Episode 001- The Inaugural Episode
Summary
For our first episode, we will start with Chris Detzel who will talk through his work so far in getting Imperva's new customer community through launch. We will also talk about the importance of customer engagement and its automation. Lastly, a mini case study on how Chris and I solved our customer engagement problem whilst at RexelSponsored, by no one, yet, but we are open to sponsors. Beer Sponsors would be amazing! πΊπ»π»π»π»π»π»
- For our first episode, we will start with Chris Detzel who will talk through his work so far in getting Imperva's new customer community through launch.
- We will also talk about the importance of customer engagement and its automation
- A mini case study on how Chris and I solved our customer engagement problem whilst at Rexel
- Note: The interruption you hear about mid way through the podcast was a public radio canvaser who kindly reminded me that I have yet to renew my membership. I of course did with the gentleman.
Transcript:
00:03
welcome to our inaugural podcast of
00:05
peers over beers
00:06
your hosts michael sandoval me and chris
00:09
detzel
00:11
in our inaugural podcast we'll start off
00:13
with chris
00:14
chris is going to talk us through a
00:15
little bit about his new community over
00:17
at imperva
00:18
we're also going to discuss this idea of
00:19
the importance of engagement automation
00:21
in the community
00:22
engagement overall a little mini case
00:25
study of our
00:26
effort that we did at rexell with
00:28
regards to
00:29
engagement automation and you're gonna
00:32
hear an interruption somewhere about
00:34
halfway
00:35
that was the public radio canvasser
00:37
coming to my house
00:38
apparently i forgot them this past year
00:40
don't worry
00:41
yes i gave all coming up
00:45
next
00:46
[Music]
00:50
so i mean i just want to make sure i got
00:52
the name of the beer correct
00:54
of yours yeah it's called i think it was
00:58
number 21.
00:59
oh yeah beers over or piers over beers
01:03
got it it's from lewisville
01:05
or louisville i was thinking that too
01:07
that's why i brought a beer just i was
01:08
like we got to talk about
01:09
yeah it's called uh
01:13
old town brew house double vision
01:18
okay so we're recording um
01:22
my name is michael sandoval and i'm
01:24
chris dettel
01:26
and i'm chris detzel excellent oh go
01:29
ahead and have a seat if you do
01:30
is it better standing i like to stand
01:32
but yeah it's fine no no i got it
01:33
that's all right because i can do uh i
01:35
don't know let's lift it higher
01:37
i don't know do you guys
01:41
um so once again my name is michael
01:43
sandoval and i'm chris stetson well
01:45
hello chris how are you doing i'm good
01:46
how about you i'm doing good
01:49
so this uh this is a very interesting uh
01:52
point in how we got some discussion we
01:54
were just having a beer and we thought
01:55
hey we should probably record our
01:56
conversations because
01:58
they're pretty they're pretty good yeah
02:00
we're talking about a lot of cool stuff
02:02
yeah uh and mostly on the community side
02:05
and so we thought well hey how about
02:07
piers over a beer
02:09
wouldn't that be kind of fun so we are
02:10
having a beer and this one is that's why
02:12
i would look it up
02:13
old town brew house from louisville
02:16
texas an ipa
02:17
pretty good eh it's it's excellent
02:20
cheers
02:24
so with that we were already having the
02:26
discussion uh before we started
02:28
recording
02:29
but chris was telling me so well
02:30
actually i'll let you chris tell me
02:32
what are you doing yeah um
02:36
so i'm building or have built an
02:39
online community for um for a
02:43
cyber security software company called
02:45
imperva
02:47
so what why did they one
02:51
yeah i think that um it's a good
02:54
question
02:55
the biggest reason is to kind of think
02:56
about a few things
02:58
um is retention
03:02
so and then also case deflection
03:05
so we had a big issue with support um
03:08
not being able to answer
03:09
cases in a timely manner so you know
03:12
the thought was well if we can answer
03:15
some of those easier
03:16
questions online and have customers
03:19
really answer some of those you know and
03:21
share their
03:22
um uh share their experiences with the
03:26
products
03:27
then what better so i think that was
03:29
kind of the initial thought
03:31
right you had come on i mean they had
03:33
already made that decision right that
03:34
they wanted to do something
03:37
community-ish um
03:40
well if you want another real story is
03:42
or the big story is
03:43
that so yes and no um the story i got
03:47
was
03:48
so about a year ago i talked to somebody
03:50
that i knew
03:51
um and uh she was like hey look there's
03:54
this job description that
03:56
that needed the community and we needed
03:57
a community manager and i thought of you
03:59
and so um
04:02
they just started a customer success
04:04
organization
04:05
um the company's been around since 2002
04:08
i believe
04:09
and so they're like well we also need a
04:12
community manager and
04:13
she she went after it and they thought
04:14
of you specifically
04:16
um one person did yeah we'll look at you
04:18
specifically
04:20
so yeah i know it was a nice gesture and
04:24
so they
04:26
um thought you know
04:28
when i think of customer success i think
04:30
of retention and i also think of
04:32
case deflection so how do we help our
04:34
customers get the answers that they need
04:36
quickly and
04:37
community kind of came to their mind
04:41
and so i really started to develop the
04:42
strategy roadmap et cetera and
04:44
yeah so they you said they had a problem
04:47
with it already
04:48
obviously something was getting to the
04:50
top echelon of the company saying
04:52
you're having a customer service problem
04:53
yeah a retention problem
04:55
because also the customers are bolting
04:57
that's right uh interesting
04:59
and uh and so you came in and thought oh
05:02
i figured i know how to do this yeah
05:05
how do you know
05:06
let's go do a plan
05:09
so you recently launched it didn't you
05:11
yeah so i uh
05:13
you know we decided to go with a vendor
05:15
back in April
05:16
of 2019 which um and then we just
05:19
recently launched october 14th
05:21
so it's ready to go how did which
05:23
vintage use we use
05:24
uh we used a company called higher logic
05:27
what do you think of them
05:29
you know something I really liked about
05:31
higher logic is uh
05:33
they have this great marketing so before
05:37
you and i worked together um we worked
05:39
with a company called intelligent what
05:40
they didn't have was
05:42
kind of this engagement piece of
05:44
customer so when customers create a
05:46
login and
05:47
start looking at the content there was
05:49
really no not built in anyways some
05:52
some engagement type things that they
05:54
have um
05:55
what i call or what they call automation
05:58
rules
05:58
so you can set up different types of
06:00
personalization
06:02
and type different types of marketing
06:04
things that you can do within the
06:06
platform
06:07
and that really um is what sold me to be
06:10
honest so
06:11
you know they they can do a lot of
06:13
things
06:14
and and so that's basically what i was
06:17
sold on
06:18
so that's actually interesting because
06:19
you talked about uh intelligent so just
06:21
between us
06:22
we've worked with i've worked with jive
06:25
yeah
06:25
intelligent i've done also the open
06:28
source stuff like joomla
06:29
i even had a joomla to intelligent
06:31
conversion one time
06:32
um what else have you worked with well
06:34
of course all the other
06:35
free open source stuff but now with you
06:37
you have higher logic as an example
06:39
oh and of course we both have microsoft
06:42
experience we've both used yammer yeah
