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Customer Experience, With Andrew Wallace of SmileBack

• Kaseya

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In this episode, Dan talks with Andrew Wallace of SmileBack about customer experience.

The two talk about the importance of customer experience, operational efficiency, how to make both positive and negative feedback work for you, and more. 


Connect with Andrew here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewstirlingwallace/
Website: https://smileback.com/

Speaker 1:

Hello, I'm Dan Thomas Shefsky and this is the connecting it podcast.[inaudible]

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the connecting it podcast. I'm your host, Dan Thomas Shefsky and then joining me today is Andrew Wallace, managing director and chief product officer for smile back, Andrew, a nice to have you today.

Speaker 3:

Nice to be here. Thanks Dan.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I'm really excited to talk to you guys. Uh, you know, you really, I I've, I've used smile back back when I was an MSP and, uh, I know lots of others that use it, so I think this'll be a great conversation for our MSP listeners today. So why don't you introduce yourself and give us a little bit of a smile back?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sure. So as you said, Andrew Wallace, managing director and chief product officer at smile back, um, smile, Beck's been in the game for more or less five years and we're customer satisfaction and system, and we're specifically for MSPs and it service providers. That's great that you've used us before. Uh, we focus exclusively on customer feedback and the MSP market we've helped more than a thousand companies over the course of our lifetime. Um, mostly in the U S market, but we're, we're getting bigger and bigger, uh, particular in APEC and also in, uh, AMIA or EMA, whoever that's supposed to be said, which is actually where I'm based. I'm a, I'm a Canadian, I'm from Toronto, but I live in Berlin, Germany. And that's where I'm talking to you from today.

Speaker 4:

I'll make ice cream.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's great. And again, really excited to talk about this topic because, uh, you know, I want to get into it with you on this is why customer feedback matters.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's probably the key question and obviously we think it matters where else we went to exist or I hope we wouldn't exist. Um, and yeah, we think it's particularly important and we've found through our experience in this space that it, it is in fact very important for MSPs. Um, and there's probably four key pieces, um, of why it's important. Number one is that, um, customer feedback and using a system like ours or any of the others in this space allows you to measure, manage and quantify your customer experience. Um, so if you start from the assumption, the customer's experience is important, then you definitely want to do something with it. And so by being able to quantify it, then you can measure it and then you can manage it, I guess, there's that kind of MBA, uh, uh, textbook thing around what what's got, what gets measured is what gets managed. And I think that's particularly important here and because, um, client relationships are so important, um, in the MSP space, that's, that's where we fit in bringing that, like education, that consultation around customer experience, and then allowing you to understand your own customer experience and do things with it. Um, I would say that, you know, data without action is just vanity it's like vanity metrics. Um, and so really trying to focus on, again, that management piece, what you do with your customer, getting the survey data, Gavin, getting the CX data, turning it into action, and then two, and what's usually most important for, um, MSPs when they get started, uh, or really anyone else in any business for that matter is that being able to measure customer experience allows you to identify issues. It will tell you what you should keep doing and what needs to be changed. Um, and you know, often people are scared about getting negative feedback, but negative feedback is probably the most important kind of feedback because it tends to be the most actionable, um, and the most urgent, uh, especially vis-a-vis improvements, improvements in your operations improvements, in your experience improvements with your overall business. Um, and with that allows you to understand obviously customer relationships and increase your customer retention, uh, which is a good way to look at a business and generally makes a business more efficient, uh, when it's focused on customer retention. But then there's also a piece around customer feedback. And we can talk about this later in detail, but how you can grow your business, um, through, through customer experience and through having a customer feedback platform or system.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know we, we definitely want to get into that sales and marketing side of it because I think there's a huge advantage for MSPs to take their customer service stuff and be able to, and be able to relay that in a marketing message. So I want to get into that, but before we get into that, talk about how, you know, maybe from an MSP, that's our listener base that we have, um, how do we improve operational efficiency, you know, around that customer feedback, and maybe talk about how some of your partners are leveraging, you know, the, you know, the feedback they're receiving and what they're doing with it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So where we see our customers having a lot of success is typically when they take feedback as organization very seriously, because as I said before, they take client experience very seriously as an organization. And starting with that fundamental idea, all of their process, all their operations are built around this idea of providing a good client experience. And so what it can do is it can really provide a clarifying, um, vision for the organization, a core value where you can build things around. And so once you start getting that, that customer feedback, what typically happens, the more you get, the more you want to manage it, the more focus you put on it, the better you manage it, the more efficient you become. And so you could imagine one of the, one of the key kind of, and the really easiest examples, uh, that we see with a lot of our customers is, as I said earlier, they're really focused on the negative feedback piece. And so whenever they get negative feedback, they have established protocols that then they've turned into automations with our system, with our PSA that allow them, like, as soon as that negative feedback comes, they already know how they want to action it, depending on the nature of it. And so they built into their systems into their workflows, what to do when that happens. And so they don't necessarily have to have human interventions all the time because this system's already in place and they've already defined when do they need to do a human intervention who needs to be notified so that they can take that human intervention and all of this just kind of works as part of their workflow, part of their system, making it, them having to have less touches, which is almost kind of paradoxical, right. As you're focusing on the humans. Yeah, you're right. I ended up having less touches because you have the right, the right touches at the right time and it makes the client happier. So there's less problems with fires. They have to put out the techs are happier because everything's very clear to them. Um, it's clear without, throughout the organization and no one's getting upset about negative feedback. They they've already got things in place to take care of it. Um, and so they've really just built a system around how they handle, how they support client experience. Um, and so, yeah, the, the really the three tactical things are probably taking instant action building these automated processes and then building out a culture around the operations, um, that then in effect makes the operations more efficient.

