What’s widespread between Taylor Swift and B2B corporations?
They each go all out of their fields to win over individuals’s hearts and nurture a fan base.
Take Swift’s Eras Tour, for instance. It generated $2 billion in income and even benefited native economies. She created magic moments for followers in all places.
“These are the examples I have a look at to hunt inspiration for the B2B world,” says Kevin Lau, Vice President of Buyer Engagement at Freshworks.
With the barrier to entry in software program as a service (SaaS) decrease than ever, he believes clients have extra software program choices now, and so they don’t hesitate to change. You may’t take buyer loyalty as a right anymore.
In a chat with me, Kevin shares what it takes to construct an ecosystem of enablers inside an organization to show clients into followers and enhance retention. He additionally shares tips about creating magic moments for purchasers of AI merchandise.
This interview is a part of G2’s Skilled Highlight collection. For extra content material like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a publication with SaaS-y information and leisure.
Heat-up questions
What’s your favourite beverage? When do you take pleasure in it?
I take pleasure in boba, a type of milk tea, with my household. It is often a chilly beverage, and also you get to eat the tapioca balls in it.
What was your first job?
After I graduated from school, I began consulting. I wished to create a social media enterprise, and this was approach earlier than Twitter and Fb.
I took a course and spent over $20,000 to be taught the basics of relationship advertising and marketing. Then, I began taking some shoppers. That’s how I bought began earlier than transitioning into the B2B world.
What’s your favourite software program in your present tech stack?
We use many alternative options. We use Base, which helps us reward, acknowledge, and curate buyer engagement.
We additionally use UserEvidence, which helps us curate extra personalised and related third-party validation from our clients. It addresses a lot of our ache factors and supplies proof for our go-to-market (GTM) groups. Our group has discovered numerous worth in that software program.
What issues at work make you need to throw your laptop computer out the window?
A whole lot of advertising and marketing people would empathize with me once I say this: anytime you attempt to sew knowledge collectively and combine programs, that may be a giant problem.
The identical goes for locating the right knowledge to help or validate a few of the campaigns or applications you’re constructing. These are the sorts of issues that maintain me up at evening. It takes numerous energy and cycles to find out tips on how to finest map that out, particularly when we now have varied tech options.
Deep dives with Kevin Lau
Might you briefly describe your skilled journey and what introduced you to Freshworks?
Since my social media consulting days, relationship constructing, speaking to clients, and listening to their validation and suggestions have been essential to me. I’ve been concerned with questions like: how do we alter the roadmap? How can clients be become followers, loyal customers, and advocates?
I’ve labored with organizations starting from giant corporations like Google to smaller startups in Silicon Valley. I’ve centered on how we construct a thriving buyer base and communities of passionate followers and followers.
I had an excellent stint at Marketo earlier than the Adobe acquisition, which helped cement a lot of my learnings and practices.
Later, I joined Freshworks and noticed many similarities with what Marketo was going by means of in its early days when it was attempting to refine its GTM method. They had been tackling the questions of tapping into buyer love and appreciation and harnessing it as a price differentiator for his or her enterprise.
Freshworks is exclusive within the sense that it has a raving fan base. We have now 70,000 clients globally, and we faucet into buyer expertise professionals and other people on the frontlines speaking to help brokers. They see these ache factors and perceive what it means to have an ideal buyer expertise.
Alternatively, our worker expertise providing ensures workers have an ideal expertise. These two philosophies stood out to me. I need to determine how we will proceed to try this proper for our clients and inside groups and create an ideal group.
How can corporations extra clearly see a robust hyperlink between buyer engagement and income?
After we consider a wholesome SaaS enterprise, there are two sides to the equation. One aspect is targeted on the lead technology pipeline. The opposite is in regards to the post-sales expertise — how do you guarantee clients are happy?
Firms should steadiness these two sides as a result of when you’ve got a leaky bucket, with you getting new clients whereas some go away you, it’s good to determine what’s inflicting that friction.
We’ve constructed a devoted middle of excellence at Freshworks round partaking clients throughout their journey from the time they consider options. This method takes a holistic view of the buyer journey moderately than a partial one.
Our philosophy is creating clients for all times and going past a transactional relationship with them. Even when the engagement is a 12 months or two lengthy, it goals to show them into followers for all times.
What’s the significance of buyer followers to B2B corporations? How can they use them to deliver higher income?
Throughout the B2C world, iconic manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, and even sports activities groups all have fandoms the place clients love merchandise, people, or gamers. The merchandise you market have inherent secret components that make these engagements worthwhile.
“One other instance is Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which introduced her and native economies nice revenues. The tour stood out as a result of she engaged her followers and created magic moments for individuals each attending and never attending her concert events.”
Kevin Lau
Vice President of Buyer Engagement, Freshworks
I have a look at such examples to hunt inspiration for the B2B world.