06:45
yeah uh
06:46
to uh to infinite item um
06:49
so it gives us a pretty good idea about
06:51
all the vendors we know slack
06:54
we've all used them all um so what what
06:57
something about the engagement piece
06:59
because i remember you and i were
07:00
working
07:00
together one of the biggest things we
07:02
were talking about was this is this is
07:04
how you
07:05
kick start a community you have to start
07:06
engagement if you don't get engagement
07:08
up and going
07:09
you know shit's going to hit the fan
07:12
yeah i remember something that uh
07:16
you said to me once is um you know my
07:19
strength is
07:20
i think really getting people excited
07:22
about community
07:23
getting people excited about what we're
07:26
doing and what the organization's doing
07:28
and
07:28
you know that is my strength and it's a
07:32
lot of fun to go do it because i truly
07:33
believe in the mission and everything
07:35
else and
07:35
and uh one of the things that we did was
07:38
you know
07:39
you're like chris we need to get people
07:41
on the community we need to get them on
07:42
yeah and i was like yeah we do so
07:45
i i started uh talking and uh
07:49
is a big company they were at rexella
07:51
and
07:52
uh and so i started talking to people in
07:54
canada and france and germany
07:57
and um started thinking about you know
07:59
what are some ways that um
08:01
that we can get people on on the
08:03
community
08:04
and you know to make this i guess kind
08:06
of short but
08:08
i found a partner in canada this guy
08:11
i'll just say his first name is rick
08:13
rick right yep his name is rick yep he
08:15
was on board he was like yeah chris
08:16
let's go do it
08:18
and so we developed this thing called
08:19
the black belt program and
08:21
the black belt program really allowed us
08:22
to engage
08:24
internal people and then also get their
08:28
customers uh to engage in the community
08:32
at first so i swear to god within
08:36
three months we probably had over 2000
08:38
people that
08:39
join the community uh what we call the
08:41
grid
08:42
it's the grid dot uh credit
08:45
record.xl.com yeah
08:46
um and and then over another several
08:49
months
08:50
we had a close over 4 000 people
08:55
new people not not just employees but
08:57
just this was
08:58
customers um that joined um community
09:02
and so i did my job i thought i was like
09:04
hell yeah you know i
09:06
i got 4 000 people in this community
09:08
it's amazing yeah eat that mike
09:10
yeah eat it mike and then and then he
09:12
stressed me out way more
09:14
and and i was so frustrated with this
09:17
and and i was clueless to be honest and
09:20
he goes all right well that's great
09:24
so what are you going to do with those 4
09:25
000 people go what do you mean
09:28
because i don't see them posting and
09:30
they're not doing anything else
09:31
i mean what are you going to do with
09:32
those people i say i don't know
09:38
and so uh and maybe you could talk about
09:41
i could talk about it but uh
09:42
you probably say it a little bit better
09:44
but you know michael was like
09:46
well there are some things we can do but
09:48
what he did was
09:50
um instead of telling me the answer at
09:52
first
09:53
he let me he he just said those things
09:55
you know what are you gonna do about
09:56
that
09:57
and and and um and then for like a day
10:00
or two
10:00
he let me kind of just die over that you
10:04
know like that was a
10:05
i mean i was like what am i going to do
10:07
oh my god you know like
10:09
and and so uh after that what'd you do
10:11
what did you tell me well
10:13
well to get some context for those black
10:15
belt programs so much
10:16
much like the word black belt is right
10:18
it's this idea of stages that you take
10:19
on right so
10:20
yeah you if you it's kind of like a
10:22
what's it called like a
10:24
like a not chicken an egg but carrot and
10:27
stick thing so
10:29
the whole goal was to get a black belt
10:31
and there were levels to each of those
10:33
things and
10:34
part of this was on a larger goal around
10:35
adoption right so we're doing e-commerce
10:37
adoption
10:38
and one of those steps was to do
10:42
community right so yeah it was a big
10:44
deal so i think one of the things that
10:45
folks don't understand is that we'll
10:46
talk about this a bit a bit later but
10:48
how do you
10:49
how do you go deep into the enterprise
10:50
like how do you get people to really
10:51
drive
10:52
the community piece and um and you're
10:54
right so going back to what you've done
10:56
is you were able to sell to this
10:57
gentleman
10:58
the business in canada that community
11:00
can be of value and
11:01
he added that as a part of a step into
11:03
the black belt so to do that they had to
11:05
do certain things right
11:06
one of them was sign up create an
11:09
account but the most important thing was
11:11
they had to ask one of their customers
11:14
to go and create an account and ask a
11:16
question if i remember correctly
11:17
yeah and that was that was actually
11:20
pretty impressive
11:22
uh i saw it because i have a doorbell
11:24
and i rarely get anybody in the doorbell
11:27
so uh
11:31
that's the thing when you're actually uh
11:33
doing a podcast uh
11:34
at your home but but to that
11:38
uh because they were trying to get their
11:42
their black belt they did the activity
11:47
hold on one second yeah
11:52
sorry so we were getting into this uh
11:53
question about um
11:55
uh
11:55
[Music]
11:58
hold on let me let me go to the last
12:00
part it was about
12:05
your tongue started yeah oh that's right
12:08
black belt all right yeah
12:10
sorry so kind of get me into it so chris
12:12
you were so just
12:13
before we were interrupted sorry about
12:15
the interruption so i think we had a
12:16
little bit of recap of what the black
12:18
belt program was but the whole
12:19
cool thing about it was you could get
12:23
for every for every person they signed
12:25
up internally they had to sign up a
12:27
customer
12:28
and so we had both internal and external
12:30
customers
12:31
show up so and because it was a thing
12:34
they had to do to get their black belt
12:35
which was a
12:36
incentive we had a lot of good sign ups
12:38
which is a good part so that was
12:39
that was a great part and we were
12:41
talking about what was really good i
12:42
think i remember the question was
12:44
um just because we have
12:47
4 000 people and no one participating a
12:51
community
12:52
does not want to make yeah
12:55
i think we should back up slightly so
12:57
the
12:58
black belt program was part of digital
13:01
adoption
13:02
so in a company that we were pushing
13:04
digital adoption and most of it was
13:06
e-commerce
13:07
and part of that black belt program was
13:10
um the community so there's there were
13:13
seven belts
13:13
two of those belts were for community
13:16
specifically
13:17
right so just kind of back up oh it's
13:19
really good because i
13:20
later i want to get into this idea of
13:21
adoption yeah because i do think the
13:23
community does play a
13:24
big part in it yeah and i know you have
13:26
some really good experience about it
13:27
uh so tell me how did you because you
13:32
i remember this being on a white board
13:34
we were talking pretty deep
13:35
right exactly i mean remember we were
13:37
getting into and this started to get
13:39
this whole idea about
13:40
how do you activate new people to the
13:43
community
13:44
right we were talking about um
13:48
uh this idea of
13:52
one was around email campaigning right
13:53
you know getting them activated
13:55
so we started talking about well how do
13:56
we know when somebody signed up
13:59
how well are we at kind of easing them
14:02
into making it very easy
14:04
to to do the one thing and we talked
