Customer Success upholds and revamps the value-driven from a product, says Folloze's Adi Aloni

In an ideal world, there’s no “handoff,” it’s a seamless transition between natural phases of the buying process.

MEDIA 7: As a customer success leader, what do you think is the key to developing long-term customer relationships?
ADI ALONI: There are 2 main pillars to customer loyalty - value and experience.

Value - The main role of customer success is to constantly deliver and demonstrate value to the customer. While the product itself demonstrates value in different ways, it’s on Customer Success to reinforce it and repackage it in a way that is optimized for the audience.

Experience - According to Forrester, more than 60% of buyers now say providers that are knowledgeable and address their needs have the most positive impact on their buying decisions. This is why it’s so important to design a holistic experience that spans the entire lifecycle of the customer and is highly personalized and relevant. In an ideal world, there’s no “handoff,” it’s a seamless transition between natural phases of the buying process.


M7: Folloze’s mission is to “Turn every customer interaction into a meaningful engagement.” How is Folloze changing the way sellers interact with buyers?
AA: We are changing the landscape by being hyper-focused on the buyer experience because we know that being buyer-centric drives big results. According to McKinsey and other analysts, B2B companies that move fast, and deliver personalized experiences across the entire buyer journey, not just top of the funnel, thrive and generate between 10-20% of top-line growth. 
That means that all go-to-market functions need to be aligned to the buyer experience and deliver value that makes the interaction meaningful.

For example, like most buyers today, I myself do most of my research online and prefer digital interactions over human interactions. But it’s a lot of work, and I have to browse through hours of content that is not necessarily relevant to me. Highly targeted and personalized communications from a seller, that takes me into a highly personalized digital experience, can shorten my process and possibly also get me engaged with that seller.

That’s exactly the problem that folloze is solving. Marketers who are using Folloze are leveraging their strengths in content, messaging, target-audience building, etc. Sellers are leveraging their strengths in relationships, and deep audience research. Together they can easily collaborate on an impactful campaign and get it to market quickly.

Read More: Affise’s founder Dimitri Zotov believes that Partner Marketing space will see huge growth in the next few years.

Marketing roles are getting more and more specialized and demanding.

M7: What are some of your go-to tools to gather data and communicate with customers?
AA: Keeping our pulse on customers is, of course, a key area of focus and we're always adding and evolving the ways we do that. Product usage/adoption and engagement are a couple of main focus areas for us when it comes to data collection.

By monitoring customer activity using the product, we can use those insights to recommend additional use cases, optimization opportunities, and next best actions. We deliver those recommendations in a number of ways, including emails, in-app messages, and live CSM interactions.

We collect engagement data based on what is happening on our customers' Folloze Boards (the terminology for the digital destinations customers are creating with our platform). We use this information to help them optimize and further personalize their campaigns, and we do this mainly through live CSM interactions.


M7: How do you measure customer satisfaction?
AA: We believe that our customer portfolio, and the number of true Folloze champions on that list, speak volumes. In addition to the monitoring and tracking tools mentioned above, gather qualitative feedback from customers and encourage open communication with us equally about successes and pain points. We value that feedback and we're eager to work hand in hand with our customers to ensure that they're getting the most out of the Folloze Buyer Experience Platform.

Also, we are proactive when it comes to providing helpful tools and content to empower customers to get the most out of our product. We are always increasing the amount of tutorial-type content we have available, and we will be adding more application-based recommendations and training content aligned to specific platform features in the near future.

Read More: We're giving companies a faster way to start Partner Marketing, says Sam O’Brien, CMO at Affise.

Change is hard, and people need a lot of guidance when going through it.

M7: If you had to describe a challenging customer experience that you’ve resolved, which would it be? How did you resolve it?
AA: One of the things that I’ve dealt with a lot in my career, regardless of what hat I was wearing, is change management. Change is hard, and people need a lot of guidance when going through it. Specifically, in the MarTech space, the landscape is ever-changing and getting more and more complex. At the same time, marketing roles are getting more and more specialized and demanding.

While Folloze is making many aspects of the marketer’s life easier, we’re also representing the change in tools and processes. Our customers look to us for guidance, especially when it comes to marketing and sales relationships.
One customer, in particular, was very slow to complete onboarding and launch because of tensions between marketers and sellers.

They were targeting their most strategic customers using our platform and, understandably, the account teams required long approval processes to launch. Using value proof points from other customers and from campaigns that had already been launched for that specific customer, we were able to get more executive involvement and speed up the process to the satisfaction of both sides.


M7: You’ve built the Customer Success team at Folloze. What are three of the most important characteristics to you in teammates?
AA: Building a great team continues to be one of the most satisfying things I get to do at Folloze. To join our team you have to be:

1. A team player and a good person- People buy from people and work with people. I care deeply about creating a collaborative, supportive, and fun environment.
2. Be customer-centric- We wouldn’t be here without our customers. By keeping that top of mind, it ensures we’re always doing the right things for the customer. By putting ourselves in their shoes, we can ensure that we’re always guided by empathy.
3. Driven and excited- Our team members have a true passion for the product, for the team, and for our customers.