At woku, we don't usually go looking for prizes, contests or raising capital. Our vision has been clear from the start: to grow through sales. But this time, an interesting exception emerged. The Santiago Chamber of Commerce (CCS) opened a competition for startups, and finalists would receive six months of free membership. For the winner, the prize would be $3,000,000. Our motivation to participate was not money, but rather the opportunity to connect with companies and expand our network at CCS. Last week we received the news that we are among the five finalists.

Why is this opportunity worth it?

Reaching the final is a great opportunity to connect with companies looking to improve their customer experience, showing how woku solves complex problems directly and easily. So, together with Fernanda and Paula, we are getting ready to present the pitch in Santiago this Thursday. This is our first time in a contest of this kind with Fernanda, and we decided to make the most of this opportunity.

Refining Our Message: Two Key Issues¹

For this pitch, we wanted to make the problem and the value proposition clear. Although I recently wrote about the problems we have detected with woku in customers and prospects (here the post: The Challenge of Managing the Customer Experience in Latam), we decided to summarize it in two specific points: the bombardment of surveys and questions with no impact.

1. Survey Bombing: Customer Fatigue

For more than 24 years, response rates in surveys have fallen from 70% to less than 30%. This is not surprising, considering that we are in an environment where every company wants to know our opinion, this causes people to experience a bombardment of surveys. This phenomenon has been accentuated even in e-commerce, where a major player in Latin America and another in Chile, report less than a 10% response rate in surveys. The situation is that survey overload is not only exhausting for consumers, but it also prevents companies from obtaining useful and consistent data.

A skeleton in front of an old computer, surrounded by cobwebs, with the text 'NO MORE SURVEYS PLEASE'. The screen shows the message 'waiting for reply... 'symbolizing customer frustration at the excess of surveys.

2. Questions with no impact: Data that doesn't lead to real decisions

The quality of the questions in the surveys is another problem. Numerical scale answers often don't reveal the reason behind a rating, leaving managers with incomplete information. What does an 8 in satisfaction mean? Is it because of the ease of the platform, the speed of the service, or something else? Often, the questions are poorly formulated, biasing the customer, leaving us with data that is not useful to understand what really matters and to act with impact.

These problems of saturation and lack of clarity result in feedback systems that don't really help improve the customer experience. And it's serious, because 89% of companies compete based on that experience, but only 6% believe that traditional surveys serve to make decisions that impact the business. This is part of the reason why companies like Starbucks stand out in a sea of competitors. They do manage to understand their customers to create a real connection, offering such a unique service that their customers prefer to pay a little more instead of going with their competitions.

What brings us to the final?

Knowing that the problem is real and that our solutions can make a difference motivates us to take this step. Now all we have to do is do our best in the pitch and show how woku can be the essential tool for those who seek to understand and improve the experience of their customers in a definitive way.

Spoiler: Tomorrow I'll write about how these pains connect with our value proposition.