Tim:
Welcome to the CX Coffee Chat. I’m your host, Tim, Global Business Director at Concentrix. And today we are here with Nouran, Director User & Partner Success at Komoot. Hi Nouran, welcome and thank you so much for joining us. Thanks a lot. I’m really excited for this conversation.
Before I ask you to introduce yourself, a little personal story and I want to set the stage because, disclaimer here, I’m a big Komoot fan. And for everyone who does not know Komoot, Komoot is a navigation and route planning app that enables users to create and follow routes based on riding types and abilities. So if you are hiking or riding with your bike, you can map your track, upload it and share it with other users, creating really, really cool experiences and adventures out there. The company is actually, and this is super interesting, it’s a university spin out from back 2010. So 14 years already on the market, profitable since 2016. And when you look in the German tech ecosystem, it’s just such a friendly and genuine company, so unattracted by hyper growth and just, I have a feeling that you guys always did your thing and stick to your values. And yeah, like I said, big fan, looking forward to talking to you, and Nouran, over to you.
Nouran:
Yeah, I’m really glad to hear that always. I’m always super glad to hear what types of experiences Komoot has enabled for people. And I would agree that I think Komoot is a really unique company in the tech space in terms of how we approach business building and also team building and all of these other aspects. So it’s great to be here.
Tim:
Can you share a little bit about your personal journey that led you into this position you are owning at the moment? Yeah.
Nouran:
Yeah. So my background is actually pretty non-traditional. I started in the non-profit sector. And there I worked on like localization to something completely, completely different. I did do a little bit of like my first customer facing roles were very much in trust and safety. And so I didn’t really do like traditional tech support, but just the content moderation piece that was a big part of my kind of growing career early on. And then eventually at some point I made the transition to tech support. And from there I went to support operations. At the time I was working for a company in Hamburg called Jimdo. I don’t know if you’ve heard them, but then from there I moved to Komoot. And that’s when I took on the support team here and currently my role is a little bit more all-encompassing than just the support team, but that was how I ended up here.
Tim:
Okay, can you give us a little overview about your primary responsibilities and what this all-encompassing means?
Nouran:
Yeah, so I manage three different largely customer-facing but also not exclusively customer-facing roles at Komoot. One is the support team and our support team also includes all the content moderation, trust and safety aspects of our work as well.
One is our partner success team and one is content. And by content, it’s like a mixture of product content, but also B2B content that we produce.
Tim:
I have the feeling when looking at the landscape and looking at Komoot, Strava, all trails that, especially Komoot really manages to, and I don’t know whether this is true, you can tell me, great user retention and brand loyalty. So, before we dive really into the specific topic, is that true? And what did you do as a success strategy to implement and foster this?
Nouran:
I would probably say it is largely, but it was also one of the things that we really focus on as a business is the question of retention and how do we keep people really engaged with using the product for a long period of time. I think the majority of the tactics that we’ve implemented, I’d say are really product driven. So, basically, we want to create such an amazing product that really gives people inspiration at any moment, anywhere. And so because that’s the thing that we’re aiming to do and that we’re aiming to provide, when that works out, people are likely to keep coming back. So I’d probably say that that’s the biggest thing we’ve done. I don’t think that, at least in the context of Komoot right now, the role that our support team plays and the role that our partner team plays and so on, like for all that we can provide an amazing support experience.
Actually, in the majority of cases, our role, I think, is to provide more of an effortless experience so that people get the solution as quickly as possible and then go back outside. That’s really what we’re trying to enable.
Tim:
And from an innovation and continuous improvement perspective, I suppose that your team is also deeply integrated into the tech development piece here, right? Because you are getting firsthand product feedback every day, you are close to the wishes and activities of your users. So how does that work? And how do you build that system to constantly innovate?
Nouran:
That’s a really interesting question. I think from the product piece, the biggest one is actually just the ability to do a lot of A/B testing and having the open-mindedness to just experiment and try things out and see what lands and what doesn’t and then adjust based on that. But there is a certain element of, yeah, working with data is great and getting customer feedback is great. But also we have our own beliefs and values as a business of what we’re trying to enable and what we’re trying to achieve. And what that means in practice, for example, is that we have some customers who would really, really love to have way more performance-elemented features in Komoot, so things a little bit more like what Strava offers. And we say, actually, at Komoot, what we really care about is the experience, and we care about adventure. And performance is just not quite a big focus in our product, so we don’t want to have a lot of calorie tracking or this is your max speed for whatever. These are factors that we might offer at some point in the future, but they’re not really the focus of our product. So I think it’s a combination of really like taking the information that you’re getting and seeing what your customers want, but also understanding what is your vision for the business and what are you trying to build here that’s different from everyone else and recognizing that maybe sometimes that means that you can’t make 100 % of your customers happy at all times, but that’s okay because you’re still offering something unique that other people don’t.
