You know that time you ordered something on Amazon (OK, those gazillions of times)? After clicking “Place Your Order,” you received an email confirming it. Then you got another email letting you know your purchase shipped. You could track that order online from the shipper to all the points in between until you received one last email that your package was on your doorstep. 

Amazon has figured out that when customers feel like they’re in the know, they’re more likely to be satisfied with their experience. Even when something goes wrong (like when the plants I ordered went out of stock, and they had to refund me), they let you know in real-time what was happening and what was being done to fix it. 

That kind of robust, transparent interaction is exactly what Silicon Slopes standout GuideCX believes can revolutionize client onboarding and project management. And since 2018, they’ve been helping companies like SaasOptics, GoTo (formerly LogMeIn), NEOGOV, and Propertybase do exactly that. 

Transparency provides clarity and eases stress

“Clients panic when they don’t know where they are in the process,” says Peter Ord, GuideCX founder and CEO. “Our product enables our customer to provide a white-labeled customer portal to allow their clients to follow along, be accountable to deliverables, and have that Amazon-type customer experience. If things are missed or 3rd parties don’t do what’s required of them in a timely manner, they have a clear understanding of the overall process. Generic project management tools tried to solve this in the past but struggled because there was no customer-facing portal.”

Just like when we tap on the Lyft app to see our driver’s proximity, GuideCX helps its customers provide clarity every step of the way. Say, for example, you have an implementation initiative at hand. You’re working through a new multi-month project with a client. You might have three groups with several players involved: your company’s staff, your client’s stakeholders, and third-party consultants. 

At the outset, project managers can set up project milestones in a Kanban-style format. Within each milestone, your project manager can add individual tasks, assign responsibilities, add notes, attach documents for review, and more. As the project progresses, tasks can be tracked by status (e.g., not started, in progress, blocked, complete, etc.), and the platform sends out emails with status updates, assignments, and deadlines.

The entire experience is white-labeled, so your branding is intact and the UI is user-friendly. Everyone knows what their roles are. If anyone misses a step, there are delays, or something’s blocked, it’s all transparent. The entire team can have visibility and work together to get things back on track immediately.

Getting some skin in the game

Ord pointed to a cultural shift that has made the GuideCX approach so effective. “There’s a unique thing that’s happened,” he says. “Ten years ago, if you would have asked customers if they wanted to participate in the process, they would have said, ‘No, you guys do it all. I’ll sign a contract, and in six weeks, I’ll get my product or service. I know it’s going to take that long, and I’ll accept when it gets here.’”

But today, he says, we live in a society where everybody wants to be in the know. “On my last Delta flight, I was notified when my bags were boarded onto the plane. Why would they do that? Because thousands of customers are worried about their bags when they have to make a connection or if they checked in late,” Ord says. “Today’s customer expects to be on the same page at every single step during the process.”

Like the implementation tools, GuideCX’s tools can also walk clients through the onboarding experience. The platform solves common onboarding pain points: the need to send constant manual reminders, poor sales-to-onboarding handoff, lack of forecasting, long time-to-value, and high risk of customer churn. 

“Companies are asking the customer to do more and more, and that adds to buy-in for the product or service they’ve purchased. The byproduct is that you’ve won the renewal in the first 30 days,” Ord says. “In the SaaS world, clients usually sign one-year agreements. Typically around nine months in, you reach out and say, ‘Are you happy?’ But happiness happens within the first 30 days of the experience.”

Gaining momentum

GuideCX is growing. In fact, the company just secured a $25 million Series B round of funding led by Meritech Capital Partners, with financing participants that included new and previous investors Album VC, Prelude, Sorenson Capital, Epic Ventures, Orchard Ventures, and more. 

Much of the company’s growth was accelerated by the pandemic, which Ord is quick to frame with compassion. “We grew substantially, but we also understand a lot of companies struggled, and we don’t want to minimize that struggle,” he says. “The pandemic did make our product more relevant. As workers went home to work, collaboration became that much more difficult. It wasn’t just collaborating within your own team—when you add external parties and customers you’re trying to onboard and work with that are also remote, it adds another layer of complexity. Transparency solves that problem. Understanding who has the ball and who’s in charge of what can be that much more efficient.”

GuideCX’s funding will enable the company to continue the success of its platforms, which Ord is also quick to point out can always be made better. “The more customers you add to your platform, the more feedback you’re going to get,” he says. “There’s a great book I love, ‘The Mom Test.’ The concept of this book is: Don’t just rely on your mom for feedback because if she’s anything like my mom, she’ll always say amazing things about you. The way to get feedback is to sell beyond your geographic location, outside of your own country. Now we have clients in India, the Philippines, and the UK. They have valuable perspectives that companies in the US wouldn’t have necessarily given us. Customers help us stay ahead of the curve. If you stop growing, you stop getting that valuable feedback in the different markets.”

For project managers and customer success specialists worldwide, that kind of openness to change is good news, as GuideCX’s commitment to ongoing improvement can only make their jobs easier.