14:08
about
14:08
the one thing what are those what was
14:10
what was that one thing
14:11
that we could get them to do and it had
14:12
to be something was low low low barrier
14:15
profile pig exactly yeah that was the
14:18
first thing right
14:19
we said what it was the lowest barrier
14:22
thing we could get them to do
14:24
yeah update their profile and then
14:27
uh so that's one thing but then we
14:29
looked at data
14:31
right so we said when you know let's not
14:34
just look at
14:35
let's not just look at these first 4k
14:38
people
14:39
how many have we signed up since then
14:41
and when was our last
14:43
date of activity right yeah yeah and we
14:46
started going to this whole question
14:47
about
14:47
oh we have how do we
14:51
how do we get them to do the first thing
14:54
right and that just led us into a whole
14:55
path about
14:56
activation the whole path
14:58
[Laughter]
15:00
it was and and you know uh that's what
15:03
we wanted to create because the platform
15:05
at the time
15:06
uh wouldn't do those things it didn't
15:08
have what
15:09
uh i call you know um automation rules
15:13
or
15:14
those kinds of things where you can
15:15
actually set that up and do that
15:17
and so we had to kind of draw that out
15:20
on a whiteboard
15:21
and say you know what what is the first
15:22
thing we want to do and we wanted them
15:24
to create a profile pic and that led us
15:26
down to
15:27
great if a customer then we started
15:29
thinking about what else
15:30
you know or some of the things that uh
15:32
we wanted to do and and that was
15:34
more of well we want them to subscribe
15:37
to content so if they subscribe to
15:39
specific forums or content you know then
15:42
then they're emailed you know about
15:44
whatever um
15:45
you know if somebody posts or whatever
15:47
about you know that topic or
15:49
that specific content um and then you
15:52
know
15:52
then we start to get even more deeper
15:54
about well if a customer isn't logged in
15:56
uh within x number of days so 30 days
15:59
then send them an email that says hey
16:01
have you you know done these things do
16:04
these two or three things
16:05
right yeah i know too bad this is not
16:07
like an actual
16:09
video piece because i i think we even it
16:12
would be great to add this as part of
16:13
the
16:14
add-on to the podcast rates which is we
16:16
had this idea about a three-step
16:18
we had a three-stage way of customer
16:20
activation
16:22
and they were triggered by milestones so
16:24
the first milestone was profile pick
16:26
yeah and you're right the second
16:27
milestone was subscribe to content
16:30
and then was it a poster and i think we
16:33
had some data
16:34
that said if they did one activity i
16:37
think the minor one was profile
16:40
then there was and i have to look at the
16:42
percentage it was a percentage of
16:44
active they did something afterwards
16:46
right so the whole task was to just get
16:48
them back to go do something
16:50
yeah and and if we just did one extra
16:52
step we knew they were
16:53
just going to get deeper so i think the
16:55
third step was their first post
16:57
you know something like that right
16:58
asking their first post and we even
17:00
toyed around
17:01
do we have them ask do they have them
17:04
give us their thought what are they
17:05
doing for the day
17:06
right we had a lot of that question
17:08
about what is the right way to ask for
17:10
the first post so we had this three-step
17:13
stage
17:13
and we put timelines right so if they
17:15
didn't do this between
17:17
the last the first time they hooked up
17:18
or came in i think i still have that on
17:21
the picture somewhere
17:22
it was pretty it was pretty good it was
17:24
funny because
17:25
i remember when michael put this on the
17:28
uh he would always
17:29
put it on this window and put on a
17:31
marker
17:32
put this erasable marker on the window
17:35
and
17:35
um and he put it out there and then it
17:38
took me probably
17:40
two weeks three weeks to i mean i looked
17:42
at it i wrote it down
17:44
but then i can recite it you know i knew
17:46
exactly
17:48
what we had to go do what stage we were
17:50
in yeah yeah and
17:51
and that was the hard part because we
17:52
had to actually get it developed i mean
17:54
we had this
17:55
uh magician of a developer that can do
17:58
some crazy
17:59
and so we'd say hey we need this i'm not
18:02
saying he didn't struggle at times to
18:03
kind of figure out what that was but
18:05
just go in there and and you know might
18:08
take him a little bit of time and then
18:09
all of a sudden voila
18:10
yeah yeah you did the right jackal trace
18:13
yeah so
18:14
kind of pulling back to what you're
18:15
doing right now so knowing that that was
18:16
an experience right so
18:18
almost in some way you we could almost
18:21
talk
18:21
to those who listen like well how you
18:23
know
18:25
almost the feedback is you know what is
18:28
your community's
18:30
thing right and in some way we look at
18:31
the data yeah right so
18:35
looking at the data when did they log in
18:38
when was their
18:38
life what was the first thing they did
18:41
as an activity
18:42
member right that's how we started
18:43
looking at some stuff and
18:46
and i think we solved it was what was
18:48
the lowest
18:49
barrier thing so for our community we're
18:52
using intelligent that
18:53
uploading or creating a profile pic was
18:55
pretty easy
18:56
and i think we also looked at some other
18:58
data too so we looked at other
18:59
communities and found out that
19:01
you know i think we even looked at
19:02
linkedin about how they did profile
19:04
build which was this kind of scaling
19:05
that's right looking at a thermometer
19:07
you're
19:07
twenty percent through thirty percent of
19:09
the news that was some good there was a
19:10
good case study
19:11
about how we could go figure out how to
19:13
do it right
19:15
so so we kind of leaned on that and
19:17
that's how we came across it
19:19
um yeah i want
19:22
so not to this uh to kind of completely
19:25
get this off but
19:26
i do want to talk about you know some
19:28
vendors make that easier than others
19:29
yeah so
19:30
this is what was going back to the
19:31
beginning which was and we're not
19:33
endorsed by these guys we're just
19:34
talking about experience right
19:36
so what was in this what was in this
19:39
product that made that easier
19:42
well it was what they call the
19:44
automation rules right
19:45
so that from my understanding uh was not
19:49
built intelligent you have to have
19:50
a just go in there and and develop
19:54
it and do all kinds of crazy and
19:56
take some three to five months to
19:58
potentially do it you know the nice
20:00
thing about
20:01
so the nice thing about let's say higher
20:04
logic for example is they
20:06
have most of that built in and what they
20:08
don't have built in
20:09
uh you could you could use you can find
20:11
a developer or a company
20:13
that i found that can develop through
20:16
javascript very simple
20:18
um kind of this hey you're 50 there
20:21
you're 60
20:22
there you're 70 there and it's
20:24
relatively cheap
20:25
you know to to get them to do something
20:27
like that so it's like a plug-in
20:28
you could put in to do some of these
20:29
things it's sort of a plug-in but they
20:31
use the automation rules that are
20:32
already there
20:33
right so they just make it api
20:36
yeah no no no so it's so uh just a
20:39
script
20:40
just a script javascript right that uh
20:43
that uses
20:44
the already built-in functionality of
20:47
higher logic to say you know if you
20:51
so for example if a customer hasn't
20:53
built a profile or haven't hasn't put a
20:55
pic
20:56
or hasn't put or subscribed certain
20:58
content you could put those things
21:00
