ANA: Best practices in working with startups

Intuit Confidential and Proprietary1

Best Practices in Partnering with Startups

ANA at Sony Computer Entertainment of AmericaOctober 28, 2014Speaker: Aliza Carpio, Intuit Inc



A Tale of Two Parts…

– Process– Best Practices

We’ll wrap it up

What We’ll Cover


Process


Purpose To ground everyone on identity, roles, expectations and goals

• Sharing who we are…brand personality, voice

• Clarity of roles…decisions (DACI model)

• Shared vision on what success looks like

• Set clear operating mechanisms, Op Mechs…How we work, communicate and escalate

Process: The Set Up


• Elements– Team: Marketing, Development, Care, PR/Social, Program management

– Assets (You): Brand voice, brand identity, target customer, target goals

– Assets (startup): Best practices from other customers, proposed timeline, success stories

• Discussion Topics– Roles: DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed)

– E2E process for supporting customers AND supporting each other

– Escalation process…when things go wrong (shut down/pause)

– Op mech…emails, meetings, on call schedule?, SLA (service level agreement)

The Set Up Starts At Kickoff


Initial, Year 1• Kickoff• Req gathering and

Working sessions (Op mech)

• Development & Testing

• Launch• Optimization meetings• Lessons learned and

Next Steps

Overall ProcessLet’s Do It Again, Year 2

• Kickoff• Roadmap meeting • Working sessions• Development &

Testing• Launch• Optimization

meetings• Lessons learned and

Next Steps


• It’s about optimize…optimize…optimize– Launch and Optimize vs Launch and Learn

• My recipe: Weekly meetings, Bi weekly reporting with analytics and Email follow up

– (30 min) Weekly meetings – week over week changes, analytics overview…

• ”What else can we do?” (brainstorm and adopt a plan)• What decisions do we need to make?

– (3xs a week) Review dashboards/reports – get observations and report out

– (Weekly) Emails as follow up and reporting to “I”, informed leaders/stakeholders

Operating Mechanisms, Op Mechs


Best Practice


• Observations to Insights1. Solving for Enterprise and Scale2. Establish E2E mindset (for customers)3. Both Parties Measure Results4. Op mechanisms = Small wins along the way

• Two case studies: Local Response and Extole referral program

– Local Response : Twitter Targeting System– Extole Referral program: Invite a Friend

Best Practice

http://adage.com/article/digital/startup-localresponse-targets-twitter-conversations-display-ads/239815/

http://www.extole.com/


Twitter Response System & Referral Program

Local Reponse

Identify tweets to target and respond with an offer (landing page)

Extole

TurboTax customers have the opportunity to share TT discount via email, FB and Twitter.


• Observation: Start ups are quick to respond but their dev processes don’t always embrace “developing for scale” or for enterprise

– Performance in Question: Traffic load, concurrent users – Gaps in Quality testing practice– Gaps in Social implementation

• Our Next Move: – Proactive in providing QA requirements/documents– Set up our own QA team (Me+) to ensure quality gaps were

addressed…fun “bug bash” event– Provide code to fix gaps in Social share

Solve For Scale


Example: Inconsistent Test Results

What the page should look like…

How the page renders in Chrome


Anything Missing?


• End to End: Consider all touch points for customers (including agents)

– Is the content “on brand? – Agent support is limited – what do we do now?– How fast can we stop something if it isn’t received well?– Ensuring tracking works accurately – understanding behavior

• Our Next Move– Share our brand voice and personality– Fill in gaps in customer support, conduct training for agents

and support managers…create contingency plans

Establish E2E Mindset


Content is “On Brand”We provide brand voice guidelines to ground everyone…

1. Extole takes the first crack at the draft2. TurboTax editors provide feedback3. We meet somewhere in the middle

(most of the time)


When something doesn’t go so well..

• Launched campaign for mobile app directed at tweets that say “haven’t done my taxes yet”

• Action we took…Paused this campaign on Day 2 – consistent negative results

• Observation…Offers on Twitter must be narrow and focused


Contingency Plan: Support

• Current Extole Support model…Email only, M-F may not be enough for TT customers

• Action we took…Created a “lite” support model in case customers call us and created support site FAQ; Provided training for support managers

• Observation…Extole model + FAQ on support site worked (continue to use this for next year)


• Observation: Gaps in E2E measurement or tools available for you to self-serve

– Range of sophistication from online dashboards to xls report– Define/redefine terms like CTR, Conversion– Both sides need to understand “what is best in class”– (If campaign starts from within a service/product) Inaccuracy of reporting due

to tracking implementation• Our Next Move:

– (After launch) Standup meetings – review stats and get grounding on terms, startup shares best in class compared to other brands/similar campaigns

– Analytics team member is part of Kickoff and Dev process – Implementing custom tracking work to ensure accuracy in reporting

Both Parties Measure Results


Example of Online Dashboard (Self Serve)


Understanding what is Best in Class: Advocacy

Key Insights• TurboTax customers are great advocates for the product…7!%

of those who saw the offer clicked on it and shared with at least 1.6 friends

• (Extole) Best in Class advocacy rate…awesome is at 45%...we exceeded this

• The placement of the offer inside TurboTax experience is right on!

• Email, by far, had the best results for conversion

Decision• Keep this offer and scale it


• Necessity: Short amount of time (3 weeks) to test and scale– Principle: Each day counts…Experiment mindset (try, get

feedback and measure)– Principle: Each side is willing to iterate so that we can learn and

continuously drive better results• Our next move

– Keeping our weekly “stand up” meetings – Keeping our weekly “I” emails that provide status

Set up Op Mech to Gain Wins Daily/Each Week


Could this work in a support situation?

After learning from Extole that a couple of other brands have an agent model, we tested “Invite a Friend” with our Social Care agents in the last two days of tax season.

Overall, a positive experience and we’ll be rolling this out from the start of season for tax year 2014.


Content Shift

At the start of tax season (January) March messaging stressing urgency


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The Wrap Up


• This is a partnership…not a vendor/customer relationship• Transparency is key…what’s not working, what is working

– Weekly meetings help us adjust or optimize• Stop to recognize “Wins”…share how much you appreciate

each other• We’re in this together…we both succeed

What I’ve Learned…



Aliza Carpio@socialac

[email protected] 619.208.6705

Engineering

ANA: Best practices in working with startups