Customer-first Revenue Growth

Summary

Tracy Young, co-founder and CEO of TigerEye, interviews Soumya Srinagesh, CRO at Deliverr, on how to build customer-first strategies to foster trust and drive revenue growth. Soumya discusses various aspects of building a customer-centric culture and shares insights on leadership and personal growth. Here are some key points from the conversation:

1. Customer-First Approach: Soumya emphasizes building a business where success is tied to customer success. The focus should be on helping customers achieve their goals, which in turn drives business success.
2. Defining Customer-First: Being customer-first involves aligning the entire company towards ensuring customer success, understanding the customer’s needs deeply, and building products, pricing, and strategies around them.
3. Cultivating Customer-Centric Culture: Soumya suggests that establishing a customer-centric culture requires alignment on the definition of “customer first” across the organization. Communication and clear guidelines about the target customer, their needs, and how to serve them are crucial.
4. Personalization and Trust: Soumya discusses the importance of personalized experiences and trust-building. To strike a balance between personalization and business needs, she recommends personalizing at the industry, business, and individual levels.
5. Building Trust: Trust is developed through delivering value and being accountable. Providing value involves teaching customers a new perspective and helping them succeed, while accountability comes from personally ensuring the customer’s success.
6. Short-Term vs. Long-Term: Soumya advises focusing on customers’ current needs while having a clear product roadmap that aligns with long-term vision. Customers should be able to achieve success with the existing product, with new features enhancing that success.
7. Leadership Style: Soumya’s leadership style involves being deeply connected with every level of her team, getting involved in various tasks, and showing up as an authentic human being. She emphasizes the importance of deep engagement and empathy.
8. Career Advice: For those early in their careers, Soumya recommends embracing hard work, asking questions, and being eager to learn. She also advises against focusing on superficial measures like titles and instead urges alignment with a larger purpose.
9. Clarity of Values: Soumya emphasizes playing to win, being a doer, and establishing clear, objective metrics to measure success. This clarity in values contributes to building a focused and impactful culture.
10. Inclusivity and Respect: Cultivating a culture where people can be themselves, contribute ideas, and learn from failures is important. Inclusivity, respect, and creating an environment that encourages authenticity are essential.
11. Business Growth: Soumya’s ultimate goal is to become the CEO of a highly impactful company. She highlights the importance of aligning personal goals with career decisions and focusing on long-term growth.

The interview provides insights into how to develop a customer-first strategy, build trust, and create a culture of collaboration and growth in a business.