in into that logic and say okay well
21:03
great you know you're 10 there you now
21:06
done your profile now you need to
21:07
subscribe to content do these five
21:08
things
21:09
and then you can keep adding to those
21:11
five things so it's
21:13
kind of i mean you have to make it you
21:16
know look
21:16
the way you want to make it look uh but
21:19
it's a lot easier than having
21:21
you know a hardcore developer going in
21:23
there and truly developing it
21:25
so a lot of that stuff is built in and
21:28
so that was my um
21:31
draw to that company in a big way
21:34
because i remember what you said about
21:36
engagement
21:37
i could i could today easily get 2000
21:40
people
21:41
logged into our community today i have
21:44
300 plus people
21:45
logged into the community since october
21:47
it's only three weeks
21:48
that's the easy part for me that's not
21:50
bad so um
21:52
it's great but how do i engage those
21:55
people right
21:56
not all those are customers so some of
21:57
them are employees versus
21:59
but i would say you know uh
22:03
little probably it's way over half so
22:06
let's say three fourths are um employees
22:09
and then the other fourth
22:10
which is a pretty big amount um so it's
22:12
350 by the way is the
22:14
number but but uh another fourth there
22:16
there's actually
22:17
customers without doing any marketing
22:19
stuff
22:21
and before i go off because it kind of
22:23
came to my head did you do any
22:24
type of when you launch a community and
22:26
then we'll go back to this idea of
22:29
activation because that sounds pretty
22:31
germane to the conversation right this
22:32
how do you get
22:33
how do you customers i mean how do you
22:35
when they come in how do you get them to
22:36
engage right this is the idea of
22:38
engagement right um there's a whole plan
22:40
around it you know that's a strategy in
22:42
itself by the way michael it's not a
22:44
that's he would tell me actually there's
22:47
a lot of tactics
22:48
that you can uh do chris that's a
22:49
technical strategy
22:52
yeah exactly correct i remember that
22:55
over and over well chris those are
22:57
pretty good tactics
22:59
um but uh let's think about the overall
23:01
strategy and put those tactics on the
23:02
roadmap
23:04
oh my god i can hear myself oh my god so
23:06
can i well we'll actually let's go in
23:08
before i my brain is going to live in a
23:10
couple of places so
23:13
going back to this idea of automation
23:15
that you were in yeah
23:17
uh what did you um
23:21
do you obviously put these rules in
23:23
place or have you put these in place yet
23:26
i'm i'm i am putting them in place some
23:28
are already in place and then
23:30
over time we'll put more in place and
23:33
when you kick start this going back to
23:35
my brains in a couple places so when you
23:37
kick started did you do
23:38
a like a launch or you said you didn't
23:41
put any marketing behind it so how did
23:43
you get folks to
23:45
well michael that's that's a long story
23:47
you know if you want to hear that
23:50
i'll make it as short as possible well
23:52
how about we do this how about we
23:54
let's leave that for another okay
23:55
another note because i think that's an
23:57
important thing about blockchain yeah no
23:58
it's a big one
23:59
it's a big one uh because i agree cause
24:01
i think you know part of my philosophy
24:02
was around
24:04
it's hard to launch something for which
24:05
you do not have a part that i called a
24:06
party
24:07
right and it's it's hard to get people
24:09
to go to a party when no one's at the
24:10
party
24:12
yeah that's right so we'll we'll talk
24:13
about that i use that analogy it's funny
24:15
that
24:17
um i get that from michael is is who
24:20
wants to go to a party that nobody's at
24:22
you know i've used that in some of the
24:24
ceo staff meetings and
24:26
and also on some of the all hands
24:29
meetings
24:30
all company meetings uh and i say that
24:32
all the time
24:33
but it works well people laugh yeah no
24:37
that's a good thing or not but it is
24:40
true
24:40
you especially in this community space
24:42
you have
24:45
it's a party you have to go you you
24:47
don't want to just show up to
24:48
nothing there it's it's crazy no i agree
24:51
i agree so how did you um before we i
24:54
think we'll close up this session and
24:56
then we'll kind of start another one
24:57
because i think we're coming up in
24:58
around 20 minutes or so um
25:02
so within these first 300 folks um
25:06
350 i'm sorry didn't mean to undercut
25:08
sorry
25:10
sorry sorry sorry fair point 350. um
25:14
and to give some context i mean not to
25:15
say that's any so
25:18
for those who don't know rexella's of 13
25:21
depending on 14 billion depending on
25:23
where you are
25:23
on a hero exchange uh
25:27
two billion i think in provo
25:30
yeah yeah so just to give you
25:32
concentration
25:33
we're at the beginning right that's
25:35
right um
25:37
have you seen any trends so far at the
25:38
very beginning the first uh 350 or
25:41
are they coming in they asking questions
25:42
do they feel engaged do they
25:44
yeah there's there's a few customers
25:46
that uh when i say a few maybe five or
25:48
six that uh
25:50
they have some product specific
25:52
questions so impervo has
25:54
close to 18 different products
25:57
we could talk about that you know and
25:59
trying to create a content plan and
26:01
things like that um over time but but
26:04
yeah there are people that
26:06
um are very interested more and talking
26:08
to peers about
26:10
uh how they're using the products and
26:12
certain things that they did around
26:14
around that so does that answer your
26:17
question or
26:20
lightly i mean it was around how do they
26:22
feel engaged are you going to this
26:23
engagement
26:24
and do you feel good i mean what's the
26:26
first time you're you know
26:27
i don't know one month into the uh not
26:29
even a month like three plus weeks
26:31
a little a little over three very good
26:34
but uh
26:35
yeah i mean when i think of engage i
26:38
think if
26:38
there's two or three people that i think
26:41
are pretty engaged
26:42
but i think there's things i'm gonna
26:44
have to do more to
26:46
to keep them engaged and so that's
26:48
that's the thing that i'm uh
26:50
a little bit worried about right so is
26:52
how do i continue this engagement piece
26:55
and and and so i've been thinking about
26:57
that a lot
26:58
well then let's carry that to the next
27:00
conversation how's that great all right
27:02
so this ends our first uh session our
27:04
first uh podcast and
27:06
i think uh the next theme is going to be
27:08
around
27:09
uh how do we get more forks more folks
27:12
in the adoption phase
27:13
uh until then thank you this is michael
27:15
sandoval chris stensel
27:17
alrighty thank you very much thanks
27:18
michael
28:10
you
00:03
welcome to our inaugural podcast of
00:05
peers over beers
00:06
your hosts michael sandoval me and chris
00:09
detzel
00:11
in our inaugural podcast we'll start off
00:13
with chris
00:14
chris is going to talk us through a
00:15
little bit about his new community over
00:17
at imperva
00:18
we're also going to discuss this idea of
00:19
the importance of engagement automation
00:21
in the community
00:22
engagement overall a little mini case
00:25
study of our
00:26
effort that we did at rexell with
00:28
regards to
00:29
engagement automation and you're gonna
00:32
hear an interruption somewhere about
00:34
halfway
00:35
that was the public radio canvasser
00:37
coming to my house
00:38
apparently i forgot them this past year
00:40
don't worry
00:41
yes i gave all coming up
00:45
next
00:46
[Music]
00:50
so i mean i just want to make sure i got
00:52
the name of the beer correct
00:54
of yours yeah it's called i think it was
00:58
number 21.
