Ian Hillis: Hello everyone and welcome to PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments Podcast brought to you by Payrix and Worldpay. I'm your host Ian Hillis and today I'm talking with Andrea Kando from TouchBistro about strategies you can use to keep satisfied customers on your software platforms. Welcome to the show, Andrea.
Andrea Kando: Great, thank you. Nice to be here. I appreciate you having me on.
Ian Hillis: We are thrilled to have you on. And audience, we're in for a real treat today. I want to spend just a minute giving you an overview of Andrea's background so you can understand the depth of knowledge she's bringing to this conversation. Andrea Kando is a Chief Payments and Strategy Officer at TouchBistro, an all-in-one restaurant management software provider with more than 16,000 customers in over 100 countries and a full suite of cloud-based solutions for front of house, back of house and guest engagement needs. She joined the organization in March of 2022 and leads TouchBistro's payments business which processes more than 14 billion in annual volume across multiple processors and a hybrid of commercial and technical models. Andrea also leads the strategy function within TouchBistro, orchestrating the company's assets and ensuring TouchBistro's internal and go-to-market strategies are positioned to support its annual growth targets. Prior to joining TouchBistro, Andrea was EVP and head of product marketing and communications at Paya, an integrated payments provider. And prior to joining Paya, Andrea spent 14 years at First Data Corporation, now part of Fiserv, most recently as Vice President of Commercialization and Client Experience, and held progressive leadership positions within First Data, including Client Care and Operations Programs and Strategy Lead, Chief of Staff, Head of Enterprise Financial Services, Client Training and Documentation and Head of Contract Center Training and Quality. She is passionate about mentoring and building the next generation of technology leaders, serving as committee director in multiple organizations including Women in Technology. I don't know what more you want from an expert on this particular topic. Andrea, welcome to the show again. We're thrilled to have you.
Andrea Kando: Thank you. Thanks for the kind words.
Ian Hillis: So, before we get started here, Andrea, can you tell our audience a little bit more about TouchBistro and the customers that it serves?
Andrea Kando: Yeah. So just to layer in on some of the things that you, that you already mentioned, Obviously, you know, 14 billion in annual processing, we process in over 100 countries and just to double click on the sort of the solution that we offer, we have full end-to-end, business management software for restaurants and restaurateurs which offer, kind of, we think about it in three pillars. Right. The first is the front of the house capability, which is really everything, if you think about a restaurant environment, all the things that happen with, you know, menu management, order management, table management, payments, and then, the second pillar there is really around the back of house. So that's everything that happens. Everything from fulfilling an order and getting the order to the kitchen and out the door all the way through to all of the management, reporting, staffing, payroll, accounting, et cetera, that a restaurant would need to manage their business. And then the third pillar, which is really critical is also, you know, we think of that as customer engagement. And so that is really all of the loyalty solutions, marketing solutions, reservations, online ordering, and additional value-added services that help restaurants acquire new customers and keep them coming back in.
Ian Hillis: Fantastic. Personally, I have watched TouchBistro grow over time, and it's truly been impressive the growth you all have been able to achieve across all of this. So, this is a fantastic conversation, the right person to be having it. So, let's start there. Andrea, we're here to talk about retention. What is your working definition of retention? How do you define it? And honestly, why should software platforms care about it?
Andrea Kando: Yeah, well, they should care. I think mostly it is simply because without customers, there's no revenue. Right? But, just to broaden that definition a little bit more, I think about retention as sort of the systematic process of how software companies keep their customers keep their revenue flowing and continue ensuring that they can board new customers to the platform while keeping their existing base.
Ian Hillis: That makes sense. And keeping people on obviously means preventing churn. So, if people are churning, what are some of the common reasons that that happens in the SaaS world?
Andrea Kando: No, that's a great question. And listen, I say, there's controllable churn and then there's uncontrollable churn. Right? Controllable churn is things that the software company can control. Things like dissatisfaction. How do you make sure you don't lose your customers to competitors and there's also sort of a subset of that too, which we think about as silent churn, which is where customers may still be paying some version of their subscription, but, they're not necessarily using your solution, and they may just be waiting for their contract to expire or something else has happened where they're not using it. So, it's not just around making sure that customers are paying, you want them to also obviously use your solution. And then you know uncontrollable churn is really, I mean this happens in any business, go out of business, catastrophes happen, whatever the case may be, where really, it's not necessarily something that a software company can control. It's just that sometimes we lose customers, as a result of a number of other external factors beyond our control.
Ian Hillis: So, if we think about breaking into controllable and uncontrollable, how do you address and create strategies? I would imagine uncontrollable churn probably a little bit more difficult, but maybe there's some interesting pieces there. How do you think about this as you address and create those strategies for retention?
