This excitement in the air is further reinforced as startups prepare to emerge and take advantage of the ‘here and now’ era and all potential future investments opportunities.
What does it take to run a successful startup? Infobip, a global cloud communications company and fellow unicorn from Croatia shares five ‘not so’ secret tips for a successful startup with the goal of helping Thai entrepreneurs accelerate the growth of their business ventures.
Everyone has ideas, but the importance is to have a winning idea – one that will help win over investors, give them a reason to invest, and drive forward successes in the long run with an on-going flow of sales and profit. A good business plan must be both innovative and sustainable. The key here is to stay focused and be prepared to make sacrifices. As the old saying goes, ‘Good things take time.’
Innovation is not limited to just the business idea itself but extends across all business units. For instance, your products or services might not be one-of-a-kind in the market, but having an innovative marketing plan, distribution channels, and – most importantly – customer communication tools can help make your business stand out. Setting yourself apart from competitors with customers and finding a unique selling point through enhanced customer communication and personalised engagement can significantly improve customer experience and set your business up for success.
Once a great business idea is built, another key feature to incorporate is a concrete execution and scalability plan. A good business idea is nothing if not scalable in the future. Therefore, businesses must consider this at the beginning to attract investors and get their backing. Investors often look for scalable businesses that have the potential to multiply revenue with minimal incremental cost.
Startups should not just aim for high profit margins, it also needs a strong and scalable back-of-house system. A system that allows for remote work, provides immediate customer interactions, and innovates employee automation. This will allow companies to streamline the company, reduce operational expenditure, and prepare them to scale for the future, especially now where work is not only applicable at the office!
Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘employees can make or break your business?’ This is very true, as talents are what drives a business forward. Therefore, identifying the right personnel with passion and right skill sets for the job is an essential part to any successful startup. This is especially true in the beginning, where hard work and long hours are expected to setup and drive operations.
Finding the right people for the job will significantly increase productivity and help shape startups grow into the organisation that they aspire to be. To do this, it’s a good idea to establish a clear baseline of your company culture, values, and growth path in order to attract and retain like-minded individuals. At the same time, it’s very important to make sure that the business not only engage employees properly but also have a proper customer engagement platform that can help optimise workflow for all and increase overall operational efficiency, innovate work productivity, and gather consumer insights. This is especially true for customer service agents who are the frontliners of the company and handle direct contact with your customers.
Once you have set up your business idea and explored potential customers, it is time to take the business public. To do this, a very important question to consider is ‘How do I best communicate with my customers and their needs?’ Building a connected network that communicates effectively between a business and its customers is extremely important. This is especially true in today’s ‘here and now’ era where customers expect to communicate with a business anywhere at anytime, and on their preferred channel. Having a strong and seamless customer communication platform is essential, moreso for customer-centric startups that put their customers first. They are the likely ones that tend to have an advantage in the long run.
Moreover, it’s also useful to keep a record of your customers’ preferences and purchase history, so it will be easier to provide a more personalised experience. Thankfully, modern communication tools, such as Moments from Infobip, have made it possible for businesses to securely keep a record of customer communications and create tailor-made message tracking and user experience. A tool that helps to manage and improve over-all conversations will ensure each interaction is specifically catered to the customer’s unique relationship, with reference to time, content, context, and channel.
There is no denying that, with the recent coronavirus pandemic, the business world had experienced unprecedented changes across the board. Therefore, the challenge now not only lies with building a successful business, but how it can also adapt and make profit in times of change. During the pandemic, many businesses have switched to working from home, with difficulties associated with data management and customer communication. Therefore, having a system in place that allows for a seamless transition between home and office work that allows you and your team to stay in constant contact with customers is one of the greatest business tools of the modern era.
Infobip, with its solution, Conversations – a one-stop cloud contact center solution, can enable businesses and sales agents to manage work from anywhere, anytime. This includes providing the ability to seamlessly manage all customer communication across multiple platforms in one single workspace, improving employee performance, and enhancing the customer experience.
To help startups in Thailand to grow and strive in the ever-changing business landscape of the ‘here and now era’, Infobip had launched its very own Infobip Startup Tribe programme in Asia Pacific. This initiative will help foster a community of startups, right from their early stages, with unparalleled growth tools, scalable back-of-house solutions, and direct access to advisor experts and advisor investors from the most reputable global and local VC funds and accelerators. A ‘not so’ secret tribe that will help you and your business to strive and scale at ease, with focus on your products, vision, and mission.
For more information about how to propel your startup to the next level, join Infobip’s Startup Tribe programme today at https://startups.infobip.com/.