Digital Mavens
Digital Mavens




In this Martech Fireside Chat, I catch up with Tom Goodwin and talk about Reviews.io, a solution to help businesses grow their online reputation through review collection and management.

Martech Fireside Chat Episode

In this 23 minute chat we talk about:

If you do like what you hear/see and want to sign-up to Reviews.io, mention this Martech Fireside Chat with Tom Goodwin or Kingston Lee-Young and mention 'FIRESIDE20' to get 20% off all their plans. Mention on the live chat on their website of to the Reviews.io customer success team and support team.

A big thanks to Reviews.io and thanks to Tom for being on this Martech Fireside Chat.

If you need any help with your digital tech stack, or to help get more out of your current online performance, please contact us, we’d love to help.

Reviews.io Transcript

Kingston Lee-Young: Hi everyone. Welcome to the latest edition of the Martech Fireside Chat. I'm Kingston Lee-Young from the Digital Mavens, and I'm here with Tom Goodwin, who is the COO of Reviews.io. Hi Tom.

Tom Goodwin: How you doing Kingston, thanks for having me here today.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah, thanks for coming on. So yeah. Wanted to get you on board and, talk a little bit about Reviews.io. So let's jump straight into it.

Can you tell us a little bit about reviews.io and how you got started?

Tom Goodwin: Well, yeah, well, we started as a reviews.co.uk just over 10 years ago. As from the domain we started in the UK as a reviews solution. We're one of only a handful of companies globally that were awarded a Google seller ratings license, and very much built the business from there.

We rebranded the business as REVIEWS.io as we started to have a little bit more of a global presence. And my role is COO is I look after the operations side of the businesses. We've recently launched offices in Irvine, California, Sydney, Australia, Berlin in Germany, and then obviously still have our head office team back in the UK. And I'm very fortunate enough to be based in the office in Sydney here.

Kingston Lee-Young: So, okay. Let's also jump into reviews, why are reviews important?

I know that we've seen with restaurants and with accommodation and a lot of things, that there's been this massive trend towards it. But why do you guys think it's really important?

Tom Goodwin: I think, you know, the customer's voice is becoming incredibly important as part of some pre and post buying journey. And I think authenticity behind those reviews is a key elements of that. And I think as brands compete in a very competitive space online, their brand trust is a huge part of that. You know, I think we've all you know, we're all guilty of when we go to buy a product online or when we're researching on it, we quite often will put reviews at the end of that search term.

So, you know, when we're looking at that and reading about the brand, brand trust is a huge player in that. And then I think as a business, what we're there to do is support our customers in leveraging that brand trust in that customer's voice online, you know whether it be on their own website or within sort of Google search feeds.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. Okay. Well, let's unpack that a little bit more. What are the key features or superpowers that you have?

Tom Goodwin: Super powers? That's a pretty big word. Well, I've definitely got a few features that I think you know, give them quite a lot of superpowers, but I think for us, we're very much, we operate across all platforms. So, you know, we're not sort of focused purely on one platform; like some of our competitors around just Shopify. We, you know, we, integrate with all the platforms out there. We also have a very user-friendly, open API that allows even sort of the most sort of complex or enterprise businesses use our solutions.

So I think being a non-contracted solution, as well is certainly is something we're super proud of, you know, we're very transparent in our pricing and the way that we promote our products. And then I think the things that we've really developed and really been proud of over, certainly over the last 18 months, is how we can help customers promote user generated content.

So it's a way that we can turn those reviews into sort of real powerful messages that can be, and that, that can be through our integration with Instagram, the way that you can create shoppable Instagram galleries, the way that you can create beautifully creative pieces that can be shared on Instagram stories. And that, again, it's all about how we identify those customers for, you know, are they an influencer for your brand, you know, the way that, you know, looking at the number of followers, looking at what their reach is, really being able to put all of that information into our solutions.

So when it comes to, you know, not every review is the same, you know, there's a huge amount of text-based reviews out there and really where, what we've really embraced is the way that you can use customers' photos that have been incorporated with a review. The way that you can leverage, maybe the video review that's been submitted and the way that you can really edit that and promote that and use that to leverage your brand online.

And I think it's, it's really, you know, there's a lot more now to just the review, you know, it's about how you, yeah, how you leverage it, how you capture it. So the fact that we provide the ability to capture the video and the photos along with that review. And yeah, I think, our Instagram integration is something that we're super proud of and, that being able to identify influencers within our integration, something that we're certainly, if we were to class a superpower, that's one that we're very proud of.

Kingston Lee-Young: So do you think then the role of the Influencer's coming back? I know that there was a bit of a dark patch for them about 12 months ago.

