Have you ever been to the orchestra? It’s a wonderful experience that folks from all creeds and classes can appreciate. It’s also a spectacular lesson in cooperation. There are dozens of musicians playing individual instruments that combine to form one cohesive orchestral sound. These are artists who are at the top of their game, oftentimes spending years if not decades mastering their craft… but there's an interesting question: who plays the orchestra?

Much like a B2B SaaS company, an orchestra needs someone to ensure cohesion. If you move too fast, the composition will fall apart. If you’re all playing along to different music, you’ll stall and have to regroup or even start over. The conductor keeps everyone together. It’s sort of a thankless job because if everything sounds perfect, the unit as a whole gets the credit. But, if mistakes are made responsibility falls upwards.

Meet one of the best conductors around — Zeb Evans. He's the Founder and CEO of ClickUp. Since founding ClickUp in 2016, Zeb has led the company of over 700 employees to become a major player in the workplace productivity market. Today he shares with us his lessons and tactics that make ClickUp operate like a world-class symphony orchestra

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“Using too many tools can kill productivity and efficiency as well. Pick one that can do it all and implement that within your SaaS business.”

 

 

-Zeb Evans

Key term:

Customer feedback

Every company is different, but when it comes to SaaS, customer feedback is non-negotiable. You’ve heard us talk a lot about its importance, and it’s because customer feedback is at the core of so many aspects of your business needed for improvement and proper growth — from marketing and sales to product development.

What to do today: 

• Follow Zeb Evans.
• Schedule a time to meet with your product and customer success teams to discuss your current feedback and product development processes.

What to do next quarter:

Develop a system for collecting, categorizing, and responding (or reacting) to customer feedback. 

Our guest, Zeb Evans, understood very early on that customer feedback was at the center of growth and success. His whole methodology around developing software is based on customer feedback. Today, ClickUp is valued in the billions, so it’s safe to say he’s got it right.

Below we’ve included some of the go-to tactics around customer feedback that have led to ClickUp’s massive success. 

• User feedback – Actively listen to your customers. Always. Your product is the center of your company and it must be built around how your customers work and how they use it. Prioritize updates and new features based on the things your users ask for. 
  
  
• Focus on process — Implement a process that will allow you to quickly adapt your product and incorporate new or updated features based on customer feedback. This will ensure you’re always meeting customer demand and staying ahead of the competition.
  
  
• Be efficiently reactive — This goes against what you may have heard, but when it comes to marketing and sales, Zeb explains that he coaches his teams to be extremely reactive in terms of customer feedback. “When a customer wants change, change everything,” he says. “Really focus on the problem set that they have.” The key is to be efficient, which is why having a functional process in place is crucial.

What to do within the next year:

Implement your new or improved system and process for collecting and efficiently applying your customer feedback.

As you make modifications to your messaging, product, etc., it's important to diligently evaluate the outcome to ensure you're properly interpreting and/or applying the feedback received. Don't expect perfection and modify your system/process as needed. Remember, feedback is an ongoing process and so is development.

Who should own this? 

Customer success and product development will likely be more impacted and/or directly involved, but because customer feedback can affect so many areas of your business, ownership could also be shared across your entire leadership team.

Who's up next week?

Next week David Barrett, Founder and CEO of Expensify, talks to us about obsessing over process.

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