242: Fireside with Whitney Brittingham and Aakrit Prasad

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode two hundred and forty-two of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Arkrit Prasad and Whitney Brittham for a fireside chat. I would like to welcome to the podcast today Arkrit and Whitney from Apptech. Now, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself for our uh the benefit of our listeners, and then I'm super interested in today's topic. So nice to meet you guys. Thank you for joining me. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Aakrit Prasad: 0:50

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much, Charlotte. A pleasure to be here. Um, and um joined here with my colleague Whitney. Uh, just for introduction, my name is Akrit. I'm the CEO co-founder of ApTedge. We're a venture back company that focuses on enhancing customer support operations. And um, we today we'll be talking a bit about uh how customer support plays a role in CHURN and how um how that gets compounded with the new trend around product-led growth. So we'll be having a conversation with Whitney, who's our head of customer success and support. Whitney, I'll let you introduce yourself as well.

Whitney Brittingham: 1:23

Yeah, great to be here. We're really excited to talk a little bit about some of the trends that are impacting support teams. Um and I can share just a little bit about what we're seeing here at AppDetch as well.

Charlotte Ward: 1:35

Super. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. Um, well, let's get into it then. So customer support and how customer support can influence and reduce churn is is something that I think for most support leaders out there would be living the dream. It's like actually having the ability to affect revenue. Um but you know, I um we we I have been in environments where the um approach to revenue growth is product-led. But I have to confess, I don't know a great deal about the the whole principle of product-led growth. So I think it would be interesting to start there in a in terms of like a definition. Um and I think that also the other thing that I will say is that I have been quite interested in the last few years in support-driven growth. Um, and I'm interested also in exploring with you whether there's kind of, and we get into this in in a bit, but whether there's a conflict there or and how those two play together. I think that's super interesting for for support leaders too, right? So can we begin with a definition then? What is product-led growth?

Aakrit Prasad: 2:46

Yeah, I'm happy to kind of give some context on what I've seen in the industry and how PLG has really evolved. And uh and then uh love to kind of uh riff with both of you on on this. But um, PLG or product-led growth is really kind of an approach where you can attract customers to your product and in a in a way that's self-service. So you're able to extract customers, new customers to your product through your product itself. And what it requires is for you to build a product that is so kind of uh self-service oriented that you may have content that goes out through marketing and different channels where a new prospect may hear about you, but then they're able to log in, uh, they're able to uh get access to your product by simply navigating to your website, your homepage, and being able to click a link to say try, and then be able to get in the product and start using it. Uh and then there's other aspects of PLG that are super critical because you need to be able to get a new user to kind of an aha or like a compelling event moment in like the first couple hours, or some people would say even the first few uh you know, first 30, 15, 30 minutes, right? So they're able to get some, unlock some value themselves. Uh, and they've been able to do all of this without having to have met with anybody from sales, right? So you're basically having uh a new customer self-identify with the problem that your product is solving and then getting them to value without having any anyone from the company have to kind of uh to navigate that flow. Uh and it becomes really powerful for companies because A, it allows you to attract new users with really low acquisition costs, right? You don't have to invest a lot in your sales uh engine to attracting customers in the product. But what it also does is once you have customers in your product, your sales team is now able to talk to those users, and they may be free users, right? But they've already self-identified with the problem, they're using the product, and it's much easier to go to someone that's using your product to say, hey, let me show you what more we can do based on what value you're getting out of the product already today. So that's kind of the fundamental kind of market and the model that PLG speaks to. Uh, but it does require kind of a different go-to-market motion. It requires investments in marketing and uh product and engineering and customer success because you have to have really good documentations. I'm still gonna give it a Whitney Standers. I'll let her speak a bit more to that. But from an engineering standpoint, I'll mention it does require uh a fair bit of investment to make your product so simple to use and deploy. Because if it's got a heavy kind of professional service deployment, then that's not going to be something that a customer or new user themselves can can uh can set up and get value while you have.

