Get your product to more customers and make sure it stays relevant

How can you get your product to more customers and make sure it stays relevant to them in the long run?

Hello and welcome to Affogata’s podcast: Let’s talk customer feedback. We had the pleasure of hosting Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix. Dana has been a part of Wix for the past 7 years. She began her journey in customer care as a team lead. Part of her role included bridging between Marketing’s social media team and customer care to learn about user feedback, with the common goal to strengthen the relationship between their users and Wix, on social media. In 2017 she was offered the opportunity to join the social media team by leading her own team called “Social Support” which focuses on shaping Wix’s brand perception and building meaningful relationships with their Wix users.

A summary of this podcast episode:

1. There is a critical piece of the market brands aren’t paying enough attention to and that is customer feedback. Find out how Wix is first and foremost a customer-obsessed company.

2. A conversation on the power of customer feedback and what's the influence Wix users have on the company's brand and products.

3. Dana answered how does monitoring and analyzing user trends in feedback help prioritize product development and brand growth opportunities at the company.

4. Dana shares Wix's best practices for connecting with their customers, and how almost everyone in the company is trained to a certain extent to perform user feedback calls or user feedback sessions due to its significance in the company.

Audio version

Transcript

Host:

Dana for our first question. How does user feedback influence your day-to-day as a team lead and Social Media and Community Manager at Wix?

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

I think it influences us a lot on a regular basis, actually. Our team was created based on the necessity of forming that relationship with our users and also with our non-users on social. So if brands normally have a customer care department and that's kind of like the main place where users communicate with the brand or the company communicates with the users. So we also wanted to create another platform or another space for us to interact with people who are interested in Wix, and it's a great space for us to not only collect feedback but also answer questions, converse about different topics, it's very much part of our day to day job.

Host:

Yeah, it makes total sense. I actually really like how your team is at Wix that you really focus on user feedback. So in your opinion, what's the influence your users have on the company's brand?

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

It's a huge influence. We as a company put user feedback at the center of our company. I would say vision or who we are as a company. And we take feedback very seriously. Really. It's part of our team's day-to-day in the sense that if we get questions or feedback that are relevant to other teams, then we will communicate with those teams. If it's the product team or the customer care team or QA, we will pass on the feedback to them and make sure that they prioritize any sort of issues or features, or updates that need to be made based on our feedback.

But it's not only coming from customer care or from social media. Like I said, it's part of the brand's belief that we all need to have user communications or user conversations on a regular basis. So essentially, almost everyone in the company is trained to a certain extent to perform user feedback calls or user feedback sessions because it's very significant and very impactful to how we make decisions in the company. It's not only, like I said, coming from customer care, from Social, but we all as a company or all as employees have a sense of responsibility that this is really where we can get authentic feedback and really create the change that is needed coming from our users or even, like I said, from non-users on Social. We speak with a lot of people that are either interested in joining Wix or heard things about Wix or not entirely sure if the platform is relevant for them.

So based on these conversations, it allows us to get a better understanding of how the brand is being perceived within the community, within the Wix user community, but also externally by people who don't necessarily use Wix but are interested in the future either joining or signing up.

Host:

Definitely. I actually like it because I think that at the end of the day, a company that is really customers should try to get feedback from everywhere. So I realized that you mentioned that everybody's kind of trained to make these types of calls or get this type of feedback.

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

Yes. I feel like the feedback that a PMM would get in a user call might be a little bit different from the feedback that a customer care agent would get or the feedback that I would get as part of my job being on social media or community manager. So it's really about having different angles and different perspectives that correlate with your role and your job. But at the same time, when you add everything together like I said, we all work for the same company, it really creates this pool of insights and information that allows us to grow.

Host:

I agree. And mixing everything in terms of quantitative data is, at the end of the day, the most important to really give value to what you're providing to your customer. Right? So how does monitoring and analyzing user trends in feedback help prioritize product development and brand growth opportunities in your opinion?

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

I think it's really important. I think, as I said, it's the essence of my job, but it's also very much the essence of Wix. We on Social get a lot of very interesting perspectives and a lot of interesting pieces of feedback and information that are really valuable for us. And it's really part of my job to make sure that this is passed on to the right people.

So sometimes we could get feedback about something that's very specific and very for specific users or a specific country or region. But we also get feedback about significant products or significant pain points that could affect not a couple of users, but hundreds and thousands or even millions of users. So it's really our job to voice this feedback and people's thoughts about our products and our services and make sure that it is prioritized in correlation with what the company really wants to push. But at the same time, it definitely has an impact on the progress and the development of products, the releases of products. It impacts the different campaigns that we have within marketing.

