How Hotjar’s VP of Product took the “Jobs To Be Done” framework to the next level, to build a customer value driven product strategy.

Megan Murphy

|

VP of Product

of

Hotjar
EP
88
Megan Murphy
Megan Murphy

Episode Summary

Today on the show we have Megan Murphy, VP of Product at Hotjar.

In this episode, we talked about the importance of delighting customers in small ways no matter the stage or size of a company, how Megan took the “Jobs To Be Done” framework to the next level, and how she’s trying to build a more human product strategy at Hotjar.  

We also discussed why growth at all costs can set you up for failure, how today’s product managers can keep up with change, and make sure they’re building for their customers today but at the same time future-proofing for tomorrow.


Mentioned Resources

Highlights

Time

Delighting customers in small ways: The common denominator that has held true throughout Megan’s career in product.. 00:02:18
How Megan took the “Jobs To Be Done” framework to the next level, to build a more human product strategy for Hotjar. 00:03:42
Why growth at all costs is not healthy for any company. 00:09:53
How today’s product managers can keep up with change. 00:12:01
How to build for your customers today, but also future-proofing yourself for the future. 00:15:31
Making your customers heroes at their job, can cut churn. 00:21:16
Acting on customer feedback: A muscle we need to train. 00:25:22
How would Megan fix churn and retention from a product lead perspective in 90 days. 00:25:22
What's one thing Megan knows about churn and retention today that she wished she knew when she got started with her career. 00:30:43

Transcription

EP 88 | Megan Murphy Interview

Andrew Michael: [00:00:00] hey, Megan. Welcome to the show.

Megan Murphy: [00:00:02] Hi, thanks for having me.

Andrew Michael: [00:00:03] It's great to have you for the listeners. Megan is a director of product management and Hotjar a behavior analytics and user feedback tool that answers questions about your users, that traditional analytics cons by combining user feedback and behavioral analytics.

It's also, obviously the place that I've been working at for the last three and a half years. And you've obviously heard many episodes, where I reference Hotjar prior to our HR, Megan was head of product management in 26 and global product lead of Scott's Kenna's car hire product. So my first question for you, Megan, is you've worked for various companies at various stages and sizes.

and you've also worked across like B2B and B2C customers and also served like SMB to enterprise. What would you say is the common denominator that has held true in your role as product lead? No matter which company you're at.

Megan Murphy: [00:00:50] Yeah. I would say the most, the thing that I've tried to string along with me, no matter the stage of the company or the size or the nature is, delighting [00:01:00] customers in small ways.

I think, especially in the B2B space, it's often an afterthought and I. Care so much about that, but it's actually one of the five product principles that I've articulated for our team and how we build our product at Hotjar. so yeah, I think like attention to small details and not missing any moment to express the brand, have a fun and playful tone of voice, or of course, whatever is appropriate for the brand language.

Andrew Michael: [00:01:28] Yeah, I definitely see that as well. I think when it comes to B versus B to C like on the B2B side, we typically tend to be very bland in our communication. We forget that they're actually humans at the end of our products. and we almost try to take the more formal routes, nine times out of 10.

but ultimately I think like at the end of the day, it's. Yours is it's people using your products and services and actually one of the things. And one of the main reasons I mentioned to you as well, that I wanted to get you in the show was I loved your approach to the Mo the most recent update. [00:02:00] Now that we've putting together for the product strategy at Hotjar was around how you went about, looking at sort of the jobs to be done of each individual persona that we have, and then taking a bit of a zoom out and looking at what would they hire to do in the first place?

And. this is where I want to start today a little bit, just diving to the silver deeper. And what was the idea behind this? talk us through a little bit about the thought process and the methodology that you took, through this process.

Megan Murphy: [00:02:27] Cool. So at Hotjar we, we say that we serve four main personas and those personas match very well roles of, and disciplines in within tech.

So we say, for example, that we serve digital marketers. We serve product managers, UX designers, et cetera. and when we think about how we build our product on a day-to-day basis, we use jobs to be done to frame. what is the context that somebody would get value from this? but I think that we've traditionally looked a little bit too [00:03:00] narrowly at, okay.