Speaker 2:

I like what you said there about the culture, because I think that's really important for the MSP to embrace it. It's one thing to have a process and a policy, but it's another to have it a part of your work culture and to really take it in. And I think that's really, when you start to see it Excel the most is when it's a part of your everyday work culture. It's not just a policy or a procedure. Uh, it it's a part of your MSP. And I think the ones that you see raving about it, and maybe, you know, raving about their customer satisfaction and all those things it's because everybody in the company lives and breathes it and they, you know, they're working daily to accomplish that mission.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, exactly. Right. And I think that they, yeah, they feel that right. Like it's in their DNA and also you can see how you would have the client, the attack and the management all aligned on the same thing. Right. They, all their interests are aligned. All their interests are the same around providing that great experience. Um, and, and ideally everyone gets, you know, everyone, everyone prospers in that, in that, because the client's happy, um, their businesses working. So they're, you know, maybe their account's growing the business is making more money. The techs are getting raises, uh, you know, and instead about thinking it, in terms of just day to day, you know, like, oh, I solved this one ticket. You're thinking about how does giving this good experience, how does actioning this feedback ladder up to our higher goals and then that percolates throughout the entire entire company and all the relationships with their customers. And, and yeah, I often think about a sports guy and I love the San Antonio spurs. So I would think about kind of the San Antonio spurs back in the Tim Duncan, um, era. And I guess that kind of dates me in terms of my age, within by Leonard as well. It was my favorite player of all time. Like they lived and breathed the team game. Right. And the system that Greg Greg Popovich, um, established and obviously feedback is not as important or as interesting as the San Antonio spurs and basketball, but I think it's the same mentality. Right? You want the whole to buy into what you're trying to do rather than, um, you know, have, have different players trying to do their own thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. A great point. And I'm a sports person as well. And a lot of my analogies and things I bring up are related to sports it's because it's easy and it's, so I totally get what you're saying.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. It's a little tough though, of living in Europe and then trying to explain to your team hockey analogies, uh, Simon stick handling this, uh, customer across the goal line. Like, what are you talking about at all? That's a good point.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The other question I had for you is, you know, customer experience, you know, how has it changed, you know, with COVID and you know, now that we're opening back up in some areas, you know, some are still, you know, locked down pretty heavy, but, um, have you guys seen anything from the MSP side, you know, when it comes to, you know, customer experience changes, you know, was it a positive on, you know, during COVID? Was it, you know, what, what have you guys been seeing?

Speaker 3:

We saw everything, uh, especially in, I guess, 2020 now at the beginning and the first lockdown, um, when that hit, when we were talking to our customers, they were just seeing massive, massive, massive increases in the amount of activity at the service desk. Um, you know, as companies were trying to support remote work when they weren't ready for, to support remote work. Um, so that was the main thing was we were seeing 200, 300, 400, 500% increase in the service desk, which is obviously tough, right. I mean, good for business, but also hard for operations. Um, and so what we actually saw though, was in that the companies were focused on customer experience. We're also getting significantly more, uh, positive feedback, even though they weren't always, uh, delivering on their requests, uh, to the SLA days. And when we go through it, I mean, this is anecdotal when we get into the specifics, but, um, you know, we, we would see some of our customers say on LinkedIn posting, how just they get this long message from one of their customers saying, you know, I really appreciated in these really difficult times and all this uncertainty, um, you know, whomever taking the time, um, to work with me on this particular request on this project on X, uh, which was pretty cool to see. And I think, and, you know, I did some, some reading and some study, I read some studies on this, um, yeah. And apparently nurturing relationships. Um, and this, I guess is intuitively obvious as well is always more important in times of greater uncertainty and greater chaos. Um, because people are much more likely to kind of fill this space with their own kind of anxious or paranoid thoughts, which, which seems totally appropriate. So the people who are proactively reaching out, talking to their clients, saying, this is how we're going to do things. This is what's going on for us tend to, to have really positive feedback. And we also actually saw a lot of new business where, um, people were coming to smile back and saying, look, we've never had feedback before, but we, through this experience that we really needed a feedback system in order to understand how things were changing with our existing customers and what new needs, um, needs were out there in the marketplace and to our internal teams were responding. Cause you could see through the feedback how the internal teams were, were responding to the changes in, in their work.