Tim:
You are obviously navigating in a landscape where you have, your support volumes, you have a paid version, you have a free version, but you also work with you to generate that content. So my question here, so how did you set up your team and your tech stack to be probably self-service and automated, but also very personal and close? Because disclaimer here again, I’m really astonished how small your team is compared to the amount of customers you’re serving.
Nouran:
Yeah, so this is definitely a long-term process and it is still a challenge pretty much every day. It’s really the question of like, how can we build systems that are sustainable for the business, that are sustainable for our team and that are sustainable for our customers? Because ultimately, we want to provide the best experience that we can. And we recognize that actually realistically there’s only so much that we can afford as a business. So, we can’t actually provide a five-minute response time to every case that comes in all the time. That’s not going to happen. And so maybe there are ways that we can still enable that and still make that happen in some cases. So for us, I’d say that we’ve built multiple layers to our system. One is, of course, the support center, and we’ve really invested a lot in self-service there. One is an AI solution that we’re currently piloting. And we’ve also built a larger team of freelancers that support us, especially during peak season when the increase, like for us, peak season is a really long amount of time and also the volume change is really intense. So, for us to try and manage that with just our internal team was really challenging. And then at the same time, obviously, we’ve maintained our internal team that then have their own specialized set of responsibilities. So having all of these elements together and trying to make them work as best as they can is really the thing that enables us to support the number of people that we’re able to support with the staff that we have. But then it’s also a question of understanding that each of these systems works a little bit differently and might have some counterintuitive impacts. So, for example, if you’re extremely successful at self-service, your cost per ticket will go up, your average handling time will go up. And for a lot of people, this feels very counterintuitive. And when you look at your numbers, you’re like, whoa, what’s actually happening. But if you think about it a little bit more, then you’ll see that this is of course the natural, this means that you’re being successful. So it’s just really being able to understand the data that you’re working with and tailoring your approach to the types of challenges that you’re facing as a business.
Tim:
So you already mentioned some of the system thinking approach when it comes to customer experience. So I’m curious about the AI pilot, obviously, because in all of my discussions with clients, with prospects, with the ecosystem, we need to talk about tech empowerment.
So, what is it that you want to solve or what is it that you’re piloting? What is it that you are interested in to understand whether an AI solution can actually help you solve an issue or challenge?
Nouran:
Yeah. So AI right now for us, our plan is to make it customer facing. And so what we want to do is we want to have an AI solution that directly responds to customers. The biggest challenge I feel is not… I think I was one of those people for a very long time who really hated chatbots. And…
My experience of customer facing chatbots was always terrible. They were very rarely actually helpful. Often people use them really with this goal of like ticket deflection. And so it really felt like actually you’re just putting barriers in my place, in my way so that I’m not able to solve the problem that I want to solve. And that’s an extremely frustrating experience. That’s obviously the opposite of what we want to provide. I’m not commenting here. That is not at all what we’re aiming for. One of the things that I do really believe changed a lot with the introduction of ChatGPT was very much this aspect of sometimes AI can actually understand what you’re trying, what you’re looking for. And sometimes it’s really able to provide you good answers within a short amount of time. And this is the question of like, okay, we can’t provide five minute response times to our customers across the board, but maybe for a specific number of cases, we can because actually they’re like product questions that, you know, so long as we have the answer documented well enough and we have an AI solution that’s clever enough to actually understand that that’s the question that the customer is asking, then people will have a much better experience from that. So that’s currently what we’re testing. We’re in the training phase still. And so it’s not replying to a ton of people. We’re very upfront about it when people do get a response that was written by an AI. And we care a lot about that because we want to make sure that people understand when they’re interacting with our team versus when they’re interacting with an AI solution. But, I really do believe like some of the answers that it has provided have been really high quality answers. And for me, being able to solve a person’s question within a couple of minutes of when they submit it consistently is just an amazing experience that I would really want to enable.