00:59
oh yeah beers over or piers over beers
01:03
got it it's from lewisville
01:05
or louisville i was thinking that too
01:07
that's why i brought a beer just i was
01:08
like we got to talk about
01:09
yeah it's called uh
01:13
old town brew house double vision
01:18
okay so we're recording um
01:22
my name is michael sandoval and i'm
01:24
chris dettel
01:26
and i'm chris detzel excellent oh go
01:29
ahead and have a seat if you do
01:30
is it better standing i like to stand
01:32
but yeah it's fine no no i got it
01:33
that's all right because i can do uh i
01:35
don't know let's lift it higher
01:37
i don't know do you guys
01:41
um so once again my name is michael
01:43
sandoval and i'm chris stetson well
01:45
hello chris how are you doing i'm good
01:46
how about you i'm doing good
01:49
so this uh this is a very interesting uh
01:52
point in how we got some discussion we
01:54
were just having a beer and we thought
01:55
hey we should probably record our
01:56
conversations because
01:58
they're pretty they're pretty good yeah
02:00
we're talking about a lot of cool stuff
02:02
yeah uh and mostly on the community side
02:05
and so we thought well hey how about
02:07
piers over a beer
02:09
wouldn't that be kind of fun so we are
02:10
having a beer and this one is that's why
02:12
i would look it up
02:13
old town brew house from louisville
02:16
texas an ipa
02:17
pretty good eh it's it's excellent
02:20
cheers
02:24
so with that we were already having the
02:26
discussion uh before we started
02:28
recording
02:29
but chris was telling me so well
02:30
actually i'll let you chris tell me
02:32
what are you doing yeah um
02:36
so i'm building or have built an
02:39
online community for um for a
02:43
cyber security software company called
02:45
imperva
02:47
so what why did they one
02:51
yeah i think that um it's a good
02:54
question
02:55
the biggest reason is to kind of think
02:56
about a few things
02:58
um is retention
03:02
so and then also case deflection
03:05
so we had a big issue with support um
03:08
not being able to answer
03:09
cases in a timely manner so you know
03:12
the thought was well if we can answer
03:15
some of those easier
03:16
questions online and have customers
03:19
really answer some of those you know and
03:21
share their
03:22
um uh share their experiences with the
03:26
products
03:27
then what better so i think that was
03:29
kind of the initial thought
03:31
right you had come on i mean they had
03:33
already made that decision right that
03:34
they wanted to do something
03:37
community-ish um
03:40
well if you want another real story is
03:42
or the big story is
03:43
that so yes and no um the story i got
03:47
was
03:48
so about a year ago i talked to somebody
03:50
that i knew
03:51
um and uh she was like hey look there's
03:54
this job description that
03:56
that needed the community and we needed
03:57
a community manager and i thought of you
03:59
and so um
04:02
they just started a customer success
04:04
organization
04:05
um the company's been around since 2002
04:08
i believe
04:09
and so they're like well we also need a
04:12
community manager and
04:13
she she went after it and they thought
04:14
of you specifically
04:16
um one person did yeah we'll look at you
04:18
specifically
04:20
so yeah i know it was a nice gesture and
04:24
so they
04:26
um thought you know
04:28
when i think of customer success i think
04:30
of retention and i also think of
04:32
case deflection so how do we help our
04:34
customers get the answers that they need
04:36
quickly and
04:37
community kind of came to their mind
04:41
and so i really started to develop the
04:42
strategy roadmap et cetera and
04:44
yeah so they you said they had a problem
04:47
with it already
04:48
obviously something was getting to the
04:50
top echelon of the company saying
04:52
you're having a customer service problem
04:53
yeah a retention problem
04:55
because also the customers are bolting
04:57
that's right uh interesting
04:59
and uh and so you came in and thought oh
05:02
i figured i know how to do this yeah
05:05
how do you know
05:06
let's go do a plan
05:09
so you recently launched it didn't you
05:11
yeah so i uh
05:13
you know we decided to go with a vendor
05:15
back in April
05:16
of 2019 which um and then we just
05:19
recently launched october 14th
05:21
so it's ready to go how did which
05:23
vintage use we use
05:24
uh we used a company called higher logic
05:27
what do you think of them
05:29
you know something I really liked about
05:31
higher logic is uh
05:33
they have this great marketing so before
05:37
you and i worked together um we worked
05:39
with a company called intelligent what
05:40
they didn't have was
05:42
kind of this engagement piece of
05:44
customer so when customers create a
05:46
login and
05:47
start looking at the content there was
05:49
really no not built in anyways some
05:52
some engagement type things that they
05:54
have um
05:55
what i call or what they call automation
05:58
rules
05:58
so you can set up different types of
06:00
personalization
06:02
and type different types of marketing
06:04
things that you can do within the
06:06
platform
06:07
and that really um is what sold me to be
06:10
honest so
06:11
you know they they can do a lot of
06:13
things
06:14
and and so that's basically what i was
06:17
sold on
06:18
so that's actually interesting because
06:19
you talked about uh intelligent so just
06:21
between us
06:22
we've worked with i've worked with jive
06:25
yeah
06:25
intelligent i've done also the open
06:28
source stuff like joomla
06:29
i even had a joomla to intelligent
06:31
conversion one time
06:32
um what else have you worked with well
06:34
of course all the other
06:35
free open source stuff but now with you
06:37
you have higher logic as an example
06:39
oh and of course we both have microsoft
06:42
experience we've both used yammer yeah
06:45
yeah uh
06:46
to uh to infinite item um
06:49
so it gives us a pretty good idea about
06:51
all the vendors we know slack
06:54
we've all used them all um so what what
06:57
something about the engagement piece
06:59
because i remember you and i were
07:00
working
07:00
together one of the biggest things we
07:02
were talking about was this is this is
07:04
how you
07:05
kick start a community you have to start
07:06
engagement if you don't get engagement
07:08
up and going
07:09
you know shit's going to hit the fan
07:12
yeah i remember something that uh
07:16
you said to me once is um you know my
07:19
strength is
07:20
i think really getting people excited
07:22
about community
07:23
getting people excited about what we're
07:26
doing and what the organization's doing
07:28
and
07:28
you know that is my strength and it's a
07:32
lot of fun to go do it because i truly
07:33
believe in the mission and everything
07:35
else and
07:35
and uh one of the things that we did was
07:38
you know
07:39
you're like chris we need to get people
07:41
on the community we need to get them on
07:42
yeah and i was like yeah we do so
07:45
i i started uh talking and uh
07:49
is a big company they were at rexella
07:51
and
07:52
uh and so i started talking to people in
07:54
canada and france and germany
07:57
and um started thinking about you know