For example, if we choose to focus on a certain product like SEO or performance or a certain tool like Wix bookings or eCommerce, this is based on the understanding that this is something that users need or this is a product that users are interested in. Also, everything that's happening right now in the world. So Covid-19 has really shifted the way that people build websites and people are shifting from working in stores or factories or physical businesses to the online realm.

So a lot of people right now are rediscovering e-commerce, understanding how to build an online business, what it actually means to build an online business, setting up a store, payment, gateways, shipping, labeling, and tracking system. So all these things are extremely important to our users, and it all comes from essentially their feedback.

Host:

I agree. And at the end of the day, as you say, everything is going online. And that doesn't mean that everybody knows exactly how the online world and e-commerce work. So it is definitely important to hear the feedback from these people who are not used to doing their websites or selling online. So that's really interesting, right?

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

We have a lot of first-timers people that have had their businesses offline for many years or shops, and it's pushing them into this corner where they're not entirely sure what to do and how to set up their online store. Not everyone is tech-savvy. Not everyone knows how to build a website. And essentially our goal is to make it accessible, user-friendly, smooth, and honestly, when it comes to setting up payments or payment gateways or shipping, it sounds a little scary. So it's really important for us to make sure that when people get started or relaunch their businesses online that we are there to support them, but also to understand if the process was easy, was difficult, were there any issues or bugs or glitches? And that really, like I said, allows us to focus on okay, this is the product that we have. Does it require any maintenance? Does it require any changes? Is it working well for this kind of user? Is it working not as well for that kind of user? So yeah, really, it's very impactful.

Host:

I agree. It's amazing the work that you do also because your audience is so broad that you do need to pay attention to every part, every demographic of your audience.

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

Absolutely. So we have a very wide range of users. We have business owners that have maybe 1500, 200, or 500 employees. And we also have what I call the one-man band, which is a business owner that may have started in their garage and then moved into a small warehouse and does everything on their own. So it's really important for us to make sure that we can accommodate for both the larger businesses where people have the facilities and the infrastructure and the manpower, but also for people that need to do it all on their own.

So it's really important that we are able to collect feedback from both kinds of users. And it really defines at a later point how we develop these products. So Ecommerce is the best example. We want to make sure that setting up payment gateways is easy and understandable to both kinds of users, regardless of their knowledge or their experience. But it's not only about creating an online store or setting up a payment gateway. It's also making sure that these business owners are able to accept their payments and they're able to ship out deliveries, that the whole process is smooth, that there aren't any bugs or any issues along the way.

So it's really, you know, from start to the very end. And we are in touch with our users every step of the process. And most of these people do reach out to us on social. I think it's the easiest way or the most intuitive place to connect with the brand on social media. I think it makes sense to most of us if we're already on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. It's much easier for me as a user or consumer to connect with a brand through social media rather than look for them on their contact page or scrolling or browsing through different internal pages that belong to that brand.

So we're really kind of like the front line of Wix on social. And it's really important to us that we take the time to get to know our users, understand their pain points, understand their needs, and based on that, we essentially do prioritize a lot of the different product development and changes and releases that happen within the company.

Host:

I agree. Social media in the end is much more personal than going into the chat or looking for answers for yourself. So I completely agree with you. And how important do you think it is for companies to listen to the voice of their customers from social and support channels and make relevant channels? I know that we've discussed a lot about it until now, but I feel like a lot of companies have been saying we do listen to our customers, we do make changes. But do you really think that companies are doing it as much as they say and in your opinion, why do you think it's so important?

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

I know that certain companies put a very strong emphasis on the users' voice. Like I said at Wix, it's very much the essence of Wix and we train the large majority of our employees to conduct user calls and collect feedback. I think that it's extremely important and I do encourage other companies that, you know, think about it to understand that really it helps shape the brand not only internally in terms of product and in terms of services or capabilities, but also it really strengthens the relationship with your users when you conduct user calls or when you listen to feedback, not only through customer care but when you take the time to speak to your users and you get to know who they are physically.

John living in the States and he owns a bread store or he does cookies for bakes cookies for a living. It's having this unique opportunity to connect with the users on a deeper level and strengthening that relationship really goes a long way. So it's not only us gaining insights about what we need as a company, but it's also us connecting with their users, really understanding their needs, really understanding their perspective. And I truly feel that it's a win-win situation.

