EP 142: Growing Organically Through Unconventional Channels with CozyCal Co-Founders Chris Tan & Kat Lu

Published: July 24, 2018, noon

b'The Nitty Gritty\\n\\n* What inspired Chris to start building CozyCal, a simple and easy-to-use online scheduling tool for small business owners and solopreneurs\\n* Why Kat Lu decided to leave her healthcare consulting career to work on product development and customer support at CozyCal full-time\\n* How Kat and Chris manage their roles in the company as a couple (and how their backgrounds influence how they operate)\\n* What channels they use to grow CozyCal including the WordPress Plugin Directory, webinars, podcasts, and affiliate programs\\n* Why they use Intercom over email for real-time feedback and communication with their users \\u2014 and how that informs their development process\\n\\nKat Lu and Chris Tan never set out to build a SaaS company\\u2026 but when a friend needed an easy way to schedule appointments online for her naturopathic practice, Chris decided to develop a minimalist calendar to automate the process for her.\\nThat service is now CozyCal, a simple-to-use online scheduler, that helps users generate leads and grow faster. After seven months of working on the product part-time, they decided to go all in. Kat left her job in healthcare consulting to become CozyCal\\u2019s product and customer support manager while Chris continued to build out requested features as the head (and only!) developer.\\nIn this episode, Kat and Chris shed light on what their product development process looks like, what it\\u2019s like to work together as a couple, and all the interesting ways they market and promote CozyCal.\\nWe release new episodes of What Works every week. Subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode.\\nHow they use Intercom for onboarding and real-time customer support\\n\\u201cIntercom made a huge difference for us. Prior to that, we used Zendesk and it\\u2019s a more passive channel of communication between us and the customers. We have to wait for them to send an email to us and then we send an email back. There is no real time communication. With Intercom, we\\u2019re able to talk to users in real time and gather feedback.\\u201d \\u2014 Kat Lu\\nCollecting user feedback is essential for SaaS companies like CozyCal. Customers who use the product every day know the product well, then share their ideas to optimize and improve it.\\nThat\\u2019s why Kat and Chris recently switched from the email helpdesk tool, Zendesk, over to Intercom. Intercom makes it dead simple to communicate with customers in real time and collect feedback. In fact, the pair joke that they answer customer requests faster than they respond to each other\\u2019s text messages.\\nAnother feature they love, Kat says, is Intercom\\u2019s onboarding campaign feature. So far, they\\u2019ve used it to auto-send messages throughout a new user trial period. \\u201cIt really makes a huge difference to us,\\u201d she adds.\\nHere\\u2019s an example of how a 10-day onboarding campaign works:\\n\\n* Day 1: Welcome message in app and email\\n* Day 2: Examples of how other people use CozyCal\\n* Day 5: Reminder of additional features, like payment and Zapier integrations\\n* Day 9: Prompt user to upgrade to the Pro Plan\\n\\nAs you can see, they strategically educate users over a period of time in accordance with the trial \\u2014 and they do it all from Intercom.\\nUsing the WordPress plugin directory to market and grow CozyCal\\u2019s user base\\n\\u201cOne of the terms of being in the WordPress plugin directory is that, if you\\u2019re selling a SaaS, you need a freemium plan. That\\u2019s one thing that\\u2019s tricky. The people who come in through WordPress may not be the easiest to convert \\u2014 but just having that...'