Charlotte Ward: 5:19

And I and I think that's the interesting tension that I felt is like the the drive to such a self-service environment seems so so much, so such an antithesis, I think, to what we perceive to be support-driven growth, which is largely higher touch, it's more consultative, it's more uh partnering with your customers to build enough of a relationship with them that you can grow their business, grow you their business with you, right? So so how do you like um I mean, Whitney, maybe this is a question for you. How how do we how do these two relate to each other?

Whitney Brittingham: 6:00

Yeah, I think that's a great point, Charlotte. Um, a lot of what I actually end up seeing is that because so many companies are shifting to more of a product-led growth or you know, PLG in shorthand, I might use that moving forward. Um, because they're transitioning to more of a PLG approach, the customer's first interaction with a company or a brand is actually most often with the support team. Because what happens is they might run into friction in that self-service onboarding experience, or they have a question they can't find the answer in the documentation online. They're not going to reach out to the sales team to talk about that. They're actually gonna reach out to support and they're gonna say, Hey, I'm stuck. Can you help me? And it actually really changes the role that support has to play in the organization and lends itself a little bit more to that support-driven mentality that you're referring to, where the support agents actually the customer's first interaction with the brand. And that really elevates the importance of the information that they're sharing because this might be the deciding factor for that customer. Do I want to convert and continue working with this product or not? Is based on that experience that they have with the support team, it tells them when something goes wrong, what can I expect? And so um I actually think that support-driven growth and product-led growth are very closely tied together for that reason. Um and it does actually make the support agent a very large factor in driving the revenue of expanding and actually closing any of those deals that may have come in from a PLG motion.

Charlotte Ward: 7:39

That makes a lot of sense. And I guess, I mean, some of this I think goes back to our point about the complexity of the product and when the customer first feels feels value, it might be 30 minutes or it might be two days or a week or something, depending on the complexity. But when a customer does hit that first point of tension, that first challenge, and they reach out to support, um, the interaction, I would imagine there again with some variance depending on the complexity. The interactions are they quite short on average compared to what I would consider to be a longer tenured customer in a more traditional environment where those customers are building relationships with support folk over time.

Aakrit Prasad: 8:29

Yeah, I can I can speak to that one. So I think this is this is where there's a really compelling opportunity for support organizations and the industry moving forward with products becoming more PLG oriented, is that interaction doesn't have to be short. That interaction could be an interaction that helps a customer realize, hey, I'm using this for free, but the support team is allowing me to understand a lot more value that I can unlock with this product, right? And if the support is empowered to simply just focus on solving that one problem, then there's a lot of opportunity that's being left on the table. Here's a customer that's never interacted with the company before. They're using the product, they ran into an issue, and they're talking with somebody from the support team as the first person they're talking to from that company. And this is an opportunity for the support person to be able to connect with the customer and help them understand, you know, what more can they do with the product, right? And like be able to really unlock more value when they've got them on the meeting. Because getting time with people also is not easy. And sometimes even your own customers, you can't always get time with them, right? It's it's um uh uh people are so spread thin on time with the amount of work that's uh that's being uh kind of driven through in their day-to-day. So uh here when you have someone for actively reaching out saying, Hey, I need help with something, right? That's a huge opportunity to be able to help them understand a lot more value that they can get out of the product. And usually with PLG, you know, you'll get a lot of these free customers reaching out to you, right? So they're they're free by nature, but they're using the product of identified with this problem, that's why they're using the product. There's a tremendous opportunity to be able to convert them to a paid customer by being able to connect with them, resolve that issue. You've kind of, you know, maybe taking them from a point of view where they were a bit frustrated when they reported the issue to build the relationship with them, empathetically connected with them. And now you're able to push that relationship forward by saying, Hey, I'd love to get a little bit more time with you next week to show you some of the things you can do with the product.

Charlotte Ward: 10:16

Right.

Aakrit Prasad: 10:16

And now you've taken someone that um you know is using the product and uh and reached out with an issue, but using the product for free, to somebody that can actually become uh you know a paid user and look to expand the value of your product in their organization.

