Hi, Kaylee, how are you? Good thanks. How are you? Good. It looks just might be the two of us. Oh really? Yeah. That surprises me. This is a good topic. It is but you know, I didn't do a great job with sharing it. So let's see if anybody jumps in. I'll share the link. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. How are things been going with you? The community's buzzin It is fun. Yeah, it's moving along a little bit. I mean, I wish it would grow a little bit faster. But you know, what are some of the kind of metrics that you're looking at early on? Um, membership and just like how much activity is in the community? So the posts and comments and things like that? Yeah. So we'll see Yeah, anything you like or dislike. Honestly, I just this is maybe asleep response, but I love how supportive it is. And like, I feel like you have really leaned into creating a safe space so I feel super comfortable just as far as asking questions. And I think just in terms of your category setup, as well, it's really easy to navigate. I know where to go to for different things that I'm looking for which I have also found to be really, really helpful. Good, good. Yeah. I don't have like a lot of categories, I guess yet, but I'm hoping that it'll grow and we'll see what happens. And I kind of like that, like right now. It's just you're figuring it out. And I can go through and read like, for example, one of the things I find like I was traveling yesterday, and I was just scrolling through my phone, reading some of the latest posts. It's easy to do that when it's all hosted within one channel, or just like having like a few as opposed to having like 10 or 15 Because sometimes I find that that can just be too many places to go and look when really it's just I'm kind of interested in exploring more of it. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know a lot of times people get really excited when they start a Slack channel and they want to do all these different categories and everything. And I'm like you really shouldn't because it gets the conversation so fragmented, and then it gives people the idea like, oh, I don't know where this exactly fits, and they get distracted and don't post it all or just it's an uncomfortable feeling, not knowing how to do something, and people avoid it at all costs. So if they're like, I don't know where to post. A lot of times they just won't. Yeah, 100% I totally agree with that. We are funny creatures aren't we? Are
and it's, you know, that's just human behavior and that change management is not an easy feat. Because you're changing that behavior. And it's yeah, it's tough.
Yeah. So what are there any cabbie event type things you want to talk about today? or So
honestly, it's
one of the things that caught my attention with this invite was around user groups.
Oh, I can talk about that. If
you're cool to talk about that. I would love it. Because just in with this new company that I'm at, our CCO is interested in spinning up these user groups, and you started leaning into this at my previous company with the community that I was managing there. But that community was much more mature. So just to paint the picture, we launched our community to me,
one second, I just want to say this is recorded. Is that okay? I think so. Okay. All right. Go ahead.
There's nothing private, I'm sure. But yeah, so at the previous company I was working for our company or our community was much, far richer. So we launched our community to all of our customer base back in at the end of September.
And so at my previous company, we had folks raise their hands to say I want to take the lead with this user group. And they really spearheaded spinning that up alongside of us and we stepped in to say like, you know, we'll help you source speakers will help you from a promotional standpoint. And if like I said, if you're looking to engage, you know, one of our experts around a certain topic will help facilitate that. So these are the customers right? Exactly. We wanted them to more or less take the lead and then we would support them in ways that were appropriate and made sense, right. Whereas with this company, because the community is much less mature, we haven't had those hand raisers yet. And they're still just really grasping the concept of the community and understanding that now they have this space where they can connect with other folks who are using the same software. So I guess where I'm going with this is, my question is really around what's your experience, like spinning up user groups and what are your recommendations in terms of getting those started? Okay. So the customers have raised their hands you've said we are happy to help with like certain things. What sorry. So just to clarify that so that is what we experienced and how we grew the user groups at my previous company, okay, which is like that's how I envisioned it with this new company, they we haven't identified those hand raisers yet. Nobody has come forth to say, hey, I want to help with this. I want to be like the President or leader of this user group type of thing. Yeah, we're trying to figure out how, how do we approach this? Is this something that we start to create on our own and then slowly identify somebody to take over? How do we want to go about it? Okay. One, why are we moving into the direction of user groups? So
the real focus is to give our customers a connection point between them and other people from their region. Just to have that, you know, regular cadence of jumping on a call and feel that they can have conversations amongst themselves without it being led and managed by our company.
Okay. Okay. And forgive me, is the community already set up with this company? Or? Yes, okay. Yes. So there is a community launched
it at the end of September, so it's still very much in its infancy stage.
Okay. Launched at the end of September. How's the engagement? In the community?