As a UX designer, I want to XYZ. And sometimes we forget that those XYZ tasks and jobs to be done are actually in the broader context of the UX designers role and their career and their life. And I think in. Work and in life I'm not afraid to let my head go in the clouds a little bit and to zoom out.

Because I think that's the only way that we can actually understand how the daily decisions that we make tie up to the big picture. So in terms of the product strategy, one of the first things I did was look at the job descriptions of, the roles that we serve at Hotjar what are the actual job listings on LinkedIn?

What do they say that those roles need to do? And then I looked at five job descriptions. For each discipline and then created this aggregate job description based off of the common denominator that I saw for [00:04:00] each listing. And what I found was that ultimately all of the roles and all of the personas we seek to serve, seek to, synthesize a bunch of inputs, like a bunch of noise and signals make sense of it, given their specialty.

And then tell this very compelling story. That's going to convince their product manager and their other stakeholders that they have to prioritize the thing that they found, because they found some little golden nuggets among this sea of noise, and now they need to move it forward. So no matter the discipline, that's basically what we expect of everyone like synthesize and become this very compelling storyteller.

And that was really the frame for the product strategy. th that's how I set the context. Because I think that we lose sight of the fact that our product, not just we at Hotjar, but I think in the B2B space, generally, we often forget that. People really care about how they perform in their roles and how [00:05:00] that gives them validation as professionals and how that makes them feel good about themselves when they wake up in the morning and look in the mirror.

And it's not the entire thing that makes them feel good about themselves, but it is a big part of it for many people. So like getting back to this human sense is the, is the guiding light of the product strategy that I recently, I think it was about a three-month exercise for me at Hotjar.

Andrew Michael: [00:05:23] Absolutely. I think what I love about it as well is that obviously we typically, we talk about jobs to be done a lot. And, what are they trying to achieve with your service or tool? But what you've actually done is I've taken a step a little bit further back and looked at, okay. These customers, these people that we are serving, what are they being hired to do?

And in the context of their roles, like what could we do to help serve them? And I think a lot of times you think about you want to create a product that it becomes like makes your users super heroes in the sense that it gives them super powers. but often you look into the job they're coming to you for as opposed to what are they [00:06:00] trying.

To achieve within their current roles. And then, taking the lens you saw. I loved that it was almost just like another perspective, bringing into it, but bringing a lot more personal perspective, as opposed to what are you trying to achieve with Hotjar today? It's more like taking that step back and saying, okay, this person hired for this role needs to achieve these things.

And this is how we going to help them. achieved them.

Megan Murphy: [00:06:21] so shows some white space in the market. So if we see that, for example, a product manager, take five job descriptions, find the common denominators among them and then create this ultimate job description. then actually what I did was I said, okay, line by line, like this bullet point, the product manager needs to prioritize, blah, blah, blah.

Then I looked at what are the. Products out there that help product managers prioritize. So then I got a better sense of all of the products that each of these roles are living in and their day to day. And I recognize that our biggest competitor, our biggest existential threat doesn't lie in the direct composition of those who are [00:07:00] doing things like Hotjar offering products.

I caught it. Actually, the biggest threat is where the people we seek to serve are spending most of their time. And what are the gaps in their workflows? what is, what are the scraps on the floor that nobody's paying attention to? That's where we can really help those roles be heroes in their jobs.

Andrew Michael: [00:07:20] Yeah, very interesting. Like another really good lens as well. Just being able to see who your actual competition is because often, sometimes we try and compare ourselves like directly to the closest competitor who has the same sort of feature set and, delivers a very similar product offering.

But more often than not, it's like your direct competition is the alternative psych, what are people not doing? But this again is even another step further is looking at okay. Solving fairly similar problems to what we are trying to do just from a different perspective. And these are actually some greater, maybe competitors that we're going to be facing as we go.

And we start growing and, moving on like our trajectory we're talking about before the show to the a hundred million Mark, Which is something like one to [00:08:00] do to bring up as well with you. Cause we each had a little bit about it, but this sort of growth at all costs. And I'll show you the question before the show.

