Written by Jessica Murray

Two weeks ago, I shared quick sound bites from LaunchTN’s 3686 conference in Nashville. I also promised a recap of the Partner Popup workshop I led on day three.

Here it is.

The topic?

“Read the Signals: What Founders Can Learn from Real-Time Customer Insights.”

Why focus there?

Well, for one…without customers, you won’t really have a business.

But, also because a strong understanding of your customers will help you better deliver differentiated experiences that can build a moat. The data in the image below support this: 80% of customers value experiences with a company as much as the products or services delivered.

Repeat that until it sticks.

Interpreting the signals you receive at every customer touchpoint well allows you to build and execute the type of stand-out experiences you’ll need in a competitive and increasingly commoditized landscape.

The workshop’s purpose

The goals were to allow attendees to leave the room with:

A clear view and appreciation for how customer insights reveal hidden friction, operational inefficiencies and gaps in user experience.
A practical framework for evaluating each stage of the customer journey.
A clear action plan to optimizes products, brands and experiences from first click to follow-through.

My co-host and I tackled the topic from our respective areas of expertise. Mine: Operations and Customer Success (CX). Hers: Marketing and User Experience (UX). Combined, we shed light not only on different functional perspectives but also on how these functions (and others) must come together to deliver a cohesive end-to-end journey.

What surfaced?

I tend to judge the success of events like this not necessarily by how many butts are in seats (though it was a well-attended event), but by the conversations that ensue once we get to the hands-on and collaborative portions of the session. That afternoon, the noise level and engagement were high, so I knew we hit on something that resonated with every entrepreneur in the room.

Before the Q&A, we closed the session by bringing the group back together so individuals could share their takeaways.

For context, the attendees represented a diverse range of individuals, including tech startup founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, service providers, ecosystem builders, and more. So, there was both breadth and commonality that surfaced.

The highlight reel:

The investor journey, not only the user journey: A founder in fundraise mode mapped investors as a customer segment, with stages, touchpoints and signals to gauge progress.
Conversion unlock: Another entrepreneur struggling with platform signup conversions uncovered potential B2B pathways and automation across touchpoints to explore.
Designing for natural behavior: A realization of the challenges that come with trying to influence human behavior, and how journey mapping and better questions aid in aligning UX with more natural tendencies. Thus, leading to better business outcomes.
Referrals build awareness: One service provider doubled down on the first stage of the customer journey and realized how important building a “referral engine” would be to driving increased visibility to her work.
Retention signals: All the talk of loyalty got another attendee deeply thinking about client delivery, and the hints along the way that signal whether things are going well (or not).
A need for efficiency: One entrepreneur griped about how much time was spent on outbound sales and customer onboarding, and began asking new questions about optimizations to save time while still providing exceptional services.

How can this help you?

Even if you couldn’t attend the live event, here’s a mini framework to help you take the next step if you find yourself wrangling incoming customer data, feedback, research, etc.

Document the journey. Name the stages and touchpoints.
Categorize signals: Decide in which stage they belong and tag which inputs indicate progress or risk.
Go deeper than the surface level: Ask better questions to get to root causes vs. surface-level symptoms. What are these indicators really trying to tell you?
Prioritize: What successes will you double down on, and which bottlenecks need to be addressed pronto?
Act: Build an action plan that enables incremental progress.

The next opportunity to hang out and learn IRL

Speaking of events. I have another one coming up later in October in collaboration with the Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville. It’s a different topic, and I’m looking forward to sharing it. Here are the details if you want to join us!

READING THE SIGNALS: TAKEAWAYS FROM OUR RECENT PARTNER POPUP EVENT