1 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like business infrastructure. Today, we'll be focusing on how to build a customer life cycle to drop these value bombs. I brought Saumil Mehta and the EOFire studios. Saumil leads Square’s Square Point of Sale and CRM business unit. His responsibilities include overall ownership and organizational management across multiple functional disciplines, including Product, Engineering, and Design. And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about the customer life cycle, the connection of that to customer experience the tools the businesses can use to build out your customer life cycle, fire nation omni-channel and so much more.

1 (47s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors have an idea for an online store, but stuck because you don't have the courage or resources to take action that stops today. It's time to turn your e-commerce idea into reality with the ideato store contests, for details, visit www.ideato.store today. That's www.ideato.store. Turn your small e-commerce business into the next big thing with Klaviyo. Klaviyo is the easy to use email and SMS platform that gives you everything you need to build genuine relationships with your customers. Give it a try with a free account at Klaviyo.com/fire. That's Klaviyo.com/fire/fire.

1 (1m 28s):
Saumil say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up

0 (1m 41s):
Great to be with you all and obviously great to be with you, John. Thank you so much for inviting me and, and yeah, it's a, it's a great question. What I would say, and I don't know how unpopular this will be, but what I would say is that unlike what most people would say, I am comfortable with both regret and jealousy as emotions. You hear a lot these days about how regret is bad and you should just kind of put that aside or how jealousy is terrible. You should just run your own race and there's truth to all of that. What I found over the years though, is that if you can pay attention to your feelings and if you can pay attention to why there's regret or why there's jealousy.

0 (2m 26s):
And then of course put that aside and use that to inform your future actions. It's a more productive way to live any more informed way to live than to simply say, well, regrets are terrible. Jealousy is terrible. Let's just move on. So that's maybe one thing that I can offer

1 (2m 43s):
In foreign nation. That's why I love starting off with that question because it brings some really unique perspectives. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. Give you some different perspectives about how to look alive, how to think about life, how to operate within business. And as I mentioned, introduction, Saumil, I mean he leads Square's point of sale and CRM business unit. And we'll be talking about building a customer life cycle today, but first off somewhere I want to dive in and have you tell us a little bit about square? So Fire Nation can get a good jest of what square is and does, and specifically what you're trying to solve.

0 (3m 21s):
I could talk about this for hours, but I will aim to keep it short to Square's mission is economic empowerment. We wish to democratize access and participation in the economy for audiences that we would consider a traditionally or even currently underserved many people know the story, but if you don't, we started over 10 years ago with the smallest of small businesses, the flower shop or the flower cart down the street that wasn't accepting credit cards and thereby losing business. The, the taxi cab driver that was stuck with a pretty poor way to actually manage transactions and accept payments.

0 (4m 3s):
And over time, we've also started to serve consumers through cash app and hopefully artists in the future through title, me and my colleagues are focused on the seller business on the seller side of the business, which serves businesses, what we call them sellers of all sizes, all categories, and increasingly more and more countries on the seller side. Specifically, we help businesses start, run and grow their business through well integrated well-designed tools, any collection of what we would call API APIs to boot. And the purpose again, is to help these businesses get access to tools that they might not have do help them grow their business through tools that were previously unavailable and to hopefully do it with a great design and great customer service.

1 (4m 53s):
Well, that's one thing that we're going to be focusing on for the rest of the interview today is the word customer, because we all do hear this phrase customer life cycle. But to be honest with you, most people don't have a clue of what that actually means. What the heck is a customer life cycle, break it down for us.

0 (5m 12s):
It's one of those things that's tossed around, but somewhat poorly understood. So, so we can break it down and simplify it. Customer life cycle is the different stages that a consumer or a purchaser or even a prospective purchaser of your business, whether you're selling goods, services, something in between goes through from being aware that they have a need for your product or service to being a loyal customer and a brand advocate. And so it's effectively this question of how do we get purchasers and prospective purchasers from point a to point B point a being awareness and point B, which is the final destination, essentially being a brand advocate or a loyal customer.