07:59
what are some ways that um
08:01
that we can get people on on the
08:03
community
08:04
and you know to make this i guess kind
08:06
of short but
08:08
i found a partner in canada this guy
08:11
i'll just say his first name is rick
08:13
rick right yep his name is rick yep he
08:15
was on board he was like yeah chris
08:16
let's go do it
08:18
and so we developed this thing called
08:19
the black belt program and
08:21
the black belt program really allowed us
08:22
to engage
08:24
internal people and then also get their
08:28
customers uh to engage in the community
08:32
at first so i swear to god within
08:36
three months we probably had over 2000
08:38
people that
08:39
join the community uh what we call the
08:41
grid
08:42
it's the grid dot uh credit
08:45
record.xl.com yeah
08:46
um and and then over another several
08:49
months
08:50
we had a close over 4 000 people
08:55
new people not not just employees but
08:57
just this was
08:58
customers um that joined um community
09:02
and so i did my job i thought i was like
09:04
hell yeah you know i
09:06
i got 4 000 people in this community
09:08
it's amazing yeah eat that mike
09:10
yeah eat it mike and then and then he
09:12
stressed me out way more
09:14
and and i was so frustrated with this
09:17
and and i was clueless to be honest and
09:20
he goes all right well that's great
09:24
so what are you going to do with those 4
09:25
000 people go what do you mean
09:28
because i don't see them posting and
09:30
they're not doing anything else
09:31
i mean what are you going to do with
09:32
those people i say i don't know
09:38
and so uh and maybe you could talk about
09:41
i could talk about it but uh
09:42
you probably say it a little bit better
09:44
but you know michael was like
09:46
well there are some things we can do but
09:48
what he did was
09:50
um instead of telling me the answer at
09:52
first
09:53
he let me he he just said those things
09:55
you know what are you gonna do about
09:56
that
09:57
and and and um and then for like a day
10:00
or two
10:00
he let me kind of just die over that you
10:04
know like that was a
10:05
i mean i was like what am i going to do
10:07
oh my god you know like
10:09
and and so uh after that what'd you do
10:11
what did you tell me well
10:13
well to get some context for those black
10:15
belt programs so much
10:16
much like the word black belt is right
10:18
it's this idea of stages that you take
10:19
on right so
10:20
yeah you if you it's kind of like a
10:22
what's it called like a
10:24
like a not chicken an egg but carrot and
10:27
stick thing so
10:29
the whole goal was to get a black belt
10:31
and there were levels to each of those
10:33
things and
10:34
part of this was on a larger goal around
10:35
adoption right so we're doing e-commerce
10:37
adoption
10:38
and one of those steps was to do
10:42
community right so yeah it was a big
10:44
deal so i think one of the things that
10:45
folks don't understand is that we'll
10:46
talk about this a bit a bit later but
10:48
how do you
10:49
how do you go deep into the enterprise
10:50
like how do you get people to really
10:51
drive
10:52
the community piece and um and you're
10:54
right so going back to what you've done
10:56
is you were able to sell to this
10:57
gentleman
10:58
the business in canada that community
11:00
can be of value and
11:01
he added that as a part of a step into
11:03
the black belt so to do that they had to
11:05
do certain things right
11:06
one of them was sign up create an
11:09
account but the most important thing was
11:11
they had to ask one of their customers
11:14
to go and create an account and ask a
11:16
question if i remember correctly
11:17
yeah and that was that was actually
11:20
pretty impressive
11:22
uh i saw it because i have a doorbell
11:24
and i rarely get anybody in the doorbell
11:27
so uh
11:31
that's the thing when you're actually uh
11:33
doing a podcast uh
11:34
at your home but but to that
11:38
uh because they were trying to get their
11:42
their black belt they did the activity
11:47
hold on one second yeah
11:52
sorry so we were getting into this uh
11:53
question about um
11:55
uh
11:55
[Music]
11:58
hold on let me let me go to the last
12:00
part it was about
12:05
your tongue started yeah oh that's right
12:08
black belt all right yeah
12:10
sorry so kind of get me into it so chris
12:12
you were so just
12:13
before we were interrupted sorry about
12:15
the interruption so i think we had a
12:16
little bit of recap of what the black
12:18
belt program was but the whole
12:19
cool thing about it was you could get
12:23
for every for every person they signed
12:25
up internally they had to sign up a
12:27
customer
12:28
and so we had both internal and external
12:30
customers
12:31
show up so and because it was a thing
12:34
they had to do to get their black belt
12:35
which was a
12:36
incentive we had a lot of good sign ups
12:38
which is a good part so that was
12:39
that was a great part and we were
12:41
talking about what was really good i
12:42
think i remember the question was
12:44
um just because we have
12:47
4 000 people and no one participating a
12:51
community
12:52
does not want to make yeah
12:55
i think we should back up slightly so
12:57
the
12:58
black belt program was part of digital
13:01
adoption
13:02
so in a company that we were pushing
13:04
digital adoption and most of it was
13:06
e-commerce
13:07
and part of that black belt program was
13:10
um the community so there's there were
13:13
seven belts
13:13
two of those belts were for community
13:16
specifically
13:17
right so just kind of back up oh it's
13:19
really good because i
13:20
later i want to get into this idea of
13:21
adoption yeah because i do think the
13:23
community does play a
13:24
big part in it yeah and i know you have
13:26
some really good experience about it
13:27
uh so tell me how did you because you
13:32
i remember this being on a white board
13:34
we were talking pretty deep
13:35
right exactly i mean remember we were
13:37
getting into and this started to get
13:39
this whole idea about
13:40
how do you activate new people to the
13:43
community
13:44
right we were talking about um
13:48
uh this idea of
13:52
one was around email campaigning right
13:53
you know getting them activated
13:55
so we started talking about well how do
13:56
we know when somebody signed up
13:59
how well are we at kind of easing them
14:02
into making it very easy
14:04
to to do the one thing and we talked
14:08
about
14:08
the one thing what are those what was
14:10
what was that one thing
14:11
that we could get them to do and it had
14:12
to be something was low low low barrier
14:15
profile pig exactly yeah that was the
14:18
first thing right
14:19
we said what it was the lowest barrier
14:22
thing we could get them to do
14:24
yeah update their profile and then
14:27
uh so that's one thing but then we
14:29
looked at data
14:31
right so we said when you know let's not
14:34
just look at
14:35
let's not just look at these first 4k
14:38
people
14:39
how many have we signed up since then
14:41
and when was our last
14:43
date of activity right yeah yeah and we
14:46
started going to this whole question
14:47
about
14:47