Tom Goodwin: Yeah. I think it's about how you'd identify an influencer. So, you know, there, isn't just the, in a generation, you know, the, the influence out there, the ones that we see on you know, the celebrity influencers as we call them, but, you know, every brand has got an influencer. So, you know, every brand has got a brand ambassador, the people who love that product. Who shout about their product. Whether it's an apparel you know, whether it's a fashion brand or whether it's you know, a holiday company you're promoting, you know, bespoke packages, you know, everyone, you know, everyone has their own influencers. And, you know a fashion influencer is no good to a an electrical company or something like that.

And I think that's where our integration really helped. You know an influencer to a, you know, to a travel company, is going to be very much based around, you know, the characteristics of that influencer. And I think yeah, you know, we're not out yet. I think where you've sort of touched on it, the Influencer in general, has definitely had a bit of an awakening, but I think it's about how we find our own ambassadors within our businesses. And I think that's really where our product really comes to life.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. I actually, I really liked that. Because, I think a lot of people do think straight away when you hear the word Influencer, I have to get to someone with lots and lots of followers who, you know, maybe looks a certain way and you might have to pay for that. But if you're then talking about it as an Influencer for your business, who actually genuinely really has experienced your product or service, and is willing to promote it, then you really only need to get to a few of those and their network and they can have quite a powerful effect.

Tom Goodwin: I think that's where our Klayvio integration really comes into play as well, because you know, what we're able to do is actually push that segment data into the customer profile within Klaviyo. So that again, you know, you've got people out there who've got, you know, maybe 10 - 20,000 followers, are really strong within that current, within your sector, within your vertical of your business, and then you can, and you can push them into a unique flow, within Klayvio to actually then, you know, reward them in a different way.

Working with, you know, other plugins, like smile.io or Loyalty Lion in terms of adding them onto a real dynamic and unique loyalty program. And I think that's really where you use, you know, where data really comes into play and then how you can actually push that through, into your other tech stack to really, you know, again, leverage the people, you know, your ambassadors of your business out there.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. And so, what's your approach then to other applications in a business's tech stack? You know, how well do you play with others?

Tom Goodwin: I mean, the tech stack is incredibly important to us. Integrations is a huge part of our business. So yeah, I mean for us we've got fantastic relationships with the likes of, yeah, like I said, Loyalty Lions, smile.io, Gorgias, Klayvio, Message Media, lots of different businesses out there. So whether it's communication, whether it's customer support, customer success, that side of it. Whether it's pure like customer profile and Omni channel marketing, whether it's loyalty rewards you know, we've got a, and then right across then the social channels, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram and those, you know, we really leverage, we want to be very much part of that, what we call the tech stack flywheel, it's you know, making sure that all of that data is being shared across all the platforms, and that, you know, that every bit of everything that we're providing from a customer's voice brand trust perspective has been able to be leveraged within the other platforms.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. Okay. Nice. Nice. So I'm going to ask you a question from, that's probably on a lot of people's minds is, so what's the difference between Reviews.io and say Yotpo or Okendo out there.

Tom Goodwin: I would say the main difference between ourselves and say someone like Yotpo is that, you know, we're a non-contracted solution. We're a rolling 30-day subscription, we're a pure SAAS model. We're a hundred percent transparent. All our prices are on our website. And that, you know, overall, we're not trying to, we very much look at ourselves as a key piece in customer's tech stack. So the likes of Yotpo tried to be you know, tried to be everything I suppose.

And that, I think, you know, we talked about it pre going live is that, you know, nowadays Martech everything's moving so quickly. The last thing you want to be doing is signing up to these long contracts and really putting all your eggs in one basket. And I think with some of our competitors, that's what they try and make you do. And, you know, for us, we look at the tech stacks out there, particularly loyalty, customer support, marketing tech stack. You know, we look at them as huge friends of ours.

You know, we've got an amazing relationships and it's about how we can leverage each other solution, how we can improve that integration, how we can maximize the data flow that's going between the two. And, you know, what we're really good at is we're really good at reviews and we're really gonna identifying, and helping our customers capture all of that user generated content.

So I think that's where we are there, and then the likes of someone like Okendo, you know, their Shopify only, you know, and I think that's the key thing that, we've obviously got a very powerful integration with Instagram that we've developed ourselves. Some of Okendo use, you know, other people's integration to be able to enhance some of that. But overall, you know, I think the biggest difference with ourselves and Okendo is really the fact that we're not, we're not stuck for one platform. We're not just stuck for Shopify. And if you look at the space at the moment and you look at 26% of our customers are on Shopify, and don't get me wrong Shopify, if you look at all our leads coming in and you look at our business as a whole, yeah Shopify is huge, and we've got some amazing developments on the roadmap ahead in terms of what we're doing with Shopify. But we also look at, you know, we've also got very strong connections with Magento, Big Commerce you know, right back from sort of our legacy clients going back from where we first started, 10 years ago, the WordPress environment. And then, you know, we've got some huge enterprise clients who are using our API, you know, we've got clients who are collecting and review with us every 0.6 of a second.