0 (5m 60s):
We usually break it down into five stages and different folks will use four or six stages. But, but let me tell you the five stages that we think about. So the first stage of the customer life cycle is awareness, right? You can't buy something that you don't necessarily need, or you might not even be aware that you need it. So the awareness stage is essentially making a prospective customer aware of you, your brand, your offerings, you stand for what you value and what you offer. And if they have that need, they should be aware of it. And if they, if they don't necessarily have that need, but might have that need, they should still be aware.

0 (6m 42s):
And so, so awareness is how you achieve that with the broadest pool of prospective purchasers in your industry. We'll give you an example. So I live in San Francisco and you know, I became a homeowner a few years ago and stuff's always breaking out around the house. I'm sure you know, this feeling. And, and I go on YouTube and find amazing videos of like simple home repair things that you could do by yourself, DIY. And that's how I become aware of various home repair pros in my area and the day that something actually goes wrong, that I certainly can't fix. I should be able to remember and say, oh boy, you know what? Those home repair pros that I saw two months ago that were really helpful, I'd better call them because I'm now I now need this thing and now I'm aware of them, right?

0 (7m 31s):
So that's the awareness stage super important. The next stage down from awareness is consideration. So I'm aware that I have a need. Now I have to consider my options. And that is a consideration stage. And of course it varies by the type of business. Think about a coffee shop, right? I move into a new neighborhood. I'm walking around the first morning. I'm going through a consideration stage to figure out where I'm going to get my morning coffee, but it's going to be pretty quick, right? I'm going to look at a place I'm going to consider it. If it looks good, I'm just going to jump in and buy me a coffee and be on my way home repair, of course, completely different. If I'm going to do a $5,000 flooring job, which unfortunately I'm personally going to be needing to do soon here, I'm going to go through and take my time, right?

0 (8m 19s):
I'm going to sit down with my computer at my desktop for an hour, and I'm going to pull up all the review sites and I'm gonna do my Google research. And I'm going to look on YouTube and I'm going to be calling businesses to see if I can get ahold of them. I'm going to be looking at their websites. And so that's a consideration phase where you're saying, okay, I have this awareness, I have this need. Now I got to consider my options and pick the best one for me. So that's consideration next one. Down from that conversion, obviously super important, right? How do I actually convert? How do I actually conduct a transaction, the actual act of commerce with the business owner. Once again, you know, picking the two disparate examples, coffee shops, super simple.

0 (9m 1s):
I go in there, use a pay pay at my point of sale. Hopefully it's a square point of sale I might add and, and, and be on my weight. But of course, if it's home and repair, it's going to involve something completely different. I might get an estimate and then I might pay an invoice. And so that's the conversion step of actually doing the first transaction with the business owner and with the business. And then, and this is the part where most people could use more time and attention. The next step down is retention. It is hard to get the first transaction from a prospective purchaser, but it is just as hard and a lot more beneficial. If you can actually retain the customer, right, get the customer to do transaction number 2, 3, 4.

0 (9m 47s):
And once again, that's going to vary by stage. If it's a bakery, well, you might visit a bakery and be a retained consumer. When that goes back over and over again, four or five, six times a month. But if you are a gutter cleaner, right? So again, to pick a completely different example, a retained customer looks like somebody who comes back once or twice a year. So retention is also going to vary by business category and the needs of the purchaser, but that's the next step. And the final step difficult to achieve with most consumers, but the best brands and the best businesses do it successfully is loyalty or advocacy is the most coveted stage because you can be retained and still not loyal.

0 (10m 28s):
I won't name names here, but my internet provider, I'm retained. I pay my bill every month, but you can bet your bottom dollar. I'm not. And most people that you know are not advocates for their internet service providers, for all the reasons that we're familiar with. And so how does a brand or business owner design their life cycle in a way or design their customer experience in a way that produces advocates that produces loyal customers. And this is something that more businesses would do well to pay attention to. And one that certainly we continue to focus attention on square when we serve our own customers.

0 (11m 7s):
So that's how I would set up the five stages of the customer life cycle. And of course in today's day and age, the customer life cycle continues to get yet more complex because of the way we live. Right? I mean, think about the acceleration that we've gone through with COVID over the last 18 months, and now everything's online, everything's contactless, everything's online plus offline. And so how do we design the customer life cycle in response to the world around us is an ongoing challenge.