So, I would say we're getting a handful of returning users, and it's usually the same people who are responding to questions. It is a support community. So we do have those people who are just coming to ask their question, get their answer, and then you know, we might not see them again until they have another question. But I would say we get like a few posts a day.
Okay, that's good. That's good. Yeah. Okay. So a few posts a day so you're getting some people that are coming if you've got a few posts a day then you've probably got like, if three people are posting a day, that's usually probably get like three to five people per 100 visitors that might post so that's not bad. You can actually do quite a bit with that. What I see with a support community is that it's a little bit harder to build that engagement and that sense of community because it's focused on here's an answer, answer it go. Like, it's not like our community where it's you know, we're bonding together. We're trying to have relationships and like support each other and that sort of thing. So it's a little bit different. Now. One, you can either start sending out and building out that sense of community. Like, if you can do some kind of regular call cadence where you're just like, hey, jump on, we'll answer questions and talk about this issue this week. And then you can bring up things that you want to talk about. What it does is it makes you helps you facilitate bringing these people together. And as that happens, they're going to be like, we want to do this more. We want to get on and do this more. So it's kind of like a jumpstart, to building out that sense of community. If you can do that even an hour topic, community discussion every two weeks, for two months, you're gonna have like four or five calls that people are starting to pay attention to, and building that sense of community where they start, you know, say you get 20 people on a call and four or five of them really talk. There's going to be probably 15 connections made out of that call, where people just feel comfortable reaching out to you because you were on the call. And as that happens, it starts bringing loyalty and that sense of community to your community. Once people do that, and feel that sense of community, it's so much easier to be like, Hey, does anybody want to have these types of topic calls or user groups on their own where we're not a part of it, and start to get people to raise their hands? Because they see that building up? What do you think about that so far? Yeah, I love that. And that has been kind of my train of thought in terms of how I want to go about setting these up. So for example, we have our founding members and we have done some calls with them and they've asked to have that as a quarterly reoccurring call. And the Ask eventually there to that group will be you know, would you be interested in taking on this user group as being like the team lead for this so I feel like we're very aligned there. Um, in terms of setting up those bi weekly calls. I do like that. Did you? For example, with selecting the topics for these calls? Did you put out a survey or just call for topics? I think I saw that in the community actually. I've done that. Yeah, I've done that. Some. I found that just like paying attention to what people are talking about, and the questions that are coming up, I can come into a call and be like, hey, so until brought up this topic this week, and I thought it'd be a good question to discuss as a group and what we think like, you know, across different customer areas or whatever. So it's nice to like, see what's being posted in the community and probe further. I'd like to have a topic that's kind of open but specific enough like events and calves, and awards and things like that. Honestly, it's that very broad. For our group. I should be more specific, but I have like, three calls a week that I do three, one hour calls a week for the community and like, I can't get more specific. At this point, maybe someday, but I think that that helps. Like you look and see. Okay, these are the questions people are talking in the community. What do you guys have on that? Or what do you think about that, and just spacing them out to be like, Hey, we're going to talk about this discussion. And it's bring your wins, bring your struggles, bring your obstacles, don't say struggles people don't like that. Wins obstacles, and just your insights on this topic, and share and I say you usually get to talk about five to six topics per call. Like if it's an hour call. That's how I would do it. And I'm suggesting it as a jumping off point, not as like an ongoing program. Because you once you get that community started that sense of community, you can enable other people to do it like, John, I heard you talking about this on a call and it really seems like people understand your point of view and you have a really great way of speaking about it. Would you be interested in one hosting a future call about this or to hosting a regular call about this? So if it's a one time thing, then you get them in? They do it then you can say hey, would you like to do this regularly with a group around this topic? Or this area? And if it's, you know, if it's ongoing, just offer Hey, if you want to do this ongoing, you're a pro at this, what can