When have you seen force or friction impact a company’s ability to grow?

[mbarba]

Revenue Operations, or RevOps, is integral to taking an inbound approach to business and speeding up your company’s flywheel.

Why are those important? Let’s define terms first:

• Inbound is a method of attracting, engaging, and delighting people to grow a business that provides value and builds trust.
• The flywheel is a model adapted by HubSpot to explain the momentum you gain when you align your entire organization around delivering a remarkable customer experience. Rather than thinking of your business as a funnel, with leads coming in at the top and customers coming out at the bottom, think about your business as a circle — as a flywheel.

When thinking about how to spin your company’s flywheel faster with RevOps, there are two important concepts to keep in mind:

1. Force is what allows your business to scale by spinning your flywheel faster and faster. This looks like when your customer has a great customer experience and tells their friends and colleagues about it.
2. Friction is what grinds your business to a halt, if not addressed. This is when your company provides your customers with a bad customer experience, and they also tell their friends and colleagues about it. In turn, this slows down your flywheel.

Here’s what I’d love to hear:

1. Share a time when you had an amazing customer experience and you saw a company grow faster and faster because of their wonderful customer care.
2. Share a time when you had a poor customer experience (please don’t name names or organizations) and how you saw that type of poor care affect their business.

[LBreytenbach]

1) Good customer experience resulting in growth: I managed a call centre. The consultants were inundated with leads, and the quality of their responses was poor and sporadic. We streamlined the feedback with communication feedback templates, which increased response times and the quality of the feedback given. No spelling errors, quick professional responses, etc - all resulted in being able to handle more leads, every month, in a more professional manner. We were also able to track the communications and response times better.

2) Poor customer experience: I have a security alarm in my house. The alarm kept sending a panic alarm to the control centre, which resulted in monthly additional costs (due to the high number of panic alarms going off in a single month). A consultant solved the problem when the realised there was a problem with the battery, which if replaced would not send the panic alarm signal or incur additional costs which ha to be reversed manually by staff or followed up on by an irritated customer

[ColleneBay]

Sales executives trying to sell to anyone that will have a conversation with them versus finding clients that we can partner with and providing mutually beneficial solutions

[degreeplus]

Not-so-well-trained sales reps trying to sell only the SKUs that are easiest to sell is one of the frictions I've seen in many companies.

[AOgungbaro]

n order to better serve our clients, we had to develop a standard operations procedure manual to guide with step by step, consistent tasks to be accomplished, which will contribute to the optimal satisfaction of the customers that we service and improve our process flow. 

[AOgungbaro]

In order to better serve our clients, we had to develop a standard operations procedure manual to guide with step by step, consistent tasks to be accomplished, which will contribute to the optimal satisfaction of the customers that we service and improve our process flow. 

[JKing4]

1. Our company has grown faster and our revenue has grown exponentially in the last several years. We went from serving 244 clients in 2017 to 1,777 at the end of 2021. Yes, new customers have been a huge driving force behind that revenue increase, but so have increased the number of current customers enrolled in our non-core add-on services. 

2. I really haven't experienced that too much, but my mom has in a company's inability to address customer concerns. When you scale, there is often a need to hire new people and even create new positions that were never needed before.

[BMichael0]

🤔

[STripathi4]

.

[MsShona]

1. Share a time when you had an amazing customer experience and you saw a company grow faster and faster because of their wonderful customer care. I brought my minivan through Carvana back in 2017. Back then they were a new company -- and people thought that I was crazy to buy a car online (sight unseen). But I had just had twin boys and their older brother was 1 year old. I had no ability to go out and go jumping from dealership to dealship to find the perfect minivan (and yes, with 3 baby car seats, that's what I needed). Carvana brought the car right to your home. You had 7 days to call them up to take it back if you didn't like it. My ex was a mechanic. So I didn't have much to lose. It was a fantastic experience. The delivery driver was also a notary that took care of the title paperwork. They handled the financing. If I opted to trade-in, they would have taken my old car too. He even brought extra promotional toys like frisbees (my kids were too young for those....but he didn't know that) and little bounce balls when he heard that I had little kids. Since then Carvana has grown by leaps and bounds....and even have some other companies trying to get in on the online car sales marketplace.
2. Share a time when you had a poor customer experience (please don’t name names or organizations) and how you saw that type of poor care affect their business. I usually prepare and file my own taxes. But 2 years ago I had a child custody trial that was scheduled in Febuary. I knew that I was getting a sizable tax refund back....but there would be no way that I would have it in hand in time for the trial. I owed my attorney some fees that exceeded my retainer and I didn't want him to go into the trial knowing that I owed him (may have been fine, but I didn't want to take any chances!). So I went in to one of those tax preparation places that advertise instant receipt of your refund. It was a terrible experience. The woman preparing my taxes gave me vibes that she was pretty inexperienced with the software and the process....and I had a very simple return. Also I had no idea that the advertised rate was just for your tax return. It didn't include the schedules. I thought that I would be paying $150 tops and my bill ended up being $400! To make matters worse, I had to pay another fee for the rapid refund. I was given a Visa card that would not be activated until the next day. I asked what the card balance was, and was told they had no idea. They would review my return and then let me know. The next day I received a text message that I had been approved for a rapid refund of $500. So I paid $400 to get instant access to $500. My tax refund was for more than $7K. I was livid. There is a (good) reason why those tax preparation outfits are going out of style. I hope that they become completely obsolete in the next decade or so because they take major advantage of people (there is no reason why a simple 1040 tax return with a few schedules for childcare and student loan interest credits should cost $400).