Tim:
Yeah, that’s very interesting. I mean, we are serving more than 2000 clients globally with a workforce of, I don’t know, 440,000 people at the moment. And…
One of the questions I mean, really that is driving us at the moment and that I want to ask you is how do you think looking at your team, your typical or your classical customer support role will change in the next five years?
Nouran:
I’d say that we’ve already seen a big part of it. And I do think it gets more and more demanding over time. There’s definitely an aspect of support. So I’ve actually also spent quite a lot of time in the queue myself.
I’m like not super strategic and very separate from what we’re doing on a day to day basis. And I can already tell you there are some days when just having like what I would call easy tickets are just really, really nice for you. And they give you a real sense of like accomplishment. And you have this idea of like, hey, I did so much today. I was really productive. And I got back to this many people and it was really amazing. Realistically, that’s not I think that that’s going to become rarer and rarer as an experience and support.
And what that means in practice is that the role is going to become more demanding. It’s going to require a lot deeper technical knowledge and understanding when you’re providing tech support, because the number of cases that you’re going to be left with to handle will be the ones that really require work and effort and research and time. And then the rest of the job will be doing things like training your AI solutions and monitoring their responses, working on your support center and making sure all of the documentation is up to date, collaborating with your internal teams and getting information from product or from engineering and so on. So that’s really what the role will just become a lot more multifaceted. And that’s both fun, but actually in a lot of cases, I think it’s actually quite scary because the amount that will be required from every individual to really adjust their working style and to be able to thrive in that environment is going to be pretty intense.
Tim:
Yeah, I mean, what you’re basically outlining here is that in the future, level one will be automated. Because what you just described is like your typical level two support ticket. Yes. How do you, I mean, coming again to the fact that your team is incredibly small versus the amount of users you’re handling. So how do you, from a leadership perspective, how do you make sure to reach maximum efficiency, but also not burning them out, keep them engaged, ensure success and the best user experience in the end?
Tim:
Also an ongoing challenge. I think there are a couple of things to me that are really essential.
Number one is just realizing that multitasking is not real. And so for all, it sounds nice to say, hey, you know, we cover all of these different topics within our team. It actually takes a ton of focus and context switching from every team member to be able to do that. And that loses you time. So it’s really hard to maintain efficiency if you have that kind of system. And what that means is, the solution is that you really need to be very clear about what your top priorities are at every point in time. And everyone in the team needs to understand that. So, if right now our top priority is tickets and this is our top priority, if our top priority is the support center, then that’s our top priority. Everyone should have that clarity at all times. I think a lot of it has to do with like how you organize the work that you’re doing and a lot less with the work itself. So the perception of how challenging it is or how demanding it is or how stressful it might be is a lot in the organization. And if you try and simplify and make it easier for people to focus, then you can kind of move away from that a little bit.
The other thing is that I think you have to very consciously take your foot off the pedal some of the times. So, you cannot keep asking for more and more. You know, there’s this amazing graph that I think a lot of people have probably seen around stress. And there’s this point at the top where they say this is a sweet spot of stress. You need a little bit of stress to be really productive but it cannot be so much that you get overwhelmed and collapse. And so, you have to recognize, okay, there’s a certain element of stress that I can introduce very consciously to the job and that’s okay. And for a lot of people, this is actually motivating and the kind of thing, like the drive that they would need to get things done. For me, for example, a deadline, like I absolutely need a deadline to be able to get something done. And if I don’t have one, it’s just not going to happen. And that’s an okay level of stress, but you cannot have a deadline every day and you can’t have a deadline every week and so on.
So you need to understand, okay, this is the sweet spot, we’ve achieved it, I can maintain it for some amount of time, but not for very long. And then I have to very consciously say, okay, I can expect our productivity to go down right now and it’s okay. This is something that’s acceptable to us. So that those two things I think are quite essential priorities. And then being really, really aware and really watching people’s reactions, really observing how they’re responding to you, the moment you feel like it’s too much.
You have to really just take a step back and say, okay, this is not working. We need to do something else.