we do to help you? No, that's awesome. I really do appreciate that feedback. One thing I do want to call out is just you know, I'm not an expert in the space or product service at all, and I'm absolutely not a product expert. Would you recommend bringing in additional stakeholders to offer that value from the company standpoint or just really put emphasis on the fact that this is about our customers sharing? And my reason for that question is I just want to make sure that they're really getting value out of the conversation and just having that I guess, a self doubt of not being able to offer that myself. Yeah, I don't want them to be like, Oh, well, this was a waste of an hour of my valuable time. I'm not going to come back to this next time. Right. Yeah. So I have a customer that is very much in line with that, like, I have no idea what they actually do. What
it's a software company, but not far, but it's a software company, and I get like the overall idea of what they do, but I don't understand the profession at all. It's like a type of engineering that is foreign to me. Hi, Robin and Lisette. Thank you for joining. I'm with Kaylee. We're talking about calves and kind of starting up a cab for her company. But our user groups user group sorry. And the the kind of situation right now is that they don't have people raising their hands but they know that it would be beneficial. To have user groups. So far. My suggestion is to start having some of these informal calls like we do for the community. And as you're doing that you're going to notice and find people that want to talk about these things. And then nurture that relationship into them becoming user group leaders. So her thing we're talking about right now, is she doesn't have the she's not the expert on the topic. So what I do is say, Hey, we're gonna have an open discussion every two weeks about these topics. Every two weeks, you're gonna get on a call with us. And we're going to bring up some topics and we want to hear from you the customers and your expertise. So share what are the obstacles, insights and wins that you've been experiencing in that area. And our expert, whoever from your team is going to be joining us because he'd like to learn to or something like that just to say, you know, so that they know when they come. There's not going to be just somebody facilitating the call, but somebody that's going to make sure there's good information going back and forth. And once that once it's moving along a bit of this program of having, you know, these people coming together, it builds that community, that sense of community, and then you get people that you know, like this month. Rachel Ward is going to she does expansion calls. That's next Thursday, the following Thursday, Joel clack key is doing he's from case buddy case study buddy and he's going to be doing a monthly call on case studies and stories, which I think is gonna go over really well. And I've been super lazy about getting other people to host calls, because you can find them a lot faster within two weeks. You can see like two of the events you can tell who's going to be we're going to be informational and helpful about those things.
Yeah, no, that's awesome. This has been super helpful. I appreciate you sharing all of your
advice. Sure. No problem. How are you? Robin?
Doing well, I wanted to join today's call because we actually just signed the contract for our company's first ever cab in March. So are you
signed a contract for it? Is that like what you owe the venue? Okay. Yeah, I sometimes get people confused because I swear like last week, somebody was posting on a community asking for someone to host a cab for them. And I was like, oh did was that you? It wasn't okay
exciting Yeah. Well, we'll have right now we only have a you know, a small group attending in person. We've got a couple of people that are gonna join online. But for my company, it's the first time they've ever hosted one so super exciting.
Have you checked out any of the resources Lesley Barrett put together on cabs?
Probably not. Okay.
She we did a call almost a year ago when I started these like weekly calls, where she shared on hosting and executive cab and like she goes all out for everything she does. I'm like an MVP. I'm a minimal viable product person. Like I get whatever, I can scrape it together and put it out there and make the most of it. She like plans so well and so meticulously. But she did that call she shared, like her whole brief on it. The gifts she gave the she had an auction where she bought fake money off of amazon so that customers could bid on new features. Just lots of fun stuff. And she wrote about it in her CMA soulmate newsletter. So if you get to check that out, I would say that could be helpful. I don't know exactly where you are. Do you have any questions about the cabs are in decent
shape? I think for me right now my I just need to finalize the internal number of GP folks. So my company's GP by globalization partners, by the way, I don't think we've met Kaylee or Lisa So nice to meet you and maybe to
visa Am I saying
your name right.
Let's set let's Sorry, sorry,
you weren't there? No. So we had I just haven't taken down my son's birthday decorations yet. Office is temporarily in the kitchen. So yes, it looks like I'm having a party back here.