Speaker 2:

I think, you know, you know, you hit on a few things is people were really understanding, you know, during COVID, I mean, you know, normally an SLA is broken in an everyday environment. If it was pre COVID, you know, you were getting a negative review. Um, but as long as you are communicating and saying, Hey, look, we're experiencing a ton of calls. We're going to work with you. We're going to get this through. It still ended up being a very positive scenario and the MSPs and their customers felt that as well. And you know, so I think they're coming out of it with a little bit stronger relationship, you know, than they did before, you know, just hearing some of that feedback and seeing how much they were valued.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Most definitely. We definitely saw it. And of course we saw the flip side too, where those who didn't take it as seriously, um, for whatever reason, you know, there, the, the relationships frayed a bit. Um, and so it went both ways, but I think it did underscore the importance of just client experience generally. And I think coming out of the pandemic, that won't change that will, uh, and, and not just in the MSP space, just more broadly. Right. You know, with all, I think it started in the B to C space, it's moved more into a, to B, to B where people really care about the client experience and they have much higher expectations of the client experience and the transparency offered. Um, and the, and wanting to talk about the, the relationship of the business. That seems to me, uh, just to be part of our lives now. Uh COVID or no, COVID

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely. So let's get into this, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, you know, getting those really good testimonials and really, you know, taking, you know, some of those things, you know, customer feedback is also very beneficial when it comes to the sales and marketing side of, of an MSP. Um, and I think it's something that's probably undervalued on an MSP side is really talking and, and really, you know, highlighting those numbers and highlighting the feedback. But what, from your side, you know, how does an MSP take the customer experience, you know, and use it for sales and marketing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So we see it generally them using it to support, um, their strategies or their tactics, what they're doing in the marketplace, primarily through, uh, first and foremost, if they have a good C-SAT score, um, posting dot on their website, we have functionality on fall back that allows you to do that, but you could just do your C-SAT score, stick it up there. Um, as a, as a industry recognized benchmark, um, for, for your customer service, uh, we see a lot of customers using, again, we have a website widget, but, but maybe they do it different ways. Um, using the testimonials, like turning, um, feedback into, into testimonials, they can display, you know, Dan's MSP provides great service. Every single time. MPS surveys are particularly good with that because yes, the question, not just how good were we on this ticket, where you typically get, you know, uh, Dan solved this ticket, um, quickly, uh, and was great along the way. When you ask the NPS question, how likely are you to recommend you tend to get, I would recommend Dan's MSP for it's like superior client experience, uh, its expertise in the space, et cetera. Right? So we've seen a lot of customers using NPS in order to drive those testimonials and, you know, picking up on the last points we were making there in this world where people, you know, go to Google and, and drop a search term in there and then want to see reviews. Um, you know, having Google reviews that, that give your MSP five stars could be a real differentiator, especially locally, if someone's Googling, um, you know, uh, MSP, well, they probably went to MSPs, but whatever it is in Toronto or in Markham, um, which is a suburb of Toronto, you know, you wanna, you wanna appear high on those search terms. You want to have someone be like, oh, I've never heard of this shop, but they've got a lot of good reviews. I can read with people and say about them. That gives a boost of confidence, a boost of credibility. Um, and then we also see sales teams just using, um, the, the responses or even talking more to their service desk managers about, you know, what are, what our customers like about us. Uh, so to give some insights into what your unique selling proposition is, uh, using that feedback using, um, the ops team, uh, in order to drive the sales process to demonstrate value.

