What’s widespread between Taylor Swift and B2B firms?
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 take 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, they usually don’t hesitate to modify. You possibly can’t take buyer loyalty without any consideration 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 e-newsletter with SaaS-y information and leisure.
Heat-up questions
What’s your favourite beverage? When do you get pleasure from it?
I get pleasure from boba, a form 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 faculty, I began consulting. I wished to create a social media enterprise, and this was manner earlier than Twitter and Fb.
I took a course and spent over $20,000 to be taught the basics of relationship advertising. Then, I began taking some purchasers. That’s how I received 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 lots of our ache factors and offers proof for our go-to-market (GTM) groups. Our crew has discovered numerous worth in that software program.
What issues at work make you wish to throw your laptop computer out the window?
Plenty of advertising people would empathize with me once I say this: anytime you attempt to sew knowledge collectively and combine methods, that may be an enormous problem.
The identical goes for locating the right knowledge to help or validate a number of the campaigns or packages you’re constructing. These are the sorts of issues that preserve me up at evening. It takes numerous energy and cycles to find out find out how to greatest map that out, particularly when now we have numerous tech options.
Deep dives with Kevin Lau
May 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 modify the roadmap? How can clients be became followers, loyal customers, and advocates?
I’ve labored with organizations starting from giant firms 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 lots of my learnings and practices.
Later, I joined Freshworks and noticed many similarities with what Marketo was going via in its early days when it was making an attempt to refine its GTM method. They had been tackling the questions of tapping into buyer love and appreciation and harnessing it as a worth differentiator for his or her enterprise.
Freshworks is exclusive within the sense that it has a raving fan base. We’ve 70,000 clients globally, and we faucet into buyer expertise professionals and folks on the frontlines speaking to help brokers. They see these ache factors and perceive what it means to have a fantastic buyer expertise.
Then again, our worker expertise providing ensures staff have a fantastic expertise. These two philosophies stood out to me. I wish to determine how we are able to proceed to do this proper for our clients and inner groups and create a fantastic group.
How can firms extra clearly see a powerful hyperlink between buyer engagement and income?
After we consider a wholesome SaaS enterprise, there are two sides to the equation. One aspect is concentrated on the lead era pipeline. The opposite is in regards to the post-sales expertise — how do you guarantee clients are glad?
Corporations should stability these two sides as a result of when you have a leaky bucket, with you getting new clients whereas some depart you, you’ll want to determine what’s inflicting that friction.
We’ve constructed a devoted heart 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 firms? How can they use them to carry larger 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 substances 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 live shows.”
Kevin Lau
Vice President of Buyer Engagement, Freshworks
I take a look at such examples to hunt inspiration for the B2B world.
Your providing might not be as thrilling because the Eras Tour or an iPhone, however you’d have buyer followers who love your resolution. It may very well be any resolution, from HR tech to IT software program.
You could harness these clients and supply them publicity, and you’ll find yourself with model influencers. They love your product, so why not allow them to develop your enterprise within the course of?
Thanks for that elaborate reply. Buyer churn is a significant ache level for B2B firms immediately. Have the elements inflicting it advanced over the previous few years?
After the pandemic, macroeconomic circumstances modified, and so did GTM methods. Corporations are additionally present process digital transformation at a quicker tempo.
Companies are additionally contemplating larger useful resource consolidation, streamlining to be extra productive and environment friendly, and extra carefully scrutinizing their tech stacks.
“At present, there are manner 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 a fantastic expertise, they don’t hesitate to maneuver on to a different resolution via a trial or a POC.
This implies you possibly can’t take buyer loyalty without any consideration anymore. You will have restricted time to win over a buyer, whether or not they’re new or outdated. You could deal with them with respect and care, particularly in the course of the preliminary 90-day window.
The magic moments or raving experiences I discussed assist them see the worth instantly. This may very well be achieved by exhibiting them find out how to use the product quicker, connecting them to loyal clients, or having them attend occasions. All of this ensures an impactful expertise, so clients are much less more likely to churn.
You touched upon the growing variety of choices available in the market and the way clients may change shortly. In line with G2 knowledge, the AI product class is the quickest rising relating to the variety of merchandise being added. Do you’ve got suggestions for retaining clients for AI merchandise?
It goes hand in hand with onboarding, which I discussed earlier than. We’ve to satisfy the client the place they’re. Most firms are within the analysis part for AI merchandise.
They’re experimenting to see how AI might help drive higher productiveness and whether or not it’s the correct resolution to make staff profitable. For instance, with our Freddie AI product, we attempt to get clients via the beta course of.
They will play with the answer on this part and perceive some use circumstances. This helps us collect validation and suggestions earlier than the product goes reside within the common availability stage.
AI additionally has many functions in buyer engagement. How is your crew utilizing AI to raised 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 making an attempt to resolve with the product or just need assist. AI instruments assist us deflect tickets to make sure our clients see solutions quicker. We additionally use our on-line channels, together with boards and group networks.
On the crew stage, we actively use AI for content material creation, measurement, and knowledge reporting.
How do you carry completely different features in an organization to work collectively on churn?
The largest factor is to have a customer-first mindset. There’s an ecosystem at play that helps enhance buyer expertise and create followers to your firm.
Clients shouldn’t expertise speaking to completely different groups or features in a corporation. It needs to be a unified expertise for them.
Apple is an effective instance from the ecosystem perspective. Even in case you’ve had a nasty expertise with them as soon as, the general expertise issues extra.
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Sticky moments throughout the client journey hook you. Even within the B2B atmosphere, clients view experiences from the same lens. They might have had a tough onboarding expertise or points with the contract. But when they’ve had different nice experiences, say from the help crew, they might be keen to miss minor infractions.
You’ve quoted examples from the B2C phase. How do the foundations of engagement change between B2C and B2B? What are a number of the engagement areas which can be extra essential in B2B?
In B2B, the goal is rather more particular than in B2C, the place you forged a wider internet and your product is cheaper.
As a buyer, you should purchase a product utilizing your bank card on an e-commerce web site. Nevertheless, in B2B, a buyer goes via 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 (ABM), whereby you don’t simply discuss to practitioners utilizing the answer. You additionally interact mid-level influencers liable for the fee heart and the executives to indicate them worth. This improves the chance of consumers staying.
What are a number of the most weak spots alongside the client journey the place they’re almost certainly to churn?
The onboarding expertise is among the many most important junctures from a retention perspective. That is the place the rubber hits the street, and the client asks if the product delivers what the gross sales consultant promised. In addition they ask whether or not they have the correct instruments and assets to see speedy worth.
The second juncture is near the renewal cycle. Nevertheless lengthy the engagement is, generally we wait too lengthy to make sure now we have the client on the prime of our minds. We wait till the renewal cycle to speak to them proactively and nurture them. Behind the scenes, they may very well be evaluating another options.
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Comply with Kevin Lau on LinkedIn to unlock new methods of partaking clients and constructing a fan base to your firm.