1 (11m 38s):
So far nation. I want to run through this real quick because it's a critical process. This customer life cycle one is awareness and you move into consideration, then that actual conversion, then the retention, and then this is something I think a lot of people don't think about very deeply as the loyalty becoming an advocate, like actually being an evangelist, like talking about it, being like so excited. How do you think the Netflix movies that we all watched get around? Because we all advocate for them. We love certain shows, and then we talk about them. We advocate for them. And then of course, if your friends talking to Holly about something and you respect and trust that friends, I mean, that's going to be something you're going to go off and say, Hey, I heard about a great show today.

1 (12m 22s):
Let's make it happen. So let's talk about the tools the businesses can actually use in this building, out of the customer life cycle.

0 (12m 32s):
Another great point, right? It we're fortunate as business owners and we're fortunate at square, certainly to have the most concentrated set of tools available to us in today's day and age to design an exceptional customer life cycle that helps the brand stand out. That helps the brand be omni-channel friendly. That helps the business attract and retain consumers that will become advocates with the help of good tools unlike ever before in business history. So let's talk about that. I'm going to tell you tools, but I'm going to break them down again with the five stages to make it simple.

0 (13m 13s):
So let's start with awareness. There's a series of tools available for awareness and I'll cherry pick a couple of examples. YouTube is a fantastic source, right? Blogs are a fantastic source of creating awareness, consumers and prospective purchasers. When they become aware, what is the first thing they do today, they actually go online on their phone and they basically try to understand what it is that they could be doing in a completely different context. As I said, like there could be a DIY kind of YouTube video for a home repair business, and that content is being put out into the world, not to immediately attract the consumer, but to create awareness for the business and to build a brand that exists to serve the consumer, even if the transaction isn't happening for months or years down the road.

0 (14m 7s):
So for awareness, we would recommend YouTube blogs, Instagram, and certainly the plethora of ad formats that are available on social media and on Google and elsewhere. So awareness is just about ensuring that you have great content and great advertising. The next stage is consideration. And in consideration, we would advocate that your website really should be the number one option, put yourself in the shoes of a consumer. If they're evaluating amongst three, four or five different vendors, they're going to pay attention to the level of completeness of your website, to the level of professionalism and care that the brand has.

0 (14m 49s):
Making sure that the consideration step is painless consumer. So that is the number one tool we will recommend because in today's day and age, consumers certainly look at websites and ensure that information is clear that the process for the way, goods and services are delivered as clear that if it's a self checkout that is super seamless, that everything works successfully on mobile devices. And so consideration the number one tool we would recommend is ensuring that the website is a plus. And then beyond that, we would also recommend messaging tools. So depending upon the type of business, the consumer may want to message the business directly and hear back from them before they make a purchase decision.

0 (15m 36s):
This is why square has invested heavily in products like square messages, which allow businesses and prospective consumers or existing consumers to communicate with each other before the consumer makes a purchasing decision. And finally, we would also advocate for reviews, reputation, online reputation specifically on various review sites is the coin of the realm in 2021. And so anything that businesses can do to ensure that they have fantastic online reputation is going to be a critical part of the consideration step. So website, reputation, management messaging, those are the three things we would advocate for and consideration.

0 (16m 17s):
Then there's the conversion step. And again, we live in an omni-channel world. Consumers expect to be able to buy online. They expect to be able to buy offline and they expect all this work seamlessly. If your business is an offline business, or at least has an offline presence in the form of a store or even a field operation, we would, of course recommend that a point of sale product is absolutely must have in today's day and age. And if you're done a pick a point of sale, you should pick something that is mobile first cloud first and Omni channel friendly. And of course we can recommend one to you, but, but there are several options available and square point of sale.

0 (17m 3s):
I'm certainly biased, but is, is, is one of the best ones out there. And additionally, an online store with e-commerce capability is also critical for conversion in today's day and age, consumers may prefer to buy online pickup in store. They may prefer to buy offline and, or buy online and return in store. They may want to buy offline and print a shipping label to return from their homes. And so a wonderful e-commerce presence alongside a point of sale for offline businesses. And ideally both of these things working together will be critical for the conversion step.

