Customer Success as a Culture — How and Why Torchlite Marketing Brings All Customer Feedback to the Table
How Torchlite CEO Susan Marshall uses a customer advisory board and a flip-the-funnel approach to build the entire product around real customer feedback.
TL;DR
- Torchlite CEO Susan Marshall takes a "flip the funnel" approach that puts customers at the center of everything the company does.
- Torchlite's entire platform was built on customer needs: the team first worked with potential customers on an agency basis, then built the product around those conversations.
- Torchlite's Customer Advisory Board is made up of five small-to-medium businesses in the Indianapolis area, chosen for close proximity so they can meet in person and react to new ideas regularly.
- As CEO, Susan relies on frontline managers and rigorous reporting tools to stay connected to customers when she can't engage directly.
To succeed with customer success at your organization, it takes incredible alignment and collaboration with the Product team. We interviewed and asked 8 industry leading product leaders their advice on how they put customers first when building new products or working on existing products at their particular companies. Today we’ll highlight Susan Marshall, CEO of Torchlite Marketing. In this post, we’ll briefly explore her approach to customer success alignment as it relates to the product team at Torchlite.
Download a complimentary copy of the eBook “Customer Success as a Culture: Product Leaders Edition” to see Susan’s full contribution and get access to other product leaders’ viewpoints.
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About Torchlite Marketing
Torchlite is evolving the way businesses go to market. By seamlessly connecting digital marketing experts and business owners through its application, they make building effective digital marketing campaigns easy – driving leads, online traffic, customers and revenue.
Why Susan Relies On Her Team To Be Her “Eyes & Ears”
As CEO of Torchlite and a former product leader at Apple and ExactTarget, Susan is all about customer success and believes in a “flip the funnel” approach where customers are at the center of everything they do.
As CEO, Susan has to rely on her team to be the eyes and ears into the customer base. While she spends as much time as she can with customers, she is building out a team of frontline managers and a set of rigorous reporting tools that help her see straight into the business and help her understand what’s happening with customers even when she can’t engage directly.
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Why Torchlite’s Entire Platform Was Built With the Customer In Mind
When asked about the Torchlite platform and how it was built with the end customer in mind, she commented, “Our entire platform was built on the needs of our customers - before we even built our platform we approached potential customers on an agency basis,” said Susan. “While we were working with them [customers] in those early days, we began to understand how to communicate and how best to serve them. Then, we built our product around those conversations.”
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How Torchlite Uses its Customer Advisory Board to Listen
Even though Torchlite is in its early days, it has already formulated a Customer Advisory Board comprised of 5 small to medium sized businesses in the Indianapolis area. Because of the close proximity of the companies - something Susan and team designed - they can meet in person and put new ideas in front of them on a regular basis. These companies were some of the earliest adopters of the platform and have been incredibly key in helping to form the roadmap. Susan commented that, “they’re very vocal in terms of feedback, but we want that from them. Our customers are everything to us.”
The customer culture is a key element to Torchlite. Susan and her leadership team instill customer focused values in everything they do. They talk about the performance of marketing campaigns and customer wins on a regular basis to ensure the focus is never lost.
Read Susan’s full contribution to the ebook entitled, “Customer Success as a Culture: Product Leaders Edition” and learn from 7 other product leaders like Susan.
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Download the full “Customer Success as a Culture” eBook collection:
Customer Success as a Culture: Customer Success Leaders Edition
Customer Success as a Culture: Sales Leaders Edition
Customer Success as a Culture: Marketing Leaders Edition
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Learn more about how ClientSuccess can help your company develop a strong customer success methodology and strategy with easy-to-use customer success software by requesting a 30-minute demo.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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