Q&A with Daniel Rodriguez, Chief Marketing Officer at Simplr.ai

You invest so much energy and effort into solving an important problem for your client, but often you don’t get to see the results because you’ve moved on to the next client, or it could take years for your recommendations to play out.

MEDIA 7: Could you please take us through your professional journey?
DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: I started my career in strategy consulting, which was exciting and challenging but ultimately unfulfilling. You invest so much energy and effort into solving an important problem for your client, but often you don’t get to see the results because you’ve moved on to the next client, or it could take years for your recommendations to play out. I then moved on to investment management, where I could put my analytical skills to better use in allocating money. What I didn’t realize is that in finance it takes even longer to see the fruits of your labor and the benefits you’ve brought to clients than it does in strategy consulting!

While working in finance, I began moonlighting for a wine tech startup. That’s where I got hooked on the adrenaline rush of startup life, where a company can grow in a matter of months. I went to business school to transition my career into startups and haven’t looked back. After failing to get my own startup off the ground at MIT Sloan, I joined Seismic, a B2B enterprise SaaS company, as head of marketing and I’ve been leading marketing efforts at high-growth tech companies for the past 9 years.


M7: How does Simplr help companies expand their customer service capacity and engage customers with speed, empathy, and precision?
DR: What we realized is that there is a new customer, the NOW Customer that lives online and has massive expectations around CX. Think Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka: “I want my golden goose, and I want it now!” Old, rigid service and support models--think BPOs that require months of hands-on training or old, traditional contact centers that value agent productivity while sacrificing customer satisfaction--simply could not meet the demands of the NOW customer. So, we created a new model combining people, technology and intelligence to exceed their demands and give our customers an unfair advantage over the competition. At the heart of our NOW CX platform is the Simplr Human Cloud Network. It’s a completely distributed workforce with no fixed hours or wages and can scale to meet our customer’s needs any time of day, no matter the demand. They are empowered by a machine-enabled platform that provides guidance and brand-specific information needed to offer an exceptional customer experience every single time. This means no traditional training or coaching for our specialists. Instead, they are smarter and faster right out of the gate. Not only does the platform uses AI to ensure and scale the service quality of our entire network, but it also includes business intelligence to provide customers with the insights they need to proactively improve the overall service.

The fact is that consumers have little patience for anything other than consistently exceptional experiences when it comes to how they interact with brands.

M7: Congratulations on Simplr being shortlisted in the 2021 SaaS Awards Program in the Best Product for Customer Services / CRM category! What was the strategy behind achieving this prestigious recognition?
DR: Thank you! We are very proud of the recognition. Ultimately, we were able to effectively showcase to the award judges the incredible potential of NOW CX. The fact is that consumers have little patience for anything other than consistently exceptional experiences when it comes to how they interact with brands. As we conveyed during the awards process, Simplr stands to transform how customer service is delivered to meet the expectations of the NOW customer. In the meantime, we're upending the much-maligned and stagnant contact center model.


M7: According to you, how have customer demands and requirements changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and how has Simplr adapted to meet these changes?
DR: COVID-19 was a sea change for CX. It forced a lot of brands to rethink how they interact with customers to consistently foster incredible experiences, or risk losing them for good. In fact, according to a survey we conducted, 27% of consumers said that customer service wait times on digital channels during COVID-19 caused their brand loyalty to waver. It makes sense: Consumers continued to need goods, but almost all physical store locations represented a potential threat to their health, so they moved online in droves. And if a familiar brand couldn’t offer a seamless and easy buying and post-sale experience, it wasn’t a question of whether the consumer would switch to a new brand, but how quickly they could find a competitor. When we look back on the pandemic, one of the major consumer trends that will have resulted from it will be changed in brand loyalty across industries. I guarantee that the brands which offer incredible customer experiences have benefited the vast majority of the time.

You must give 10 times more to your customers than you take. You provide real value in your content. You provide real opportunities to celebrate your customers’ successes. You help them succeed in their own careers on a daily basis.

M7: What are some of your preferred marketing channels given your target customers?
DR: Simplr represents a new way of thinking about CX and how brands should invest in it. So, a lot of our marketing efforts focus on educating our customers and the market as a whole about what this next phase of CX looks like. We do a lot of webinars and virtual events on that topic and invest heavily in thought leadership and educational content that is truly beneficial for the customer and not just a Simplr promotion. We also want to provide opportunities for our customers to communicate with one another and learn about what works and what doesn't in their CX programs. To that end, we've launched CXLife, a CX community dedicated to ensuring that they can lift each other up and become the true leaders of NOW CX.


M7: What is your marketing mantra to stand out in an overly saturated MarTech space?
DR: You must give 10 times more to your customers than you take. You provide real value in your content. You provide real opportunities to celebrate your customers’ successes. You help them succeed in their own careers on a daily basis. It is only through the consistent value that you develop a true community of customers who will then help you tell your story and speak your praises. And if you do it effectively, they’ll begin speaking your praises without you even asking. That's when you know you've built a truly valuable brand that can cut through the noise.