So, you know, we've got a real variety, from the start-up right through to your enterprise type clients. And I think the flexibility when it comes to, you know, the way headless commerce is coming in and the way that enterprise clients were looking at engaging in the review space, I think it helps a lot. I think, we also have an incredible integration with third party review apps as well, so that what we like to see ourselves as the full reputation management site.

So we're able to connect with lots, with Facebook, with Google My Business, with the likes of TripAdvisor, with G2 crowd and Capterra and even TrustPilot as well. You can, you can connect to all of those platforms and manage all of those reviews within our solution. So you're not having to log into multiple solutions. So our third party environment is definitely very very popular, particularly with clients that have got a strong online presence, but also are strong in bricks and mortar. You know we've got clients in Australia, likes of Pillow Talk, you know, got huge amount of stores across Australia. They need to be able to manage those Google My Business reviews, but at the same time, you know, online, they need to be able to create their own. They need all the good stuff that we provide with being a Google licensed product. So I think that that's the biggest difference is that we're not stuck just in that one environment.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. Nice. So what's on the roadmap for this year. Anything you can share?

Tom Goodwin: From our perspective, a big thing we've been doing this year, speed has become a massive thing, you know, really making sure that our widgets are the fastest widgets out there, so when their working within our customer's websites, you know, we've got the quickest widgets out there.

And also customization and personalization is a huge part of what we're doing. So again, really putting a lot of power into the way that we're able to collect information from our customers, from the reviewers, how we collect that customer's voice and making sure that we're providing our customers every opportunity to gather information so that they can be more personalized in what they're doing and the way that they're reaching out to their customer base.

So certainly there's a huge amount of we are doing around customization. And so we've got lots of new, widgets that we're launching that are really making sure that everything that we publish on our customer's websites, it's all about their brands, not our brands. So it's, you know, we should really be you know, it should be very much integrated in what they're doing. So certainly that's a big thing.

And I think also, we're launching a new dashboard. I think we've, really, the first sort of major dashboard overview we've done as a business. And I think that's really exciting because of all the, you know, we've got a lot of amazing features and I think it gets to a point where, you know, we want to really make sure that we're leveraging that and making that as easy as possible for customers to use those new features. So I think it's now come time to sort of launch a new dashboard, which is super exciting for us all.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. If you had to forecast out, crystal ball gazing, you know, what do you think are some tips or trends to look out for?

Tom Goodwin: I think, you know, we're talking to lots of people and I think personalisation is, you know, it's not something new that I'm telling everybody, you know, personalisation, I think is as you and I have spoken as well as the, it's a huge part of, as the new, you know, as ecomm as online grows as quickly as it's growing, you know, the stats that they have in 2020 became the new 2030. I think it, people want that, want to feel special within an online environment. So, you know, there's amazing tools out there that enable websites to be very focused around the individual customer and how you can add that personalised environment into everything you do.

And I think that for me, is still going to be a very strong trend throughout this year as people adopt and change. So the more dynamic websites will become, will come in terms of being able to, you know, show products that are specific for that customer who is on your website at that time, in the way that your loyalty rewards work that way.

I think that, for me is fundamental, I think also it's around about, for me, it's about how you leverage user generated content. So really making sure that all of the user generated content that you have, you're able to provide that sort of social proof throughout the buying journey. And making that content very dynamic, which is really important to us as well. So when you look at again, the way our Klayvio integration works and we're able to embed dynamic content into that specific to that customer, I think is a big plus in terms of what we're doing.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. I like that. And definitely support that. Certainly it's great to have all that in, and you've got user-generated content. We know how good that is, but if you got then connect that to the next part of the buyer journey, or combine it with, with your outbound comms, then it kind of just sits in that one channel and it is nice, but you'd rather connect all the dots and then drive them down through to eventually a purchase or a transaction.

Tom Goodwin: Yeah. And I think that the people that, you know, the better you do that the more success you're going to have, and the more success you're going to have at beating, you know, some of the big players out there. And I think it, it makes the playing field very even within the sort of online community, the more personal you go, whether you're the biggest retailer out there or independent, if you're all doing that well, then you will win and you will do, and you'll be successful in this space.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah. Yep. So if somebody is thinking about reviews.io potentially they've tried out some of the other offers, what's a good place to start. You know, what's a reviews process.

Tom Goodwin: I think for us, we've just recently launched a new plan called the Essential Plan. So it makes it, you know, our solution a lot more, you know, enables people to get onto our solution a lot earlier in their sort of, I suppose, the review space, you know, there's some popular competitors out there who, who really focus on the sort of startup space, but I think now we've got a great product that, yeah, the essential plan of $65 Australian dollars, and that really enables people to really start leveraging that customer's voice, super quick. You know, from our side, you know, we, when people sign up with ourselves, you know, we really encourage reaching out to past customers.

