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June 15, 2023
By Verne Harnish
Many companies that use the Scaling Up platform use Align, a strategic growth management software. The New Orleans, La.-based company, founded in 2012, designed its software to help growth companies plan, communicate and execute on their vision.
A little over a year ago, Align was looking for a way to keep its team more aware of customers’ concerns and suggestions. It started holding “Customer-Voice Parties” on Zoom.
Once a month, Align convenes all or most of its 22-person team on a videoconference to discuss customer feedback that comes in directly from customers, through calls to its “customer success” team, or via its sales team. The intel it gathers this way has been critical in setting priorities.
“The Customer-Voice Parties are an organization-wide conversation to look at the comments and feedback we’re getting from our customers,” says Alex Abramson, manager of the customer success team.
While the parties are informal in tone, they do include a slide deck that addresses what’s working well with the software, and any challenges and pain points customers have mentioned.
The parties have become a great source of ideas for improving upon the software. One just-released innovation suggested by customers was adding sharable links to Align. Customers can paste the links into an email to refer other subscribers to information in Align that they want to discuss.
The Zoom parties have also made Align’s team aware of opportunities for fine-tuning the customer experience, pointing to changes in workflow that can benefit the users.
“It’s extremely helpful for me to determine what improvements we can make sooner rather than later,” says product manager Jeremy Ducote.
Although Customer-Voice Parties were an innovation to bring people together during the pandemic, Align found they work so well it plans to continue them indefinitely.
“It’s a really great forum for us because of how much we value our customers,” says Abramson.
