Social media is an essential part of the marketing strategy for most businesses, and that’s why it’s important to do it right. However, typing a few words into a box, pushing “publish,” and hoping for the best just doesn’t cut it.
That’s where Agorapulse comes in. Its mission is to help businesses make the most of their social media presence and reap all the benefits that come along with that, from increased brand awareness to meeting and exceeding sales goals.
We’re delighted that Kristell Cormarie, Agorapulse's head of customer success, took time out of her day to speak with us.
Sure. My name is Kristell Cormarie and I've been the head of customer success at Agorapulse for the past 10 years. Agorapulse is a social media management tool which allows brands and agencies to manage their social presence on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on, on one unique platform which allows them to plan their content in advance, automate content, and have great reporting.
What problems were you struggling with before eWebinar?
Obviously the dedicated customer success manager service cannot provide for each individual client. We’re talking about more than 8,000 clients right now.
When it comes to educating them, there is no way we can educate each company individually, so the problem that we had is that prior to eWebinar we were running a live weekly webinar which required a lot of energy from my team because each webinar took two hours out of their day between the preparation and the webinar itself. Not to mention the stress of being live!
“Before eWebinar, we were running a live weekly webinar which required a lot of energy from my team.”
I was having to ask team members to make different webinars for different time zones because we have clients all over the world who speak different languages. So there was a lot of stress, and it was taking a lot of time. That was kind of a bummer for us. Sometimes we also had no-shows – we’d block times for the webinars and no one would show up!
How do you use eWebinar at Agorapulse today?
I can speak mostly for my own department, but I know other departments are using it too. From a customer success side of things, this is something we put together for the low-touch clients or the smallest clients, the ones that don’t have a dedicated customer success manager.
They receive different communication from us when it comes to being educated during their onboarding. Depending on what they want to achieve, we have created different webinars and we are using them to hook our clients from the beginning and let them know about the best way to use Agorapulse based on what they want to achieve.
“We use eWebinar for our low-touch clients who don’t have a dedicated customer success manager.”
So we have webinars on different topics, depending on what each client needs. The beauty of the webinars that were recorded in English by the US team is that they can be used by the APAC English speaking teams even though they're not the ones who created it. We created different slots and the webinars are moderated by different team members across the world. I know there are also use cases for the sales department, and also the marketing department has been using eWebinar to promote product launches.
What did you do before eWebinar when working across different time zones and regions?
That was a struggle. We had one weekly live training in French, one in English, another one in APAC. That was a lot of time and a lot of pressure.
What are the benefits that you’ve seen since adopting eWebinar?
We are no longer freezing our calendar two hours a week to make sure we can have a decent setup and my connection isn't going to drop, so it's a big time saver.
The team members have a reminder on their calendar to moderate the chat, but moderation can happen while they're doing something else. And another great part is that our eWebinars look live, even though they aren’t!
“eWebinar is a big time saver. We no longer have to freeze our calendars for two hours a week.”
The second benefit is being able to reuse something no matter the time zone, as long as the audience speaks English. So I would say scaling and saving time are the biggest benefits.
Are you creating a lot more content now?
Yes! We stopped giving the big presentation that was too overwhelming for people. People didn't stay until the end, so we decided to break down those topics depending on the goal people want to achieve, and they can use those assets how they want to.
For us this is also a way to gather what is most popular, so it's been a real change of mind for us to be less feature oriented and more solution oriented.
So you’re creating smaller bits of niche information instead of a big general presentation?
Yes. People have different needs. In the social media world, some people are in charge of the content strategy, some people are only in charge of moderation, making sure they respond on social media in a timely manner.
“We’ve tailored our webinars to meet the unique needs of each type of customer.”
So we have tailored our webinars to those niches, and our hope is that the audience sticks around to the end and feels like they’re using their time wisely.
How do your customers feel about the new hybrid format, compared to the live format from before?
We haven’t had any complaints. I think the fact that we keep behaving like it’s live really helps. They understand that in a SaaS environment you can't have dedicated training when you pay the bare minimum, so they are okay with that because there's a chat and we have a strong support team if they have a very specific question. So we haven’t had any complaints about the performance and we haven't had a drop in attendees.
Our customers know it’s not live, that’s not a secret. But they understand it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s self-service and they can pick whatever they need. But it’s still quality, and it's designed to address their needs and what success looks like to them.
How have you helped your team or company by implementing eWebinar?
So far I've heard nothing but praise from my team because it's easy to use.
“My team loves eWebinar because it’s easy to use and saves time.”
We've also spread the love to other departments at Agorapulse. I’ve touted the benefits of using eWebinar over Livestream and when they learned it would save them time, it didn’t take much more to convince them!
What do you love most about eWebinar?
For me, it’s the UX. My team is having a lot of fun playing with all the features and putting in surveys. We get these ideas in our head and it’s so easy to implement those ideas on eWebinar.
It’s also easy to plan the pricing and budget, which is important. I have a CFO to report to when it comes to budget, so that's why it's so important. I also love the tiny little details, like the fact that we can tag each webinar so we can immediately find the one we want at any given time.
Who would you recommend eWebinar to?
I’ve already recommended it to my peers!
There was a French event with customer success professionals and they were struggling when it came to how they could provide value at scale to many, many customers. They kept saying they were doing videos and webinars that didn’t scale. Then I said, “I gave up on that, I’ve solved that problem with eWebinar.” eWebinar is a no-brainer for any customer success structure that has a lot of low-touch clients.
Thank you for your time, Kristell! I’m happy to hear that Agorapulse has embraced eWebinar and everything it has to offer!
Are you a business leader who is looking to take your social media game to the next level? Be sure to check out all of the amazing things that Agorapulse can offer you!
…And if you’re looking to offer presentations, training, and onboarding around the clock – all while offering a personalized interactive experience – click here to get started with eWebinar!