Client case study with IRIS Software

Rather read it instead? Here’s the video transcript:

INTRODUCTION:

In today’s video, I’m going to be talking with Elizabeth Carter from IRIS Software.

IRIS is one of the UK’s largest private software companies. They provide administrative software solutions for businesses, charities and the public sector.

IRIS has been using Melu across a number of its brands since March 2021, primarily for new client sales, but also to assist with customer service.

It’s been incredibly successful, so let’s get into it and hear about Elizabeth’s experience.

Lee: So Elizabeth, how did you start using Melu originally and what’s your experience been with us over the last couple of years?

Elizabeth: Well, I was previously at Senta and Senta Practice Management for accountants and bookkeepers. We implemented Melu because we also had integration into Senta, which meant that our clients, that people who use Senta could take the data that was collected by Melu and have it generated directly into their database. So that’s how these conversations started and then we recognised it would be a good thing for us at Senta.

And it was a good thing, it was really valuable and it was great because it allowed us to track leads but also it allowed us to have a really direct conversation with our customers, which is what we were really focused on. It also enabled us to pinpoint people to particular areas of help and when you assess a product, you assess piece of software, you need to be able to help your customers as much as possible. So the team at Melu were able to do that.

And I think right away we were impressed with how Melu got the Senta tone of voice and the Senta attitude, which is very customer focused and all about speaking direct to our customers. We were impressed with the process in terms of putting together the FAQs and then being able to adapt that as things went on and moved. So we were very happy customers at Senta from a lead generation view, from a support point of view.

And I was quite new at Senta as well and it gave me a lot of insight into how people were using the website and that was really valuable. So from a selfish marketing point of view, it was good insight for me.

Lee: Excellent, yeah, that’s brilliant. And I remember how we got into that as well. Melu was exhibiting at an accountancy event at the NEC and our stand was right opposite the Senta stand, and it was one of those events where most of the delegates were at CPD sessions and so there wasn’t much for the exhibitors to do. So we spent the whole time just talking to James, the original founder of Senta. And it was just a conversation about how a chat and the data from it could go into the CRM in Senta and be of value to the client and that’s where it all began.

Elizabeth: Yeah, so for accountants and bookkeepers, that’s really a useful thing. So we were there at Senta and then skip forward a year or two and Senta was bought by IRIS, Center was bought by IRIS in January, 2021. Well the website stayed where it was but IRIS was certainly impressed by what we were doing. And now also under the IRIS umbrella there was Taxfiler. So the more I got to know my colleagues at Taxfiler as we were now part of the family we recommended Melu there.

And again, Taxfiler found it very useful in terms of directing people to support and managing questions about the purchase process. It was also then introduced on Staffology and FMP, so I think it’s a couple of brands within the IRIS family. But again with this process of creating an FAQs and adapting that FAQs as we needed to. And all those brands are slightly different, there’s slightly different specialisms even though the end users are actually the same, they’re accountants, Staffology’s slightly different because that’s a payroll product. But there was an adaptability about Melu that we appreciated. So that was fantastic.

So there’d be established brands, so that was useful for support and for new business. Where Melu really came into its own was with IRIS Elements and this is when we launched a platform at IRIS. And when you launch a new product there’s lots of questions, I mean there’s lots of questions internally but there’s also lots of questions externally. And using the Melu FAQs and working with a team really enabled us to adapt what we were saying and adapt our narrative in terms of the questions that people were asking.

So we knew that if we were getting a lot of questions around a particular support topic for example, we knew that we needed to amend what we were doing and add more support around that. The other thing that was really important around IRIS Elements is there’s different ways to buy it. You can either buy it online or you need to speak to somebody. And as much as you can explain that on the website people are always going to have questions and as marketeers we think that our prose is wonderful and we’ve obviously explained everything but sometimes that doesn’t translate.

So Melu’s been really useful in terms of answering those specific questions. “I want to buy this, I’ve got this many users, what’s the best product for me?” “I’m not sure about this, can I speak to somebody?” And developing those conversations and enabling us to capture details where possible, but also directing people to the right part of the website where possible as well. So it’s fantastic for that.

Lee: Yeah, absolutely. I think from the history of the chats that we’ve had a lot of the people visiting the website are looking to buy, or their existing clients that need a bit of support. So being able to direct them quickly to where to get that support is obviously very important. But for the people that aren’t sure about things, a lot of the time the information is there on the website but people’s attention spans and time and the amount of research that they can do is getting less and less it seems. So when someone lands on your site, you put in all that effort with things like search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising to bring people to the website.

If they’re then not going to really read enough to engage with you and just hit the back button, there needs to be something there that’s going to help keep them on the site, something sticky. And I think that’s where the live chat, definitely for most of our clients, that’s where the live chat has the biggest value because they can actually engage. And if they then know that they’re either going to get a call back from someone, or they can start a trial or book a demo they’re less likely to go off and then try and find an alternative because they’ve kind of stuck with you.

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. And I do think the human aspect is really important as well, Lee, because my bank has got a live chat and it’s a chat bot thing and it drives me insane. It’s more detrimental what they’re doing with that live chat than, I’d prefer them not to have a live chat at all. But people are used to using things, people are used to requesting things by text and also people just aren’t going to wait, they’re used to it.

And of course you’ve got lots of people who prefer to pick up their phone and talk to people and that’s fine and the Melu team can direct them to do that if that’s what they want. But there are so many people that just want the answer to my question immediately. So that’s been really vital I think.

And I just want to think a little bit more as well about what it means to marketeers and to web design people as well, I’m not a web designer, but from a marketeer point of view, it’s really important to understand the questions my customers are asking. And I’m not going to be able to think of any examples but that there’s been times when we’ve had questions come in and we haven’t even considered what the answer is yet. And that’s a direct customer, and that’s a direct piece of customer insight that we wouldn’t get unless we put together a focus group and we’ve got everybody in a room and we ask them a select question.

But this is real time amendments that you can make, input you can get, on the customer purchase experience, for a SaaS product that’s absolutely vital. In a way that it would be different for different products, but that sort of real time information is really important.

Lee: Yeah, for sure. I think that’s a real hidden benefit with the live chat as well because some of the chats that we handle might not necessarily turn into anything significant, like someone might not want to give their details, to example book a demo or to have someone call them back, but during that chat they may have actually asked for something or mentioned something that maybe isn’t on the website or that it hasn’t been considered as a blog post or a video or a webinar.

And by looking at our data in our client portal and of all the chats that you’ve had, you could see a pattern maybe there’s a few people asking the same thing like, “How do I do this?” Or, “What’s the process” like, “What’s the best thing to do for this?” And you could then go, “oh lots of people are asking for this, let’s do a webinar, let’s do something on it.” So yeah, it hopefully helps build up that marketing content as well.

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s always really important, isn’t it to review which pages are popular and which pages aren’t. I always think we put an awful lot of focus on case studies and obviously we want to have customer stories. Is that important? Well, we can see that that does come high up the ladder and things like that. So yeah, it’s really important to get that real life experience.

Lee: For sure. Well thank you so much for your feedback on that. It’s been really useful to hear your opinion of how our service has been and we love working with you guys. It’s great to be across all those different brands and helping your potential clients get where they need to be and your existing ones get the support they need. So thanks for your time, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Thanks, Lee, we’re really happy with Melu.

Lee: That’s good to hear! Thanks very much.