Speaker 2:

It's really important. I mean, I tell MSPs on a daily basis, if you're not highlighting your, your C stat scores, your tickets yet, you're resolving your SLA time, your response times and, and things like that. I mean, that's important stuff. I mean, when, when someone looks and searches on an MSP's website, they know what they do, they know that they provide it services, but it's how it's delivered. It's who they are. It's their unique, like use of their unique selling proposition. Um, it's understanding, you know, like if I'm a business owner and I'm looking and I'm like, wow, you resolve your tickets within five. You know, you're responding to someone within five minutes of a ticket coming in and you got a 99% satisfaction score and you're helping, you know, the productivity of a business increased by this. Those are things that really matter, uh, from a marketing standpoint and they hit home for that owner or that buyer who's on the other side. So I think leveraging it, you're not seeing enough of it. Um, I think, you know, there's great things that every MSP have, but they're not highlighting it to, whereas people know that and can relate to it. So I think it's really cool how you guys have those integrations to push that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no doubt. Thanks. And yeah, we've been trying to, um, provide some education consultation in the marketplace too, because I mean, I get it right. It's, it's one of those things where you do the job and you're technically good at you're an expert. And so you want the work to speak for itself. But I think a of the time when, you know, if, if say you're someone who doesn't understand the tech and you're just going out and you, so it's all on trust, right? You just want to believe this person who I have hired is going to do the job and you don't really have a way to assess yourself, are they doing it right? So when you can see other people who are in your shoes as well, who don't have the same expertise, don't have the same depth of knowledge. You're like, oh, okay, well, there's other people who work with these guys, you know, I trust them. And so it just adds that level of, you know, you do your job, right? And now you've got other people saying it. And so, um, the, the market can those buying the services can sympathize with the people who are in their shoes. Yeah. One

Speaker 2:

Of the things I always say in a lot of the marketing presentations that I do is it doesn't matter how good you are at what you do. If people don't know what you do. And you know, so it's really important. You could say you deliver the best customer service, but okay. How, what does that look like? Uh, you know, great. Everyone says they can patch my computers and they're going to secure me and they're going to do it, but like, that's great, but like, what are you doing? What makes you unique? What's, you know, and there's so much that comes from those, you know, customer feedback that, uh, I see some websites that are very well done where they're publishing their scores and they're getting all that stuff up there. And I think it's something that's very relatable that it's current. It's something that's within the last month. You're not going to testimonial from five years ago. It's something that's like fresh. I think that matters a lot. So, uh, you know, using that stuff is really important.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And it's all there, right. If you're collecting it, why not leverage it? Right. It, it costs you the onetime, uh, you know, adding a couple of lines of code to your marketing website. And then, you know, if you use our widget or some of our competitors like it, they dynamically update. Um, so you're getting those fresh reviews, those new reviews in real time. Um, and if your customers are taking that box from marketing permissions, I mean, they want to help you. Right. Um, and so they're saying like, Hey, we love you guys to do great service. Why not take advantage of the gift that they're giving you?

Speaker 2:

No, that's great. And like you said, you know, help drive your operational efficiencies, get your team in, build your, build your team's culture around your customer service, uh, in, in also, you know, making sure everyone believes that I think it's a really good formula for success, uh, in the MSP space. So we've talked a lot about, you know, whether it's operations or whether it's sales and marketing, um, you know, just general customer service stuff. What about final thoughts type of stuff in terms of just utilizing, whether it's smile back, but just the high level again, around customer sat, like what, what would you want to leave the listeners with today?

Speaker 3:

I would say take like, take it seriously. Uh, client experience is important and it's only become, going to become more important. Um, and just start collecting feedback, whether it's with a tool, whether it's with a system, no matter how I would just suggest do it, you know, and it can be as simple as you, you can ask these questions in conversation with people as you go for dinner, you can, um, you can give feedback on the phone, you can get feedback almost any way. It doesn't have to be with the fancy piece of technology. You just got to get it in even a little bit is better than none. And I find the more feedback you get, the more feedback you want and then eventually, usually want it systematize it and stuff like that. But yeah, if you're, if the world's opening back up and you're out events or you're taking your clients out for dinner, like I would, I would have a scripted way of asking, like, how are we doing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that's great. How do people get ahold of you or learn more about smile back

Speaker 3:

So they can go to www.smile, back.com and check out our website and you can book a demo or even start a trial, uh, both are free and we just do consultation for anybody. So, um, you can reach out to me at Andrew it's malbac.com and I can do it myself or such up with someone on my team. We're happy just to talk feedback, uh, feedback anytime.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's great, Andrew. I appreciate you being on, uh, today. And, uh, you know, this is some really good stuff. And I think a lot of times we get wrapped in the weeds as MSPs and forget about, you know, tools or things that we could put into place to help us grow our business. Um, so I'm really glad you were on today to talk about some of this and, uh, we'll have to have you back again and see where the stats scores are and you know, in the next six months as we see the world open back up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Most definitely. Thank you for having me on, and I'd love to talk to you more.

Speaker 2:

All right. So that's it for this episode of the connecting it podcast, you can locate us on your favorite podcast app, but if you're in the apple iTunes store, give us five stars and leave us a comment we'd love to hear from you. Again, this is a channel MSP, a podcast, and we want to bring things that are going to help you grow your managed service provider. So until next time everyone have a great day.