So we I just want to make sure I don't have too many people from our company in the room given that right now we're gonna have four customers in the room. I was aiming for a one to one ratio. I think we might have to go a little heavier on my folks just so I've got everyone all the teams represented. But it's we're just doing like, a little longer than a half day and don't want it to be too long. So I think we were pretty good in terms of agenda. spent time on the phone and speaking of wisely spent time on the phone today with our our son dozo lead. You know what's the best way not only for the cab to gift those people but just starting gifting as as a whole because I I build the ground from our program from like, nothing. So we're putting all of the pieces in place. So yeah, that's
awesome. So with that ratio of customers, you're going to have four customers
in the room right now we've got four I'm going to send a follow up like a cab package, so to speak. So with our mission, our charter are a social sharing opportunity for them if they want to announce that they're they join the cab want to just get their approved by you know just like an I haven't told them the location so they've RSVP I said San Francisco but now I get to say like where we're going to be so yes, right now for in person too, but I'm hoping that maybe I can get like one or two more to join when I send out that package. So
yeah, I in the past I've had because we've had a lot of calls on these. The average that people suggest is like 10 to 12. So I don't know how helpful that is. Obviously it's whoever you can get to attend. But if it were me and I was going to have a lot of people from my own team, compared to the amount of people that our customers and I don't know how much you want to listen to me, but I would focus on like a kind of spoiling them type of approach where it's obviously you're giving them gifts for coming. But just like we're gonna put these people with you at your table wherever it is, so that you can ask them questions. We're going to ask you questions too, but you know, you're gonna get a half hour of brain picking from our experts just because you're here. And I think like if you position it like that, as they are delivering as much value as possible to them to the cab, visitors peoples then it doesn't feel like you're just trying to suck for me. It feels like you're trying to like make me feel good and give me a ton of value so that I stay a customer which I already expect, but it also helps with like future cab participation. Yeah, yeah. And what you said about sharing on social, I would ask it, can we share that you're going to come to our event, or can you not do that a little bit differently. I'm approaching it as like, Hey, you're a valued customer. We completely respect your privacy we're not going to put your information out publicly but we would love if you care that you're doing this I'm just because I don't want to make anyone nervous that we're putting it out data and also we know the competitors are watching right so we don't want to like specifically put up like one of our competitors could have blogged out on who their CAB members are. And I'm like, oh, okay, you know, like, aggressive. Yeah, it is. But I think it's also like to celebrate those customers and to show like your, your appreciation and giving them the spotlight so it kind of works. Both ways. Like you know, it is aggressive, but it also says Hey, we love you as our customer. So we want to show everybody that you are our customer. Also it kind of ties your customer a little bit closer to you. It's gonna be a little bit harder to leave if you're like shouting them out on social media.
Yeah, maybe I'll think about like post event, getting their permission to put some pictures out and tagging them yelling.
Yeah, that'd be good. And then in terms of connections, they're all interactive and I will have as of now three C level so they're they're getting like really exclusive access that nobody gets Yeah, how I in the promotions. I don't know how many people you want to come our customer success people or AES reaching out to customers to be like, hey, you've got to come.
Yeah, the account team sent the initial invites. Okay, and then I've had the conversation from that from there with the account teams on copy is very exclusive. We actually only targeted 30 accounts at all. Okay, loops of getting my goal was five to seven participants. Because this is when we wanted it to be very exclusive, very tight knit. Moving forward. You know, this America's only So moving forward, we're gonna do a Mia and then we'll like longer term 2024 Probably do AsiaPac but we're doing regional tabs and like really like you are the top of the top so that's where we're at. I mean, 10 to 12 is a great number. And if we got that many we for sure would host them in the lower metric,
that makes sense. That makes sense. Um, can I ask what internally has brought you to the point that you're starting this starting this whole program of cabs? So we started a whole customer advocacy program, there was no program in place. And so it's really there. A new cmo joined a little over a year ago started really building out the company when the company has gone through hyper growth. And I don't want to dominate this whole call. But just to give a little background, the company like I think three years ago was 200 people maybe that and thinks Keightley and now it's like 1200 plus people so it's just like, that's really grown quickly. And so, with the change in CMO, you know every every function is meeting to mature because it used to be a small organization. Everyone knew everyone everyone knew everything up here. But now everything has to be a program and a process. And so, when the BPI report into which is underneath the sales oriented or sorry, the marketing organization, you know, really suddenly need to build out that, that customer function and that's when I joined just last summer Oh nice. Ya know, it helps in like Kaylee said this is helpful to hear a lot of times when people come on and they have things that they want to discuss. I like to ask a lot of questions as well to one help with any advice I might have and to to like, help learn what your situation is and where you're coming from because it helps me share more advice like I've done almost a year of these calls, and it's a lot of fun, but I've learned so much and try to take that and just share it in every call so that it makes it easier for everybody involved.
Yeah, and I'm sorry, I joined late, but maybe calian Was that could you just give me like a little background on where you're at and what you're focused on?
