Is your PMF real? đŽđđ©
Why measuring average ticket handling time in isolation can be "dangerous," having a deliberate system for approaching PMF, and revisiting "real" work as a founder.
Hi there,
Welcome to the twenty-eighth edition of The Baton. A fortnightly newsletter that brings you three, hand-curated pieces of advice drawn from the thoughtful founder-to-founder exchanges and interviews taking place on Relay and the interwebz. So, stay tuned!Â
In this edition, youâll find instructive and inspiring pickings from the brains of Guruâs Rick Nucci, Productboardâs Hubert Palan, and Pilotâs Waseem Daher.
#1: âYou donât always want to close out the ticket as fast as possible.â â Guruâs co-founder and CEO, Rick Nucci, compellingly calls into question standard metrics that drive most customer service orgs. (Source: Inside Intercom)
Look, I completely understand why metrics like âaverage handle timeâ need to be part of the conversation. They do. I think itâs important. Itâs a way to manage capacity for a growing customer service org. You want to know, on average, how long it takes to resolve issues.
But looking at it in isolation can be very, very dangerous because you donât always want to get the person off the call. You donât always want to close out the ticket as fast as possible. Thatâs why I think it can be dangerous to only look at that.
We have customers for example, who will literally teach their customer service teams to intentionally ask open ended questions as calls are wrapping up. The reason theyâre doing that is to get to the real âwhyâ behind the ticket.
Someone could write in tomorrow and say, âHey, I need to know how to do this specific thing in your product,â and as a customer service agent, you can be prompted to just say, âOh, you go here, file, drop down, click this, choose that, thanks.â Then they close the ticket and think, âCool. I closed that one really quick. I came in below average.ââ
But ask: Why? Why are they trying to do that? What are they really getting after? I just hear story after story about how asking âwhyâ leads to the real thing.
âWeâre really struggling with getting our team to adopt this part of your product.â
âOh, really? Why is that?â
âWell, they donât think that itâs a good way to actually do this or that.â
You could have a totally different conversation than what it seemed like they wanted to do when they wrote into you.
âŠ
Starting with changing the metrics and how you measure success in that org, thatâs step one. It has to be CEO-down. They have to buy into the concept because if you donât establish that, then the conversation is just going to be about cost and how much we have to spend.
What you actually want to hear is, âHey, this quarter we started asking all of our customer service agents to ask the following three open-ended questions at the end of each call. As a result, we saw CSAT go up,â or âWe saw the premium to upsell conversion go from X% to Y%.â
Now, youâre starting to connect the teamâs performance to more revenue-connected metrics, which I think is a great start in changing the narrative.
#2: Donât âstumble intoâ PMF â Productboardâs co-founder and CEO, Hubert Palan, cautions against accidentally landing on product-market fit. "The initial PMF is just a small, small subset of the company that youâre going to build.â (Source: 20VC)
The strategic aspect needs to be there. If you just go and you stumble into it [product-market fit] by accident because you saw something or you tried something and you donât really have a system in place that allows you to consistently go forward and validate and test and iterate, in a smart, strategic way, youâre in trouble.
Because what happens when you get to product-market fit is that the market at that point starts pulling you in all these different directionsâŠ
People start asking you, âoh, can you do more use cases, kind of more broader.â And other people whoâre not really the persona that the product is for, see it and they like some aspect of the product and say, âoh, this is great, I know this is a sales tool, but I can also use it for marketing.â
Or for us, with product management, âoh, this looks great, I would also like to use it for my personal task management. Because you guys have this flexible hierarchy and I can put in a mind map.â
So, if you donât have the muscle of thinking strategically and systematically about it, the risk is that you will start responding to all these asks. âThis is great, the market will pull us where we need to be.â
But without a strong strategic lens, youâre in troubleâŠ
If youâre not focussed on the ideal customer segment, you hopefully should have defined, then youâllâŠbe throwing random stuff into the product, the product starts bloating, and you slow down.
I would argue that this is the biggest challenge for most companiesâŠ
[Product-market fit] is typically just a sliver of, if you want to build a big company, the initial PMF is just a small subset of the company that youâre going to build. Itâs a small, small segment. And itâs a small set of needs that youâre satisfying. But how do you go from there?
#3: Avoiding the âpriority #27â trap â Pilotâs co-founder and CEO, Waseem Daher, on how scaling as a founder often involves telling apart what youâre good at from whatâs important. (Source: Startup Real Talk)
I also call this the âworking on priority #27 trap.â This is one that I catch myself falling into on a daily basis. Priority 27 is tempting because it is real workâand itâs work youâre good at doing. Everyone enjoys doing things theyâre good at, so itâs very tempting to spend time here.
You have to resist that urge. I have to constantly ask myself âIs this the most useful thing I could be doing? Is this a real priority for the business? Is this the actual best use of my time?â
An example: a while ago, I wrote an elaborate Python script to sync data between our CRM and a spreadsheet I use for tracking revenue. The other day, I wanted to add a feature to further improve the reporting.
Then I paused. Was this really the best use of my time? No. I should be focused on growing Pilotâs revenue, not on incrementally improving my internal dashboard. Adding that feature would not help me make Pilot more successfulâit would just consume my time.
The problem with this type of fake work is that itâs a form of procrastination. The thing you should /actually/ be doing is unpleasant and hard, and youâre tricking yourself into thinking youâre making progress by doing this stuff. But youâre not.
This trap is real, and itâs constant. Your job as a founder is to build a product people want. Anything else is a distraction. Itâs easy to forget that.
From the Relay archives:
AMAs: With Vue.aiâs founder and CEO, Ashwini Asokan. Featuring Ashwiniâs thoughts on: Operating decisions for a software category brimming with unknowns, getting to product-market-sales fit, why big news in AI is always hyped, and more!
Until next time,