Like what was the common denominator you saw between all the different companies that you worked at and the B2B B2C, SMB 10 surprise. And it came down to this. Maybe you want to talk a little bit through that, like from a product managers perspective, like how have you seen this common denominator across the different companies that you've worked at?

Megan Murphy: [00:08:25] I think the biggest common denominator in my perspective is, the competition that's out there. Like it doesn't take the shape as you alluded to it doesn't take the most obvious shape. It's usually something that you can't even, you can't even articulate. I like the, Reed Hastings quote. Netflix is competition is actually a bottle of wine.

So that illustrates the point. but I think the common denominator for me, or like my approach to both contexts and B2B and B2C is that, Growth at all costs is actually not something I want to, that's not really the direction [00:09:00] I'm marching in. but growth to stay alive I think is often necessary because, if we don't, keep growing and keep serving the evolving needs of our customers, then the reality is that some other smaller startups will pop up and do exactly that. And they'll land and expand. And then we won't be very useful anymore for the people we , seek to serve. So I think that like growth at all, costs is not super healthy.

I've worked in a, an environment that I think was, did, Pursue growth at all costs. And it's really taxing and it's really, it can be really harmful to the people who are trying to contribute to that growth, but growth for the sake of adaptation, staying relevant, staying alive, evolving, like it's pretty Darwinian, but I do think it's true.

If you don't continue to grow and adopt, probably will die or not be relevant to anymore.

Andrew Michael: [00:09:59] For sure. I [00:10:00] think especially like the rapid change in the market continuously, like the rapid change of innovation building, like in the, specifically in the software and like soft space, like the competition is immense and the change is immense and the technology advancement is immense.

as well, like you mentioned this Darwinian, factor, and you constantly need to be making change. In your opinion as well. Like how do you see product managers being able to keep up with this change? what do you think they should be doing to be effective in this world?

Megan Murphy: [00:10:33] Yeah, within the product discipline these days.

I think a lot of things are evolving. and that's probably true. Even outside of today. But when I think back to when I started in product, like the success criteria for me, and my role was so different than what I would consider success criteria for one of the product managers on my team. So an example of this is that I was expected to write really detailed user [00:11:00] stories with Gherkin syntax, QA scenarios.

I laugh about it now because I think. I don't even know if people have heard of Gherkin syntax these days. And it's certainly is not something that I've seen practiced in a really long time that implies a lot of things with it, That implies the product is a discipline is less about, being so explicit and descriptive, such that it would diminish the empowerment of the engineers on their team.

So in the spirit of today, that's no longer what's expected. but I also think that the product managers of tomorrow or whatever year in the future will have very different roles than they do today in order to well evolve as a discipline and also keep serving the needs of their customers. For example these days, if you do a search on LinkedIn for, either people or jobs for research ops, design ops, product ops, you'll see this growing and [00:12:00] growing.

And within product. I think what that means is that a lot of the manual work that it takes to build out this connective tissue between different products you use every day. And how do you assess priorities and how do you make sense of all of the different user feedback and insights that are flowing in via various channels that you use to collect them?

I think we can expect that product ops will keep. Emerging as its own path within the discipline. I think we'll see more automation take place and remove some of the manual work that product managers spend a lot of time on today. And I think that means that product managers needs to position themselves as, Trend forecasters within their domain to look out for the signals that are around them, make sense of them by drawing patterns and understand the broader context in which that affects the mindset and the consumer behavior and expectations by looking at trends of their business, [00:13:00] and their customer's needs.

Andrew Michael: [00:13:02] Yeah, I think this is a topic as well, that I've really enjoyed, like watching you at Hotjar I think is obviously you're really enjoy, topic of trends and, had a really good, interesting talk that I attended that you gave to the company as well on the topic, but yeah. The one thing, I think when it comes as well, like to product development and product management in general is you always fighting between this balance of building for the here and now and the customer's demands and the problems that they have today versus like where the market is going and where your product should be moving in order to meet that market in the future.

