Ramesh Natarajan (Host): To start with, I’ll give you some context around what we want to talk about today. So one thing that we believe is that 2021 will be the year of change. And what we are noticing is that more than 60% of consumers across the world, and even more so in North America, are trying new brands due to economic pressures, stores closing, and changing priorities. So these customers are now going online in their search for better and safer ways to transact with businesses. And that translates to tremendous growth opportunities for companies that provide excellent customer service. With blurring lines between sales and service, every customer interaction has become an opportunity to sell. In fact, some of our clients are seeing 70% of sales related queries come through customer service channels.
So given this entire context, how is your organization currently viewing sales and service? Do you find that increasingly, customer service agents are doubling up as salespeople and guiding prospects towards purchasing your products or services? And does this create the potential for customer service as a profit-center?
Susana de Sousa: That’s a great question. And there’s no doubt that support departments are often seen as cost centers. That is accurate. The resources that we spend in support are definitely a cost to the business. There’s no way around that. However, the message here is that being a cost center and a growth center are not mutually exclusive. So at the end of the day, IT support experience shouldn’t just be about solving an issue. It’s more so an opportunity to help customers discover more about your product. At Loom, specifically, we’re not just fixing issues, we’re preventing new ones from happening in the future.
Also, every interaction that we have with our users or paid customers is an opportunity. To give you a concrete example, if a Loom customer contacts our support team, our first mission, obviously, is to delight them with a fix to the issue that they reported. But then if we’re successful, we then have the opportunity to help the customer discover more use cases and unlock additional value. Whether that is by upselling, whether that is just by explaining more use cases or features. The value is the most important thing here. We believe that our superior customer experience is a key competitive advantage and that sets Loom apart from its competitors.
Ramesh Natarajan (Host): Kat, how do you approach this? What’s your take on customer service having potential to generate revenue?
Kat Olsheske: I have a similar sentiment to Susana’s. Here’s an example. If you’ve paid attention to how teams are scaled, you’ll see that the sales team is scaled quicker than the support team is. This has a lot to do with support being a non-revenue-generating function. This is an opportunity for leaders to create a revenue stream out of support – for instance, I created an enablement team as a branch of support that started generating revenue. You need to get creative on how your support team can impact the business.
Sales brings the customers in. Support should be what makes the customer stay. I will refer to OpenPath Access Control, which is a dinosaur industry. They’ve been here forever, you hear of other companies who've been around for years doing the same thing. And it’s not one of those industries where good customer service is the number one goal. So for us, being able to deliver that allows our customers to make the right choice while choosing between similar products. It's definitely a deciding factor for people to purchase. But it’s also a factor for customers to want to stay and help you grow your business and spend more.
Ramesh Natarajan (Host): Personally, when I go to a supermarket, somebody might walk up to me and ask me if I want something. That is a sales activity, right? Do you try and think about it that way? That is, is there an opportunity to deliver proactive support, where you find opportunities to cross sell, or upsell? Or have proactive conversations with your customers, instead of waiting for them to come to you with a problem? That typically has aspects of sales and growth associated with it as well. Is that an expectation that’s being created, or a conversation that’s being had right now in your organization?
Kat Olsheske: It’s definitely being had. Post-pandemic, most businesses are experiencing hyper growth, with everybody wanting to use stuff again, travel again, and purchase again. So we’re trying to decide between staffing and making the most of our resources. And this is where some creative solutions come up where you can be more efficient with what you have, create proactive solutions, solve the problem before it even becomes a problem. That way, you don’t need to necessarily staff more to support the volume, you just have to make smarter decisions. Susana?
Susana de Sousa: We’re certainly having the conversation around how we can be more productive, and how can we tie that dollar amount to our support team to help with upgrades and revenue as well. One thing that stands out to me is, during those conversations, we wanted to make it seamless and not forceful. So there should be a customer experience where, if you have a conversation with the customer, it should be completely natural. You shouldn’t force an upgrade on them.