Charlotte Ward: 10:30

Yeah, it's the very um it's the exact opposite of cold calling, isn't it? You you've already helped them, you've become a trusted advisor, and uh you're in a position of uh of helping them further. Like you wouldn't want to be helped more.

Whitney Brittingham: 10:46

Exactly. I think the role that trust plays in the support experience is so critical here because the the support team is there to solve problems and to listen to the customer's experience. They're not there to sell them something. And so I think they actually have the opportunity to build trust so much faster with someone as they're onboarding onto a product than a traditional sales team would, for example.

Aakrit Prasad: 11:14

Do you think I'm sorry, go ahead.

Charlotte Ward: 11:16

Oh, sorry. I was just gonna uh ponder briefly whether that trust was more easily won for a free experience or for a paid customer. What do you think?

Whitney Brittingham: 11:28

You know, it's a it's a really interesting question. Um, and a lot of this is gonna depend on how you have this set up with your org. But I do think that there is an opportunity to win trust a lot more quickly because you're using a free product. And so if you actually have the opportunity to speak to a human being when you have a problem, you know that this company is invested in your experience and wants you to be successful. Um, you know, I think that's where you see a lot of community-based programs springing up to be able to, you know, devote those resources to interact with those users and give them the confidence that the brand really cares about what they're trying to accomplish.

Aakrit Prasad: 12:14

Yeah, and the other point I wanted to also kind of uh speak to on this was every business is moving closer to a subscription model. So, you know, historically, we sold perpetual licenses, uh, companies sold perpetual licenses, and um support was looked at more as like a cost center in those relationships, right? Because you kind of sold this license in perpetuity, and now you have the customer that's basically using the product for the same product for as long as they they want and that perpetual license. Now that everything is moving to a subscription license and customers can renew every month or churn rather every month, right? You have the ability to transform that support interaction into something that can be used to build a stronger relationship, build a stronger trust that allows you to expand the value that you're bringing with your customer.

Charlotte Ward: 12:57

That's a very interesting point as well, because it's it's an o it's an opportunity every month to increase that trust and to renew that trust, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, that's super interesting. So I think then um going back to PLG then, what are your experiences in supporting that environment? Like early stage, how do we if if we're thinking about providing support for a product that is building a PLG experience or has a PLG experience and you're putting support in place, that kind of early stage, what what are the first things you should think about? What are the first concerns you should you should you should have in your mind? Do you think?

Whitney Brittingham: 13:50

Um I can take a stab at this one. Um I think, you know, for a company that's just starting to explore product-led growth, you want to start with something uh that's going to provide someone with value at a very low effort. Um and so a lot of times what you'll see companies do is offer like a free trial. That's a great example of how people might dip their toes into product-led growth. And in order to do that effectively, you need to have a really clear understanding of the customer journey. Um, so I think support taking part in those customer journey mapping activities is actually really critical because what they're going to be able to tell you is here are the areas that are most likely to cause friction, where people are most likely to run into issues. And by partnering support with your training, your documentation, your customer success and marketing teams, you can actually get out in front of that much more easily than you would if you tried to take, you know, the reverse approach, right? Because it's the support folks who are seeing day-to-day where people are encountering friction. And then you can start to design the support experience around that, right? So you enable your agents, hey, these are the most common things that these people are likely to encounter. And when you receive a customer who's running into one of these issues, here are ways that you can actually coach them to get more value out of the product. And then your support team is actually playing a critical role in that free trial experience and ultimately closing that new business.

Charlotte Ward: 15:27

I really love that actually, because you're right, there's not a support team on the planet that couldn't articulate what their most common problems are and probably actually how they're quite simply fixed or overcome or worked around. And uh, but then figuring out the next step beyond just getting around the common problems, because frankly, if they're common problems, then hopefully you're fixing them in product anyway. Um, but but figuring out how you get that customer to the next straight next stage quickly in that support interaction is the next stage of value in terms of value to their business, not value to your business. Um, yeah, I I think that that's very interesting. Um good piece of advice, Whitney.

