Decoding Customer Experience Metrics with Alchemer’s Marty Mrugal

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone, it's Alan Hummel. Welcome to another Textron TV interview.

We're glad you're joining us. I've got a first time guest here on Techron tv, so let's give a, a nice reception. His name is Marty Mele.

Marty is the CEO of a company called Almer. That's A-L-C-H-E-M-E-R. And Marty, welcome to Text on tv.

It's great to have you on here. Thanks, Alan. Great to be with you today.

Great. Oh, it's our pleasure. So, Marty, we're going to get into what is and what you guys do there.

But before we do, I always like, I always like to let our audience know who they're talking to. And I'm always interested in CEO. I'm a CEO myself, been a co-founder of multiple venture back to companies.

I always like to hear people's journeys. How, how, how did they come to be seen? Yo, there's usually a lot of passion involved, little bit of craziness, little luck.

Ooh, this and that. But tell us your story. Well, Alan, I have all those ingredients, quite frankly, so Most of us do.

So I actually started in transportation logistics, spent 12 years, um, in that industry. Spent a lot of time in sem, automotive assembly plants and oil refineries, uh, chemical plants. Um, you know, basically looking at raw materials coming in, shipping, finished goods, going out of these production facilities.

And after about 12 years, I, I, I said, you know what? I, I am, it's time to kind of switch industries. The company was being acquired.

And I said, I'm either gonna go into software and technology, or I'm gonna go into pharmaceuticals. 'cause they had way better margins than transportation logistics companies did. Mm-Hmm.

And so, uh, I actually started, um, with a company called SAP, um, in, you know, the late nineties when Y 2K was happening, and I'm sure a lot of your audience can can relate to, to that, those days. It was crazy times. And, um, I actually started by writing business cases to justify, you know, the large, uh, cost of implementing an ERP system like that to, to boards of directors, um, and executive teams.

So it gave me an understanding of how software worked, how it impacted business processes, and then what the value of that was to the income statement and the balance sheet right. Of a company. I think it was a great introduction to technology.

And then over the course of 22 and a half years, I worked my way up through SAP and my last position was an executive vice president, uh, responsible for customer success. I actually implemented SAP's first customer success global program, um, where we brought together all of the different CU customer success organizations across our, the, the company's cloud organization. So at the time, um, company had acquired Concur.

Um, they acquired Ariba, uh, success Factors, Hybris, you know, you name it. There were about 40 plus billion dollars of acquisitions, but there was not one uniform Customer success program. So the last thing I did at SAP was I brought all of those teams together in one unified customer success motion in one engagement model with our customers.

Um, then the pandemic hit, and I was, and I said, man, I'm tired of flying to Europe and Asia every other week. And I took, I was gonna take a year off, and a friend of mine called me at Citrix and said, Hey, come, come help us. And I was their Chief customer officer for about a year and a half.

And then they were acquired by private equity. Yes. And I said, I'm finally gonna take my break.

And, um, I was, and then the, one of the private equity firms called and said, Hey, we'd like you to come back over to one of our portfolio companies. Um, and I was the Chief operating officer at, uh, at a Ned Tech company. And then, uh, I did take a year off finally.

And, uh, good for you. Spent some time with my family and my two daughters, my wife and my two daughters. And then, um, I started to, to take some calls and I had several opportunities.

Alan, quite frankly, and this one with Alchem really resonated to, for me, because I had run customer success teams. Um, I had been responsible for customer success at large scale, you know, companies like SAP and then also medium sized companies like the ed tech company, where as COOI had responsibility for support professional services, um, customer success, et cetera. And so I came at this from a practitioner's point of view.

I've used these tools and technologies, um, and my teams have used these tools and technologies, and I just saw great opportunity. I saw in Alchem a company that was easy to use, easy to implement, fast time to value, great total cost of ownership, and for mid-size enterprises, it was a perfect combination. And so we have a great opportunity moving forward to really take customer success, um, employee sentiment analysis, digital and, and digital, um, product evaluation and product feedback and product sentiment analysis, and really take it to the next level.

