What’s frequent between Taylor Swift and B2B corporations?
They each go all out of their fields to win over folks’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 every single place.
“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 prospects 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 prospects 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 Teaa e-newsletter 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 sort of milk tea, with my household. It is normally 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 needed to create a social media enterprise, and this was means earlier than Twitter and Fb.
I took a course and spent over $20,000 to study the basics of relationship advertising and marketing. Then, I began taking some shoppers. That’s how I obtained 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 customized and related third-party validation from our prospects. It addresses lots of our ache factors and supplies proof for our go-to-market (GTM) groups. Our staff has discovered quite a lot of worth in that software program.
What issues at work make you need to throw your laptop computer out the window?
Numerous advertising and marketing of us 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 correct knowledge to assist or validate a few of the campaigns or packages you’re constructing. These are the sorts of issues that maintain me up at night time. It takes quite a lot of energy and cycles to find out finest map that out, particularly when we’ve varied 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 prospects, and listening to their validation and suggestions have been necessary to me. I’ve been inquisitive about questions like: how do we modify the roadmap? How can prospects be became followers, loyal customers, and advocates?
I’ve labored with organizations starting from massive corporations like Google to smaller startups in Silicon Valley. I’ve targeted on how we construct a thriving buyer base and communities of passionate followers and followers.
I had a superb 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 by in its early days when it was making an attempt to refine its GTM strategy. 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 prospects globally, and we faucet into buyer expertise professionals and folks on the frontlines speaking to assist brokers. They see these ache factors and perceive what it means to have an incredible buyer expertise.
However, our worker expertise providing ensures staff have an incredible expertise. These two philosophies stood out to me. I need to determine how we will proceed to try this proper for our prospects and inside groups and create an incredible group.
How can corporations extra clearly see a robust hyperlink between buyer engagement and income?
Once we consider a wholesome SaaS enterprise, there are two sides to the equation. One aspect is targeted on the lead era pipeline. The opposite is regarding the post-sales expertise — how do you guarantee prospects are glad?
Corporations should steadiness these two sides as a result of you probably have a leaky bucket, with you getting new prospects whereas some go away you, it’s essential determine what’s inflicting that friction.
We’ve constructed a devoted heart of excellence at Freshworks round participating prospects throughout their journey from the time they consider options. This strategy takes a holistic view of the shopper journey quite than a partial one.
Our philosophy is creating prospects for all times and going past a transactional relationship with them. Even when the engagement is a yr 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 better income?
Throughout the B2C world, iconic manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, and even sports activities groups all have fandoms the place prospects 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 folks 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 answer. It could possibly be any answer, from HR tech to IT software program.
You will need to harness these prospects and supply 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 serious ache level for B2B corporations as we speak. Have the components 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 sooner tempo.
Companies are additionally contemplating better useful resource consolidation, streamlining to be extra productive and environment friendly, and extra intently scrutinizing their tech stacks.
“Immediately, there are means too many options on the market. The barrier to entry in SaaS is decrease now, and prospects have extra flexibility and choices.”
Kevin Lau
Vice President of Buyer Engagement, Freshworks
In the event that they don’t have an incredible expertise, they don’t hesitate to maneuver on to a different answer by a trial or a POC.
This implies you possibly can’t take buyer loyalty as a right anymore. You will have restricted time to win over a buyer, whether or not they’re new or outdated. You will need to 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 could possibly be achieved by displaying them use the product sooner, connecting them to loyal prospects, or having them attend occasions. All of this ensures an impactful expertise, so prospects are much less more likely to churn.
You touched upon the growing variety of choices available in the market and the way prospects may change shortly. In keeping with G2 knowledge, the AI product class is the quickest rising relating to the variety of merchandise being added. Do you’ve gotten suggestions for retaining prospects for AI merchandise?
It goes hand in hand with onboarding, which I discussed earlier than. We have now to satisfy the shopper the place they’re. Most corporations are within the analysis section for AI merchandise.
They’re experimenting to see how AI will help drive higher productiveness and whether or not it’s the fitting answer to make staff profitable. For instance, with our Freddie AI product, we attempt to get prospects by the beta course of.
They’ll play with the answer on this section and perceive some use instances. 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 staff utilizing AI to higher buyer expertise and enhance loyalty?
AI helps us improve assist, which yields happier prospects in the long run. It’s serving to us guarantee our prospects 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 prospects see solutions sooner. We additionally use our on-line channels, together with boards and group networks.
On the staff stage, we actively use AI for content material creation, measurement, and knowledge reporting.
How do you deliver totally 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 on your firm.
Clients shouldn’t expertise speaking to totally different groups or features in a company. It needs to be a unified expertise for them.
Apple is an efficient instance from the ecosystem perspective. Even should you’ve had a nasty 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 surroundings, prospects view experiences from an identical 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 assist staff, they might 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 can be extra necessary in B2B?
In B2B, the goal is rather more particular than in B2C, the place you solid 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. Nonetheless, in B2B, a buyer goes by a number of gross sales cycles. You speak 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 conduct is totally different.
So, B2B is extra about creating followers throughout totally different sectors of the shopping for firm. It’s extra like account-based advertising and marketing (ABM), whereby you don’t simply speak to practitioners utilizing the answer. You additionally interact mid-level influencers answerable for the price heart and the executives to point out them worth. This improves the probability of consumers staying.
What are a few of the most susceptible spots alongside the shopper journey the place they’re most 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 shopper asks if the product delivers what the gross sales consultant promised. In addition they ask whether or not they have the fitting instruments and assets to see rapid worth.
The second juncture is near the renewal cycle. Nonetheless lengthy the engagement is, typically we wait too lengthy to make sure we’ve 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 could possibly be evaluating another options.
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Comply with Kevin Lau on LinkedIn to unlock new methods of participating prospects and constructing a fan base on your firm.
