Can a focus on customer experience really drive business success? On this episode, Steve Martocci, the visionary behind SUPCO and Splice, shares why he believes prioritizing user needs leads to groundbreaking innovations and a loyal customer base. Plus, he describes the process to capture attention, build interest, and drive action by truly understanding your users.Tune in to learn:(0:00) Intro(1:37) Customer Experience as a Competitive Differentiator(3:01) Building Products for Yourself(6:35) Balancing User Experience for Different Segments(8:09) Inspiring New Users Through Experts(9:57) Creating a Diverse Set of Opinions(11:45) Navigating Customer Feedback and Intuition(13:08) Learning from User Feedback(14:50) Prioritizing Features Based on User Needs(16:22) The Importance of Team Collaboration(18:34) Building and Leading Teams(21:04) Creating an Environment for Innovation(25:31) Maintaining Customer Connection as You Grow(41:41) Building Trust with Customers(45:29) Recent Impressive Brand Experiences(49:35) Advice for Customer Experience Leaders –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their AI strategy with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org
Chapter 1: What is the importance of customer experience in business?
Feedback can be really helpful in showing you what to prioritize. But it's so important not to lose that intuition and that intuitive sense of people don't know they want this. And that might be something that just blows their mind and makes them want this product even more. But they didn't ask for it. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood.
Today, I am so excited to have my dear friend Steve Martosi on the show. Steve is a serial entrepreneur with many successful businesses under his belt. GroupMe, a group messaging app that was sold to Skype, Blade, the helicopter company you may have heard of, Splice, a royalty-free music platform for creators, and now Supco, a companion app for your supplement routine.
Chapter 2: How do you build products for yourself?
We are going to dive into creating businesses with the customer in mind and really dive into Steve's genius around business building. And I will say that I have had a front row seat as he's been doing this on his latest venture because his co-founder and CEO of Supco is actually my partner, Nick. So...
I have definitely gotten to learn a little bit more about Steve's leadership style and how he builds businesses, and today we are going to dive into all of that. Steve, so great to have you on the show.
I'm excited to be here, and I'm also really curious what Nick gets to say behind the scenes on this, because you get the unfiltered Steve feedback, so you know exactly where to go with your questions.
Chapter 3: What strategies help balance user experience across segments?
Perfect. We'll spill the tea for everyone here. Yeah. So Steve, you've built many successful products across various industries, social networking, music production, transportation, now health tech. And I'm really curious to know how you think of customer experience as a competitive differentiator for you.
I don't think about it as a differentiator first. I first think about the product that I want to exist. Right. Usually I'm the first user of the product or at least, you know, want to have something come into existence. I generally don't like to build things that already exist in the world. Like, so I don't usually even have something to, to kind of look at as a, as a comp.
Chapter 4: How can you inspire new users through expert opinions?
So for me, I think it really just starts is what's the experience that I want. And then I think once you've kind of nailed that, you start thinking about what's the experience for others and the other kind of, you know, different segments of a market.
Yeah. I mean, you being the original user, I can imagine gives you a major step up because you are, you were building this for yourself. Like I know with Supco, for example, both you and Nick are those like extreme supplement nerds where you have spreadsheets on spreadsheets of all the supplements you're taking and the nutrients and you really were solving a problem for yourself. Yeah.
And so I'm curious to know how you've kind of then translated that into a business, because it's one thing to say, hey, I have a problem, but it's another thing to go out and actually build the thing.
Chapter 5: What role does customer feedback play in product development?
Yeah. And look, I think in all the business, if you go all the way back to GroupMe, right, GroupMe was made in 24 hours at a hackathon to go to a concert with our friends. And it was just something we needed, you know?
And then, you know, the same weekend I was using it for the concert, my co-founder was using it for his family, kind of like who was having a baby, you know, delivered and keeping them updated. This was before group text messaging existed. So I think that like the real thing is to start with our core message. Problem.
Start with the thing that Nick and I need and then really just kind of like start seeing where it falls apart. Right. You give it to a give it to your mom and she doesn't understand what the word stack is. And you're like, oh, OK, well, maybe we have to tailor that down. Or, you know, you kind of say, I just want to get biohackers right now.
Chapter 6: How to prioritize features based on user needs?
or I'm just going to focus the initial release on this core market. And then think about them educating the world about these things like terminology and stuff as you go. So, you know, in every company, it's been a bit different. In Splice's example, I wasn't really the first customer because I am not the kind of hardcore musician.