So we have sort of a review booster feature that enables you to really capture that review content from past customers, you know, so that you can sort of fast track to a point where you can really leverage that content on your own website, on product pages using our widgets. So yeah, then, you know, really setting the automations in place, which is, again, it's one click, whether you're on Shopify, Big Commerce, Magento, super easy, WordPress, super easy just to use our plugins there, that creates that automation that enables those review invitations to go out at a set, designated time, you know, the happiest point in the customer's journey, then you ask for that review.

And then really, you know, we very much become very much plug and play. We've got an amazing customer success team based in Sydney, here, who will help all the customers sort of really maximize the solution. Really get their stars in their Google shopping feed, get their stars in their Google Ads. Get those product reviews on their product pages so that user generated content is getting re-indexed and creating more traffic for them. And you know the one thing we do with all of it is keeping Google happy. At the end of the day if you put out content out there and keep Google happy then you know, it will really start to come to play and you'll really start to create some good organic traffic back to your site, as well as leveraging what's already on your site.

Kingston Lee-Young: Sold! Done. So look if anyone does want to jump onboard and start with you, do you have a little offer for them at all?

Tom Goodwin: Yeah definitely. Just state FIRESIDE20 and that will get you 20% off any of our plans. Jump onto our live chat on our website. Or my customer success team and support team here in Sydney are fully aware of the offer we are putting out there today. And we'll get you set-up super quickly. You know, we're really proud of the support team and success team we've created in Sydney, you know we've only been here, not even 2 years, but our focus has very much been supporting those customers and making sure we've got a local support team that can do that for them.

Kingston Lee-Young: Yeah, fantastic. So those that are listening, or those that are watching FIRESIDE20 - get 20% off. Fantastic. Alright, I think I might call it there. Thank you so much Tom for your time. And talking us through Reviews.io. We'll hopefully speak later on in the year when there is more exciting news.

Tom Goodwin: Yeah definitely. Thanks for your time and thanks for inviting me along.

Kingston Lee-Young: Alright, thanks Tom. See ya.

Tom Goodwin: Cheers. Bye.

End.

Do you own or run an ecommerce store? If so, you'll be glad to hear that the shift to online shopping is showing no signs of slowing as 49% of consumers expect to shop online more frequently even after the pandemic according to GWI's Connecting the Dots Report.

But the real questions is what's going to encourage consumers to buy your product or service? Well, apparently the third-highest motivator after free delivery and easy checkout is an entertaining shopping experience.

The call for what Global Web Index is referring to as 'entertain-merce' has the highest demand from high-income earners 32% and millennials 33% so there is big potential to impact your bottom line.

From AI, AR and Virtual Shopping experiences to video tutorials, quizzes and incorporating social proof there are lots of ways to adopt new features with varying budgets.

If you want to discuss ways to enhance your ecommerce experience for consumers then contact us for an obligation free discovery call with our CEO Kingston.

In this Martech Fireside Chat, I catch up with Billy McClennan from Gorgias - a Customer Service application built for ecommerce stores.

Martech Fireside Chat Episode

In this chat I find out about:

If you'd like to find out more about Gorgias, visit via Kingston's referral link.

If you do sign-up for Gorgias, mention this Martech Fireside Chat with Billy McLennan or Kingston Lee-Young to get your second and third month free!

Thanks Gorgias and thanks Billy for being on this Martech Fireside Chat.

If you need any help with choosing the right customer service platform for your business, or to help get more out of your current ecommerce performance, please contact us, we’d love to help.

Gorgias Video Transcript:

Kingston (00:00):

Hi everyone. I'm Kingston Lee-Young from the newly branded Digital Mavens, your digital development and solutions partner here in Sydney, Australia. I'm here online with Billy McLennan, who is the partnerships team lead from Gorgias. Gorgias is a customer service software. And I'm going to jump in and talk more about this software with Billy, in my MarTech Fireside Chat. So let's jump in welcome, Billy.

Billy (00:31):

Ah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And it's a pleasure to be on this fireside chat.

Kingston (00:37):

Yeah. Excellent. So I guess for all those listening out there, tell us a little bit about Gorgias and how did you start?

Billy (00:43):

Yeah. Happy to jump right into it. So yeah, Gorgias in a nutshell right now. And then I'll tell you how we started, but Gorgias is essentially it's a customer support help desk, specifically for ecommerce. So that's really where we differentiate is all of the customers that we work with, they're all ecommerce brands. And so what we do and what our goal is, is we try to bring in all of the communication channels that a brand interacts with - a website, visitor, a customer into one place and connect it with all of their data so that they can essentially respond super quick, provide a really good customer experience and a lot of cases automate, which I'm sure we'll get into. Yeah, so that they have a really easy and quality way to interact with customers. And a little bit about Gorgias in the backstory.

