Clozd: Hello, I'm Jacob Michael, Enterprise Program Manager here at Clozd, and I'm with Carolyn Klinger, Director of Market Intelligence at Affinity. How are you doing today, Carolyn?

Carolyn Klinger: I'm doing well. Thank you, Jake.

Great. I'm excited to have this conversation today. Today we're going to be talking about how Affinity uses win-loss feedback to understand their customer lifecycle. Carolyn, can you tell us a little bit more about your role and its scope?

Yeah, so I joined Affinity about two and a half years ago, and I, as you mentioned, am the Director of Market Intelligence. I was brought into Affinity to stand up a win-loss program, which I certainly did. I'm responsible for all of the competitive intelligence, win-loss program and so forth. But in addition to that, we also added in a customer experience program and a post-implementation program as well to really understand the full customer lifecycle of our buyers and our customers.

Carolyn, you've described yourself as atypical in how you leverage win-loss feedback. What do you mean by that exactly?

Yeah, so I think a lot of people maybe look at specific slices of customer data. So maybe you're looking at win-loss as one specific segment and trying to understand why you're winning and losing in competitive opportunities. That's certainly very valuable and we do that at Affinity today. But in addition to that, understanding existing customers. So what is the experience with an existing customer versus a net new buyer, for example, and how is a new customer versus an existing customer using your product? What we found at Affinity through our customer experience and our win-loss programs is that the longer a customer is with Affinity, the more advanced their skill set with our product is. And so not only are they using more advanced functionality, but they're also asking for more advanced functionality. They're much more demanding in terms of what they're asking for Affinity from a product perspective. So really understanding the differences between customer needs, customer wants is really important.

So in addition to that, we're also trying to better understand new customers as they onboard with Affinity. So post-implementation, we're also reaching out to our customers to ask them, "How is the implementation experience with Affinity?" In that way, we're really capturing the entire customer lifecycle. So not only when a customer first joins Affinity as a net new customer, but then also in their onboarding and then further into their relationship with Affinity over the longer term.

Why did you feel you needed to structure your program that way?

For us, understanding the entire customer journey with Affinity is really, really critically important. I've seen over my career in competitive intelligence over the last 15 to 20 years that looking at just competitors is an important step, but it's only one step in the journey to understanding the broader market, the broader customer base, differing dynamics that are happening, maybe technology changes, regulatory changes. So really trying to understand the full spectrum of what's happening in the market with our buyers and with our customers is really, really important. And so let me take you through the workflow or the sequencing in terms of how we capture feedback from our customers and our buyers.

So when a buyer first comes to Affinity, maybe they've heard of Affinity, maybe they haven't, they're doing research about Affinity, they eventually go through an evaluation, then they select Affinity or select a competitor. We're going to capture their feedback in a win-loss interview or a flex interview. And so we get that feedback in terms of how we're doing from a sales perspective, from a product perspective and so forth.

Assuming that they choose Affinity, then they're going to go into an onboarding sequence. And so we're onboarding them. We've got an onboarding team. They're making sure that the new buyer and the new customer is up to speed in terms of the workflows, in terms of how they can move their data into Affinity and use Affinity effectively. We're capturing that feedback. We know from research that implementation is critical. It's a critical stage in the customer journey with any company. And so that's really, really important to get that feedback.

And then six months before the renewal, we're going back out to that customer and we're asking them, "How's it going? How's the account support? How do you like the product? Are you having any issues with technical support?" We really want to protect that renewal so that we're able to rectify any issues that have come up for that customer before we get to the renewal. We don't want to be chasing down any issues and fixing any problems weeks before the renewal is coming due. And so we're able to protect that renewal with the customer experience interviews. And then that cycle repeats.

Of course, with an existing customer, we're not asking them to go through a post-implementation onboarding feedback cycle, but certainly when they reevaluate Affinity at their next renewal, we'll ask for win-loss feedback. And then we'll also ask for customer experience feedback. So it's a continuous loop in terms of always understanding that feedback at different stages in the customer journey. And then on top of that, we can then add in filters. So if we want to look at the information by segment, by the tenure of the customer with Affinity, by geographic region, by vertical, we can add in different layers into the data and really focus in on the customer and the journey.