0 (17m 43s):
And certainly also why we continue to invest heavily in square online, which is our online store offering. Then we come to retention, two types of tools that are super valuable. The first is customer relationship management software, more colloquially known as CRM. Once you have this base of customers, we need to be able to recognize who they are. We need to be able to understand what they've purchased from us, how often they visit. Did they have a good experience last time? How can we make their experience better? And all of this data is usually managed and analyzed and stored and recorded in CRM software.

0 (18m 23s):
Once again, not different options, online, lots of options by category of business, even, and certainly square paired with it's point of sale and square online offerings also offers an integrated CRM system that manages all your customer data online and offline sync together all at once. We would also recommend marketing software, certainly email marketing and text message. Marketing are both popular options today and, and marketing and retention software. What it allows you to do is take consumer data. That's now in your CRM, which hopefully you have and allows you to ensure that you message these consumers thoughtfully.

0 (19m 7s):
If you have a new promotion, if you have a new discount, if you have new store hours, if you have new staff, all of these things are things that the consumer would benefit from and keeps your brand top of mind from a retention perspective. And so we would recommend marketing software and CRM software for retention. And finally, for advocacy, we would recommend a loyalty program, whether your business is primarily in store or primarily online or increasingly both a loyalty program is a fantastic, proven, successful way to ensure that consumers have a reason to keep coming back to ensure that consumers feel special for transacting with you versus somebody else down the street or somebody else that's two clicks away.

0 (19m 58s):
And, and of course, as we all know, there's a reason we're all obsessed with our points because these points programs, these loyalty programs certainly work. And the final thing I would say is gift cards, gift cards are once again a powerful mechanism to bend, build brand advocacy and loyalty. Because once you get to the point that you've purchased a gift card to give to your friend, you are effectively doing advocacy on behalf of the brand, to your friends and family, which is also amazing. So awareness, which is YouTube blogs, Instagram ads consideration, which is website messaging, reputation, conversion, which is point of sale.

0 (20m 39s):
And e-commerce online store retention with marketing software and CRM software and advocacy with loyalty programs, core

1 (20m 47s):
wild Fire Nation. This is one of those episodes where you're just like, I need to go back with a team of no takers and just take notes vociferously, because there's so much knowledge, so much value being shared here. So many takeaways and things to implement and insert into your business. Literally today, we're going to be talking about some really important things. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, do you have an idea for an online store, but are stuck because you don't have the courage or resources to take action while that stops today, it's time to turn your e-commerce idea into reality. With the ideato store contest, the contest is organized by.store domains.

1 (21m 29s):
The domain extension for business owners, stores and anyone who is selling something online more than 450,000 sellers currently trust store domains for their online store. The ideato store contests is live right now, and we want you to have a chance to win up to $30,000 in cash prizes to help start your own online store. In addition to the cash prizes up for grabs, you can also win a chance to be mentored by me. JLD on your journey to finally launching your online store idea for details on how to sign up, submitting your online store idea via Instagram and more visit www.ideato.store today. That's www.ideato.store.

0 (22m 15s):
Getting an online business off the ground isn't easy. There are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to building an e-commerce brand. So if you find yourself working late, tackling a to-do list, that's a mile long with your fifth cup of coffee by your side. Remember great email. Doesn't have to be complicated. That's what Klaviyo is for Klaviyo is the email and SMS platform built to help e-commerce brands earn more money by creating genuine customer relationships. Once you set up a free Klaviyo account, you can start sending beautiful brand and messages and minutes. Thanks to drag and drop design templates and built in guidance. And with e-commerce specific recommendations and insights, you can keep growing your business. As you go get started with a free account at Klaviyo.com/fire.

0 (23m 6s):
Fire Nation is time to build genuine relationships with your customers at Klaviyo.com/fire. That's Klaviyo.com/fire.

1 (23m 11s):
Saumil we're back. And we all hear this word, omni-channel. What role does omni-channel play and actually building this customer life cycle. We've been talking about

0 (23m 23s):
Another one of these buzzwords that happens to be super important. So let me first start by defining omni-channel, John. So omni-channel is effectively the process by which businesses meet consumers, where the consumers are or choose to be right? Simple concept today, consumers live online, offline, and everywhere in between at all hours of the day, the kind of logical separation that we had between our quote unquote online life and offline life that's gone, right? That was the thing. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that's gone. We're glued to our phones.

