Keeping a startup’s first customers excited
Going from making a prototype to shipping the product to getting your first customers is an exciting time for most startups. The first customers — the early adopters and innovators — are often a mixture of very different personalities and competencies. Their responses often determine whether the product will grow and bring the next wave of customers (the majorities) on board, thereby making the startup a commercial success. So ensuring the first customers are excited is important.
Helping customers get started
Depending on your product, the early adopters are most interested during the purchase phase, but when the product arrives and onboarding starts, they meet some challenges. Something might be missing, or a setting might be wrong, hindering the product. Making sure everything is set up right might be fun for some customers, but for most, it is just an obstacle in the way.
As a startup, you should never forget to onboard your customers and guide them until they are fully up to speed. This is a critical moment in a startup’s customer life cycle, so we spend a lot of time thinking about the perfect onboarding experience. In our view, the ideal scenario is if your best friend helps you get started, ensuring everything works smoothly. We really wanted startups to be able to provide the same “best friend” onboarding experience, so we got to work:
The “best friend” experience
Let us imagine an example: You buy a new product like the Fleye — a safe flying drone:
Before you can start flying, you need to put it together or adjust something in the setup:
At this moment, you might be uncertain about what to do. This is when the best friend’s help is needed. The friend would stand next to you and see exactly what you are seeing, assisting you as you go.
But what if no is around to help?
We wanted to recreate this “best friend” experience for people who were not in the same room, and we came up with a free way to do it. With the flying app already open, you simply tap a single button, which connects you to someone who can help and shares your camera. You can then show what you are doing:
Your friend on the other end can then see exactly what is going on or what might be wrong:
By talking directly with you and seeing the same thing, your helper can get you up and running and keep you excited about the product. Which makes for a much friendlier customer experience.
Its free — for the cost of learning
The best friend solution is called Concierge, and we are giving it away free.
Yes, it is true. The best friend solution is called Concierge, and we are giving it away free. And that’s for a couple of reasons: First, we would like to learn. We want to see how people use the product. Therefore, the current functionality is free. Second, the product and its technology are entirely new for us. We are still working on improvements. The product works, but there might be small bits that are not super smooth yet. As you can tell from the picture above, when you turn the phone to landscape, you still see the screen vertically from the remote expert’s point of view. We are working on things like this, and they will gradually improve.
So what would we like in return for giving a free product away? Feedback. We want to know any challenges you might have and how you think we could make it even better.
If you want to use the product for free, sign up at https://live.gotoassist.com/
If you have a technical background, you can read the documentation for our app and web SDK here: https://live.gotoassist.com/explore-sdk
Good luck with your customers.