And then at that point, how are you using that data to drive actual change at Affinity?

Yeah, that's a great question. Change management is so important and it's so hard. It's hard for us. I think it's hard for many, many people. When I first joined Affinity, I met with the sales reps and some of the sales reps said to me, "I don't really need your information. I know everything there is to know about my competitors. There's nothing new you can teach me." And that's one perspective, but many more, as we've stood up the program, as we've shared the insights, have really used the data to more effectively hone their messaging, to really understand competitors at a much deeper level in terms of what's important to our buyers, what competitors are doing or not doing from a functionality standpoint, any extra information about a competitor's service and support model, for example. So all of that information is feeding back into the organization, and we do that through a couple of different ways.

One is that we've got a Slack channel where we automatically publish any new win-loss profiles or customer experience profiles that are published for Affinity, and everyone at Affinity is able to see that information. We don't put barriers in place. We make sure everyone, whether they're in the go-to-market team or finance or engineering or anyone can see that information. We also share the information at enablement sessions. We share the information with our senior leadership team twice a year in an executive readout and then cascade that information down in very specific presentations to different cross-functional teams. We also hold competitive intelligence office hours where we're also having more of a discussion in terms of sharing information, but also getting field intel back as well. So lots of different ways to share that detail.

How do you personalize the insights and feedback that you're collecting to generate the most value for each department there at Affinity?

Yeah, so one of the ways we do that is to make sure that the information that we're sharing out is curated to those different groups. So I mentioned the executive readouts that we do twice a year. We take that information and then we customize that to different teams. So for the sales team, for the customer success team, for the marketing team, for the product team, I will take that information and I will adjust it. So I'm not hiding anything. They still have access to the executive presentation, but I'm making sure that it's very tailored to those groups because if I'm in marketing, I may not care as much about customer success or sales, but I really want to know about brand and reputation and events, things like that. So that's one way that we do that.

We also make sure that we can meet our buyers where they are. And so what I mean by that is that we have integrated Clozd with Salesforce. We've integrated Clozd with Crayon, another service that we use. And so we put a lot of integrations in place and automations in place so that if a rep is in Salesforce or they're in Crayon and they want to get the information that way, they don't necessarily have to log into Clozd. They certainly can, but there are different ways for them to get that information.

We also take a lot of our win-loss information, and we will pull out specific information and put it into relevant sections in the battle cards. So why we're winning, why we're losing, we're pulling a lot of that information, in fact, most of that information from our win-loss program. And so by really tailoring that information, it helps us to speak directly to the needs of our internal customers, our sales reps, our customer success managers, to make sure that we're giving them what they need.

I do interviews with a handful of AEs and CSMs every quarter, and I get their feedback. It's just a really quick call, 15 minutes, and I'll say, "I know you're busy. I know you want to be out there selling or servicing your customers. Tell me what's working well? What's working for you? What's not working for you? What should I be doing more of? What should I be doing less of?" And I've gotten some really terrific feedback from those sessions that I've then taken back and incorporated.

One example of that, last quarter, a couple of reps said to me, "I can't seem to find the competitive information." And I said, "Oh, really? That's quite interesting. We have a notion page. It's our intranet, it's within the marketing page. You don't know where that is?" And these were two of our best reps. And so to me, I said to myself, "If two of my best reps don't know where to find competitive information on our intranet, that tells me a lot. That means that most people don't know where it is. They were searching in Slack for the information." So I immediately pulled all of the competitive information out of marketing, created my own competitive intelligence page just dedicated to competitive and put that on notion.

And then the other thing that they said was, "The way you got this organized doesn't really work for us. You have this organized by content type. So all of the battle cards are here, all of the side-by-side comparisons are here. All of the win-loss profiles are here. I need this to be organized by competitor. So if I know if I'm going against competitor X, I want to find all of the information about competitor X right here, whether that's a battle card, win-loss profiles, et cetera." And so I reorganized the way that the information was presented to them on that very specific page. And so now it's a one-stop shop for people to go and find the information.

So I think it's really important in the same way that we are asking our AEs and our CSMs to be vulnerable and to ask for customer and buyer feedback about how they did? We as competitive intelligence professionals, we also need to walk the walk and ask our internal customers for feedback on how we are doing to make sure that we're best serving the needs of our internal customers.

