Podcast: HYP3R CEO Carlos Garcia interviewed by Mighty Capital Partner Johannon Olson

Hear from the leader as one of Mighty Capital's portfolio companies shares his experience delivering customer delight through product:

• The power of authentic customer delight
• Driving efficiencies for growth with a personal touch
• Staying true to your company's mission and core values

The Power of Authentic Customer Delight

At every product organization, I believe the core mission for every team is to obsessively focus on customer delight. Specifically, your product should be so easily understood and appreciated that your customers will freely share it with one another. On the marketing side, it's critical for brands to engage with users in a way that is also shareable and ultimately enjoyed as part of their daily routine.

In my current role at HYP3R, we are seeking to do the same with location services. We exist to leverage the power of location services to integrate with marketing activities in ways that drive customer delight. Simply put, there's a reason why our logo has a heart in the middle. Our organization genuinely cares about delivering a marketing experience for businesses and users alike.

That said, it's safe to say that many product and marketing teams are straying away from this approach.

The reason why is that it's hard to scale a business while maintaining a personal touch. For example, we all want to leverage tools and services that can automate our daily operations. In many ways, these techniques are leveraging tactics that marketers have used for many years. The difference is that automation removes a degree of personal touch. As a result, the elements of customer delight that make products compelling become afterthoughts. Most importantly, customers are more perceptive and demanding than ever. With this, they can easily discern truly authentic messaging from an "auto-generated" campaign.

From my perspective, we have to realize that being human is just as important in business as it is with our personal relationships. As a result, it's critical to find ways of integrating a personal touch into practices that simultaneously help businesses scale up for success.

For example, I think we can all agree that receiving "cold e-mails" is one of the most intrusive communications that we get in our inbox. In other words, these messages often seem irrelevant or overtly transactional. With this, I focus on empowering our team to figure out ways in which we can bring customer delight to practices that are normally devoid of personality. For example, we think critically about subject lines and body copy that align with the person on the receiving end - rather than just sending the same copy to every contact. Ultimately, every business must understand that you can't stray too far from what made you successful in the first place. In my case, I boil it down to the "give first" mantra. Specifically, you have to demonstrate value before you even start talking about dollars and cents. In the end, this approach will enable your team to focus on the customer delight that makes your product special.