And that was, I had to do a two-hour research session with, you know, a music producer to understand their workflow to validate a hypothesis I had. So, you know, it's a little different every time. But you go with your gut at first and you kind of, you know, even if it's not pretty, it's got to be functional. And then, and then you can kind of, you know, spice it up and adapt from there.
Chapter 7: What are the keys to effective team collaboration?
It's actually interesting, the concept of like, what's the group that you go after? Because I think a lot of businesses struggle with this. It's like, do you go for the super users and the super users only in the beginning? Or Like you said, are you trying to educate people and open it up to a wider net? How do you think about that? And like, how do you make that decision?
Look, I think one of the principles for me that's really important is I like to build tools that are extremely powerful yet extremely easy. Right. Like there's like there's something that you can do, especially when you're not just trying to recreate something that exists. You're not just trying to make something 10 percent better that existed before you're trying to create a whole new category.
And so, you know, that gives you the kind of opportunity to, you know, kind of build these elegant user experiences that can progressively reveal themselves to the newbie. But then when the, when the hardcore user wants to click in and see, oh, you do that, you do that. Oh, okay. You're there. And then, you know, there's kind of this, this secret sauce, I would say of, of, of towing that line.
And, and look, I get a lot of sometimes for people being like, well, what's your target market? Like, why are you just focused on, on this group? And I'm like, cause I actually believe I can build stuff that appeals to the entire sector. And that has happened with Splice particularly, you know, we're such a tool for the brand new music creator and half a top 40 music. And that's hard.
Yeah. I mean, you have like splice as an example, you have both the, the experts as well as the people who are just exploring music as a hobby. And that's such a, there must be a fine balance there between, you know, speaking to the experts and then speaking to someone who's just learning. How do you approach that as you're building the business and especially the features that you offer?
Because that simplicity piece gets really complicated when you're trying to serve multiple different groups.
Yeah, look, I think that it's a great question, right? And you see that with, so for Splice, and I actually think for Sepco in a lot of ways, if you appeal to the pros, if you appeal to the most respected people in the industry, you start to realize that the newbies and the people getting used to the space, they want to learn from their heroes, particularly in music.
And they're kind of willing to jump over hoops to be like, I want to be like that person. right? It's kind of where like, you know, yes, a lot of people have garage band installed and mess around garage band, but there's, you'll actually see people jumping ahead to tools like logic and Ableton and, and these more complicated systems because they want to learn what their heroes do.
So if you kind of give a way to speak to them and let them do some of the marketing and messaging and you realize like, Oh, wait a second. I have the same sounds that, you know, that producer is using to make top 40 songs. Like, Okay. And, and you kind of inspire them so that even if there is some, some learning to do along the way, they realize it's the right learning to do.
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Chapter 8: How can you maintain customer connection as your business grows?
It's the learning that like the absolute best in this industry can also go down this path and it's not going to be a waste of their time.
Yeah. It's kind of like they can see their journey in front of them.
Yeah. You know, we used to say our biggest, we had two things that were our biggest competition, but, but once we had you, our biggest competition in, in, in supplies is people giving up on themselves. Yeah. So you just didn't want to let someone get frustrated with the process and you never want to have someone get stuck along the way.
So if you can kind of cater to them and even if they have some learning to do, they just don't feel alone in their journey. It really helps them stick around.
It's really interesting, actually, because that's inspiring. Like when you can see what others are doing, you can see that, oh, this person in the case of Splice put out this song and they found that sample on Splice. Like I can do that, too.
And with Supco, I think you guys have really nailed this in the fact of having influencers share their stacks where you can go and find what people that you're looking up to are doing. taking and what they recommend, and then you can go and do the same thing. So even someone like me, who, despite having lived with Nick for almost five years now, I do not know that much about supplements.
I can go and learn and see, oh, here's what an expert is doing. And I can be like that as well.
Yeah. And look, I think that's exactly right. And in music, it was important to have a wide variety of genres. Yeah. And a wide variety of producers at all different levels, you know, just because, you know, yes, the Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso song, Song of the Summer was made from three splice loops. And that's like super inspiring to some people. They're like, wow, like I can do that.
That's nuts. But then there's other people who are like, well, no, I'm like a deep underground techno artist doing this and that. And like when you realize they can use it too, you're like, oh, yeah. I can appeal. And I think in, in Subco it's similar, right?
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