From communities to chatbots, Christian Vaughan is always on the look-out for the next opportunity. We talked to the CMO of disguise about how enriching the customer experience can help accelerate growth.
Tell us about your role at disguise
disguise was born when our founder, Ash Nehru, had a vision for delivering show-stopping audio-visual experiences. But there was a snag: the right technology didn’t exist. So Ash decided to build a platform from scratch and bring together a team of Trailblazers to take it to market.
I have a background in marketing and digital strategy and I take a customer-centric approach to transforming technology to drive greater value. I worked with Fernando Kufer (CEO) and the executive team to extend our usage of Salesforce to give us a 360-degree view of our sales, marketing, and customer service activities.
What’s next for disguise?
We have a ‘the show must go on’ attitude at disguise; we go to great lengths to ensure a performance is a success. We’re launching new products all the time to enable our customers to do cool cutting-edge stuff, like augmented reality and mixed reality within live production environments. We’re also expanding into new markets – by 2021, we want to have a presence in 100 countries.
How will you help disguise meet its growth goals?
If you want to grow your business quickly, you need to give your customers a really great experience. I am constantly looking for new ways to delight our customers and to understand them better. We use Salesforce to survey both our customers and support agents to get a full picture of their experience and gauge their satisfaction levels. We are also making greater use of self-service features, such as chatbots and communities, to empower our customers and partners. Automating and digitalising more processes will enable us to continue to deliver a great service while growing our business and customer base.
We caught up with Christian at Salesforce World Tour London earlier this year to hear about some of thease approaches....
How does it feel to see your Salesforce vision come to life?
It’s the highlight of my day: when I come to work and hear my colleagues excited about using Salesforce, it feels amazing! We have a culture of kaizen – continuous improvement – that we apply to not only our products but also our processes.
With Salesforce, we can keep tapping into new technology to unlock greater business value. Nothing beats seeing someone’s face light up when you show them how you can make their life easier or how performance metrics have improved.
What advice would you give to new Trailblazers?
I’ve worked on several Salesforce implementations and I’ve learnt five main things:
- Clean up the quality of your data – if you put good stuff in, you will get better insights out.
- Define your business processes before you start and identify your weaknesses
- Establish a change management framework with a strong focus on people
- Start small with just one solution or just one user group – you can add more functionality and value over time
- Find out what your customers want – it influences everything from product development to service delivery
By delivering a great experience, disguise will be able to retain and attract customers across the globe, which will fuel growth. Find out more about how disguise delivers show-stopping customer service here.