0 (24m 4s):
We're walking around with them and we're buying online, picking up in store. And so omni-channel effectively says, how am I going to design my customer life cycle and my customer experience in a way that reflects the way my consumers and actually all humans these days live. And if they want to purchase online, great, we can offer that if they want to book appointments by calling me on the phone, we can do that. But if they want to do that online, we can do that too. If they want to check my hours of operation at 11:00 PM at night, while they're checking out their favorite Netflix show, instead of waiting to call me at 9:00 AM the next morning, we can do that too for them.

0 (24m 46s):
So Omni channel in summary, if you step back, represents a reversion of control from the seller to the buyer, right? 20 years ago, you'd be calling around five different places and asking them, how late are you open today in today's day and age, if that information isn't available on their website, you're not getting that customer, right? So in this way, and many other ways, omni-channel represents a reversion to the buyer. And as a result asks sellers to design the customer life cycle in a way that is omni-channel friendly. So what does that mean? We talked about the five stages, right?

0 (25m 28s):
Awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, advocacy. You can design a thoughtful customer life cycle for your bakery, let's say right. And what that could look like 20 years ago is I have a great sign. I have great signage. I have a welded store. I'm in a great location. When the customer comes in, I'm going to make sure that the person who serves them or takes their order is a friendly person. And by the way, I'm going to give them a punch card on the way out the door and ask them to come back for 10 punches. That's a customer lifecycle and a good customer experience 20 years ago in today's day and age.

0 (26m 8s):
That's great, but it doesn't quite work because the consumer lives differently. So the question in front of us is how do we design a customer life cycle that is thoughtful and authentic and careful, but friendly to the omni-channel environment that we live in, which of course has been accelerated over the last 18 months through the crazy COVID world that we've all been living through. What does that mean? Well, what that means is that each stage we have to break down how the consumer is living and then design and redesign and tweak our customer life cycle in reflection of that. So for example, if we're talking about awareness for that bakery, certainly they should be having great signage and a welded store, but they should also consider if they need to be posting on Instagram about how they bake their baked goods to generate awareness amongst local consumers who live down the street, but also check Instagram four times a day.

0 (27m 11s):
When it comes to consideration, this bakery may want to ensure that they can offer a wonderful website that explains all the different, big goods and the way they're built and what sorts of goods are available when, and, and, and so on. And what is the story behind a particular cake and, and that, that nature that allows the consumer to consider this bakery more strongly, but it's also available online in addition to offline, when it comes to conversion, certainly the bakery should have a great mobile friendly point of sale, but also could offer, buy online pickup in store.

0 (27m 53s):
How convenient would it be if the consumer can just pull out their phone, browse on their online store, pick the cake they want for their birthday or their friend's birthday tomorrow, and go pick it up at 9:00 AM the next morning, no actual mood to go to the shop and wait there for half an hour while they make a custom cake for you. All of this can be done online, and then you go pick it up in the store. That's a wonderful customer life cycle at the conversion step. And certainly for retention and advocacy, you could do the same. So the purpose of omni-channel is to ensure that across channels and devices, we design a lifecycle that reflects the way consumers live and helps the consumer having a wonderful experience at every step of the, every step of the customer life cycle in a way that we live today.

1 (28m 47s):
Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, Omni channel for all the obvious reasons. And one thing you may not know Saumil is at Fire Nation is kind of on the beginning side of things, as far as getting their customer life cycle going and getting their business rolling and getting to like that point where they have real traction, real momentum. I mean, of course it's across the board, but a lot of people are really still in that kind of building momentum and traction phase. So to end here strong, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs for our listeners here today who are just getting started?

