How to build a customer-obsessed company
The mindset your startup needs to scale
Talk to every customer
As the face of the company, the founder needs to be available to those early customers. Give out your email or WhatsApp so customers know they can talk to you. Model this behavior in front of your team, however small or large.
Pay attention to negative feedback
Check your social media and online reviews, and investigate every complaint. Those gripes are gifts, and they’re how your customers will teach you. Dig into the details to find meaningful insights, and don’t ignore them because they tell a story you don’t want to hear or they’re hard to address. Pay attention for precisely those reasons.
Amplify the voice of your users
Don’t stop with just talking to customers—make their voices heard. For example, you could use software like Airtable or Trello to create internal dashboards that display customer feedback (as well as other metrics). Also, consider a Slack integration where customer issues are automatically posted to a shared Slack channel—it’s a great way to get product managers, engineers, and other employees thinking about the customer experience.
Base product iterations on customer feedback
When developing your product roadmap (and later, when you’re hashing out the product requirements), be sure to incorporate user feedback. Analyze how they’re using your product, and embrace agile development so you can shift direction quickly without losing large amounts of development time.
4 ways to act on customer feedback as a founder
We recently started aZendesk for Startups Programwhere we share strategic advice with an exclusive community of up and coming startups. Here are four essential tips we always share with founders for getting customer experience right:
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Analyze bad ratings that include comments.While it might be tempting to spend time on the glowing reviews, you’ll garner more actionable information from those customers who are unhappy with your product or service.
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Meet every week to discuss customer satisfaction outcomes.Set time aside for the team to analyze negative comments and brainstorm about ways to remedy the underlying causes.
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Group negative comments by cause—and look for trends.Doing this will help you identify problem areas such as long ticket resolution times, poor product documentation, or bugs/unexpected product behavior.
The next time you’re debating how to balance the time you’re spending on your product vs your customers, remember this quote from Zendesk’s CEO & Founder, Mikkel Svanne:
Don’t forget to talk to your customers!
Story byBrad Bowery
Brad focuses on VC and accelerator partnerships at Zendesk for Startups. He is also a partner at Founders Den.Brad focuses on VC and accelerator partnerships at Zendesk for Startups. He is also a partner at Founders Den.
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