Andrea Kando: Yeah, I think when you really focus on the controllable churn, uncontrollable, there are some things you can do. It's very specific to the vertical for example, if a restaurant goes out of business, are you selling it to somebody else? And then does that actually open up a new opportunity to sell to board that customer but in terms of the controllable piece, right. When you think about kind of how the different paths to revenue occur, you can have revenue from your recurring revenue from your software subscription. You can have recurring revenue from hopefully if you're a software company, you've got integrated payments and you're earning revenue through that integration. And then of course you have one time revenue associated with could be things like hardware, professional, primarily professional services. If you kind of double click on the recurring and the payments you, if you want customers to stay on your platform, you should be very proactive about it. And so, what I mean by that is there should be kind of a very dedicated function to making sure that, number one, you understand your customer's life cycle. So, sell them the right thing. Some of this sounds very basic, but it's actually the more mature software companies get, the more they can home in on this. But sell them the right thing at the right time, get them boarded quickly, but on their timeline. And make sure that includes whatever it is you're trying to monetize, including payments, and then depending on the type of software and the type of customer, continue to train your customer on the value that the software adds. So, make sure you stay engaged and let them know, the second piece on that proactive piece is really like, look at your usage data. So, you really should be monitoring how, when, and where customers are using your solution. And like what is it? A low usage customer compared to a high usage customer compared to your middle. And then as you start to understand that usage data, like look for triggers that could indicate attrition risk. So, you know, are payments starting to dip? Are you seeing less activity with the software? Is there a particular part of the software that's no longer being used? And you can try to, you know, the more you look at that data and analyze it, you can try to assess some patterns and kind of understand where you can take corrective action, to avoid churn. Ah, and then you know, I think finally you need to really monitor sentiment. So, look for high risk cases or contact types, you know, understand what delights customers, do more of it and make sure that you really just understand your customer's feedback and, and roll that into, you know, your broader business operations. So that's kind of the proactive side. I think on the reactive side, I mean again, unfortunately, uncontrollable or controllable, like this is just a fact of life. So, if you do lose customers, which you will, you know, try as much discovery as possible to retain the customer. But know when to just process the churn. Right? So again, if it's somebody who has just experienced some sort of, you know, traumatic event like a hurricane or a wildfire or something like that, I mean there's times that you can talk to them about and at times that you can't, maybe you put them into a different sort of nurture campaign post churn so that you can attempt to win them back later on. So, I think, yeah, I think if you kind of create like this 360-degree view, and have, you know, really focus on the proactive, retention strategies hopefully the intent there is you're doing less of the reactive.
Ian Hillis: That makes a lot of sense. And one of the topics you brought up there that really resonates is the difference between like I call an immature software platform, but a software platform that's just getting its feet under it and starting to grow versus someone that's been around a while. What are some of those “no regret standing this up”? You're going to grow into this over time versus moving into that PhD level of sophistication. If we first start with the newer platforms that are just trying to set the baseline strategy that they can grow into, what recommendations do you have there that kind of set that foundation for them?
Andrea Kando: Yeah, it's a great question and it's obviously, it's always a journey and it's a marathon, not a sprint. Your customers are constantly changing, your software is constantly changing. So even advanced or more mature software companies are constantly looking at this stuff too. But I think if you're new, the first thing you need to do is really just understand your customers and start there. If you don't have a journey very clearly outlined. Right? So, you should have a customer experience outline for every step, every touch point that your customers go through. So, start with how you market and position your solution. Then flow it through to the sales and contracting experience, whatever that looks like, whether it's fully digitized, whether it involves a salesperson, whatever the case may be then think about how you onboard that customer, how you install and activate, the solution for the customer, how you train that customer, and then finally sort of how you service, support, and even bill that customer. And so, I think if you can, if you have a clear solution, if you have a clear view of that, then you can really start to develop your long and midterm strategy to help address customer attrition.
Ian Hillis: You bring up a great point around. You constantly focus on the voice of the customer, understanding their sentiment of those pieces. And certainly, there's a lot of data you can use to make some assumptions around all of that. And look at the quantitative lens. Some of the things you're talking about here kind of hint at a little bit of a qualitative lens. I'm wondering if TouchBistro does anything you would say that's particularly insightful around. How do you capture that voice of the customer that may not show up in a slight dip in payments volume or something? How do you ensure that you have the pulse and voice of that customer ongoing?
Andrea Kando: Yeah, it's a great question. Look, and I will say I think recent AI and other tools have really helped us with this. But I'll call it the not AI way of doing it is really, you're just, you're mining data across your service organization. You're looking at cases, you're looking at tickets, you could be looking at, you could be looking at usage data. You could be, I mean we have obviously in our development shops, right, we've got, people who are dedicated to monitoring things that I call them “things that go bump in the night.” Right? So, any unusual experiences or performance on the platform, whether the customer notices it or not. Quite frankly, sometimes they don't, or oftentimes they don't. But it helps us really sort of react quickly and adjust where we need to. We also do sort of on a regular basis we will, look at, kind of call it like a word potpourri or a word salad. Of all the different, the different reasons that people are contacting us or that we're collecting sentiment across social media, internal sources, external sources, et cetera, and really putting all that together to understand where our customer sentiment is and what's important to them.
Ian Hillis: Andrea, you've given a lot to contemplate, both from first timers getting into this and for the more mature. Any final parting pieces of advice for software platforms out there that are thinking about either expanding or refining these strategies, things you had wished you had known earlier on?
Andrea Kando: I think, like I said, that once you've got that journey mapped out, that customer experience, it really does, I'm such a firm believer that everything starts with the customer, because if you keep your customers happy, then the business is happy and healthy as well. And so, if you have a journey mapped out, then really, you're not going to get it right the first time and again it'll continue to evolve. But having a North Star and understanding where you're going to improve, and then really making sure that you've got a vision in mind in terms of which metrics you will measure when, and how. And really just aligning all of that data to analyze where customers are happy and what makes them leave.
Ian Hillis: Fantastic. Andrea, I can't thank you enough for spending time with us in the audience today. Incredible insights and we're grateful for your time.
Andrea Kando: Thank you. I appreciate the time. And you know, I'm available for anybody that has questions.
Ian Hillis: Where can people reach you if they want to learn more about you and TouchBistro?
Andrea Kando: They can find me on LinkedIn. Andrea, last name, Kando.
Ian Hillis: Fantastic. Well, thank you. We want to be a trusted resource for software providers who are out there trying to make sense of embedded payments and finance to help them get the education they need to make the business decisions their customers and investors will thank them for. Thank you to everyone joining us today. And I look forward to continuing the conversation in our next episode.