And I think this is also why there's this concept of, Product market fit. You never really have. It's completely, it's moving targets and you're always trying to move and chase and, get as close to it as possible. So yeah. In your opinion, like how, as a product manager, can you effectively between the here and now versus where the market is moving so that you're ensuring that you're actually building for your customers today, but then [00:14:00] future-proofing yourself for the future.

Megan Murphy: [00:14:03] first, I think it requires that you have leadership who recognizes this and gives space for higher risk, who gives space for anticipating evolving customer needs, evolving business models, evolving, packaging and like pricing mechanics. So I don't want to, I would be remiss not to mention that.

I think that. Product leadership and general like executive leadership absolutely needs to recognize this. And ideally they set the tone such that, okay. X percent of our teams and our investment will go into keeping the lights on, which means keep our existing customers happy, make sure they have a great experience, cover our costs.

And. And then Y percent goes into, here are some risks that we're willing to take and how they slice that and bucket it into like [00:15:00] low risk, high risk, whatever is up to them. But I think that acknowledgement is often lacking completely. And then there's just this expectation that every product team is going to have both the psychological safety and the financial flexibility to figure out how to.

To create like a well-balanced portfolio of a mix of their own product and the type of risk they take. So I think leadership plays a huge role in this and at the individual contributor level for, regardless of the level, but for individual contributors and product managers, working with their product squad, I think it takes a little bit of Gusto, like a little bit of courage and bravery to recognize this and say, okay, if we can anticipate these customer needs, what is the lowest risk way we can validate?

validate something. And if you're a high traffic, if you're blessed with high traffic and you have a ton of customers, then maybe you can run a bunch of, the split tests to help [00:16:00] validate what you think will be the next thing. Even if there's little behind it, I'm thinking like a fake door or something like that.

but if you're a smaller company and you don't have the volume to help you validate things through statistical significance, or if you just recognize that it's not appropriate to use that. then I guess, going out and literally being with customers, talking to them. We always, I hear so much discourse about that in the product community, like obsess over your users and talk to customers, blah, blah, blah.

And I think it's all great in spirit. But one thing that surprises me is just how little of it is actually lived out. So like my first couple of weeks at Hotjar, for example, I spent. I think three weeks interviewing 15 non-customers and I chose non-customers because they wanted to see how our target customers, somebody I would love for them to use.

Hotjar what are their problems? What are their pain points, their challenges, what are they doing? How are they solving it? Like I specifically chose to [00:17:00] look. Outward, but you might own discovery because it helps set the tone for my first couple of months at Hotjar on what the real sentiment is of the type of people we want to, we would love to do business with you.

And I just think we need more of that for

Andrew Michael: [00:17:15] sure. I think this is a big point. What's one of your favorite questions to ask in an interview.

Megan Murphy: [00:17:21] Oh, let's see. I. Yeah, I guess I loved, I love to do like screen shares where they show me, I asked what's a five-star product experience that you can think of, show me how you use it.

So that gives me a sense for what actually brings them delight. Cause usually the things that they say bring a five-star experience are nothing to do with the value proposition. They're usually things that speak to them as human beings and that elicit some sort of emotional connection. so I'd love to do that.

And yeah. I just love to ask them, what's your favorite product that has nothing to do with what we're talking about today. Okay. Tell me about that. Oh, [00:18:00] really? When do you use, I love to get in there, get in their psyche and understand, when do you use this? How does this make you feel?

I'm much more about, much more about that than yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Michael: [00:18:11] Nice. so flipping to like the top pick is obviously of the show in general. So a lot of what we've been talking about has a lot of relevance and I think like specifically as well around product strategy, understanding your personas better and their jobs to be done, ultimately like being able to serve them and give them a superpower means they're not going to want to get rid of your tool and you probably going to have a customer for life.

But what is one thing as well? I think. Having worked across these different types of companies, and from a B2B and B2C background that direct now, like when it comes to retention and churn, is there something that you see in common and is there something that you see that's completely different?

Megan Murphy: [00:18:49] Sure. Yeah. in the B2B context, like I'll definitely put my ignorance on the table. Hotjar is my second experience working in [00:19:00] B2B product. So my first experience was a very young startup that I joined at seed stage, and I stayed there for about a year until they were preparing to raise their series B round and, Given the nature of that product, it was B2B.

