How Bizzabo’s Customer-Centricity Makes for Event Success

From onboarding to ongoing event consultation to our recently added 24/7 support, we know now more than ever before that the path to event success starts and ends with a customer-centric approach.

Sophia Bernazzani, the Editor of HubSpot’s Service blog, frames customer-centricity as ”The way of doing business so that every team and department foster a positive customer experience, at every stage of the customer journey”.

We couldn’t agree more.

Truly customer-focused company puts the needs of customers before everything else and ensures that every team is aligned with this directive in mind—and that’s how we do it.

Great products are built by great customers

“I love the very easy to configure, excellent tutorials and support available, love the customer input they seek for feature improvements”

Georgina Clelland
Events VP, AIIM International

Different software companies determine their product roadmaps in different ways.

Some companies are sales-driven. They first sell on a feature and then the product team starts to build it. Some companies are marketing driven. They sell on an intangible idea that often has little to do with the product that is built.  

At Bizzabo, our underlying belief is that our customers hold event marketing knowledge that is stronger than anything we can envision ourselves and that’s why we’re led by the desire to learn from them and grab their own insights at every stage of the development process. We use various techniques to ensure that our planning process—as well as execution—is heavily dependent on customer feedback.

Through the power of usability testing, we present a select group of customers with a prototype of a new Bizzabo feature that is in an early stage of development. The maturity level of this prototype can range from a hand-drawn paper wireframe to a functional, yet unfinished, working prototype.

We see great value in this test as it allows us to ensure that the new feature is first and foremost user-friendly. If we witness during the test that a customer struggles to solve the tasks we’re providing, it is a clear indication that something needs to be changed before the product is finalized. We also make sure to ask many open-ended questions related to the value of the new functionality and the behavior flow.

As the renowned management consultant Peter Drucker said, “what gets measured gets managed”. Our Product team constantly measures the usage patterns of our customers to determine which features are considered a success and which flows need to be improved. As we come to plan our roadmap, we first and foremost collect all the insights provided by our customers through feature requests, support tickets and direct customer success sentiment.

Using a weighted arithmetic mean, we prioritize each potential planning concept based on the number of affected customers and the contribution to their overall success metrics. Through this process, we can guarantee that the product release will directly impact the “day after the release” for many of our customers as opposed to just one. But it’s not just about numbers and weights—it’s about listening to what customers are saying.

After realizing that direct communication between product and customers yields success, we recently defined a process called “user voicing” that includes assigning every customer to a product manager that is directly responsible for maximizing the product development needs of that customer. This process creates a very meaningful byproduct of turning every product manager into a true advocate for their customers with the desire of achieving event greatness together.

An extension of your event team

“The Bizzabo customer support is unparalleled; this includes their customer success managers and their web support team. Both have taken the time to get to know us personally and as an organization, and keep our needs and parameters in mind. They are quick, responsive, incredibly kind, and knowledgeable in their product. I could truly write pages on how valuable their customer support team is. I sing Bizzabo’s praises any chance I get”

Molly Reid
Director of Events, Teach for America

At the heart of our customer-centric approach is our Customer Success (or CS) team. Our CS team does not act as just the customers’ point of contact at Bizzabo—they act as an extension of our customers’ teams. They provide helpful event marketing and management tips alongside in-depth product knowledge.  

Instead of creating a “one size fits all” onboarding plan, we have our success managers create a customized onboarding plan based on the unique needs of their customers over the course of  a four-week time frame. Every onboarding plan starts with capturing your business goals when planning events and extracting from that the product tools that will allow you to reach those goals in hand.

One of the most exciting touch points for us, throughout our customers’ lifecycle is the strategic business review meeting where we present the customer with data and analytics we’ve gathered from their event performance dashboards and the conclusions that can be drawn from the data.

This session allows our success managers to act as true event experts who are recommending practical ways to achieve the event goals that were defined on day one. Whether a customer’s goal is to increase their event registration by 25% or to boost their team’s efficiency by 30%, we are able to present them with informed recommendations for achieving their specific goals.

Aside from offering advanced training and milestone meetings (e.g. introduction, training, implementation, pre-first event, post-first event debrief, and a strategic business review) we encourage customers to take education into their own hands through our certification academy, knowledge center, award-winning blog, video tutorials, webinars and more. (You can find many of these resources in our Event Resources library.)

Every Step of the Way with 24/7 Support

One of our core values as a company is that We Care.

In addition to the white glove service of our Customer Success team, our customers can count on our 24/7 Customer Support team to be there if technical challenges occur. We’re proud to say that our average response time is 1.7 hours (the industry benchmark is 24 hours).

In order to make the offline experience seamless, customer support must be top-notch and quick to resolve problems. To accomplish this goal, we’ve assembled a global team that is  trained to not only respond to tickets submitted but to also guide, train, and advise on the best ways to use our product. Through in-platform live chat, phone calls, personalized explanation videos and more—we aim to create an experience where our customers feel truly cared for.

Meanwhile, our Client Services team is hard at work on analyzing statistics from support tickets to figure out what are the product areas that require improvements and additional resources. We characterize tickets by product areas, urgency level, customer types and more, and take data informed decisions which impact our customer centric product roadmap.   

If You Need Us, Just Call

Our customers’ success is our highest priority. Whether you are looking to learn more about events, get advice on an event marketing email, or are looking to become a customer —let us know.