Sounds crazy, but how about you listen to your customers?

People often ask me where the idea to build a marketplace for talent came from, and this question is most commonly followed by a very perplexed look and second question of why I would set out to build a business that is purely designed to cannibalise my first business (a traditional talent agency).

And for me, it’s easy.

I listened to what my customers were saying. I listened to the market. I knew the industry was ripe for disruption. It was a simple case of disrupt, or be disrupted. If I didn't do it, someone else would, and either way the traditional agency model was in threat and I wanted to be on the right side of history.

And I think having this realisation, that it wasn’t some lightbulb moment that struck me in the shower but years and years of listening to customer feedback, that led me to create a habit I still do to this day in theright.fit (the now thriving marketplace that shocked everyone). I do the first and last hour of customer service, every day, in the business.

My day starts like this:

Alarm, coffee, gym, shower, second coffee, customer service. It’s the perfect health check of the company. I get to learn what features our clients are loving, or more importantly, hating. I can get a sense check of how busy the marketplace is, spot trends in common issues that arise, and it gives me some of the best ideas for new features. 

But most importantly, I get direct, one to one communication with our customers.

I get to talk to them first hand, ask them things and probe them for details I’m sure they didn’t think would come up when they submitted their CX ticket on our website. They see my passion, and hopefully learn a little bit about the ‘why’ behind the company. Whilst we are a pure play tech company, with over 16,000 talent and 11,000 clients across the globe, these moments help me build rapport, community and connection, which I think are invaluable.

And the stats are backing my daily customer service obsession. Companies in APAC doing CX well are 4.4x more likely to have grown their customer bases over the past six months, and 10.8x more likely to have significantly grown customer spend during the same period, compared to companies identified as starting their CX journey.

Thankfully, the tools to get the job done are far more advanced than when I was starting my first company, with my hot pink flip Motorola phone and four kilogram laptop. There are phenomenal platforms like Zendesk, Justcall, Slack, and even the process of building offshore CX teams has become substantially easier and higher quality. 

So when you’re next in the shower thinking about how you solve growth for Q4, reduce churn, or increase the average cart size per customer… Maybe think about doing something unconventional and asking the very people you’re trying to solve for. Because you are not your customer. But your customer will be the first to tell you the answer, if you’re just ready to listen.