Customer Driven: A Global Recipe 👨🍳
This story is a continued from this post, on how I came to speak at the AWS Startup event where this was presented, as well with how I came up with the concept for it to be written as a “recipe”.
Prep time: 10+ years (give or take)
Serves: 120,000+ customers worldwide
Ingredients:
- A strong DNA built with your customers
- Time, talent, teamwork
- The right message, delivered correctly, to the proper target
Steps:
- Find your DNA by talking to customers
When an employee gets hired, one of the first tasks on the first day — as part of the onboarding, it is pretty standard to learn the history of the company. However — at least in my experience, that’s usually just a piece of trivia. Very rarely is that knowledge applicable in your day-to-day duties and responsibilities. That’s why it was a big shock to me to learn that not only is the history of Channel.io’s formation relevant to what I’d be doing as a salesperson for the company, the philosophy that birthed the product is something that every member of Channel.io understands and practices on a daily basis.
The story goes, the two founders were capable of creating great teams and products — but not great at making them stick or really scale, so they had 3 pivots. On the third pivot, the big question they asked themselves was — what does it take to survive in the long run?
The answer to that question became the backbone of what Channel.io is today. Simply put, the answer to long-term business survival and growth is customers. More specifically, regular customers. That’s it — we made a product that helps businesses create regular customers by sticking to a tried-and-true method, by talking and getting to know them. At it’s core, that is what being Customer Driven at Channel.io is about — taking the time to talk to, listen, and try to always provide answers and solutions to customers.
By everyone actually talking to customers daily (regardless of seniority, function, or geography), we share a strong and common DNA: a customer driven DNA. In doing so, we have more in common with your local bakery or barbershop than the Twitters of the world, because we want to form strong bonds with our customers, which is something every Channel.io member is taught and trained to do from the very beginning. And from my personal point of view, working for a company that “talks the talk and walks the walk” when it comes to their mission and vision, it goes a long way to keep me motivated and aligned.
That’s why in order to grow your business to the global level, you’ll need a strong DNA that your team believes in, so you can survive the difficult voyage across the sea — and for our money, the best way to really know yourself as a company is to make sure you talk to and keep your customers at the center of what you do.
2. Make sure you are “ready” to go Global
Though I joined the company after the US team was formed and growth into the US market was underway, the company did not rush or take lightly the decision to enter the market. In fact, even as far back as the start of our two co-founders working together — going to the States was part of the goal — but the timing of “when” to fully go for it wouldn’t happen until nearly a decade later.
Why? Because going global is a very resource intensive endeavor — and to choose to go too early meant essentially giving up any real opportunity to grow in the domestic market. Therefore, in order to have enough capital and knowhow, Channel.io grew at home and made a smaller first step into international waters by going to a neighboring country, Japan.
By building a strong foundation, product, and reputation — we were able to confidently decide on when to enter the US market, knowing that we have a solid playbook and enough resources to to make it happen.
But time and resources alone aren’t all that is necessary. In my opinion, one of the most crucial “must-haves” to properly execute global expansion, is a well formed, hyper-aligned team.
Why are alignment and team composition so crucial? First and foremost, the reality and logistics of having a global workforce means dealing with time differences, culture differences, varying holiday schedules, etc. If you have people in Asia, the US East Coast, and West Coast — guaranteed anytime everyone hops onto a call — someone is sacrificing personal time in order to do so. Myself, I tend to get up around 4AM so that I can get online by 5AM, or 4PM on the East Coast. Others in our team have given up evenings, weekends, sleep — and the truth is that it is part of the job, so we’re not getting compensated extra for that.
Without alignment and an understanding of not just what I’m expected to do, but why I’m doing it and what part it plays in the larger goal and vision of the company — it is very easy for things to crumble and fall apart. Managers and employees start to not see eye to eye, people veer of course, and all of the sudden, things seem to be in dire straits.
So before you pack your bags and start hiring employees in a foreign land, make sure you enough resources and capital to sustain the long and uphill task that is international expansion, and that you have either the team or the knowhow to keep such a team aligned with the goals and culture of your company.
3. Right Target, Right Message, Right Delivery
The third piece of the Customer Driven recipe, is to speak the language of your customers. It’s not just enough to research or copy what others are doing, but you have to put the right message in front of the right people, in the right way. Seems easy enough, right? But for me personally, this is where I feel I get to really pull my weight and bring something to the table, because it is not as easy as it may sound.
That’s because despite our team having an amazing core DNA that led to success in Korea and Japan, a simple “copy & paste” of what we did here wouldn’t work in the US. So it is part of my job (as well as the entire US team) to take the core of what works about our product and philosophy, and to find those for which our core philosophy resonates, but tell them in a way that they can not only understand, but feel like this is what they’ve been waiting for.
We haven’t always gotten it right (which is a bit embarrassing too as a born and bred American — knowing that I had a wrong hypothesis about other Americans), but the important thing was to realize what wasn’t working. Because there are three parts to the this step — the target, the message, and the delivery — and just because one part is wrong, doesn’t mean the other two are also incorrect. And on the other hand, just because you might have one winning component, for example — the right target, if you have the wrong message and mismatched delivery, the results will be less than stellar.
One of the ways we failed in the past was just changing one part of that equation — the message. So we went full-in by telling everyone that we are a very practical, efficient, and logical option for as a live chat/team chat/CRM combo. When that didn’t work, we changed and let everyone know that we’re the visionary choice — we are doing something different and you should get on board. “Talk to your customers, make them your loyal fans, grow with them!” Turns out, that wasn’t the right approach either — well it was half wrong. What we do now is to make sure that we deliver our “visionary” story to leaders, whom we dub “the 2%” (because we feel only 2% of the US market really want to talk to customers and understand the value of doing so). On the other hand, we keep our practical message, that we’re a great value for money because you get everything you need to handle customer communications in one box — that gets saved for “the followers”.
Some use the word localization, which is half right — but from the “customer driven” lens, it just means that every action we take, we always have to consider it from that of our customers, and that can require having someone who already deeply understands the customers. In my case, being American does help because I can see the actual pains resulting from poor customer support and service — so I understand how valuable and needed this kind of tool can be to not just the businesses we work with, but their customers as well.
A long story short, everything must be considered in context — and that context is from the point of view of the customer.
Final Thoughts
I’m grateful to work somewhere that I am aligned with, as part of a team that is striving towards a common goal, where I get to have opportunities like talking at an AWS Startup Event. Preparing for this talk made me reflect a lot on both my company and my role here, and while it is somewhat obvious that taking a business to a different geography is not easy, it is more bearable and success seems more plausible since I’m at a place that has followed this “Customer Driven” recipe.
That being said, it might not work for you! However, I struggle to think of a situation where not having at least a customer driven attitude would hurt your chances of global go-to-market success. Either way, if you’ve read this far, wishing you the best of luck growing your business abroad (and let me know if you I can do anything to help!)
Seoul based, Pacific NW raised. US Sales @ Channel.io | Writes about Customer Experience, Authentic Communication, B2B SaaS, working at Channel.io, Life in Korea, and occasionally about TV and Movies.