Aakrit Prasad: 16:11

I've written it down. And just to kind of echo a bit of what Whitney, you're sharing and Charlotte, what you mentioned as well. I mean, the other thing that we are commonly seeing, and a lot of this was the inspiration for us uh starting AppDij with kind of the pain points we felt in past life, uh, was around the fact that products are changing more rapidly than before, right? And like that's there's a lot of innovation happening. And if a company doesn't innovate quickly, they lose their competitive edge to a competitor. And the average SaaS company has, you know, 15, 20 competitors now. It used to be like one to two. Um, so with that, as products change faster and there's a faster rate of innovation, a lot of times customers are reporting tickets and issues, even the free users or PLG users, reporting issues because of changes in the product. And this again is an opportunity for support to be able to empathize and connect with the customers and be able to allow uh for not only just building a stronger trust and relationship, but also opportunities to expand value with those accounts.

Whitney Brittingham: 17:06

Yeah, and this could probably be an entirely separate episode, but um it brings up a lot of thought for me around support's role in introducing new products to a market. Because, same as product-led growth, when you're introducing a new product, the first person that someone's going to reach out to when they have an issue is the support team. And establishing that feedback loop between what support is hearing from customers as they're using a new service for the very first time, and the product team, the feedback that they're getting with the areas of friction is a critical feedback loop to establish to ensure the success of that product down the line.

Charlotte Ward: 17:46

Yeah, and I think that's actually a very important point because I think that organizations can exist with how can I put this charitably? Uh can exist with either a broken or a dysfunctional or an almost entirely missing or a somewhat improvised feedback loop between customer support and product. You know, a lot can exist in meetings or in DMs in Slack or whatever that that isn't that systematic and isn't that well quantified or documented. But in smaller organizations with a relatively fully fledged paid product where it's a little bit slower moving because the product is more mature, you can get away with that, I think, in a way that you probably is probably going to be much more exposed in a PLG environment where you're likely to have a faster moving, larger user base with more turnover, wanting to get to points of value quicker. So you're going to want to iterate that product experience much more quickly. And so I think that it's a really interesting point to me that that the efficiency, the want of a better word, of that feedback loop is critical to the success of the PLG experience. Much more so than for a fully fully fledged product, right?

Whitney Brittingham: 19:19

Yeah, I completely agree. Um, I actually look, so I run both our customer success and support teams, um, but I look at support as really being the voice of the customer because they tend to have more frequent touch points in that type of environment with the customer than the success team does. So maybe, you know, one of my CSMs is meeting with a customer on a monthly basis. Support may talk to them three or four times, you know, and different users within that company as well. Um, so they actually have more data points than most other four folks in the organization to be able to identify some of those trends early on.

Charlotte Ward: 20:01

Yeah, yeah, that completely makes sense. That completely makes sense. Do you think then um and I don't have the right answer to this, that maybe there is no right answer, but do you think in terms of investment in support specifically for the PLG experience, and I don't necessarily mean a separate team or a separate group of people or anything like that, or even a separate set of operations, but do you think that this has a different cost profile in support than supporting paid customers?