And they went for enterprise clients from day one with two year, two year contracts. So I actually wasn't there long enough to see what it would look like when a customer turned. but I did, it was a great wake up call to see a fully sales driven roadmap and the tail wagging the dog on what one big customer.

With a brand name would want. and so in the context of Hotjar, I would say I'm more, leading by learning then leading by my own experience. So I will plug your podcast, which I've listened to at least a dozen times to learn from other leaders in the space. but I think generally like, One thing that [00:20:00] we need to do at Hotjar, for example, is better understand the goals of the people we seek to serve from day one.

not try to guess, not try to infer, not assume based on the role that they select upon account creation, but really just come straight out and ask them, what are you here for? What can we do for you? So last quarter, our product team and our customer success team partnered up for what I believe might have been the first time at Hydra that we did personalized one-on-one onboardings.

so we had, I think, 15 of them. And there were 30 to 40 minute phone calls or zoom calls rather, where we just asked that question exactly. And then walked people through and gave them a tailored onboarding based on exactly what they said that they wanted from us. And I forget who said this, but.

Rings true to me, do the unscalable so that you can figure out the scalable, right? So we did those one-on-one onboardings, and now we want to bring it to life through better qualitative informed onboarding [00:21:00] experiences that we can scale because our, maybe our business will, or won't in future allow a personalized phone calls for every single person who joins us.

But it would be great if the product actually walks them through that. And I think that. Like showing that we can help them achieve their goals, make them heroes in their jobs. I think that's the biggest bet that I have to play right now and , how to cut churn.

Andrew Michael: [00:21:24] Yeah, I love this and not the sexist as well.

I think it's really interesting because typically do things that don't scale is like something that you give advice to a startup just getting started. And I literally had a discussion with David today earlier, David  around this topic of how he thinks they should have done this earlier from day one, was focused on that.

Really nailing that onboarding experience, like doing things that didn't scale to begin with to have it because spending that time early on would have probably put the company in a bit of a different position to where we are today as well. But obviously I think there's a lot of other success that came out of not doing that in the beginning.

but very interesting [00:22:00] as well. I think a point to make on this is that so often you hear this things like  do things that don't scale, but it doesn't matter what stage of growth you really are. Like, you can always be doing these things that don't scale to figure things out and then automating and putting things in place.

Megan Murphy: [00:22:12] yeah. And also doing things that don't scale is I don't think that's something, any company regardless of their stage or size should be ashamed of the fact that I. In my own onboarding. I chose to do user interviews with 15 people. that's not scalable. It doesn't mean I'm going to try to be a user researcher or, replace that discipline or anything like that.

It just means that gives me really rich context, personal context. That's not something I read and absorb, but that I do. And I feel like I'm a human in the moment with the human on the other side and listening to their struggles. there's nothing that can replace that. So I'm all about frequently doing things that take time, because they'll inform in the future, that kind of guidance that I'm equipped to give and the credibility that [00:23:00] I'll have in giving it.

Andrew Michael: [00:23:01] For sure. And I think it's also maybe the weights that we give to some of these things in our own mind. Like sometimes you feel, I think the waste of time concept is a really bad thing. So I think like typical other areas, when you think about like product planning and putting the time to do the research and really understand the problem, like in a lot of people's eyes, I think as well, they feel like this planning and research stage is a waste of time because they're not actually doing work.

But when you can actually make that mental shift in your own mind to say, okay, this is actually working. If anything, this is probably the most important work I'm ever going to be doing because I'm building the context. I'm understanding I'm getting a better picture of the product. I'm actually speaking to a human at the end of the day.

And they're telling me and guiding me instead of me making assumptions or trying to like, determine the why by looking at the data and seeing what's happening. yeah, I think that's probably some mental gap that a lot of people need to make in order to realize that this is actually important work.

Megan Murphy: [00:23:54] I think one reason for that though, is an unfortunate reality that I've [00:24:00] seen in a couple other, places where I've worked, which had good intentions.