Tim:
Back in 20, what was it? 2013, 20. Yeah, I think it was 2013. The startup, I was founding with friends of mine back in the days we were owning a desk in a co-working space in Berlin. And we shared the floor with some of your Komoot team members back in the days. And I remember that, I mean, we drank coffee a lot and obviously chatted. I remember already that because we were trying to build that and we were not so really successful back in the days, that the culture you guys were fostering was very unique. So it was a very relaxed atmosphere, but you still sense that everybody was there with a purpose and purpose driven. So now 10 years later, how important is culture and a clear vision of culture and the value set for not only managing and building your own team but in the overall company?
Nouran:
I would say culture is really, really, really essential. And I think that’s super obvious for most people once you’ve been working in any kind of environment for any amount of time. I’ll take us back to the system thinking idea because I think this ties in very directly to this. So one of the concepts that I got introduced to by someone called Ben McCormack, which people can look up because he has a sub stack newsletter, was this concept of systems thinking and the idea of like a reinforcing feedback loop versus a balancing feedback loop. And the idea is that a reinforcing feedback loop is one of those that reinforces itself to think more like sales. At the end of a sale, you get like a commission, it gives you a little boost, then you can take the money that you spend and get more sales and so on. So it just reinforces itself. Whereas a balancing feedback loop is something that’s a little bit more like support. You have like an income and then you work on the income and then… the income goes down a little bit, but then you consistently have tickets coming in. So it just tries to balance itself.
In nature, this might be something like predator and prey in a particular habitat, right? There’s always a certain element of balance that happens there. And what’s really great about a reinforcing feedback loop or like understanding the difference between a reinforcing feedback loop and a balancing one is that they are driven by very different, let’s say, incentives and also mechanisms, and they have different features. So reinforcing loop can either lead to exponential growth or collapse. So, for example, if you have very few customers, let’s say you have like a pretty frustrating onboarding experience for your customers. So, you get some customers, they drop out because they get frustrated. You have negative word of mouth, which leads to fewer customers who have the same experience and they continue to drop out and you head towards collapse.
Whereas the balancing feedback loop has a kind of natural tendency to drift to low performance and it will also like always try to stabilize itself. And so in the context of support, this might be… when you have a ton of income and your volume goes up, then everyone’s output also goes up. But then when you have very little income, then everyone’s output also is very little.
And this is just a natural part of the system that you’re working with. For a lot of people, it doesn’t make sense because you see it and you’re like, OK, but we’re able to work at that kind of pace a lot of the times. Why aren’t we doing that right now when there’s actually very little to do? And it’s because it’s a balancing feedback loop and that’s how it works. And so to… counteract all of these negative aspects of any type of loop that you face, culture is a really big part of it. You need to develop incentives that change the dynamics within your team. And so, for example, if you have a culture around, I don’t know, inbox zero or something, like some kind of idea like that, and that is really a rallying cry for your team and it’s something that they find motivating and they really aspire to do by themselves, then they will.
Tim:
That’s from a management perspective, obviously, that’s… super, super interesting from a CX perspective even more.
Looking at the ecosystem and all of the other scale -ups I talk to and work with globally, usually you have this transition from a founder led company to a management led company. And I kind of have the feeling that what you just described, a manager that is coming in from the outsource might have a different idea about this feedback loop and how to place it in versus culture. So do you think the fact that… also, the founders of Komoot are still active and running the company has a part in that?
Nouran:
I would say absolutely. Komoot is a very, very strongly founder led company still today. I think that there are some, there’s always like positives, advantages and disadvantages to everything. I think one of the struggles is that the experience, especially if you’re hiring pretty senior executive level people into the company, then this, the dynamic between the externals that you hire, and your co-founders is always going to be a little bit tricky to manage. But what that does mean in practice is that we do have a pretty strong sense of culture and we have a pretty strong idea of what’s the type of business that we want to build, what are the types of people that we want to hire, what are the types of teams that we want. And I think that having that direction at least makes it easy for everyone to understand what we’re aiming for. So yeah. There’s definitely, there’s probably going to continue to be a challenge as we scale. And right now we’re scaling quite, quite rapidly. And so there is an element of like, the founders might have a super clear idea of how they want something to be done. But as you have more and more layers of management, the more diluted that image can get. So there’s always a challenge of like, how do you really keep that vision across every layer of management so that the people at the very bottom also have the exact same perception. But that’s just one of the challenges that you have to face as you scale.
Tim:
And now I’m looking at the time and we want to keep this coffee chat format. Thank you so much. This was a lot of incredible input in a short amount of time. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you all for listening!
This was the CX Coffee Chat.
