How Our Customer Experience Approach Helps You Succeed

February might bring on the chill, but you can always stay in and enjoy another Fireside Chat!

Today we’ve got Jared Loman, Kajabi’s VP of Customer Experience, chatting with Jay around a cozy laptop. Jared is laser-focused on how Kajabi’s customers feel when using the platform, and today he shares what Kajabi is doing to offer a customer experience that users can’t find anywhere else.

Whether you’re aiming to make referrals as a Kajabi Partner, or you’re curious about what makes Kajabi so different from other platforms, Jared’s perspective is one you can’t afford to miss. 

Here's what you’ll learn: 

• Why relationships are so crucial to the success of your offer (2:10)
• How Kajabi approaches building relationships with our customers (3:11)
• What does the beginning of the Kajabi customer experience look like? (3:46)
• Planned improvements to the Kajabi customer experience (4:50)

Why are relationships so crucial to the success of your product? 

When you sit down and think about what makes a particular product or company successful, what comes to mind first?

Most often, companies try to lead the conversation around their product’s features. What does it do that others can’t? 

Features can be a great way to grab attention and bring the sizzle. Who wouldn’t be captivated by wireless earbuds or a self-driving car?

But Jared’s work at Kajabi focuses on a simple truth that has been echoed by some of the world’s greatest business experts over and over: In business, it’s the relationship you build with customers that truly drives success. 

“All things being equal, people will do business with a friend. All things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend.”
- Mark McCormack (founder of IMG)

And with a little effort by your competition, “unequal” products can be made “equal” in terms of features in a relatively short time. 

 Relationships are the real competitive advantage.

In 2018, Forrester Research found that brands with above-average customer experience brought in 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors. 

When customers feel they had a great experience, they are 87% more likely to make another purchase from the same company again. This holds true even when there are other attractive solutions around (to understand why look no further than the “Four Forces” that drive consumer behavior). 

And Jared points out that at its core, customer experience is “very, very relationship focused” – that’s what makes it so hard to duplicate. It’s about understanding your customer better than anyone else. 

So how does Kajabi approach building relationships with customers?

For Kajabi, prioritizing relationships at this point in our business looks like devoting an entire department to it. 

That’s why midway through 2019, we introduced an entirely new customer success department. This team helps customers navigate the various challenges associated with adopting a platform. In Jared’s own words, “We reach out and help guide them, get them off to a great start, and set them up for success.”

Having a team with that dedicated focus allows Kajabi to connect with customers early in the product life cycle, with their relationship to our product is still new and in need of close attention. 

What does the early Kajabi customer experience look like?

Contrary to popular opinion, the earliest stage of customer experience starts before the sale happens.

Kajabi’s approach to sales is untraditional in the sense that our sales team strictly focuses on helping people make the right selection that fits their needs, rather than trying to convince them towards the sale.

This “people, not prospects” philosophy helps the sales process feel natural and non-aggressive. Because if a new customer starts by feeling “pushed into it,” their customer experience is off to a pretty bad start. 

What does customer experience do to support someone who starts a new 14-day trial?

It starts with support. From the moment that someone starts a new trial, Kajabi support is there to tackle anything they need. For users with growth plans and above, access to our support team is 24/7. It’s not unusual for users to get issues solved even on holidays:

What you may not know is that we’ve recently introduced an entirely new role within our support team to take the customer experience up a notch. 

 This new role, the Technical Lead, fields complex technical questions, even the kind of questions that would require others to go digging for answers. The Technical Lead answers those questions on the spot, preventing delays and creating a more responsive experience for the customer. 

Are there any planned improvements to the Kajabi customer experience coming up? 

Indeed there are! In addition to restructuring our entire support department around customer experience and adding new roles (like Technical Lead), we’re also testing out various expansions of our support offer. 

One example is having billing chat available seven days per week. Billing is already a super sensitive issue, and it’s universally frustrating to have to wait the entire weekend to resolve a billing problem. But will having billing chat available everyday make a real difference to Kajabi customers?

 To answer that question, our customer experience team is paying close attention to whether or not there is enough demand to support having this feature available every day of the week. That’s all part of a nimble customer experience approach.

 Another thing we’re excited about is expanding our live training offerings, in several different formats. 

 Right now we offer four live weekly training webinars for trial members, giving them the opportunity to learn from some of our most experienced Kajabi experts who know the platform inside and out. 

 These training sessions aren’t huge free-for-alls where questions get lost. They’re usually small groups of 5-10 people, so attendees really get the chance to go deep with specific questions and gain a much better understanding of the platform. 

 Later this year when we gain more space with our new headquarters, we’re interested in offering live in-person training as well. But as Jared points out, we can’t say too much about that just yet.  

How can this knowledge of Kajabi’s customer experience benefit your business?

 For Kajabi Partners:  

Having a deep understanding of Kajabi’s unique customer experience will make the referral process much easier, especially if you take inspiration from our sales process (where the customer experience begins). 

Keep your focus on helping people make the right decision, not convincing them. Many of your potential referrals aren’t aware of how robust Kajabi’s support system is, and knowing more about it could be the factor that helps them decide. 

And lastly, you can use this information to feel confident that your hard work making referrals isn’t going to waste. When you send customers to Kajabi, we’re doing our utmost to make sure they have a great experience and succeed on our platform. When that happens, everybody wins.

For Product Creators: 

Consider ways you can prioritize the customer experience of your own product, regardless of the stage you’re at in your business.  

You may not be at the point where you have a support team – that’s ok! 

 Focus on understanding your audience better than your competition. Use what you learn about them to inspire every aspect of your business, from your messaging to your offers to how you greet them in a video. This will allow you to create deeper customer relationships. 

For Business Owners:

We wanted Jared to pull back the curtain on our customer experience because it’s something you don’t always get to see when you’re on the “outside” of a product or offer.

We hope that this Fireside Chat helps you get a better sense of what Kajabi’s customer experience is like, so that you can make a confident decision about what platform is right for you.

That’s it for this Fireside Chat!

Leave a comment and let us know what you think below…