Billy (01:32):

So it started in 2015, the two founders they're from France, Alex and Roman. And when it started in 2015, it wasn't the help desk. So the help desk isn't actually that old, essentially the way it started was it was a Chrome extension for Gmail and this is that we still actually have it. And it's actually pretty widely used. And what it was is it was just a Chrome extension that if you were in your Gmail inbox all day and you were responding to very, you know, the same question over and over again, you can make these templates. And then you could use these templates instead of, you know, copy and pasting previous emails. So you could just use a template to respond to repetitive questions over and over again. And so essentially the people that, that started adopting it, a lot of them were customer support agents because anyone that's done customer support, it can be very repetitive depending on the industry that you're in.

Billy (02:24):

And so that's where the idea of the help desk started. And then after doing a lot of research we basically found that there was nothing that was focused exclusively on the ecommerce brand. So there are help desks out there. But they were kind of in all verticals, they weren't just focused on you know, a direct to consumer brand. So that's where we decided to start. And, you know, in 2017 was really when the help desk started. Obviously Shopify was doing very well and growing fast. So we started on Shopify. So we launched the help desk with Shopify first 100 customers back then. And I joined in 2019, August of 2019, we were about 25 people. And we were at around 1200 customers, most were on Shopify. We raised our Series A and if I kind of like fast forward to right now we've raised a Series B just at the end of last year and we have about 5,500 customers. And then we support merchants on a few different platforms. So Shopify being one, Magento and Big Commerce.

Kingston (03:28):

Okay, fantastic. And so who would you say your key competitors are?

Billy (03:34):

Key competitors? I mean, yeah, there's a lot of help desks out there. I think the most common one that we see is Zendesk because they're kind of the legacy ticketing system. Yeah, they've been around the longest. So even though they are not, ecommerce focused, they still have a presence in ecommerce because you know, most people, I think that's changing in certain ecosystems, but most people, if they think customer support, they might think Zendesk. So that's, that's the most common one. There's a few others like Freshdesk. If you're thinking ecommerce, there's a company called re:amaze, they're smaller than us. But they come up, there's Help Scout. There's a few different, like Live Chat, specific solutions, like tlk.io and Live Agent and stuff like that. So, yeah, there's a lot of them, I'd say Zendesk is the most common one in terms of like a full ticketing system.

Kingston (04:25):

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's maybe unpack Zendesk. So if someone's considering you, or they're currently on Zendesk or considering Zendesk, you know, what would you say the differences between what you're trying to do and what Zendesk is doing?

Billy (04:40):

Yeah, absolutely. So it all starts with that ecommerce focus that I told you about. So, like I said, we have 5,500 customers, they're all ecommerce. So everything about the product has been designed for an ecommerce brand, which customer support for a direct to consumer brand is very different than for a large SaaS company, you know, like an Uber or Lyft or an airline. So that's kind of the start. And then if we focus specifically on Zendesk versus Gorgias and features, if we dive deep into features, the very first thing you'll notice when you're in a ticket is the customer profile. So we have this very, you know, beautifully built customer profile that integrates with your entire tech stack. So we have all of the information you know, about an ecommerce brands company in one place. So if we use Shopify, for example, we have their order information, a full timeline of all of their order information like tracking information, shipping address, things like that.

Billy (05:37):

If you're using other apps as part of your tech stack. So let's say like Loop Returns is another Shopify app. You're going to have your returns information. If you're doing subscriptions with like a recharge, you would have subscription order information. So those are things that Zendesk doesn't display. A lot of that information, they don't actually display at all. And even the stuff they do, it's, it's very limited. So that's kind of a start and then you can take that information and not only do you have it available by the ticket to respond fast, but you can use that information. So for example refunding or canceling an order in certain cases you can actually create an order. So if someone's chatting and you can actually build a cart and send them that invoice via their email. So those are what we call actions which aren't available on Zendesk, for example.

Billy (06:24):

And then you can use that data in templated responses. So I mentioned the Chrome extension in the help desk, they're called macros. So you can basically create macros. And so let's say somebody asks, where's my order, instead of having kind of a blank template saying, "Oh, here's your order blank". And having to copy and paste that information from your ecommerce platform, we can pull that information into the template automatically. So in one click, you're pulling the information that they're asking for and sending the ticket. So there's that. And then if we kind of take that even a step further we have automations through machine learning, which we can definitely get into. So basically we have intents and sentiments, so basically understanding what people are saying or how they're feeling. So the step further of using the data in the macro would be someone reaches out.

Billy (07:11):

They ask, you know, I'm looking for my order. We can create a rule that says, Hey, we, you know, if someone reaches out and the intent to shipping status, or understanding that it's not a keyword, then we can essentially look at Shopify to see if they've placed an order. Is there a tracking number? Is there or isn't, when was it created things like that, and based on how you define this rule, we can automatically respond with that information. So that's like a, you know, just a very high level of how the how the machine learning works and then, yeah, I can go on, but social's a big component. So for an ecommerce brand like...