Yeah, was that did you want to go first and then I can
follow. So I've been married for quite some time here. For the first time, join. I'm excited to meet you both. I have switched industries recently. Well, I guess a little over six months now. After spending some time at home with my little guys. After going through high tech layoff I decided to do some consulting and some contracting and so I've got a cab background customer advocacy. I love the customer experience. Like that's relationship building, like is my superpower. And anyway, so I came on board with Westrock they're based in Atlanta, and they do like sustainable packaging. It's been really interesting to just learn the industry. They went through some internal changes back in October. And while their whole customer advocacy team Granted it was very lean. It was like one director and two contractors which I was one of the whole team when the new president who came on board kind of just did a complete reorg and the team was wiped out. I remember and now customer advocacy is shifting. They've asked me to stay on board for now. So we're working on a cab. Cab year one last spring was an inaugural cap. And so the new director now has asked me to kind of help set strategy for the next for this next year. And one piece of fine we're kind of struggling with a little bit is metrics. And and I would love to understand from others. You know that first year I'm considering? Actually maybe I'll check this. I don't want to take over all of it. We're not no we're just doing intros. I'll ask the metrics question after we get through all intros. But it's wonderful to meet you all. I'm excited to be this you know, there's the customer marketing community has always been like the collaboration has always just been fantastic. And so I'm always excited to jump on these calls when I can.
Well, welcome I'm glad you're here. I
couldn't agree with you more. I think being a part of like being in the customer marketing. Well, it's just so great to see how all of us can bounce ideas back and forth and jump on these calls and participate in the different communities. It's so incredibly helpful. But similar and not so similar. Sorry, did you say it's Lisa or listen,
listen, listen. Sorry.
I'm similar to you. I started in a new role about six months ago, just over six months ago, and I was brought on as the community manager, but that also obviously incorporates advocacy into it. And our company went through a reorg like a week or so after I started, the CEO was pushed out a lot of the C suite changed over so it's definitely been an interesting adventure. I came from another tech company where I was for like three and a half years just over and to throw another kind of curveball in there. Our cap was actually managed by our C suite and their EA is. So it's interesting, because with this company that I'm at now Kab is on our roadmap. And we are looking to host that within our team and I actually sit in the Customer Success department. So we have our little team of four is the customer community and advocacy. But within that is our training team and Education team as well. So as far as cap goes, I'm more of a listener today. And I can share my experience as well with it but very curious to understand your goals and why you're looking to spin these up. And just following the success Robin with where you're at in terms of getting yours off the ground.
That's perfect. Thank you. So who wants to jump in?
I would love so then I find a little late so I'm not sure Robin if I missed this. Have you? Is this your inaugural meeting for your club members or have you already have this already been an ongoing program?
It's brand new. Oh yeah. So we had originally with all the invitations that you know I guess if I did a percentage we did okay. We had we sent to 30 companies a little more than 30 contacts. And and we had nine people or eight companies sign up so you know, percentage wise 30% Not too terrible. Since it's the first one I wasn't really aggressive because I do want to kind of run this first one and see how it goes and learn and then broaden the invitation for the next one. We're doing one in person per year and then quarterly online. The online will obviously be shorter, like a couple hours probably. And as I mentioned, we started in kind of North America, kind of us only I mean, I think Canada would have been an option but at this point, it's just us based folks who have registered so it's a first for seminar execs as well. So I think it's going to be a really good learning opportunity. I position it very much as like this is a dialogue that you know this isn't like us talking at you. This is going to be you got the air of our chief operations officer. You've got the air of you know, our chief
CEO will just do a quick welcome on zoom but we've got three C suite as I mentioned in the room, so it's really just to make our customers understand how much they're valued. And before I came on, you know everything was up here it really there was a an air table that was given to me that had like 29 line items on it of all the like that was it that was tracking of customer advocacy activities. The 10 years that a company has been no one was tracking, you know references so like it was it was just a conversation among salespeople. Oh, well that person may be good. So you know, there's this person that sudden like a teen reference call starts like tons of opportunity for burnout. And we're trying to remedy that. So when I joined I started had like three pillars that I consider myself responsible for the very first pillar like that foundation was the customer advocacy and reference database. And so we did end up implementing slot five we went live two weeks ago yesterday. So you know, five and top five and fulfilling reference requests which is cool. Right? I mean, it makes life much easier when you can like filter and sort and not have to go to like a gazillion different places to figure out these references especially because I've only been here seven months right so I don't know the customers. I'm still like, you know, would that be but so that was that was step one. And then the other two sort of pillars are just all of the customer advocacy activities. So fulfilling. I had one day, not quite two weeks ago, I got requests for a total of 11
usages I, they spam like hey, can we put these four names in a press release? Can we mention these, you know, five names on a press tour? Can we put this customers logo so it's like all of these requests came in in one day. So that was an especially heavy day. But you know, just make requests and of course we're trying to source case studies I would say that that's like the one thing that's kind of taken a backseat not because we haven't tried but because you know the platform wasn't fully implemented. Video case studies budget I can't get anyone to do it. I have one verbal yes. And now they've gone dark on me. But creating creating those assets, managing that those opportunities and activities and obviously in a way that makes it beneficial to the customer. I've had to I have hurt some internal feelings recently saying like, what's in it for the customer? Like why would we is that really how we want to start our relationship with them. But you know it it's our job right to advocate for the customer as much as we're advocating for our own company and people internally see that our CMO definitely understands that. And then that third pillar is the customer advisory board. So simultaneously to launching slot five, I've been building out the customer advisory board because we did want to get it done sooner rather than later. And so we are six weeks out from that first one.
