The startup world is no stranger to the concept of the concierge MVP. As Eric Ries smartly advises, founders should be manually solving client problems until there is enough demand and information to build an automated system.
Users will never have better customer service than when the founder him/herself is shepherding users through the product. Founders will also never have a better view into what their customers are thinking than they will during this phase.
As companies grow and automate manual processes, there will still be some elements of customer service that no algorithm can replace. Humans will always play an integral role in a great customer service team. So how can companies maintain the concierge MVP feel as they scale and automate?
Here’s a few tips that have worked for us in enabling our customers to feel personally taken care of as we scale:
1. Hire a Client Experience Manager Early.
Your current users are going to be the loudest bullhorn for acquiring future users. Keeping the first visitors to your site happy while gathering their feedback is paramount to your user experience as you scale.
Our second hire after our CTO was our client experience manager and it was one of the smartest decisions we’ve made. Your first users are much more likely to forgive you for bugs or functionality issues if a friendly representative is responsive to their e-mails and willing to hop on the phone to walk them through any issues. They will also give you your best product/service feedback if someone is dedicated enough to speak with them.
2. Understand your users and personalize communication.
Take every opportunity to connect with your users on a personal level. Our CRM links to our users’ LinkedIn profile so we can quickly understand who our user is and how we can best help. We then use Yesware to send personalized emails at an almost-automated pace.
The potential bond with a new client starts at the first point of contact. Early on, it will also be helpful for understanding brand awareness and recognition. It’s a great feeling when competitors start to sign up and you know you have achieved some recognition in the industry.
3. Live help 24/7.
In the Internet age, people expect quick replies to e-mails and an all-hours support team, so give it to them! For any consumer-facing business, round-the-clock support is vital to early sales (and relatively easy to implement). I remember one client who signed up at 11pm on a Sunday night. I spent an hour on the phone with them and they lead to our largest sale ever the next week. A few tools have been very helpful to ensure our team can remain mobile and on-call.
We use Grasshopper for our phone system, which allows us to forward calls to team cell phones in off-hours. Olark or another live chat client also works well to allow early feedback from your users and give them an easy way to interact with you through GChat. Our early site was full of bugs when it wasn’t crashing. Through live chat and easy access to our office line, people who want to work with us are always able to contact our team.
4. Test early and don’t stop.
Today, our Client Experience Manager signs every e-mail with:
Warmly,
Maggie (A real person)
She doesn’t sign off like this because it is cute (well, maybe a little because of that), but because she constantly changed variables in how she responded to emails until she had an optimized response percentage.
Maggie spent months experimenting with different e-mail signatures to maximize response rates. Just by stating that she was, in fact, a real person, she not only achieved 40% more replies, but also a more engaged user base. Testing should be a top priority in every department, but it is especially important to encourage in customer service to make sure you don’t potentially turn away engaged customers at the point of the sale.
5. Value the clients who chose to work elsewhere.
Sometimes a prospective customer choses a competitor or alternative over working with you. You may or may not know why. It could be a result of your user flow, or maybe a friend referred them elsewhere. At Suitey we try to reward all of our users, regardless of if they became a “sale”.
We offer our clients, and non-clients, a concierge service that is free and helpful. In our case, the service includes helpful discounts on services that people utilize when moving: movers, exclusive specials on gym memberships, free month of cable, etc. We make sure to extend this discount to everyone we work with because it is another touch point and way we can add value to users.
Creating a great experience for everyone who comes in contact with your company will help solidify the need for you in the future. Word of mouth can be your most powerful marketing tool – make sure that those mouths are saying great things!