0 (29m 23s):
It's important to reflect on the fact that as a business owner, this journey continues for the lifetime of the business and the life cycle and the customer experience evolves as the business evolves. However, it is never too early to design a thoughtful life cycle. Even at the earliest stages of the business. What I would say is the following. There's no one size fits all model. As we have already explored through this conversation, it gutter cleaner is going to look very different from a bakery, which is going to look quite different from a fine dining white tablecloth restaurant. And so the first thing that the business owner can do, whether they're early in their journey or much later in their journey, is to ensure that they map out how their consumers go through the five stages.

0 (30m 18s):
And that is going to vary by business category. That is going to vary by consumer demographics. That's going to vary by location country, you name it. But the first step is to thoughtfully map out, how does my prospective purchaser or actual purchaser go through the five stages and then to overlay a simple if needed, but ideally omni-channel friendly customer life cycle that, that, that actually reflects the way the consumers live and converse and engage in commerce. Now it is important at the earliest stages of the business to prioritize because obviously I'm a sole proprietor.

0 (31m 2s):
That of course is burning the midnight oil in both directions may even be starting out as a side hustle may not be able to do everything all at once on day. One. That is certainly fair and understandable. And so what we would recommend are three simple tools that would help these business owners at the earliest stages. Even if they're just starting out one cannot say it enough, have a great website that truly explains to the consumer who you are, what you stand for, why you exist, what services you offer, how to get in touch with you easily, effectively on mobile phones and how quickly you can respond.

0 (31m 43s):
So a website is absolutely paramount in today's day and age. The other thing we would recommend for businesses that are transacting face-to-face, even if it's 60 distance, if you are transacting face-to-face you need a mobile friendly cloud-friendly Omni channel friendly point of sale system. Certainly we're biased. We can recommend one for you, but, but there are many options available for your business, no matter what business category you are in, no matter what niche sub category of the business, you're in, there's a great point of sale out there for you. And, and then the final thing we would recommend is customer relationship management software, because in the end, no matter how small or large a business you are, you need to be able to know and understand and engage your customers, prospective current advocates and everybody in between.

0 (32m 37s):
And that can only happen if you understand who they are in depth and have the right data and the right attributes available at your fingertips and software can help you with that.

1 (32m 48s):
Well, you've dropped a lot of value over the course of the past 30 minutes. I think you really ended with a being here, but I just want to make sure that Fire Nation knows the number one takeaway that you have for our artists to make sure of everything that you shared. This is the one thing that they're definitely going to remember, hopefully implement in a short period of time. So give us that one key takeaway, give us any way that you want Fire Nation to connect with you and or square on an, on a next level. And then we'll say, goodbye, thank you

0 (33m 21s):
For this opportunity. If there's one takeaway I can offer it is this, the world has changed on us in the last 18 months in ways that are irreversible and in ways that we don't yet fully understand. However, no matter what world we live in, it is clear that a well-designed omni-channel friendly customer life cycle will continue to be paramount to your business. And it is not too early to get started today and to map out how to make one and how to design one that produces great customer experiences and great brand advocates. If you'd like to get in touch with me, I'm on Twitter at, at Saumil, S A U M I L.

0 (34m 5s):
And I look forward to hearing from Fire Nation

1 (34m 8s):
And you'll be hearing from them Saumil because they're probably gonna have a couple of questions and a lot of thanks for all the awesome value that you dropped here today, because Fire Nation is aware that they're the average of the five people they spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with SM and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com type Saumil. S A U M I L in the search bar. The show notes page from today will pop up with everything. We've talked about links to all that jazz and Simon. Thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

0 (34m 45s):
Thank you. Thank you, John. Great to be with you today.

1 (34m 48s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bond content was brought to you by Saumil and Fire Nation. The ideato store contests by.store domains is live. You have the chance to win cash prizes up to $30,000 for sharing your online store ideas. Learn more at www.ideato.store. That's www.ideato.store. And I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side, have an idea for an online store, but stuck because you don't have the courage or resources to take action that stops today.

1 (35m 30s):
It's time to turn your e-commerce idea into reality with the idea to store contests, for details, visit www.ideato.store. Today that's www.ideato.store. Turn your small e-commerce business into the next big thing with Klaviyo. Klaviyo is the easy to use email and SMS platform that gives you everything you need to build genuine relationships with your customers. Give it a try with a free account at Klaviyo.com/fire. That's Klaviyo.com/fire.