Customer Centric Startups- Walk the walk.

On my last trip to Massachusetts I had an opportunity to sit down with the co-founder of Wistia.com, Chris Savage. We went to Crema Cafe, his favorite coffee shop in Harvard Square, and just talked about analytics as a whole. His company has a powerful, yet simple, platform for Video Analytics. So what does that mean-video analytics? Well, when you show a video to your customer, or anybody who is actually viewing it, video analytics allows you to track the interest level and effectiveness of your video. “What were the drop-off points? What section did most of your users actually watch?” That’s valuable information to any organization, especially a sales organization that needs to see how their sales cycle is going. What stood out to me in the conversation with Chris is that he’s extremely customer-centric. It’s a theme that is always on the forefront, “Think about your customer.” However, Chris and his team actually carry out this mantra on a day to day basis. I’ve been able to witness this firsthand because I signed up yesterday to use their product. There is great attention to detail with their user interface. They’ve made the sign up process as well as the usage process very simple. Another thing I love about their site is that they have a chat widget available for live support. Actually, the support they provide is rather remarkable for a young start-up company. Sometimes, start-ups get lost in trying to “close the sale,” losing sight that once they’ve sold the customer, they need to then fully meet their needs in order to get referrals, turning one customer into many customers. Chris and his team are always there to answer questions. It’s just another reminder that customer focused consumer brands on the internet are the ones that will succeed. Wistia isn’t the only video analytics company, but they are the only customer focused video analytics company that provides a powerful and simple tool. I would suggest that anybody with videos on their website check out Wistia. You can use this program called Lecturnity.com that allows you to make screencasts.  Once you make that screencast, you can upload it to Wistia. In fact, you can use any video that you already have say you have one on YouTube. What’s cool is that Wistia also hosts the product. I know that in order to be successful in my new company, I need to walk the walk–that customers will always come first and their feedback will be heard and taken into account.