And so, uh, we're owned by KKR, um, so we've got great financial backing. Uh, we've got a great vision in front of us in terms of customer success and where we want to be and, and the types of tools and technologies and solutions we want to bring to our client base. And I just see unlimited potential in this company.

So that's, that's my journey. That's why I joined Almer. Super excited about, uh, about where we're moving forward.

Fantastic. What a great story, man. Right.

First of all, look, in today's tech world, how long were you at SAP 20? 22 and a half years? Unheard of.

Unheard of, right? Yeah. Kinda that, you know, I think the average rules agree.

The average tech worker in these days was staying in their role about 18 months. Right. And, and then they hop around.

It's Crazy. You know what, you know what's interesting, Alan is like, every two to three years, I, I had a new opportunity. So it always felt, and the company was big enough where it felt like I was doing something new all the time.

Right. That, and that's, that's so, you know, look, as a CEO, that's something I try to bring to my people. I'm not SAP, we're not SAP, we're smaller, but people always need fresh jobs, right?

Fresh areas to explore, doing the same old, same old gear in and year out. You could do it for three years, four years, but you gotta keep adding stuff to the mix, I think, to keep it interesting and keep growing. Absolutely.

Agreed. Agreed. So you, you mentioned a little bit about alchem, but I wanna really focus in now on alchem.

Yeah. And I, as I said, a lot of my, a lot of our audience here is not familiar. This is their first impression, but Almer is, uh, how, well, I'm gonna ask you, how do you know you're better at it than me?

How would you describe Almer to our audience? What problems do they solve, you know, what's their product or service like? Sure.

So, you know, we provide sentiment, ana, customer sentiment, analysis and feedback, um, for, for our customers. Um, and, you know, we really believe that, um, feedback really empowers product teams, um, and customer success teams and human resources and other functions so that we provide the data that allow them to really take advantage of the pulse of the customer. Whether that customer is an external customer, it's an employee, right?

Um, and so we really take this feedback and we, we provide the insight and analysis for, you know, those teams, those executives to take action. So, you know, you mentioned your, your audience is, is technical. A lot of, a lot of your audience is technical.

And, you know, one of the, one of the big, um, you know, use cases and personas that we work with quite often, um, is product product management, head of product, CTO, um, chief Product Officers CPOs. And they use our technology, for example, to get an understanding of what's happening, um, with their applications. So an an example would be, I'll give you an example.

A healthcare company, for example, uh, in North America, was basically launching a new digital app as part of their digital transformation strategy. Um, and they were gonna shut down their call center, right? And so they were moving from a very manual based support for their customers to digitizing and automating that entire process before they launched.

That's a, that's a, and that was a, you know, a big cutover. Mm-Hmm. Um, and so before they did that, they used our in-app, um, features and solutions to gauge the customer sentiment around will this app actually be able to replace the, the call center support and services that were offered previously.

And so as time went on, they changed kind of how they were asking the questions, the in-app prompts, um, that were delivered to make sure that when they made this cutover, it was going to be successful, and they weren't going to lose any customers, lose any revenue, and make sure that there was a continuity of service overall for the healthcare system. And so that was very successful. So that, that's an example of the product team working with the customer success team to make sure that as they're digitizing these processes, that they're keeping the pulse on customer and customer feedback.

Um, and that it, that it's successful. So the product launched, the application was successfully launched, and the company saved millions of dollars, um, by moving and digitizing all of those processes. So that's, you know, that's one example of launching a new app.

And, you know, we can, we can provide in-app prompts. So for, uh, you know, if you're on your iPhone, your Android, and you see an app, sometimes the, the product team will, will launch a, a, a simple prompt that says, do you love, do you love this application? Do you love our company?

And a simple response might say, if they say yes, hey, we'll take 'em right to a rating. Give us a simple rating, one to five stars, et cetera. And so, product teams also use us to improve their application ratings, which obviously, you know this, Alan, right?

It's, it's super important to have high app ratings to increase adoption of your applications, whether it's on the iOS platform or the Android platform, et cetera. We also do the same thing on the website, right? So any digital experience, whether it's a, um, you know, a mobile, uh, experience or a web experience, et cetera, we can provide these in-app prompts to drive this feedback.