Your providing is probably not as thrilling because the Eras Tour or an iPhone, however you’ll have buyer followers who love your answer. It might be any answer, from HR tech to IT software program.
You could harness these clients and provide them publicity, and you’ll find yourself with model influencers. They love your product, so why not allow them to develop your online business within the course of?
Thanks for that elaborate reply. Buyer churn is a significant ache level for B2B corporations at present. Have the components inflicting it developed over the previous few years?
After the pandemic, macroeconomic circumstances modified, and so did GTM methods. Firms are additionally present process digital transformation at a sooner tempo.
Companies are additionally contemplating higher useful resource consolidation, streamlining to be extra productive and environment friendly, and extra carefully scrutinizing their tech stacks.
“Immediately, there are approach too many options on the market. The barrier to entry in SaaS is decrease now, and clients have extra flexibility and choices.”
Kevin Lau
Vice President of Buyer Engagement, Freshworks
In the event that they don’t have an ideal expertise, they don’t hesitate to maneuver on to a different answer by means of a trial or a POC.
This implies you’ll be able to’t take buyer loyalty as a right anymore. You could have restricted time to win over a buyer, whether or not they’re new or previous. You could deal with them with respect and care, particularly throughout the preliminary 90-day window.
The magic moments or raving experiences I discussed assist them see the worth instantly. This might be achieved by displaying them tips on how to use the product sooner, connecting them to loyal clients, or having them attend occasions. All of this ensures an impactful expertise, so clients are much less prone to churn.
You touched upon the growing variety of choices out there and the way clients may swap rapidly. Based on G2 knowledge, the AI product class is the quickest rising concerning the variety of merchandise being added. Do you’ve gotten suggestions for retaining clients for AI merchandise?
It goes hand in hand with onboarding, which I discussed earlier than. We have now to fulfill the shopper the place they’re. Most corporations are within the analysis section for AI merchandise.
They’re experimenting to see how AI can assist drive higher productiveness and whether or not it’s the best answer to make workers profitable. For instance, with our Freddie AI product, we attempt to get clients by means of the beta course of.
They’ll play with the answer on this section and perceive some use circumstances. This helps us collect validation and suggestions earlier than the product goes dwell within the common availability stage.
AI additionally has many purposes in buyer engagement. How is your group utilizing AI to higher buyer expertise and enhance loyalty?
AI helps us improve help, which yields happier clients in the long run. It’s serving to us guarantee our clients get solutions to their questions, whether or not they relate to some ache factors they’re attempting to resolve with the product or just need assist. AI instruments assist us deflect tickets to make sure our clients see solutions sooner. We additionally use our on-line channels, together with boards and group networks.
On the group stage, we actively use AI for content material creation, measurement, and knowledge reporting.
How do you deliver completely different features in an organization to work collectively on churn?
The most important factor is to have a customer-first mindset. There’s an ecosystem at play that helps enhance buyer expertise and create followers on your firm.
Prospects shouldn’t expertise speaking to completely different groups or features in a corporation. It ought to be a unified expertise for them.
Apple is an efficient instance from the ecosystem perspective. Even in case you’ve had a foul expertise with them as soon as, the general expertise issues extra.
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Sticky moments throughout the shopper journey hook you. Even within the B2B atmosphere, clients view experiences from an identical lens. They could have had a tough onboarding expertise or points with the contract. But when they’ve had different nice experiences, say from the help group, they’d be keen to miss minor infractions.
You’ve quoted examples from the B2C phase. How do the principles of engagement change between B2C and B2B? What are a few of the engagement areas which are extra essential in B2B?
In B2B, the goal is rather more particular than in B2C, the place you solid a wider web and your product is cheaper.
As a buyer, you should buy a product utilizing your bank card on an e-commerce web site. Nevertheless, in B2B, a buyer goes by means of a number of gross sales cycles. You discuss to engineers, pre-sales groups, and account representatives, and consider the product. You additionally contain a number of departments out of your firm. So, the shopping for habits is completely different.
So, B2B is extra about creating followers throughout completely different sectors of the shopping for firm. It’s extra like account-based advertising and marketing (ABM), whereby you don’t simply discuss to practitioners utilizing the answer. You additionally interact mid-level influencers liable for the fee middle and the executives to point out them worth. This improves the chance of shoppers staying.
What are a few of the most susceptible spots alongside the shopper journey the place they’re probably to churn?
The onboarding expertise is among the many most important junctures from a retention perspective. That is the place the rubber hits the highway, and the shopper asks if the product delivers what the gross sales consultant promised. In addition they ask whether or not they have the best instruments and sources to see rapid worth.
The second juncture is near the renewal cycle. Nevertheless lengthy the engagement is, typically we wait too lengthy to make sure we now have the shopper on the high of our minds. We wait till the renewal cycle to speak to them proactively and nurture them. Behind the scenes, they might be evaluating another options.
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