Nice. That's really great, helpful background and I like how you've got those three pillars. Big that's big, like the one especially that's like all that other advocacy stuff. But I think a lot of people in our space under appreciate the importance of their data, and I'm not talking like your Salesforce data. You might use Salesforce in that way but I've done it separately because it's there's just so much I want to track about people I want to know like, okay, this person has done a reference they've done their hand raised like they've said, I want to be a reference that they've actually become a reference. We had an interview of like, why they might do a case study and just all of those things and then it's a pain to track it manually and some of it you can do automated but when you get those four requests in one day, your database if you've kept kept it on top of it, you can go in there and pull the names so fast. And it's super, super helpful. So I'm excited about your database and excited for what it's like we've got about 150 members in there right now but a lot of them are like I pulled their name from years ago but but already like now having companies in I can I can like filter within slot five and say like, okay is nonprofit, you know, has, I can put a few criteria and it's making life easier already, but with minimal data, so the more robust it becomes, the better. And of course, Salesforce if y'all use that in your companies as you know like it would be a lovely single source of truth if the sales team actually populated it. But that's where we're really light like we don't have company size in Salesforce right now for the most part. We don't have industry for the most part on the back again though. So right now I have one person on my team and he and I are populating on the back end. Industry like anywhere we can pull it from like our platform, if we can pull that information we're putting it in there. So at least even though it's not tied directly to Salesforce, we can put criteria and I do have if it's helpful I have a slide with those three buckets if it's helpful for anyone I can share that yes always I would love that
please share my oh I think screenshots this April Oh, sorry. Yeah, no worries. Go nice. Y'all can be screenshotted if it's helpful.
And Robin I was just gonna add really quickly while you pull that up, and I'm not sure what your industry is. But one thing that in my past life we did to try and engage people to do the videos is as part of the videographers contract we got them to create like a one minute video that the company could use Yeah, and that still didn't work. They didn't might
and like whatever your internal priority is d you know D and I because our businesses global expansion. And so I use D and eyes is like a good example because it's like well, you want to have you know different cultures and different, you know, ethnic background, things like that. So, yes, that is in there. But thank you. I love that idea. And I do think it helps sell it. For sure. Yeah. Oh, that's a tough one. So what was what did you just say that you did, Kaylee, you had? A minute like you ask customers to do a minute call or video. Yeah, so for example, if we were doing a video testimonial and already go so just one click here is a company I used to work for and they do electronic health record software. So we would go into skilled nursing homes and assisted living facilities with the videographer. But we would work in partnership with the team who were we were working with for the testimonial to say like, Hey, are you looking for a video that you could upload onto your website and share and that was kind of the reward that they got from producing a video testimonial? Yes, perfect. Thank you. This is awesome, Robin. Thank you. It is this is really cool.
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
I was gonna say to stop sharing so each other
Oh, does matter. Cool. I have a question around. I think this is around like advocacy and and references in general how, what kind of the what we're coming across here and because the advocacy program it's going to be it's I guess let me back up a little bit. So with the new president on board, the CMO last she was such a huge fan of customer advocacy. And I think that's why there was just such a big shift. And so we're, I think they're looking to scale down the program. A little bit. Unfortunately, just the square was.
One of the things that I've run into is challenges around tracking customer permissions now, we don't there is no database I love slap five but unfortunately, until we can really get the president gung ho about customer advocacy, everything is just manual. So we're using Monday right now. And I just got my board with our recruit recruitment. Here's the customers. Here's what they've raised their hand to do. I was considering just adding another column that just says permissions and just putting any notes related to you know, what can we do with this customer? What are they okay with what are they not okay with, but I'm curious, like, what other companies how have you gone about that? Or is that just what's covered in your advocacy platform? And that's kind of like why it's there. I know.
That's a great question. Any answers?
