Transcript:
I've been fortunate enough in my career to be part of some really amazing companies that experienced extraordinary growth at sort of different phases on their life cycle. And one thing that is really consistent about that experience is at some point the growth surpassed our ability to deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Um, product-market fit, especially in software tends to drive incredible sales volume, which is great. And you should celebrate that. You know, it can be some of the most fun times in a professional career when you're going through that with a company, but the impact can be from time to time, damage to your existing customer relationships.
Why does that happen? It's easy to start pouring investment into sales and marketing. Especially when things are working and you're getting those numbers and you're, you know, you're crushing the forecast, all of those really fun things, but if you're not taking the time to invest in the customer success or experience side of the business, you're leaving that foundation of customers in the dust.
You start to see turn rates that are, you know, 2%, 2.5% or 3%. How do you outsell that? At some point, that's not going to be a problem you can solve just with sheer muscle in the market. I was very conscious of that and starting Widewail, in fact, you can see in our strategy we started with a really detailed high touch managed service that operates at a lower margin than what a software company would expect.
And we do that purposefully to create that great relationship. Right? So we, you know, we had a few hundred customers before we introduced software at Widewail. And those existing customers were first to raise their hand and say, I really got to try this software. Right. So that, that experience was very informative for me.
I also think of the voice of our customer. So I talk a lot about Prime Automotive and Koons because they joined Widewail in our first six months, taking advantage of Widewail Engage and said to me, Matt, you know, we know you've got a good thing here, please don't grow too fast. And to hear that, right, to hear that from a customer is powerful.
It means they've been through that as well. Right. I've spent my career as a technology partner, vendor, supplier, however you want to term that. And here are customers that I've served in that same period of time, 10, 15 years in previous roles, coming to me and saying, we know that you guys can do this, but don't do it at the expense of our relationship with you.
We've seen it too many times. That will remain a grounding force in our strategy. So as we invest in, you know, following the seed round that we just closed, we're investing across the company to ensure that we cement those fantastic customer relationships.
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