!

Our startup branding journey

PART 3

How to build a long-term

mission?

Hi! We are CustomerIcare Live Chat.

We want to go from this

To that

If you don’t know it yet, we have a mission!

So we’re working on a new brand and sharing

our journey with you!

We’ve got an awesome response on the first 2 parts (20k views woohoo!)

SEE PART 1 SEE PART 2

To sum things up, here’s what we want to achieve:

BECOME MEMORABLE

STAND OUTTHINK LONG-TERM

CREATE CONSISTENCY

CONNECT WITH CLIENTS

THINK LONG TERM

In this deck we’ll see how to

First, what do I mean by

« THINK LONG TERM » ?

When you’re a startup, like this it’s easy to get stuck on a really short-term mission.

In short, we have a mission called: « making money »

So this happens:Ooooh money!

OMG! Mo’ money!

You know what they say, Mo’ money, mo’ problems!

Nah, just kidding, here’s the real problem: Saying the purpose of your company is to make money is like saying your purpose in

life is to breathe.

You need a more meaningful long term mission

That will help you create a brand!

So, how do you create a long-term mission while still testing

new things every day?

It comes down to few key points:

- Solve a problem that’s bigger than your product

- Share your mission with everyone

- Create a long term plan even if you don’t follow it

- Define simple rules to guide decision making

!

It comes down to few key points:

- Solve a problem that’s bigger than your product

- Share your mission with everyone

- Create a long term plan even if you don’t follow it

- Define simple rules to guide decision making

!

I love the example of Slack. Look at what they say on their website

This gives them a lot of room to release new products while still respecting a long-term mission

If you want to grow huge, you have 2 options:

You have a product that you can distribute to an

insanely large audience (eg. Facebook)

You start with a product for a smaller audience

and launch new products in the future (eg. Slack)

Most companies go for the second option.

!

So, how do you create a bigger mission starting with a niche

product?

1 Piece of advice: Pick something you are passionate

about!

It could be changing the way we work, making customer service

more human, helping anyone pursuing their dream…

In our 2 years running CustomerIcare, we realized 1 thing:

Companies and customers are often presented as 2 opposite parties. Customers mostly reach out when

they have a problem and companies try to have as little contact with customers as they can. We think that there is a need for a new model. A model where

companies and customers collaborate.

So, here’s the mission for our new brand

We want to create a real dialogue between customers and online

businesses so customer service is not only about solving problems but about

collaborating.

And our niche product:

Aurelie ChazalConsultant

Aurelie Chazal

Hi! Is there anything I can help you with today?

We let you add a live chat window to your website. You can be proactive and greet online visitors instead of waiting for them to write

FIND OUT MORE HERE

After live chat we could launch anything that fits within our mission

That’s the beginning of our journey

That’s the world of possibilities that fit within your mission

Aurelie ChazalConsultant

Aurelie Chazal

Hi! Is there anything I can help you with today?

It doesn’t matter which path we take as long as we keep solving 1 big problem….

Aurelie ChazalConsultant

Aurelie Chazal

Hi! Is there anything I can help you with today?

And that’s what will allow us to keep testing tons of new ideas while still thinking long term!

It comes down to few key points:

- Solve a problem that’s bigger than your product

- Share your mission with everyone

- Create a long term plan even if you don’t follow it

- Define simple rules to guide decision making

Let’s see how you can share your mission with employees,

business partners, customers and everyone really

The first thing you should do is write it down!

It will help you define it better and make it real.

The next step is NOT to print it and put it on the wall.

In order for your mission to make sense you need to put your

words into actions.

The 1st step is to create this kind of dialogue with our customers

2. Treat customers like real partners

who will help develop our app

3. Pay attention to the little

details people share with us

1. Make it really easy for customers to

reach out to us

For that we need our entire team to be on the same page. This means:

A good hiring process

READ MORE

Good employee onboarding

READ MORE

The 2nd step is to share our mission with customers and partners

With a mix of

social content contact

It comes down to few key points:

- Solve a problem that’s bigger than your product

- Share your mission with everyone

- Create a long term plan even if you don’t follow it

- Define simple rules to guide decision making

Having a long term plan doesn’t mean creating a rigid schedule

for your employees to follow

new feature release

customer service ebook

JANUARY 2016

Set ambitious goal instead

reach 500 paying users

JANUARY 2016

Plus, know where you want to take your product

focus on more integrations

build more features

Just don’t draft a plan blindly. Use the data you have so far!

source visitors conversion

Google

Direct

SlideShare

Twitter

Quora

122,908

98,204

87,878

40,989

10,927

4.05%

7.05%

12.92%

1.91%

9.02%

looks like a good idea to focus on

SlideShare

Imagine that, on average:

1 SlideShare

100,000 views

2,000 clicks back to your site

260 new leads

26 new customers

You could set a goal to reach 1 Million views on Slideshare

10 SlideShares

1,000,000 views

20,000 clicks back to your site

2,600 new leads

260 new customers

But if you notice at any time that your presentations aren’t

converting as much, you can always change your strategy

Having a plan will help you be consistent and think long term

growth!

It comes down to few key points:

- Solve a problem that’s bigger than your product

- Share your mission with everyone

- Create a long term plan even if you don’t follow it

- Define simple rules to guide decision making

Having a plan helps you make sure you are growing.

!

Making sure you stay true to your mission will help you

grow the right way.

Let’s take Zappos, for example. That’s their mission statement:

"To provide the best customer service possible."

Yup, it has absolutely nothing to do with what they sell

It’s what guides all their decisions

Outsourcing customer service?

Will it help deliver the best customer service?

YES NO

24/7 support Everyone should be involved in customer service

Low quality

save costs to invest in other things

In that case the decision is easy. The NOs easily outweigh the YESes

They could offer 24/7 support in-house and save cost elsewhere. If the outsourced service is bad quality, this

would kill the mission.

Unfortunately, all decisions aren’t that easy

LITE

$0 forever

Should we offer a free

plan?

This is something we are still struggling with at CustomerIcare

Would it help encourage dialogue and collaboration between

companies and their customers?

YES NO

It would help making the software available to really small companies with tight budgets

It’s a great way to spread the word about our product and mission

A free plan means more customers with less revenues which makes it hard for us to have a relationship with every customer + create valuable content

We ended up saying no to the freemium model few months ago

It paid off but we are running into one big problem with our WordPress plugin

Tell us please, what is the reason for deactivating our plugin?

Send & deactivate plugin

We started collecting feedback from WP users with this popup

And here’s what we got:

« paid » « trial version »

« there’s no free plan. »

« need free »

« not free »

We also got a 1-start review because we were not clear enough about it being a paid plugin

(totally our fault though :/)

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Conclusion?

We don’t have the answer. But we are sticking with free trial + paid plans for

now because we are not freemium ready at all.

That’s it for now folks! !

Hope you enjoyed the presentation and we’d love to

hear your thoughts!

Tweet us @customericare

Chat with us on customericare.com

If you missed it, remember to check out the 1st & 2nd part of our journey

SEE PART 1 SEE PART 2

Also, !

if you you want to follow the rest of our branding journey, you can

sign up for our newsletter

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(Next order of business: Standing out in a crowded market)

THANK YOU!

customericare.com