I mean, XL Hell yeah. I think Monday, probably it's good until Sunday, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I meeting with the director. I said, you know, we can leverage Monday as in the interim, but I said this is not how we want to do any type of
tracking at all.
I had on a call the other day, maybe Friday, somebody's talking about using airtable with some automations and there is a tool called softer so f t r.com. Where you can make a website that pulls everything from air table. And I thought that was like, there's a way you can set that up and have a place to look at things. I guess that's about as much as I can say on it. Right now because I haven't done it myself but they do have kind of a CRM template that you can use and airtable can be cheap enough like if you buy like a $12 a month account or something where you can get some automations that I think they were saying the person that I talked to it brings in information from Salesforce. Which is helpful because like I said, I like to have my stuff separate to the first company I did this with. I had it killed like a link to their Salesforce on their name, but then a link to our community and all these other places so I can easily find them. But there are a lot of people that just use spreadsheets right now. And I like your table because it's just a little bit more more advanced in like the different fields you can have and automating some things and if you spend a weekend playing with that and softer, you can even set it up so that you can have salespeople come to it and fill out a form that goes right into air table and automates to Zapier to send you an email and lots of fun stuff.
Yeah. So I can
add here too. So we didn't use Zapier, frankly, Karen, we don't use it with the company I'm at now. Smart recruiters. We at Pinnacle care used Influitive as our community and advocacy platform. So we would present obviously the advocacy opportunities to do like a case study or testimonial, as well as you know, put an ask out there for who wanted to be a reference. We did keep an XML basically a score. And within that score, we would track user activity, but also know like what kinds of advocacy opportunities they've agreed to or are interested in, and then we did and again this was XML hell, but we did track our references through Excel and made a table in that and then had sales folks request it through. Remember, we use at this point like a Google forum type of idea. But keeping the like master document but then having separate documents for the different asks allowed us to do some specific filtering that we couldn't do with it not master doc just because there was way too much information. And our reference requests were really really niche and specific. So we needed to have that extra space per sheet. That makes sense. Yeah, I that's how I kind of feel with Salesforce. I'm like, there's so much going on there. And it's used by so many teams, and it's not updated. And I used it when I was at demand base and we used Influitive as well. I couldn't update things in Salesforce because I didn't have the right privileges to get anything changed in Salesforce was at least three months out because nobody wants to fund having an admin or like the extra time it takes. And our data was a mess. Like, I'm like, how am I going to use this? I couldn't so when my manager found out that I was tracking things manually. She's like that's got to take forever. I'm like no, when I am on a call, I'll just enter a few things or after the kids go to bed I might enter some things but it helps me be able to be successful. And if you say to me, who is our who are the best like top 20 advocates that could be our champions for the year. In three minutes, I've got the list because I had like a scoring template, as well as the, you know, like tracking everything. So I had their name, their country, their state, their LinkedIn, all of that. And then in all these tiny columns, I'd have things like the date of when they raise their hand or things like that, and I would export from Influitive reports constantly, and just copy and paste things. I got to be really good at spreadsheet
Okay, so I think there was one more topic that somebody wanted to bring up again, was there cricket Okay. Well, is there anything else you ladies want to talk about today? Other questions? No.
Robert, I'm curious to hear from you. What are your next steps with setting up this tab? What's your biggest area of focus or when that you want to get out before going live with it?
For the first event in March, you mean Yeah. I think right now it's it's just ensuring that it's a successful event that the people who attend the customers feel like it was worth their time. And that the executives feel like it was worth their time because if either one walks out of the room thinking that wasn't a good use of time or money, that's going to be a huge loss for the program. And then of course right now because I'm interested in full planning mode and like, what am I not thinking of? But you know, we've got the executive buy in. We've got the customer buy in, so I'm just hoping it all goes really well and then you know, it'll be it'll be twofold from that point, it'll be getting that quarterly cadence virtually for the Americas and launching Europe in this calendar year as well.
Is your vision. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was just going to ask is your vision to keep the regions separate or would you like to one day bring them all together?
I think one day it could be a global cab on if, if there's opportunity and reason for all of those people to be in the same region just because it
it's costly for them to all travel and time zones make a difference even for virtual events. But as an example, you know, there was there I was in a different industry before and there's a show it just happened last week actually in Europe, and it's a show that is mostly attended by Europeans, but not only by Europeans. And so thanks, thanks for that.
In that instance, we you know, when we piggybacked on to an industry event, I think there's opportunity to bring them all together. Standalone, I'd probably just stick with it and region for now, at least, but if anyone has recommendations or experiences, you know, love to hear and learn.