Kingston (07:48):

Well, I think an interesting thing from that is really yes, focusing on more of an ecommerce environment. So if you are a business, there's a lot more out-of-the-box that really is suited to those running an e-comm business. But the interesting thing I'll take out of that is really the changing power or role of, you know, those people are working in customer service. So would you say, it's less really now about taking customer complaints and, you know returning orders and logging that and running through tickets. And actually now there's the ability for the customer service resources to help sell, to help link up and maybe increase the customer satisfaction scores you know, increase loyalty by really resolving problems and helping to sell rather than just resolving a specific complaint or ticket.

Billy (08:43):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a great point. And honestly, it's, it's one that I feel like I've been presenting on for the past year and a half. So to take a step back to that question, you know, yeah. I'd say a lot of brand owners when they, when they think of customer support, they think, yeah. They think I'm just answering tickets of angry customers all day. They're order didn't arrived, things like that. And, you know, that can be very de-motivating answering those tickets all of the time. So basically what we've, we've seen over the past year, talking with customers, there's kind of like three pillars and the first one is very high quality, fast customer support. Which makes sense. You know, Amazon has really changed the way that we think about customer support. They get their packages quick, they respond quickly, things like that.

Billy (09:29):

So that's kind of like the first priority, but at the top, the other side is okay, like how can I start tracking like the ROI of my customer support team? You know, are they driving sales? Are they helping with retention? Are they helping with repeat purchases, things like that. And so we've actually added a lot of functionality in the platform and we try to educate the people that we work with on, you know, how basically sheet teaching them how their customer support team is an extension of their sales team. Especially more than ever this year. Like people don't get the level of personalization anymore that they had going into a brick and mortar store where there's a sales associate. The person they're talking to is the rep on the other side of the live chat or the email or the phone wherever they're communicating from.

Billy (10:11):

And, you know, people have presale questions you know, a good customer experience is going to make them come back to you. So absolutely. I have a whole deck on kind of driving sales. I'm happy to kind of elaborate on some of those techniques, but yeah, absolutely. It's not just about answering, you know, where's my order all day you know, your support agents are the frontline for your brand and they help drive sales. And so you know, at least within Gorgias, we try to help brands see that by tracking revenue from communication with the customer support team.

Kingston (10:43):

Yeah, awesome. So I guess if we look then in terms of say an e-comm business or someone who would be a sweet-spot customer, what type of business, and what stage would they be at, you know, when they should consider Gorgias. And then maybe with that sort of opening up of what a customer support person can do now, maybe, how should they bring this software in?

Billy (11:08):

Absolutely. A great question. So I'd say the first part about Gorgias in terms of who we can work with, if you're an ecommerce and you're on specifically one of the three platforms I'd mentioned, so Shopify, Big Commerce and Magento, potentially others, but those are the ones that we have really deep integrations with. We can work with you. It doesn't matter if you're a large client. So that has a hundred support reps, like a Steve Madden, for example, or if you're starting a brand new brand and you're the founder, and you've gotten a little bit of traction and, you know, you're still answering customer support and you need kind of some automation to help save yourself some time, like we can work with you. Yeah. So pretty much if you're an ecommerce, we could potentially be a good fit. As long as you're getting some of customer support, you know, let's say it's like 10 emails a day, let's say like, yeah, 10 emails a day. If you can save yourself, you know, even 20 minutes a day as a founder like that, you know, time is money for you at that point in your, in your venture. So that's, who we work with. And what was the second part of your question?

Kingston (12:12):

Yeah, really, what stage of that business, and I guess you've kind of covered that off in terms of you can be a founder coming into this or you could be a larger business with an established customer service team.

Billy (12:25):

Right. Yeah.

Kingston (12:27):

So, okay. Well, I guess then if somebody is already using another software or they are considering it, What are the things that you think they should look at in terms of their evaluation process.

Billy (12:40):

Exactly. Great question. So I think if you're using another ticketing system or help desk now again, if I'm looking at the three pillars, the first one is like fast, you know, high quality customer support. So I'd evaluate some of the metrics in terms of response time, first or like one touch ticket. So like if someone reaches out, can you get, can you respond to them in a single answer or do you have to go back and forth 10 times to get them the information they need? The number of tickets you're doing, the efficiency of your support team, like how many tickets per agent per day are they doing? Let's say it's like 50 or 60, you know, that, that could be low depending on the industry that you're in. So if you're seeing some issues with that also CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) so like if you're CSAT, you know, less than four you know, why is it less than four?