And I think that it's very important that any sort of company that B2C should really take the time to research their clients and understand who they are as human beings. I think that another thing is that we are very used to being in this online state of mind and feeling a little bit distant from one another, especially with COVID. And I think that one way to overcome it is not you don't physically need to sit and meet your client, but it's enough to have a call with them or a video call or a Zoom call and really talk to them face to face and connect with them on a deeper level. And it makes a very big difference. These users will naturally appreciate the effort.

I also believe that positive attracts positive. So if you have a good user call, the users will share their experience. They'll tell their friends that the experience went really, really well and it naturally circulates and creates this very positive energy that we as a brand are striving to.

Host:

Definitely, at the end of the day, customers are just like us, and having that personal connection is always really important.

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

I think the best example that I always use is what I would expect to receive as a client or customer myself. If I call the Internet company and I feel like they're not really focusing on my complaints or my pain points or they're not really listening to me, then I will feel that energy, and then I will pass that energy on and I'll share my experience with my friends or my colleagues and it really resonates with all of us. I would like to receive the same level of customer care or the same level of attendance that I would like to provide to my users. So that is kind of essentially the reasoning that I have been on social media. It's trying to shift away from being robotic or emotionalist and really focusing on connecting with people on a deeper level.

Host:

Yeah, I really like that as well. I think that it's just putting ourselves in their shoes and always thinking about what we would like to be treated like. So for our last question, I would love to hear, in your opinion, how do you know what customer feedback should be listened to and what shouldn't? How do you balance out what customers think in one versus the customer needs and thoughts?

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

So it's an interesting question because sometimes it's very intertwined with one another. I mean, we are emotional human beings. We're emotional creatures. So a lot of the feedback that we can get is sometimes more emotional. It's more about listening to the user and again, connecting on a deeper level, and being patient and understanding. And it's just a matter of understanding what sort of bits of information I can take out of that conversation and then pass it on to the right people.

Naturally, people that are more upset or more emotional will go on and on and share about what happened to them throughout that day. And then this happened, and then I called my mom, and then you ruined my day. And like I said, it's really important to understand that in general, user calls are not black or white user calls, or collecting user feedback comes in a lot of different shades of grey or shades of rainbow. And it's understanding that you sometimes need to filter out things that are irrelevant or that are more emotional.

But at the same time, connecting to that emotion is what really brings us together. If I have a user that has really struggled, let's say, with one of our products and setting it up, and it brought him to a point where he was almost in tears, that, to me, indicates that it was not only frustrating, it was extremely frustrating to the point where this person was almost brought to tears. So that, to me, indicates that this is a problem that's more severe than I initially thought it was. This is a problem that we have to probably prioritize differently than we initially thought we would. And I would like to speak to that user again, to follow up with him to make sure that he really felt like we were ensuring him that we're working on whatever issue he has.

Yeah, it's very much connected to one another. I'm not entirely sure how to answer this question.

Host:

Yeah, I can understand. It's definitely hard because, at the end of the day, the company does have a roadmap and its own goals as well. So it's hard to mix between what the company wants and what the customer wants but it is the balance it has to be.

Speaker - Dana Srebrnik, Team Lead and Social Media & Community Manager at Wix

Yeah, definitely is a balance between the company goals and roadmap and the type of products we want to push or the types of features that we want to prioritize compared to what our users need. So we combine the two together. On one hand, yes, we have our own roadmap and our own flow of different products that we are focusing on but at the same time user feedback goes hand in hand with that because if we're focusing on one sort of development and that goes against what our users need then we will absolutely feel that and see it on our social channels we will see it in customer care calls we will see it in user feedback calls so it has to be in sync to a certain degree and it is a balance and it's our responsibility as product marketing managers or as product managers or customer care agents or social media managers is to understand where exactly do we put the focus on? Is this something that really needs to be prioritized or is this something that we can kind of negotiate with the users to understand if this is something that maybe we can work on next quarter or next year?

Also, again, considering everything that's happening around us so with Covid-19, a lot of priorities have changed so it really depends on a number of different factors but in the end, the common goal is to make sure that we balance both the company's needs and the user's needs.

Host:

I completely agree and I really like the way you ended that phrase. I really want to thank you so much for taking the time to participate in today's podcast. It was super interesting to learn about your take on the importance of customer feedback and how companies can turn that feedback into actionable insights for innovation and product growth.

Thanks all for listening and don't forget to visit www.Affogata.com