article above has some good examples of how to set expectations in those ads, as well as other bits on ways you can impress early.
đ€ Customer Delight is an unavoidable phrase in SaaS and frequently a top goal for businesses. But the idea of wowing is being taken to an extreme, with companies attempting to delight their users at every touchpoint within their product. The issue with that is itâs not only incredibly expensive to do, itâs almost impossible. You are way better off solving your customersâ primary needs because thatâs what will actually delight them the most! Sure, there is value in delighting through innovation that your users donât even realize they need yet, but itâs best to making sure you check all current customer need boxes first.
đ In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes, and churn. Many try to salvage churning accounts with last-minute retention efforts (discounts) or simply send a âwe hate to see you go email.â We much prefer cancelation surveys â they are easy to do, and the insights they provide can end up being more valuable than the customer. You shouldnât even really attempt to win back customers in the survey, you should be deeply focusing on why they are leaving and trying to understand how you can prevent it in the future. Keep them short and sweet or youâll struggle with responses; one to three questions is ideal.Â
đ When teams are growing rapidly, not having clearly defined processes can lead to chaos. Itâs challenging to have a productive workforce when thereâs no baseline to measure their work against. For sales teams, the solution could be the addition of a sales ops leader. These team members should partner with the head of sales or revenue leaders to create well-defined internal processes and help your sales team focus on whatâs important - closing deals. As a bonus, find someone who understands (and more importantly, appreciates) data. Your ops team isnât selling; they have the bandwidth to deep dive into data to find any broken levers and make sure goals are realistic and attainable.
đš In Tim Brownâs, Change by Design, he argues that for innovation to be truly powerful we must use an iterative process he refers to as âdesign thinkingâ. Design thinking looks to understand the user, challenge their assumptions, and redefine problems to find alternatives that may not be apparent immediately. A big part of the process is prototyping, and continuously coming back to designs to keep iterating post launch. If youâre looking for validation behind the process, Apple, Google, Samsung, and many more have adopted it, and top schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford now teach design thinking courses.