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. So that's actually a great point, Robin. So going into year two of ours our program we have an initially it was we're just sticking to the Americas. And we just decided to expand it to incorporate EMEA to if it makes sense because specifically like in the packaging, industry like and the sustainability side of it. There are more restrictions in EMEA than there are in the US. And so it's an opportunity I think, for
for us to learn from what other companies are doing globally. So we're exploring bringing in a European customer to our next COP to see how like how does that you know, how does the dialogue go? Are they finding it beneficial, but it is it's finding the right customers who are kind of who have the same pain points. But the point is that they learn from each other right? They have that is great.
That is an excellent idea. I've never thought about bringing someone from a mia into an in America cab session. I mean, I'd have fun with that because I just love the accents, but I think it'd be really cool to think about it because they have a very different mindset. Not better or worse or anything like that, but just it's a different culture, different world. And we all speak English, or a lot of us speak English, but sometimes it feels I mean, you you've all met men before. So you know that men and women can often speak different languages. So it's interesting to learn from others and I didn't mean that in a bad way. I I'm totally all everybody's good. Everybody's equal.
Yeah, I'd love to hear how it goes. Was that kind of that'll be interesting. And we do have you know, it's, some of our top customers are in Europe and I threw it out there. You know that if, if some of their contacts are based here, absolutely bring them but didn't initially explore bringing anyone over from Europe. But moving on. Let Yeah, let me know how that goes. Because that could definitely be something we look at doing.
Yeah, we're looking to I think we're trying to not to narrow down. We're probably September mid September so that everybody can enjoy summer. And, but I'll definitely let you know another approach that we've decided to switch up this year a little bit from last year is that there were no competitors allowed no competing companies allowed in the tab and I think what after we, you know, kind of thought it over. There's value in having competitors in there obviously as long as they're okay with it, right. But I mean, like, there's just there's like this code collaboration, you know, like oh, hey, you've got the same pain points we do. And you don't have to be enemies just because you're, you know, competitors. It may work for some companies, maybe not for all but I think you know, we're it was something in the past that we were kind of like, no, that's not gonna work. We're shifting that a little bit this year.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. We are fortunate in that the way it worked out. We do have kind of a variety of titles so that you know, there's like a manager level all the way on up. But in terms of industries, it's a pretty good mix. No one's a competitor in our in what we do, I think we're a little bit fortunate that like, probably the only competitive thing would be finding out your competitors trying to expand into the same country you're trying to expand into because just by nature of what we do, we help people expand globally. So it's not like you're going into a competitive situations so much, but it's definitely something we're factoring it in for sure. Especially with like, references sales references. Yeah.
And what about metrics How are you guys gonna? How are you going to measure success with like this first year
so for the cab, the number one metric was members, and just because it's the first year, and then you know, when we roll out of the event, we'll put together the notes and kind of look for themes and try to assess KPIs based on that but going in, it's just really it's not super tangible. It's like let's get people in the room Let's talk. But if you have any recommend as that we should be using as metrics and I look at all the information you shared. Also marry from Leslie, thanks, Kaylee, if any of you have recommendations,
okay, I also there is Christine cool chick coach. I don't say her name right. I just did her first cab. And I think Amanda peacock maybe a few months ago, did a cab that it was one of her first. So if you wanted to connect with either of them, you can just hit him up right in the community. They're very open super ladies. And one I just want to thank you all for jumping on that. It's when we brainstorm like this together and talk a lot that we learn and take away so much information. And you know, Robin, you came in sharing that this is going to be your first cabin. I think we've learned just as much from you as we've shared. So I hope that you found value and Kaylee this is what I was talking about when you know after this call, I have a feeling that was that lasat and Robin are gonna stay in touch. So that's a great like building that sense of community. And in the future. You can be like, Oh, Robin finally got her cap done. Yay. It's it's launched it happen. So come tell us about it. Let's have a call. You'll definitely
have to keep us posted. I'm excited for you.
Thank you. Yeah, and I just joined the community because I didn't realize it was a separate one from the other.
I think a lot of people have that because it is like I was running the other one and HubSpot was like well, we want to do all these things. And I was like, I'm not doing that. Well. They they said they might close it. So I was like, oh, I need to start a new one. So
I'm in there now. Thank you. Thanks for hosting me. Zoe's. And I've already bugged both of you on LinkedIn
community okay. You ladies, have a good week. Bye. Bye ladies. Recording