This is wonderful feedback and I appreciate that. Just tell me more too specifically about how you have maybe some of those conversations with the sales team around maybe some of the more critical feedback that they may have received?

Yeah, that's a great question. What I have experienced with win-loss programs is sometimes the opposite of what you would expect. You bring in a win-loss program into the organization and you expect the sales team to be jumping up and down, "Yay, we get win-loss, get to find out what's happening with our buyers." That's not always the case. And in some cases, we have reps that are actively trying to avoid win-loss feedback. Why is that? Well, when reps learn about win-loss, they understand that everything they do, whether it's good, whether it's bad, whether it's something in-between, is going to be under a microscope and everyone at the company is now going to have access to that buyer feedback about their behavior and their performance. And that can be a little uncomfortable, especially when the feedback is negative.

What I tell the reps, whether it's an AE or a CSM, is that we are here to learn collectively as an organization. No one's going to be fired, no one's going to be demoted, no one's going to be put on a performance plan. We want to understand from our buyers what's working for them and what's not working? The other thing that I'll mention to people is that they may be doing a great job, and at Affinity, they certainly are doing a great job. Our people are stellar in terms of how they're selling and how they're working with not only new prospects, but existing customers. But what can be very helpful for a sales rep or a CSM is uncovering some of those things that are completely out of their control, such as product feedback.

So if I'm a sales rep and I'm trying to sell a product into the market and there are maybe some deficiencies in the product compared to the competitors, that's something that I don't have control over. But as a win-loss leader, I can now raise that to my leadership team, especially to my product team, and that can actually help the AEs and the CSMs in the long run.

Can you share some of the specific things that Clozd has done to add value to Affinity compared to some other solutions that you've had in the past?

Yeah, so Clozd has been phenomenal in a couple of different ways. One thing that not only myself but my users within Affinity really value from Clozd is the user interface. It's a very clean user interface. It's very intuitive in terms of how to navigate to different parts of the portal, the different modules and the navigation bar on the left-hand side, just really clean and intuitive in terms of that UX, UI in the feel of the platform. I also love the way that the mapping with our CRM is so easy. Once we've got that set up, and I tell my team this all the time, anything that we're tracking and filtering on in our CRM, we can track and filter on in Clozd. And so that's phenomenal in terms of just the depth and breadth of the information and making it really easy for my users to come in and use the platform.

Another thing that I really like as an admin on the platform are the tags. And I tell my team as well, "You can add new tags, you can add new categories. Anybody at Affinity can do that." And I love the fact that Clozd has allowed that to be a very broad feature within the organization, but because Clozd is very qualitative in terms of the feedback, having the tags there in addition to the decision drivers and experience drivers, I think is really important because I always tell myself, and I tell my team, "Think about your future self. In three months, six months, a year from now, what information do you want to be able to pull very quickly and easily? That's what you want to tag. That's what you want to harness in those tags, so you can quickly go to the tag and find everything you want about that topic." So that's been really phenomenal as well.

And then I think another thing that I'm super excited about is the AI that Clozd is introducing. We use the Flex interviews, and so just in terms of the summarization of those interviews, I have to tweak it a little bit, but for the most part, 99.9% of the time, it's great. That's phenomenal in terms of assigning the decision drivers, training the model in terms of what I like, what I don't like for the decision drivers. And then also just having the AI in Clozd where I'll be able to basically call through all of the information, ask the model, the LLM, "Tell me the top three competitive differentiators of Affinity versus Competitor X or competitor Y? Include at least two quotes in of those different differentiators." Having that in the tool eventually, tomorrow, soon, will be really, really helpful.

Today I pull all of that information out, I put it in Anthropic, which we use at Affinity for our own product development, but not having to go back and forth between Clozd and Anthropic and then back again, having that all in one place is really exciting and something that I'm really looking forward to.

Well, Carolyn, thank you so much for the wonderful conversation that we've had and sharing how you've been able to leverage Clozd and the insights that you're capturing with it and how you're using win-loss across your program there at Affinity. So thank you again for your time today.

You're most welcome.

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