oh we have how do we
14:51
how do we get them to do the first thing
14:54
right and that just led us into a whole
14:55
path about
14:56
activation the whole path
14:58
[Laughter]
15:00
it was and and you know uh that's what
15:03
we wanted to create because the platform
15:05
at the time
15:06
uh wouldn't do those things it didn't
15:08
have what
15:09
uh i call you know um automation rules
15:13
or
15:14
those kinds of things where you can
15:15
actually set that up and do that
15:17
and so we had to kind of draw that out
15:20
on a whiteboard
15:21
and say you know what what is the first
15:22
thing we want to do and we wanted them
15:24
to create a profile pic and that led us
15:26
down to
15:27
great if a customer then we started
15:29
thinking about what else
15:30
you know or some of the things that uh
15:32
we wanted to do and and that was
15:34
more of well we want them to subscribe
15:37
to content so if they subscribe to
15:39
specific forums or content you know then
15:42
then they're emailed you know about
15:44
whatever um
15:45
you know if somebody posts or whatever
15:47
about you know that topic or
15:49
that specific content um and then you
15:52
know
15:52
then we start to get even more deeper
15:54
about well if a customer isn't logged in
15:56
uh within x number of days so 30 days
15:59
then send them an email that says hey
16:01
have you you know done these things do
16:04
these two or three things
16:05
right yeah i know too bad this is not
16:07
like an actual
16:09
video piece because i i think we even it
16:12
would be great to add this as part of
16:13
the
16:14
add-on to the podcast rates which is we
16:16
had this idea about a three-step
16:18
we had a three-stage way of customer
16:20
activation
16:22
and they were triggered by milestones so
16:24
the first milestone was profile pick
16:26
yeah and you're right the second
16:27
milestone was subscribe to content
16:30
and then was it a poster and i think we
16:33
had some data
16:34
that said if they did one activity i
16:37
think the minor one was profile
16:40
then there was and i have to look at the
16:42
percentage it was a percentage of
16:44
active they did something afterwards
16:46
right so the whole task was to just get
16:48
them back to go do something
16:50
yeah and and if we just did one extra
16:52
step we knew they were
16:53
just going to get deeper so i think the
16:55
third step was their first post
16:57
you know something like that right
16:58
asking their first post and we even
17:00
toyed around
17:01
do we have them ask do they have them
17:04
give us their thought what are they
17:05
doing for the day
17:06
right we had a lot of that question
17:08
about what is the right way to ask for
17:10
the first post so we had this three-step
17:13
stage
17:13
and we put timelines right so if they
17:15
didn't do this between
17:17
the last the first time they hooked up
17:18
or came in i think i still have that on
17:21
the picture somewhere
17:22
it was pretty it was pretty good it was
17:24
funny because
17:25
i remember when michael put this on the
17:28
uh he would always
17:29
put it on this window and put on a
17:31
marker
17:32
put this erasable marker on the window
17:35
and
17:35
um and he put it out there and then it
17:38
took me probably
17:40
two weeks three weeks to i mean i looked
17:42
at it i wrote it down
17:44
but then i can recite it you know i knew
17:46
exactly
17:48
what we had to go do what stage we were
17:50
in yeah yeah and
17:51
and that was the hard part because we
17:52
had to actually get it developed i mean
17:54
we had this
17:55
uh magician of a developer that can do
17:58
some crazy
17:59
and so we'd say hey we need this i'm not
18:02
saying he didn't struggle at times to
18:03
kind of figure out what that was but
18:05
just go in there and and you know might
18:08
take him a little bit of time and then
18:09
all of a sudden voila
18:10
yeah yeah you did the right jackal trace
18:13
yeah so
18:14
kind of pulling back to what you're
18:15
doing right now so knowing that that was
18:16
an experience right so
18:18
almost in some way you we could almost
18:21
talk
18:21
to those who listen like well how you
18:23
know
18:25
almost the feedback is you know what is
18:28
your community's
18:30
thing right and in some way we look at
18:31
the data yeah right so
18:35
looking at the data when did they log in
18:38
when was their
18:38
life what was the first thing they did
18:41
as an activity
18:42
member right that's how we started
18:43
looking at some stuff and
18:46
and i think we solved it was what was
18:48
the lowest
18:49
barrier thing so for our community we're
18:52
using intelligent that
18:53
uploading or creating a profile pic was
18:55
pretty easy
18:56
and i think we also looked at some other
18:58
data too so we looked at other
18:59
communities and found out that
19:01
you know i think we even looked at
19:02
linkedin about how they did profile
19:04
build which was this kind of scaling
19:05
that's right looking at a thermometer
19:07
you're
19:07
twenty percent through thirty percent of
19:09
the news that was some good there was a
19:10
good case study
19:11
about how we could go figure out how to
19:13
do it right
19:15
so so we kind of leaned on that and
19:17
that's how we came across it
19:19
um yeah i want
19:22
so not to this uh to kind of completely
19:25
get this off but
19:26
i do want to talk about you know some
19:28
vendors make that easier than others
19:29
yeah so
19:30
this is what was going back to the
19:31
beginning which was and we're not
19:33
endorsed by these guys we're just
19:34
talking about experience right
19:36
so what was in this what was in this
19:39
product that made that easier
19:42
well it was what they call the
19:44
automation rules right
19:45
so that from my understanding uh was not
19:49
built intelligent you have to have
19:50
a just go in there and and develop
19:54
it and do all kinds of crazy and
19:56
take some three to five months to
19:58
potentially do it you know the nice
20:00
thing about
20:01
so the nice thing about let's say higher
20:04
logic for example is they
20:06
have most of that built in and what they
20:08
don't have built in
20:09
uh you could you could use you can find
20:11
a developer or a company
20:13
that i found that can develop through
20:16
javascript very simple
20:18
um kind of this hey you're 50 there
20:21
you're 60
20:22
there you're 70 there and it's
20:24
relatively cheap
20:25
you know to to get them to do something
20:27
like that so it's like a plug-in
20:28
you could put in to do some of these
20:29
things it's sort of a plug-in but they
20:31
use the automation rules that are
20:32
already there
20:33
right so they just make it api
20:36
yeah no no no so it's so uh just a
20:39
script
20:40
just a script javascript right that uh
20:43
that uses
20:44
the already built-in functionality of
20:47
higher logic to say you know if you
20:51
so for example if a customer hasn't
20:53
built a profile or haven't hasn't put a
20:55
pic
20:56
or hasn't put or subscribed certain
20:58
content you could put those things
21:00
in into that logic and say okay well
21:03
great you know you're 10 there you now
21:06
done your profile now you need to
21:07