Um, a lot of times a product team will also say, um, you know, we wanna, we wanna launch this new feature. And so an example of this is like FanDuel, right? The sports betting company.

They want, they, they're launching new features, they're entering new states, and so they wanna make sure that they keep their pulse on their customers. And, uh, they also wanna, they, they use a refer a friend concept in the application. And so it, it is a way for them to exponentially increase adoption of their applications, um, as they roll out across the country and across the world with, with sports betting.

So again, product teams thinking about how do we drive usage and adoption of our applications? Another use case, you know, on the technical or product side would be, um, let's say they had a glitch. We launched an application.

Let's say we launched an application on Android and iOS. We had a glitch. Now a lot of our loyalty members are upset because they couldn't, they couldn't complete the transaction, they couldn't, um, get the information they wanted.

So a lot of times we'll actually create, uh, we can do segment analysis and look at what segments have been impacted by this glitch, um, and then maybe prompt them with a coupon code or some kind of a reward, um, or, you know, maybe just surveying and saying, Hey, we apologize for this. Um, what was your experience like? We want to improve.

Um, and then they provide feedback back to the product teams, um, to make sure that, that going forward, that in-app experience is much better. And so we have many cases where, um, you know, we make sure that if there was a, a, an issue at launch and there, and the ratings and reviews go down, we can actually improve the ratings and reviews through the love dialogue in our digital applications to improve that. And working hand in hand in hand with our product teams and our customers to create the right experience for their customers in the mobile applications.

So, you know, just a, just another ac uh, you know, example. Um, and then you can also use, uh, digital for just prompting customers. If you're introducing a new feature or a function, Hey, do you like this?

Um, it spends six months. So you can actually schedule when you prompt the customer. So you can do it, you know, on a, a week later, a month later, six months later, depending on when you launch an application.

And then ask the customer what, you know, what do you like about this? What new features or functions would you like to see in this application? Again, coming back to the product teams.

And then, uh, you know, another use case would be if you want to prioritize, right? And, and as you're building your product roadmaps with these product teams, understanding like, what are the key priorities and features and functions that customers really want and covet and value, um, will help drive that, that product roadmap. And then as a product leader, as a chief product officer, as a CTO, you've gotta go to the CFO to get funding, right?

For, for new features, for new products. When you have the data from customers that say exactly what features and functions are gonna resonate with them, your, your, your story and your value becomes much more powerful around the product, around the product features, around the product roadmap, and getting that funding for the product roadmap moving forward. Got it.

You know, Marty, these are all great examples and great use cases. You know, the, the, the ribbon that runs through them all is forever in a day, companies have at least given lip service or expressed the desire to understand what it is their customers want. 'cause if we know what our customers want, we could sell more, right?

Yeah. And we have happier customers at its very simplest basis, right? Thing.

That's what it is. However, it's funny what happens on the way to that happy customer, right? We, we don't often have a tool like aer, right?

That allows us to really understand or give insight into what that customer's desires are, what the customer's wants are, what that customer's experience is. And, and, and far too often, I, and this is my own experience, you know, in several companies, is we think we know, we think we know, we think we've walked a mile in those shoots, but we haven't. We've only been at it on this side of it.

And so you make fundamental decisions, and I've been there and done it. Fundamental decisions that wind up, you know, affecting the trajectory of your company and it's success. Why wouldn't you wanna know as much about your customer and their experience as possible?

Anyway, Marty Almer, as I said, is A-L-C-H-E-M-E-R. What's the website? com?

It Sure is, Alan. So people could go on there and get started, or at least grab more information. Hey, cam, we're we're over time.

I apologize. I know it's supposed to be 15 minutes. We probably ran a bit here, but that's okay.

It was, it was great hearing from you. It was great meeting you and, and, and hearing your vision on this. So, um, we'll invite you back on maybe next time, we'll, we'll go deeper.

Sounds great. Deeper, but hey, best of luck with Almer. com, A-L-C-H-E-M-E-R.

Check it out. Marty. Pleasure meeting you.

We'll be in touch. You're watching Text Drunk tv. We'll be back in a minute.