But this problem is that sometimes you spend time in research and customer interviews and discovery and you take the time, but then. Nothing builds on that. And it sits there and collect dust because it's not actioned. And this is a problem because it creates waste and that's the thing we should all be seeking to cut in every place that we can where it makes sense.

So I think that actually that's the problem is that we don't have this like sensible, Feedback mechanism. That's okay, I go hear something from a customer and I do something about it. And that's the muscle that I think we all have to train a bit better because that's, I think that contributes a lot to people thinking it's wasteful as, because they don't or their conditions haven't, or their experience.

Hasn't conditioned to them to expect anything to come out of that work. And that's what I, at least that's not the way that I want to work. That's not the way the kind of product org I want [00:25:00] to run.

Andrew Michael: [00:25:01] Yeah, absolutely. I think that, like you said, it definitely as a case where you can spend months doing research and then not acting on it, but being able to see some immediate results.

I think one of the things we've seen actually good success with that Hotjar and I've noticed is our customer advisory board that we put together. and we have maybe. 20-30 people. I'm not sure how many people are inside it now at this point in time, but there's a channel in Slack that we have where customers are able to provide us feedback on the product or service.

And, this was one of the first times where I was actually amazed at the speed at which we're doing things in serving. cause when you actually hear a complaint or a specific piece of feedback and then an hour later, or the next day, The ship, like a change has been shipped. I think that's really powerful.

And it's probably what you're saying is that missing connection of like actually going out, getting the feedback and then acting on it. But more often than not, like we don't have the direct channels or the power, or like the right frame and mindset. When we go into this work to begin with check action there.

Megan Murphy: [00:25:57] Yeah,

Andrew Michael: [00:25:58] there was a good quote, actually, some, [00:26:00] team members, or I mentioned it the other day and, he thought we were joking with him when you mentioned it. But I think, I can't remember where it's from, but it was basically the concept of less haste more speed. so in the sense, like a lot of times, like you hear this move fast, break things and so forth, but, if you spend a little bit more time in the beginning, a little bit doing research, like that speed that you get.

in the long run, is immense as well. And you end up saving yourself a lot of pain and struggle in the future.

want to save some time for questions that I ask every guest on the show. Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario now that you joined a new company and China retention is not doing great to that company.

and you been tasked by the CEO to try and turn things around and you've been given 90 days to make a dent. What would you want to be doing with your time in those first 90 days to make a difference?

Megan Murphy: [00:26:55] I think I would probably. Roll up my [00:27:00] own sleeves and work with, our user researcher and do a couple of interviews with customers at different stages of their life cycle.

So I would look through to see what constitutes healthy, customer experience, what were the conditions that created that, and then. Likewise for unhealthy customers. I would probably help on the phone myself. I say on the phone as if I use the phone, I always mean zoomed by that. I want to hop on some sort of video call with a customer who was willing and I would.

Like sales is not a natural gift of mine at all. So I really don't have to worry about coming across as pushy or salesy. And I would just ask them like, Hey, what's up? what's better. Tell me, let me see it, let me understand it. And I would just listen and I would do that like that. Doesn't have to take a long time.

Those conversations could literally amount to a total of five hours. And then I would start working with the team [00:28:00] to. Prototype and to create the fastest, Mechanisms to validate some ideas on, okay. If this is the problem that we were able to identify with, like a common denominator across all of these conversations, what are our top X best ideas, best opportunities to solve that problem, let's go for it.

if it were like really constrained to 90 days, And I assume this would be the biggest problem we'd face. I would probably go all in and rally the team behind a narrative that says, this is the greatest threat that we face right now. I know that you typically work on it, own this other thing, but can we all agree that this is both important and urgent?

Let's go do this together.

Andrew Michael: [00:28:44] I'll give it that focus that it needs. Yeah. I think that alignment is key when it comes to, like solving for and retention, like having a central focus, having everybody understand like what the diagnosis of the problem is and having a clear [00:29:00] strategy. And again, narrative I think is super important.

next question then on the same similar topic is what's one thing that you know today about churn and retention that you wish you knew when you got started with your career.

