EVENTful | #TechNightOut

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I love networking events. New people, new places, new things to learn -- what's not to love?

The best part of these meetings is that they're usually centered around a particular topic or industry, which means everyone there starts with some common ground. While I will definitely talk to the proverbial brick wall without this mutual understanding, it does generally mean the other attendees are more open to chatting with random strangers about random topics. 

You never know where the chance relationships made at these events will take you. Among other things, I've had job leads, service discounts and product beta tests offered, and in general just had some really excellent industry conversations. There's plenty of research around the benefits of networking, but that's another post for another time.

Anyway, since I attend a slew of different networking events across ATL, I wanted to start recapping and sharing as I go. There are many options in the city every night of the week, and hopefully this will help bring one or two to light that you didn't know about but would love to try. (If this is not your thing and you prefer another thought-piece on client success or startups instead, you can skip this and I'll deliver something more in-depth in a few days, I promise.) 

Last week, I went to #TechNightOut and spent some time chatting with ATL tech folks. Hosted by General Assembly Atlanta and Hypotamus, the premise is "bringing together the whole Tech community once a month to let loose and have fun at Tech Night Out."

While I'm not sure that the tech community needs that much loosening up (most of the tech spaces I'm familiar with are full of casual clothes and beer ... LOTS of beer), I like the premise. The tech world does have a tendency to get immersed in work to the detriment of  things like social relationships. 

This month's #TechNightOut was at Ormsbys, but the location changes each time, so you get to find little corners of the city you didn't know existed. 

And although Atlanta's a big city, the tech scene is a small town -- while standing in line to check in, I ran into one friend-of-a-friend, one Atlanta Tech Village member, and someone I'd previously met at a Zendesk user group. Small world!

The ATV member and I had passed in the halls but never really talked, so we finally had a chance to swap names and companies. He was a recently appointed Client Success Manager, and as the only one at his growing startup, he asked for some advice. We had a really in-depth conversation about making clients happy versus successful, how to track metrics to show value to your boss, and where churn risks vary from industry to industry. He learned something, I learned something, and we both came away feeling a little smarter.

He also introduced me to a PR writer who was interested in a startup position, and I got a business card that I passed along to my marketing department. (We're looking for a full-time content writer, but it appears those are harder to come by than you'd think, what with the decline of newspapers and all.) Side note: That is exactly what these events help with, but I've found that often people only hit them up when they're job hunting. I really recommend building your interpersonal connections before you need them, and then these events will click into place at the right time. 

Over an intense game of shuffleboard, I met a programmer who knew some of  the engineers at SalesLoft, and begged him for some hot leads if they had any to spare (we're hiring engineers too. Shocker, I know). Fortunately, he had good things to say about SalesLoft, and promised to send some people our way. 

I also had a quick chat with a woman who coordinates events and does branding awareness for General Assembly itself. She sounds like she really loves her job, and I know they're hiring for a variety of spots, so if you or someone you know is job-hunting, I'd check out the postings here. 

Finally, I wrapped up the night getting to know the friend-of-a-friend and a few of his colleagues better, and now I have a new connection or two on social media. He's a networking addict too, so I'm sure we'll see each other at the next event. Not to mention that I made a new friend myself!

Overall, solid networking show. Good logistics at the event itself, which is key, though maybe a little more fanfare upfront to bring it to people's attention. I'll definitely be looking for the next #TechNightOut. Hope to see you there!

 

Client Success and the Bottom Line

"Can Exceptional Customer Service
Lead to Higher Conversions?"


That was the Tweet I stopped to read this morning. And while yes, I'm intensely interested in client success/service/support and all sorts of minutiae related to that topic, the Tweet caught my eye because of the "higher conversions" part.

Why? Well, because it directly related client success to revenue.

Sales reps and SDRs. ... Okay, maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration here, but you get the point. Photo | Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images 

Sales reps and SDRs. ... Okay, maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration here, but you get the point. Photo | Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images 

Let's be honest here. The rock stars in most tech companies, especially SaaS companies, are the sales reps and the SDRs. They're incredibly visible because they're setting up and knocking down big deals. It's easy to track back their efforts to a direct impact on the bottom line, and that makes them popular people. 

Client success, on the other hand ... well, you often only hear about us when things are going wrong. With a few exceptions here and there, most people don't go online to rave about the support agent who told them how to reset their password properly. But people hit social media to talk about things like ridiculously long phone calls to cancel their cable account. I love what I do and I know it makes a difference for our clients, but it's a bit quieter than other roles.

So when unbounce ran this article by Len Markidan, the head of marketing at Groove, that purported to link solid client success to conversion rates, I was in.

The article discusses the results and potential implications from Groove's 2013 SaaS Small Business Conversion Survey. When Groove, a helpdesk software company, asked 1,500 SaaS companies which channels they put the most focus on, they found that those who cited an emphasis on customer service also reported approximately 11% higher overall conversion rates on their websites.

Since I'm a research-loving kind of girl, my favorite part of this article is the next paragraph, from Len:

"An interesting data point, but is it enough to conclude that focusing on support equals higher conversions? Probably not on its own. Let’s look at some more data…"

(Is it weird that my enthusiastic reaction to this was, "YES, LET'S LOOK AT SOME MORE DATA!!" ... never mind, don't answer that.)

So what Len did next was look at data from Proposify, a proposal software company. CEO Kyle Racki had put a lot of time and effort into their customer service, part of which was reducing customer effort by scattering help widgets throughout their site. He tracked the results with KISSmetrics and found something surprising:

"Over a period of two months, the company’s overall average trial-to-paid conversion rate was 9.85%. However, users that clicked on one of Proposify’s help widgets converted at 25.23%!  That’s a 156% increase in conversions, simply from making customer support easily accessible."

Len goes on to say that the Groove team had had similar results, learning that trial users who reached out to support were nine times more likely to convert to paying users. And then Groove cleverly used this to create an alert system to reach out to users who were stuck on certain steps, which resulted in conversion rates of more than 350% higher than their average free trial users.

Pretty compelling data, wouldn't you say? Sure, it's a little on the anecdotal side, and it's certainly centered around SaaS companies, but I think that the basic concept is sound here. 

People want help. And when they get it (especially before they even realize they need it!) it reduces frustration and increases the inclination to commit.

I don't think this is especially surprising -- when was the last time you wanted to give your money to a service that annoyed, stymied and defeated you? I'm guessing never. But for excellent experiences (think about a restaurant you really like, for example), people will pay a little more, tip a little higher, and return to that company. All good client success does is take that concept from the brick-and-mortar side and apply it to the SaaS world.

So maybe client success isn't the loudest voice in the room. But it may be one of the most persuasive. And that, to me, sounds a lot like the bottom line.