subscribe to content do these five
21:08
things
21:09
and then you can keep adding to those
21:11
five things so it's
21:13
kind of i mean you have to make it you
21:16
know look
21:16
the way you want to make it look uh but
21:19
it's a lot easier than having
21:21
you know a hardcore developer going in
21:23
there and truly developing it
21:25
so a lot of that stuff is built in and
21:28
so that was my um
21:31
draw to that company in a big way
21:34
because i remember what you said about
21:36
engagement
21:37
i could i could today easily get 2000
21:40
people
21:41
logged into our community today i have
21:44
300 plus people
21:45
logged into the community since october
21:47
it's only three weeks
21:48
that's the easy part for me that's not
21:50
bad so um
21:52
it's great but how do i engage those
21:55
people right
21:56
not all those are customers so some of
21:57
them are employees versus
21:59
but i would say you know uh
22:03
little probably it's way over half so
22:06
let's say three fourths are um employees
22:09
and then the other fourth
22:10
which is a pretty big amount um so it's
22:12
350 by the way is the
22:14
number but but uh another fourth there
22:16
there's actually
22:17
customers without doing any marketing
22:19
stuff
22:21
and before i go off because it kind of
22:23
came to my head did you do any
22:24
type of when you launch a community and
22:26
then we'll go back to this idea of
22:29
activation because that sounds pretty
22:31
germane to the conversation right this
22:32
how do you get
22:33
how do you customers i mean how do you
22:35
when they come in how do you get them to
22:36
engage right this is the idea of
22:38
engagement right um there's a whole plan
22:40
around it you know that's a strategy in
22:42
itself by the way michael it's not a
22:44
that's he would tell me actually there's
22:47
a lot of tactics
22:48
that you can uh do chris that's a
22:49
technical strategy
22:52
yeah exactly correct i remember that
22:55
over and over well chris those are
22:57
pretty good tactics
22:59
um but uh let's think about the overall
23:01
strategy and put those tactics on the
23:02
roadmap
23:04
oh my god i can hear myself oh my god so
23:06
can i well we'll actually let's go in
23:08
before i my brain is going to live in a
23:10
couple of places so
23:13
going back to this idea of automation
23:15
that you were in yeah
23:17
uh what did you um
23:21
do you obviously put these rules in
23:23
place or have you put these in place yet
23:26
i'm i'm i am putting them in place some
23:28
are already in place and then
23:30
over time we'll put more in place and
23:33
when you kick start this going back to
23:35
my brains in a couple places so when you
23:37
kick started did you do
23:38
a like a launch or you said you didn't
23:41
put any marketing behind it so how did
23:43
you get folks to
23:45
well michael that's that's a long story
23:47
you know if you want to hear that
23:50
i'll make it as short as possible well
23:52
how about we do this how about we
23:54
let's leave that for another okay
23:55
another note because i think that's an
23:57
important thing about blockchain yeah no
23:58
it's a big one
23:59
it's a big one uh because i agree cause
24:01
i think you know part of my philosophy
24:02
was around
24:04
it's hard to launch something for which
24:05
you do not have a part that i called a
24:06
party
24:07
right and it's it's hard to get people
24:09
to go to a party when no one's at the
24:10
party
24:12
yeah that's right so we'll we'll talk
24:13
about that i use that analogy it's funny
24:15
that
24:17
um i get that from michael is is who
24:20
wants to go to a party that nobody's at
24:22
you know i've used that in some of the
24:24
ceo staff meetings and
24:26
and also on some of the all hands
24:29
meetings
24:30
all company meetings uh and i say that
24:32
all the time
24:33
but it works well people laugh yeah no
24:37
that's a good thing or not but it is
24:40
true
24:40
you especially in this community space
24:42
you have
24:45
it's a party you have to go you you
24:47
don't want to just show up to
24:48
nothing there it's it's crazy no i agree
24:51
i agree so how did you um before we i
24:54
think we'll close up this session and
24:56
then we'll kind of start another one
24:57
because i think we're coming up in
24:58
around 20 minutes or so um
25:02
so within these first 300 folks um
25:06
350 i'm sorry didn't mean to undercut
25:08
sorry
25:10
sorry sorry sorry fair point 350. um
25:14
and to give some context i mean not to
25:15
say that's any so
25:18
for those who don't know rexella's of 13
25:21
depending on 14 billion depending on
25:23
where you are
25:23
on a hero exchange uh
25:27
two billion i think in provo
25:30
yeah yeah so just to give you
25:32
concentration
25:33
we're at the beginning right that's
25:35
right um
25:37
have you seen any trends so far at the
25:38
very beginning the first uh 350 or
25:41
are they coming in they asking questions
25:42
do they feel engaged do they
25:44
yeah there's there's a few customers
25:46
that uh when i say a few maybe five or
25:48
six that uh
25:50
they have some product specific
25:52
questions so impervo has
25:54
close to 18 different products
25:57
we could talk about that you know and
25:59
trying to create a content plan and
26:01
things like that um over time but but
26:04
yeah there are people that
26:06
um are very interested more and talking
26:08
to peers about
26:10
uh how they're using the products and
26:12
certain things that they did around
26:14
around that so does that answer your
26:17
question or
26:20
lightly i mean it was around how do they
26:22
feel engaged are you going to this
26:23
engagement
26:24
and do you feel good i mean what's the
26:26
first time you're you know
26:27
i don't know one month into the uh not
26:29
even a month like three plus weeks
26:31
a little a little over three very good
26:34
but uh
26:35
yeah i mean when i think of engage i
26:38
think if
26:38
there's two or three people that i think
26:41
are pretty engaged
26:42
but i think there's things i'm gonna
26:44
have to do more to
26:46
to keep them engaged and so that's
26:48
that's the thing that i'm uh
26:50
a little bit worried about right so is
26:52
how do i continue this engagement piece
26:55
and and and so i've been thinking about
26:57
that a lot
26:58
well then let's carry that to the next
27:00
conversation how's that great all right
27:02
so this ends our first uh session our
27:04
first uh podcast and
27:06
i think uh the next theme is going to be
27:08
around
27:09
uh how do we get more forks more folks
27:12
in the adoption phase
27:13
uh until then thank you this is michael
27:15
sandoval chris stensel
27:17
alrighty thank you very much thanks
27:18
michael
28:10
you
Creators and Guests
Host
Chris Detzel
Chris is a versatile Digital Community Strategist with several years of experience. He has owned community vision, strategy, and execution. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of community engagement programs, creating compelling content for customer communities and acts as the voice of the customer. He believes that data should drive decisions as it is the key element of any long-term successful strategy.