Aakrit Prasad: 20:36

Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that one a bit. I mean, that is absolutely something that we're seeing. The more and more support leaders and teams we talk to, we continue to find that there is um there's kind of this model now that they're trying to uh put in place around how do we support these free users and how do we support the customers that are paying us? And how do we differentiate that experience a little bit because we can't be putting the same kind of um uh costs behind a free user as we are behind a paid user if we have to like be uh reason uh kind of more logical about the distribution of time we're spending for our team. And so that's kind of where we've started to see a lot more investment in like self-service and like knowledge. But there's uh you know something that we also pick up on in talking to a lot of support teams, which is uh to the point earlier we were connecting on, a lot of times these support lead support teams that are speaking with these customers, they'll often speak with them multiple times a week. And usually it's the customer that's reaching out, right? As opposed to from the success rule, you might be proactively reaching out to say, hey, how things going? From the support standpoint, the support agents and the teams are reaching out to uh the support, the customers are reaching out to the support team directly and to express a problem. And that that's always an opportunity to be able to solve that problem and educate them about what more is coming and get their feedback and really build trust by solving issues with them, but then also to be able to use that to potentially identify areas of opportunity to grow, right? And companies, there are some companies we've spoken to that are starting to look at support as a revenue driver, not just cost-centric. And that those are the ones we see that more commonly in like the PLG-oriented companies right now, because they're a bit more progressive with this new business model. Uh, but that that is a fundamental kind of shift in support that we're pretty excited about.

Charlotte Ward: 22:16

Yeah, it is a super interesting dynamic, isn't it? Because his I think that traditionally you would, exactly as you said, you know, you would expect to be spending significantly less on your lower-tiered customers than on your say your enterprise customers, for example. And and maybe that's still the case, but maybe the maybe the balance is isn't as isn't as doesn't have such a gradient as you might expect because of the the upsell opportunities in those lower tiers in your in your PLG experience.

Whitney Brittingham: 22:49

Yeah, one thing I've actually started to notice recently that I thought was really fascinating is that um in some organizations, we're actually starting to see community management roll up into support rather than marketing. And that seems to be a really fundamental shift where people are starting to recognize that there's more opportunity to grow that business from your free customers when you give them access to a highly technical resource.

Charlotte Ward: 23:18

Yeah, that makes complete sense. Um and I I think what's nice about uh seeing community molded um further into support is that you have access to the more technical resources, but you also have, I think, well-oiled operations as well to serve that. And and because in some ways community support is different, but it's also not different, right? It's kind of you might have different SLAs or you know, but but generally the tools can support it, the questions are generally about the same, the you know, and you definitely should make use of your skilled people to grow that community um as as much as any of your existing paid customers. That that's that's very, very much something I I I'm seeing the shift towards as well. Yeah, yeah. Um, well, it's been a super interesting chat, both of you. Thank you so much for joining me today. I um I feel like I have learned an awful lot. And for me, um just right from the top, just that realization that there is actually no tension between PLG and and support as a revenue driver, that actually it's can it's a continuum, isn't it? It's not a tension, which I think is is has been a um, it's just been a really big learning that I hope um everyone else listening to this has taken away because I feel much more reassured that that I'm not now having to go and kind of play around with how I'm competing with a different part of the organization, but actually how we should be working together. I mean, the and the same is true, I hope, for many of our listeners that they'll go and find ways to build that customer journey that we just talked about. I think it's uh it's very, very much one that uh is I'm I'm suddenly quite excited about.

Aakrit Prasad: 25:19

One thing just to I was gonna share, I mean, I think what's been always super exciting for me is support as an industry has been around for many decades. But what we're seeing now in the past half a decade and the decade ahead, we're going to see a much bigger shift in how support operates within an organization, thanks to the advent of PLG products, which is the direction that almost every company is now looking at to be competitive. Um, in addition to that, uh with subscription models, where support you know is a pretty key driver for making sure customers don't churn. Um, and as we move to kind of faster changes in the product experience, right, support becomes a really critical element of making sure customers are supported and having a good experience as the product evolves. Um, and so that I think is those kind of broader trends we see as becoming really key drivers and empowering support organizations within a company from essentially kind of a cost-centric business to a business that's really recognizing, helping recognize the revenue and expansion for an organization.

Charlotte Ward: 26:18

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much. Um, do come back and talk about, you know, that that fast-changing product environment with me again and in more depth, won't you? I'd love to talk about that some more. Um, and uh it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you both for joining me.

Whitney Brittingham: 26:39

Yeah, thank you so much for the time, Charlotte. We really appreciate it.

Charlotte Ward: 26:42

You're welcome. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash two four two for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.