Ep. 186 Devin Miller: Responding to customers right away has grown our business better than any-thing else.

Published: Oct. 26, 2020, 9 a.m.

b"

Devin is an entrepreneur, patent and trademark attorney, and an Intellectual Property expert.

He specializes in protecting startup and entrepreneurial companies with IP Legal Advice, setting them up for success in their business! In addition to founding and running Miller IP Law, he is the co-founder of several startups including a multi-million dollar startup for wearable glucose monitoring.

Devin has worked with the likes of Amazon, Intel, Red hat and Ford. He is passionate about helping businesses and has a drive to educate and entertain listeners with years of experience as a calm speaker, and veteran podcaster.

 

Most passionate about

  • My main focus is on what's called Miller IP Law. It's a patent and trademark law firm that helps startups and small businesses.
  • Another focus is on startups I founded: one in the wearable space, another that is a software as a service startup, and a couple of others that are getting ready to launch.

Best advice for entrepreneurs

  • The first thing to do is define who your customers are\\u2014not broadly saying, \\u201cWe want to sell our product to everybody who will buy it,\\u201d but saying, \\u201cThis is who we want to really serve.\\u201d This is your best first step.
  • For our company, startups and small businesses are where we want to focus because that's who we enjoy working with. You get to have a lot more impact. They are a lot more fun to work with.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers

  • We built our system so that it would automatically generate invoices based on some of the information we provided. Then it would send the invoice to the client or do automatic follow-ups.
  • We didn't understand, or we didn't account, for every possibility. We had one customer who received the wrong invoice. It was the wrong amount and it wasn't in the right name. It was just a flaw in the system that we've since corrected, but back then the customer said, \\u201cHey, this isn't the right amount.\\u201d
  • LESSON LEARNED: It's finding that sweet spot: \\u201cHey, we're automating what we can but it doesn't impact the customer touch, that customer-centric focus.\\u201d Today, we make sure that we can maintain those human touches where they're needed.

Biggest success with customers

  • Responding to customers right away has been one of the biggest impacts. It has grown our business and had a better customer impact than anything else.
  • We set up a system; 90% of the time we respond right away, and 95% of the time we respond within 30 minutes. We have a strict drop-dead rule: 100% of the time you respond by the end of the day.
  • I can't count the number of times a client has reached out and said, \\u201cHey, thank you for your quick response,\\u201d or \\u201cHey, it's great to get a quick answer; you guys are so much more responsive.\\u201d That's probably helped us grow our business.

Devin\\u2019s recommendation of a tool

  • We use HubSpot a lot. It's how we track the customer experience.
  • HubSpot has been our customer relations management tool since our first year. It's a bit more expensive, but it accomplishes what we need.
  • It provides a wide variety of ways to track the customer journey, making sure we take care of them. We can automate the things we need to and make sure we're not automating things we shouldn\\u2019t.

Devin\\u2019s one key success factor

  • The one factor for me, personally, is the ability to press forward. There are going to be good times, bad times, easy times, hard times, and everything in between.
  • What has driven our success, or made the difference throughout everything, is the ability to say, when everything is hard, \\u201cIt's not easy but I'm going to continue to press forward. We're going to figure this out. We're..."