Billy (13:30):

Those are all things that you should consider and looking to improve upon. And then I'd also say this comes through efficiency and quality and response time and stuff like that. But if your team's doing things very repetitive and it's taking them a long time to do it, I'd be like, okay, there's probably ways to kind of automate, or at least make that an easier process. Those are good things. So that you can then evaluate Gorgias, like, "Hey, can Gorgias automate?", "Can it make me respond faster?", "Can help with one touch?", "Do I have more data available available to me?", Things like that. If you're on Shopify, Big Commerce, Magento, I'm just saying it again. But the answer is likely yes. Just because we are so ecommerce focused that we can help improve upon some of those processes.

Billy (14:10):

If you're a social driven brand. So we didn't talk too much about that, but like we can pull any organic and paid ad comments and help moderate those to help improve the ROAS of your ad spend. And then also the sales side. So like, we didn't talk about it in too much details, but we can track revenue, which is pretty unique. So if you're, if you're looking to kind of like track the ROI of your support team, that's a good place to start. We have some kind of like automations with our live chat and functionality, like creating orders to kind of help your support team convert people, you know, so if someone reaches out with a presale inquiry, you know, helping convert them into a paying customer.

Kingston (14:52):

Yeah, definitely. And I think more and more is now people are jumping onto social media channels and they're starting that engagement, from pre-sales or just an inquiry. It is I guess, really important to have that all connected up so that whoever's answering it has all the information at their fingertips. And look, I guess it's then comes down to, thinking about the customer experience. I would say certainly from, from our perspective, talking to our clients, very much trying to take your hat off and think about what your customer's doing, how do you make your customer, their experience more seamless and easy. And if you've got then that software, which provides all that information on the screens for someone to respond to, as you said, it's nice and fast and easy. And if you can then link it to an upsale or an on-sale obviously then that, that certainly helps that particular team and also the business.

Billy (15:43):

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Kingston (15:45):

So crystal ball gazing, what do you think the trends are for 2021?

Billy (15:51):

So I have a few and these are my take. So by no means that maybe they're not accurate, but just based on that, the people that I've been talking to and stuff like that, I think if we're talking about conversions and sales and not so much just customer support, we'll talk about customer for a second, but I guess if we're talking about that I think that like big companies, like Facebook, for example, they're going to be looking at communication channels as ways to track conversion. So like Facebook, you know, they're competing with Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce now, like they've launched their Instagram Cart. They've launched the Facebook Checkout and with the iOS 14 update and pixels not going away, but, you know, getting more difficult to track like Facebook wants you to stay on Facebook and check out because they can, it's obviously much easier to basically say, Oh, Hey, like you chatted in through Facebook messenger, then you purchased that's conversion because of Facebook.

Billy (16:46):

So I think communication channels, a lot of the communication channels we talked about different companies are going to be trying to track and attribute conversions based on the channel that they're interacting with and checking out on is one of them. On the customer support side, what we're really focusing on is the top 10 questions for an ecommerce brand. So like 60% of customers for an ecommerce brand is repetitive. The top 10 questions are like: "Where's my order?", "How can I return?", "How can I cancel?". The classics that a lot of people listening have probably asked theirselves? And so we, our goal is to basically automate, you know, that 60%, I think our goal was like 40% this year for some brands. And so another trend, I think you're going to see a self-serve, so it's already happening, but even more like how can you allow your consumers to get the information they need on their own without having to reach out to you?

Billy (17:39):

Because I know as me as a consumer, if I can just get the information I need right away without having to wait or talk to someone, like I love that. And it helps the customer support team because they don't have to answer question. So we've launched a new self-serve live chat to basically automate the where's my order question. People can go and get all their tracking information directly from the chat widget on your website. And then maybe one more kind of like futuristic one it's not super developed now is like video chat on your website. So with everything online, like people are looking for ways to keep personal. They're not going in store. So like, there's a couple of companies out there now that do kind of like video chat campaigns. So someone would hit your website or a product page and a chat would pop up and it would be somebody actually talking about the product. So it's almost like an ad, like a UGC ad or something like that, right on your website. So I could see that being like a really popular you know, method to kind of personalize their experience on their website. You know, you had like a sales associate, like video live chatting in whether that's like a prerecorded video or live. I think that that could be something that could be coming to within this, you know, 2021 and maybe even more developed in a couple of years.

Kingston (18:49):

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Like, I think that's the trends that we're seeing in Asia certainly coming through. And especially because of the year that was 2020 you know, more video, more personalized shopping. The ability to help solve problems for people who can't get out and about. And then it might just be that you've got busy lives or you're in lockdown. So it's a lot difficult to get out into a store. That could help and look then, I think the other thing about the self-serve chat is, is really great, because one of the things you know, a lot of businesses certainly e-com forget is it has to be about the customer. And sometimes they're shopping at 1:00 AM in the morning, they're shopping after the kids go to bed, they shopping on the way into work. And so yeah, you, you need to be able to provide that service there and then when they're ready to shop, rather than, you know, really how you've set up your particular resourcing and structure around a particular time zone or time slot. So I guess, you know, that I think is really important and a good measure for those customers or ecomm businesses who are looking to grow this year and potentially sell overseas as well or internationally.