[Stefanos_GR]

oustanding experience :really enjoy when companies have really simple registration process with required data only the email 🙂 - love this kind of companies 

Poor experience :registration process with issues 😞

[Eloy]

1. Not to be THAT GUY, but Hubspot is actually a great example of Force - its rare for me to encounter such a speedy and attentive customer service team. But after just a few calls, I know I can count on them and would recommend as an avid customer.
2. Call centers tend to create purposeful friction when all of the inbound calls arrive at tier 1, it is possible that a customer requires tier 2 support and oftentimes the inbound team is not trained to identify these situations well and just generate friction for the caller through the insistence of not escalating.

[KClancy9]

1. I was traveling with my young toddler and she was just not having it. I tried everything I knew to do to help calm her. A flight attendant gave us some grapes from her lunch and magically my toddler calmed down. This helped all the passengers have a wonderful flight and helped a frustrated mother overcome a difficult time.

2. I walked into a grocery store to buy a cake for my kid's birthday. I walked up to the bakery and the lady started to huff that I bothered her. I asked a few questions and then picked out a cake. She said I don't have time for this and walked away. A second employee came over and tried to help me. I asked for the manager and she said the first lady was her manager. I left without buying a cake.

[RPeraza]

1. I believe I have seen the positive effects of customer services in the last position I was in. I noticed customers were happy and recommended the service we would offer.

2. The effects of poor customer service are something I have witnessed a lot. People seem to forget to listen to their customers and take everything they say into consideration. This is a big issue because word of mouth is very impactful.

[ARamirez8]

Amazing customer experience - After complaining about wrong delivery, customer service responded immediately and processed the refund right away with a special coupon to compensate for the inconvenience.

Poor customer experience - It takes too long or almost impossible to reach them over the phone and I had to send multiple emails/follow up before I finally received a reply.

[AAguilar2]

1. Share a time when you had an amazing customer experience and you saw a company grow faster and faster because of their wonderful customer care.

Coommunity managers that repsond to clients in a time efficient manner and with a sense of humor are amazing. One time during pandemic a food delivery app had issues with the ETA of delivery, the CM provided solutions and credited the customer affected. The credit was applied to their account and available for a second time use, guaranteeing a better experience the second time. 

1. Share a time when you had a poor customer experience (please don’t name names or organizations) and how you saw that type of poor care affect their business.

A financial insttitution was not time effective and made me go to the bank several times for the same issue, they were unable to provide a solution on the phone/email and I had to physically go into the office, this is a waste of time and energy.

[virensmehta]

According to me, a great product backed with faster onboarding is a force and anything which is not in like with this is friction to create customer delight.

[RSantoro]

Positive experience: Our customer success team is often mentioned as a differentiting factor to competitors. It is showing through referrals and increased customer engagement

Negtive experience: my personal experience with a SaaS company, when it comes to changing the type of product requested. Their inability of flexibility caused us to end business with them completely, instead of simply changing within their product offering

[GCreech]

Positive Experience - We recently purchased a new dishwasher. The installer arrived early, installed the dishwasher quickly and went above and beyond in cleanup and installation. We will go back to this company for additional appliances.

Negative Experience - We found a bug in a jar of spaghetti sauce. When we contacted the company, the response was delayed and not very heartfelt. We haven't purchased that brand of spaghetti sauce since that issue.

[RNee]

Our biggest friction is generating quotes and completing security reviews in a timely manner for potential customers. We've made some human and technology investments to create more force than friction. 

[CEOKevinK]

Force: Hosting and Promoting Special Speakers on LinkedIn and Meetup

Force: Recomend Special Speakers for Tasks Performed Well on LinkedIn

[ahoulne]

For is when a new resource is brought in to the team.

Friction is when there are either too many or not enough hand offs for the client experience.