Article • 6 min read
What do successful startups have in common?They prioritise CX
The most successful startups in our benchmark invested in their customer experience sooner and expanded it faster.Follow their lead with these CX tips for startups.
By Sarah Olson, Senior Associate, Content Marketing, @seolson5
Last updated August 21, 2023
Every startup dreams of making it big, but even now with so many examples, it’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly gives a unicorn its horn, so to speak.We do know one thing: startup success is correlated with customer experience investment, according to our benchmark study of over 4,000 startups.That might explain why more than 75 per cent of tech startups on the Forbes Cloud 100 List are Zendesk customers.(But who’s counting?) These companies recognise that a great business idea and venture capital are not enough to sustain a successful startup.You can have the most successful company in the world, but it doesn’t mean much if you can’t retain your customers. That’s why customer experience is so important. So, how do successful startups keep their customers happy?Here are a few tips.
How successful startups handle CX:
Add a CX platform within the first year
Successful startups (defined by employee growth and time between funding rounds) in our benchmark were 33 per cent more likely to add a customer experience platform within the first year of founding.Choosing a CX solution for your startup can be a daunting task, especially when you’re deciding how you want to interact with your customers.There’s a lot at stake. So, what should you be thinking about when you choose a platform? Here’s what startups had to say about their top considerations.
Price and ease of use were top priorities. But interestingly, many of the factors correlated with faster startup company growth, such as investment in omnichannel support, were ranked lower.These same features tend to be the most beneficial to customers. Customers want to connect with your company on the channels they already use. If your startup can deliver a true omnichannel experience, you can earn customers’ trust by being easy to reach when and where customers want to talk to you.Further, the data suggests that putting customers’ needs first paid off. As a bootstrapping startup, you are probably worried about cash flow and understandably so.You have limited resources and a lot you want to accomplish. But putting money into keeping those hard-earned early customers is worth it. So before you pull the trigger based on price alone, think of your customers and do whatever you can to meet their needs.
Empower customers to help themselves
Successful startups added self service early and grew their help centres faster.Unicorns were even quicker to build out online help centres, adopting self service 61 per cent faster compared to other startups.Also noteworthy, fast-growing startups added more new articles in their first 18 months compared to slower-growth companies.
How do you write a help centre article? 📝
When building your self-service help centre, your customers should be your guide. Take note of which questions come up the most in customer service enquiries and build articles round them.
When writing help centre articles, try to mirror your customers’ language in your articles, using the same words they would be likely to use and search for.
Not sure where to start? Here are some basic article templates.
It makes sense that self-service is among the first CX investments which startups make. Help centres allow customers to find answers on their own, thereby stemming the tide of incoming tickets. You can still provide your customers with practical help; meanwhile your team can focus their attention on the most urgent and high-priority issues.
There’s another important reality to consider here: people wish to help themselves, and often even prefer that to other service methods. In fact, 76 per cent of customers reported using online help centres more than phone support.
Talk to your customers in real time
Successful startups were 20 per cent more likely to add live chat in their first two years.Live channels such as chat and phone can help you solve customer issues faster than asynchronous channels like email. If you have limited resources, remember that you can walk before you run. Aim to add chat within the first year of raising funding and then build out based on customers’ preferences. But whichever channels you choose, you need to make it easy for your customers to talk to you, says Arjun Chopra, Partner at the venture capital firm Floodgate.
Companies who do not holistically serve their customers should prepare for plenty of customer churn.
"Companies need to have systems that continuously engage their customers across multiple channels, anticipate their needs as they relate to their product, and service those customers effectively," he says. "Companies who do not holistically serve their customers should prepare for plenty of customer churn."
It’s also worth noting that COVID-19 Benchmark data shows that home-bound customers are relying more on live channels, especially chat and social messaging. In this pandemic, we’re seeing the importance of having flexible solutions which can be customised to meet customers’ changing needs.
The lesson here is that when the world changes again (and you know it will), be ready to meet your customers where they are.
4. Work smarter, not harder
Early adoption of support software isn’t enough. The top-performing startups in our benchmark employed more tools to streamline operations. This includes collecting more customer data through ticket forms, developing views to prioritise incoming requests, and taking advantage of automated workflows.
Small, fast-growing startups added 2.8 times as many workflow tools, such as email automations, triggers and templated responses, compared to their slower-growth counterparts.
For those who may not be familiar, here is a quick tutorial on email workflows:
According to our benchmark, you should add at least two to three workflow tools per month and expect to have more than 60 workflows in place within two years of adding a support platform. Successful startup companies were also more likely to use app integrations to give their agents easy access to important data.The most popular apps for startups include Zendesk’s Knowledge Capture app, Jira and Slack.
Respond to customers faster
Interestingly, early stage startups had nearly identical waiting times, whether they were fast-growing or not. But by two years, fast-growing companies were resolving customer issues twice as fast as their slower-growth companies. They also had shorter first reply times and requester waiting times.
If you’re an early stage startup, aim to keep your reply times to about three hours for non-live channels (e.g. email) and have tickets resolved within one business day (8.4 hours) by your second year of adding a support platform.
But this does not mean increasing headcount or setting ridiculously high expectations. Efficiency improvements, such as the workflow tools described above, can help agents tackle more tickets in the same amount of time.
As you look to the future, remember that speed is an important KPI for your support team, but it should never come at the expense of your customer experience or your agents’ wellbeing.
It’s not magic, it’s CX
Perhaps being a unicorn company is less about magic and more about creating a magical customer experience. Meeting your customers on the channel they prefer, using data to personalise their experience and optimising your platform for faster service – these can all feel extraordinary to customers who are used to hassles and headaches. When you’re ready to develop a CX strategy for your startup, put your customers first and the magic will follow.
When you’re ready to develop a CX strategy for your startup, put your customers first and the magic will follow.