Billy (19:58):

Absolutely. I mean, yeah. Ask any, any customer support team or founder, if they can figure out a way to automate the where's my order questions so that they didn't have to deal with them. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to be able to do that. See, I think self-serve will come a long way this year. And you just made me think of something on a side note with, you had mentioned Asia and like the video the video shopping, I don't know if you saw the picture, but it reminds me, I saw this picture of a, it was in China and they had like hundreds of phones, like live streaming at the mall from the store to like Facebook and stuff like that. And they were basically like live streaming product in real time. And that situation, I don't know if that's what you were talking about, but I remember seeing that and yeah, it was really, it was really cool. Yeah.

Kingston (20:41):

Well, yeah. I mean, definitely in terms of influences, certainly in China. The other thing that I saw you know, coming out of Asia was you, instead of getting influences to shop, it's actually almost personal shoppers and this was an interesting one around people buying wine. And so they actually video chat with someone who went and tasted the wine for them online and gave them the tasting notes rather than just writing it out and having to read them themselves. So they could actually interact with that person asking direct questions which I thought was a really lovely job to have being a personal wine taster for someone online. But yeah, we're starting to see that yeah, new innovation, new ways of mediums trying to connect, breaking down borders is, definitely the trends for 2021.

Kingston (21:30):

All right. So last question really is roadmap then for Gorgias. Right, with those trends, what are you excited about? What's on the roadmap for Gorgias this year?

Billy (21:39):

Yeah, absolutely. So great question. So yeah, we had right. We raised our series B at the end of last year, so we have some money in the bank to kind of scale. And a lot of that is obviously going to be very product focused. We want the best product. And so if I talk about kind of the first two quarters of this year I had mentioned self-serve, so that's one place where we're really trying to innovate. So we just launched our self-serve, you know, the first version of our self-serve chat where, like I said, a customer can open the chat widget, put their order information, their email address, things like that in it, and get a full list of all of the orders they've placed with the brand, with tracking information. They can automatically report issues, things like that.

Billy (22:21):

So that's, that's one is really being a leader in self-serve to help deflect. You know, basically, like I said, our goal is to automate that top 10 questions, which in some cases can account for 60% of customer support. So self-serve is a piece of that. Basically deflecting tickets. That's one. Another really, really exciting one is because it's the, it's been the most widely requested feature. It's going to sound simple, but yeah, it's the other one that we're, we're launching here within the next couple of months is Instagram direct messages. So basically we could never access direct messages in Gorgias because Facebook had never opened up the API. We got early access now and we're slowly rolling it out to people so that they can basically handle customer support requests from direct messages, which I know is a huge pain point for a lot of brands because the Facebook business manager are going into your phone and going through DMs is, you know, extremely inefficient when you're, you know, you have a lot of followers and you're getting a lot of direct messages, so we're launching that channel.

Billy (23:23):

And then another one that another, I guess, one more is we're building our own native phone. So we have some really great phone partners. But we do know for some especially larger brands, you know, or brands with high ticket items, phone is still an essential piece of customer support. So we're just building our own native phone. Yeah. So those are kind of like the three big ones I'd say in the next few months. And then yeah, then one of the big goals this year is to really, like I said, automate that kind of like repetitive part of customer support for ecommerce companies

Kingston (23:56):

Sounds like an exciting year. Excellent. All right. Well, I guess I might end it here and, and thank you so much for your time. For those people who are listening and really want to try out Gorgias. Do you have a little start offer or something they can, something that you can offer them?

Billy (24:12):

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, if you're listening to this and your interest in getting Gorgias, first off, we have a seven day free trial, so that'll give you some time to use it, but in terms of offer: if you like the product we can basically give you your second and third month free. So you'll save two months on a year of Gorgias. Okay,

Kingston (24:30):

Fantastic. So, all right. The other thing is I'll put a link down in the subtitles, but certainly if you'd like to find out some more information I have a referral link, which is https://gorgias.grsm.io/kingston. Jump onto that. I'll put it in the subtitles and you can find out more about Gorgias. And then if you do want to take up that offer just mentioned to the local team that you saw a fireside chat with Kingston or with Billy and they'll be able to give that to you. Excellent. Well, thank you again so much for your time. I know you're calling in from the States from North America, or I should say in Canada. Thank you for being on the MarTech fireside chat with me.

Billy (25:22):

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much, Kingston. It was really great to be here. And yeah, like you said, just mentioned my name if you guys reach out to the team and then we can help you out.

Kingston (25:32):

Excellent. We'll see you later. Thanks.

Billy (25:34):

Awesome. Bye.

End.

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