An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
A business leader needs to have their team anticipate everything that can go wrong with their customers’ experience and create a playbook to recover from those situations, thereby “wowing” the customer. So, being prepared is the single most important thing to do. I’ve heard how Amex deals with a lost credit card, not by simply blocking the card but also shipping a new one — immediately — wherever you may be — and letting you know which subscription services on the card should be changed.
As a part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Srikrishnan Ganesan.
Co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane, Srikrishnan Ganesan is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of leading teams. With Rocketlane, he’s focused on providing a purpose-built customer onboarding platform that shortens the client’s time to value and eliminates hit-or-miss experiences for their customers. The end goal is to deliver a collaborative, transparent and professional onboarding experience for every customer.
Thank you so much for joining us !Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I’m Sri, co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane. We are a 2-year-old startup helping to provide a better way to collaborate and deliver on client-facing projects that is ten times better than the competition!
I’m a computer science engineer at heart, but I also went to business school to be able to assume other product and corporate roles. I started my career in product management and previously worked at Verizon and rediff.com.
I am excited about creating something from nothing. I figured I enjoyed the “building” part of the job — building teams, building products, building the culture, etc. So, my next move was to join a very early-stage startup and create my own company with a couple of friends in a couple of years. Our B2B SaaS startup was acquired by Freshworks™, where we learned a lot about building SaaS businesses — a lot of which we now use as we build Rocketlane.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
In our previous startup, my sales lead would focus an entire conversation with a prospective client on one feature of our product. This singular approach appeared to promote positive interest and an intent to purchase from those prospects. But in my role as a passionate founder, I would jump in and talk about the rest of our product features the prospective client absolutely must use. This tactic forced bringing in more stakeholders and complicated the sale.
I was thinking we were not doing justice to the product without selling its complete vision and capabilities. But all I was doing was increasing the risk of losing potential clients by overwhelming them with too much information. From then on, I learned to trust my salesperson’s judgment on what resonated with the customer. And to optimize that for deal momentum instead of thinking inside-out or from the perspective of what we’ve built. You can always expand to your full vision later.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are way too many people for me to thank who have helped me on all my start-up journeys. So, I cannot call out just one person here. I am super grateful to all the folks who gave me their time and feedback, made introductions, did reference checks, and looked out for me during hard times.
Here’s one story: Tony, a fellow entrepreneur who runs Tagalys, met a key leader from a large global retailer at an event we were at while running my previous startup. He felt we might be a good fit for the retailer, so he slipped me the leader’s business card. Eventually, one thing led to the other, and we got into an accelerator program through this leader and later landed a six-figure deal with them! This was just one of the small gestures that made a huge impact on our startup. There are so many people I am grateful to who made all kinds of contributions to our business.
In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?
It is said that every good experience is shared with three others, and every bad experience is shared with ten others. If you have a turnaround/”wow” moment, you are more likely to share that. Investing in excellent customer service, customer experience, and building playbooks for your teams to follow is essential to delivering a consistent experience that creates happy customers!
We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?
Very few companies count customer support as an important “investment.” Most look at it as a cost center and try to focus on cost-cutting. On the other hand, companies like Amazon care deeply about customer service and consider it a worthwhile investment. The fact that they invested in features like “May Day” showcases how much they care about CS [Customer Support].
Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?
The competition requires you to build a DNA for delivering superlative customer experience as one of your key strengths. Customer expectations change over time, and perceptions around your brand are also impacted by CX [Customer Experience] and hence become a reason for you to improve.
Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?
Sending thoughtful gifts to customers when things go wrong or when they are in a stressful situation is something that has helped us “wow” them. For example, we noticed a customer had a cat on one of our zoom calls, and at the right opportunity, we gifted her a cute accessory for the pet as a “thank you” to her. This helped our customers understand that we aren’t just a transactional company and that we pay attention to the small things.
Another “wow” experience is the gorgeous Indian art we presented to every speaker at our Propel event earlier this year. There was a very enthusiastic response from every speaker upon receiving the art.
Did that Wow! experience have any long-term ripple effects? Can you share the story?
The art we sent to the speakers made them curious about the significance of the art style and the depicted bird, a peacock, in Indian mythology. And they were posting about our gesture on social media. Anything you do that is thoughtful leaves your customer or partner “wowed” and helps them understand what it is like to work with you.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.
A business leader needs to have their team anticipate everything that can go wrong with their customers’ experience and create a playbook to recover from those situations, thereby “wowing” the customer. So, being prepared is the single most important thing to do. I’ve heard how Amex deals with a lost credit card, not by simply blocking the card but also shipping a new one — immediately — wherever you may be — and letting you know which subscription services on the card should be changed.
To create a “wow” CX, the team must simultaneously act with urgency and patience with the customer. For example, if you provide chat offerings for support, responding in under 30 seconds and not closing the chat on the customer if they are delayed, like how we message with friends, is a “wow” experience. For customers used to chat experiences that time out, providing an asynchronous experience is very appealing. So, business leaders need insights into consumer preferences and be aware of the technology to support those insights.
Creating “wow” experiences involves an element of surprise or going above and beyond. So, proactively planning these pleasant surprises and putting a playbook in place for implementing these little extras will consistently create “wow” experiences. It could be something as simple as putting the customers’ logo on their cappuccino (a partner did that for us once!) or sending a “get-well-soon” card or gift when you know a customer is sick.
Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?
Ask them! When you’ve just given a great experience to a customer, don’t be shy about asking them to share their experience. You can point them to a review site or even ask if you can get a quote from them. While they are enjoying the moment, make a simple ask!
Also, some experiences with that element of surprise or about recovering spectacularly from a negative situation automatically lend themselves to being stories that customers will share proactively with their network.
Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?
Brands need to create an emotional connection with their customers that can overcome the disadvantage of higher price points. They also need to demonstrate innovation that puts them ahead of the competition and helps consumers see the value behind the added cost. And if they can create consistent “wow” moments and positive shareable experiences/stories with their customers, they will give their brand an edge to win in the face of strong competition.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
A pay-it-forward idea: Many of us have spent a lot of energy trying to reach out to someone for their help or support and have not heard back. While we can’t do this for every person vying for our time, if you recognize someone in need of help, connect and work with them for as long as it takes to help them out as much as possible. Hopefully, someone will do this for you someday when you need a hand.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Follow me on Twitter @srikrishnang.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Srikrishnan Ganesan of Rocketlane On 5 Ways To Create a Wow! Customer Experience was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