Megan Murphy: [00:29:15] It's all about activating and onboarding and the early days like the first taste. I think it's all about that.

Andrew Michael: [00:29:24] Yeah, I absolutely love that.

And I absolutely echo that as well. I think so often when we think about churn and attention, like the immediate response is to go to look to those that have churned and try and figure out, what were those reasons and how can you save them? But yeah. It always comes back down to the beginning is first of all, did you get the right customers through the door?

were you selling the wrong premise and your product had a different fit? And then second of all, were you actually able to get them to that point where they were receiving value? Because ultimately if you're having customers through the door and they're coming with the intention of solving a problem and you help them solve their problem, they ultimately shouldn't.

And more often than not it's that [00:30:00] maybe we have Bedford customers or it's that we haven't really onboarded them effectively. And Yeah,

Megan Murphy: [00:30:04] the last, I think earlier in our chat here, I mentioned that. Like pursuing growth at all, costs is something I've observed before. And I had a short stay at, at another company at a B to C company where that was indeed to be, the approach.

It was like grow. Let's spend a ton on advertising and paid spend. And, let's invest so much in brand marketing. The product itself never live up, lived up to the brand promise. And so the churn was astronomical. And the wisdom was lacking to recognize that it was because the product failed to live up to the brand promise that actually drove all of this.

So when we would do churn surveys and try to understand the culprit, Like it was holding a mirror up to our faces and telling us that, okay. It's because, you promised this [00:31:00] and you didn't deliver, or I don't see the point of this anymore. I don't see why I'm paying for this when the free product is good enough.

I'm not getting the value that I thought I would. And so I think that if leadership doesn't have. The, humility to face the music and recognize that overselling and under-delivering is a path to really high churn. then there's probably no room or no latitude for the actual product teams to do much about it.

And, I ended up leaving there anyway for. Reasons that were, more aligned to my values and my professional goals. And that's what brought me to Hotjar, but it was a case in point, like for me, it wasn't, I had this great example to teach me what to do. It was more like I had this anti-pattern that taught me what not to do.

So I think that's more how I've learned.

Andrew Michael: [00:31:47] Absolutely. And sometimes it was a good lessons too, as well, obviously not the most pleasant places to be at or thing, but you do learn a lot and there's a good, fast learning curve there, I think as well, one other theme that she's [00:32:00] definitely been central to what you've been saying today is that.

In order to effectively increase retention and tackle churn. There really needs to be strong alignment and strong education with the exec team and the leadership of the company. Because ultimately if you don't have buy-in and if you don't have, Direction being set by them. It's going to be a very strong, uphill battle for you to try and make a dance and to try and make a difference.

So I think first place as well, he isn't even, maybe before, like starting with onboarding is ultimately actually like really identifying within your company that yes, we do have a problem and making sure that there's buy-in and alignment across the board from everybody to realize, okay, this is something that we really need to focus our efforts on, and we need to be aligned and focused in order to make a difference with it.

Megan Murphy: [00:32:45] Yeah

Andrew Michael: [00:32:46] again, how we've run up on time now, is there any final thoughts you'd like to leave the listeners with anything they should be aware of in terms of your work, how they can keep up to speed with what you're working on.

Megan Murphy: [00:32:58] Sure. Yeah. People can [00:33:00] find me on LinkedIn. I'm one of the many Megan Murphy's out there, but I'm the one who works at Hotjar.

and in terms of parting thoughts, just, thanks Andrew, for sharing stories of so many interesting people. I'm really happy to be here.

Andrew Michael: [00:33:14] Awesome. Thanks so much again, it's been an absolute pleasure having you today and wish you best of luck now, going forward.

Megan Murphy: [00:33:20] Thank you.

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Megan Murphy
Megan Murphy
About

The show

My name is Andrew Michael and I started CHURN.FM, as I was tired of hearing stories about some magical silver bullet that solved churn for company X.

In this podcast, you will hear from founders and subscription economy pros working in product, marketing, customer success, support, and operations roles across different stages of company growth, who are taking a systematic approach to increase retention and engagement within their organizations.

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