Xignite, a leading financial market data cloud provider, is looking to change the public perception of customer service in the financial market data sector. Their recent appointment of Cameron Karr as Vice President of Customer Success is the beginning to shift the organization to a greater focus on CEM and building lasting loyalty. Loyalty 360 had the opportunity to hear from Cameron, she shared with us insights into where the organization began, where it is headed and some insights into her personal customer service and loyalty philosophies.
Can you share with us a bit about Xignite’s beginnings in the industry?
Cameron Karr: Xignite was founded by our CEO, Stephane Dubois, to provide an easier way to access to market data without paying expensive infrastructure costs like the existing solutions in the market. It used to be the case that only the larger Wall Street firms had access to market data, which they used to drive investment decisions. With the advent of the Internet, a whole new world suddenly opened up. In this new world, Stephane saw the opportunity to democratize data, providing new ways for application developers, boutique investment shops and small businesses to quickly gain access to market data. This solution made it possible for developers to create the next killer app, for quantitative analysis professionals to develop new financial models, and for businesses to simply evaluate their currency exposure when exporting products overseas. In the past 6 years, we’ve grown to over 900 clients using our web services to seamlessly access market data through the cloud.
What marketplace conditions inspired Xignite leadership to lead the way in a shift to a greater focus CEM and the desire to set a new industry standard for optimizing the customer experience?
Karr: Like many SaaS companies, we measure subscriptions on a monthly recurring revenue model. In our market, we offer free trials to allow our customers an opportunity to test drive their ideas before committing to a longer term contract. It is imperative for us to make our trial customers successful so that we can grow our customer base. In doing this, we continually develop a highly-reference able list of customers for life. I often think of the role of a CEM expert in a SaaS company as ensuring the “recurring” in any recurring revenue model.
In this industry in particular, customer service standards are not as high as they are in other industries. After waiting for hours, or even days on end, customers of traditional vendors often find there is very little service offered. We feel strongly that all customers should have a higher level of service, which is why we are building out a world-class support organization.
How do you intend to influence this shift in thinking? What is the first step for Xignite?
Karr: To begin with, we have recently staffed a new team of industry experts to be much more responsive and effective in resolving customer requests. We also can offer creative solutions to address customer requirements on a real-time basis. For example, if the price of gold is not correctly reflected due to a problem in an upstream data feed, instead of waiting for our data provider to fix the price, we can insert a temporary solution to get our customers up and running on a timely basis. Our focus is on the customer, and aligning with their sense of urgency to resolve issues.
What is the employee role in supporting the CEM efforts?
Karr: As loyalty guru (and good friend) Joe Wheeler often says, we have to build a culture of loyal employees to create loyal customers. One of the reasons I love Xignite is that we have great people who are very loyal to the company and highly motivated to help customers. We are careful to hire top talent with a passion for our company and our customers. Joe aptly categorizes this behavior as having a high “Ownership Quotient” which is proven to result in customer delight.
I am also a big fan of programs that ensuring CEM is in the DNA of everyone in the organization, not just customer-facing teams. From accounting to operations, marketing to product delivery, we ALL own the customer experience. Great things happen when employees visualize that that behind every ticket, every product request and every invoice, there is a real customer trying to accomplish a real goal with our solutions. It is our collective responsibility to understand their goals and be held accountable to their success.
What do you believe will be key in optimizing CEM in the financial market data sector?
Karr: To optimize CEM, we need to take a proactive holistic approach to improving the total customer experience– not just provide reactive support. This is excellent advice for most businesses, but it’s especially relevant to Xignite because we provide market data through the cloud – not the traditional approach to data delivery. Our e-commerce subscription model requires a whole new set of tools for this industry: innovative and modern ways to help customers manage their subscriptions and data usage online. The service bar has already been set by other e-commerce leaders, so customers naturally expect to manage their data usage online just as they can manage their cell phone minutes today. Leaders like Amazon have established an expected online purchase experience, so customers want it to be just as easy to do business with us.
What is your personal customer service philosophy?
Karr: My personal customer service philosophy is to never tolerate mediocrity just because your competition can get away with it – turn your service into a competitive weapon instead. Years ago, when I managed customer loyalty for a large enterprise software company, I presented customer satisfaction scores to our CEO, highlighting how we compared against a benchmark of our competitors. He paused a moment and said, “Why do we want to be just as bad as the other guys?” That was a pivotal moment for me – our industry had a classic B2B ‘hostage effect’ driving business decisions and we all needed to change our way of thinking.
Looking to the loyalty experts, I love the way Southwest Airlines took advantage of recent industry changes in air travel. When other airlines started charging for bags, Southwest launched an aggressive marketing campaign. They turned something they already had been doing for free into a competitive advantage – simply by telling the world that bags fly free.
Taking a page from the Southwest playbook, Xignite also chooses to buck industry trends in favor of the customer. Traditional market data providers offer slightly tolerable customer service, staffing call centers with reps trained to read from scripts that are not empowered to offer real solutions. We are raising the bar to deliver the outstanding level of service that customers need— and deserve.
The key ingredient to this philosophy is to have empathy – and a great way to do this is by staffing teams who have walked a mile in the customers’ shoes. Early in my career, I managed back office operations for an asset management firm, so I know how frustrating it is to miss a split or have a bad stock price from a market data provider. I also appreciate how wonderful it can be to have a partner –not just a vendor- on the other end of the phone who understands your problem, truly cares and is willing to go the extra mile to help.
About Cameron Karr:
Ms. Karr has extensive experience building and managing Global Customer Loyalty programs by successfully combining her Six Sigma expertise with Voice of the Customer (VOC) insights to drive measurable results. Prior to Xignite, Karr was a sales and marketing executive at MarketTools. Before that, she ran Global Customer Loyalty for SAP Business Objects. Previously, she held positions in customer loyalty, service delivery, sales consulting and strategic project management during her twelve years at Advent, a leading provider of financial services software.
For more information about Xignite and Cameron Karr read the recent Xignite News Release (link)