In the latest edition of the Transcript, we dig into how software buyers are responding to the market downturn. Here are 5 learnings from Yardstiq interviews on what it takes to improve retention.
The market downturn is top of mind for execs.
How are software buyers responding?
Here are 5 learnings from Yardstiq interviews on what it takes to improve retention.
But first…
Come and talk to me
We’re experimenting with conversational AI to help software buyers make decisions.
Basically you ask the question and it’ll answer you. It’s all done by training the AI with Yardstiq transcripts.
Here is an example where someone is asking the AI about Retool, a low-code software tool.
Turn your sound on to hear the conversation.
The future is going to be a crazy place.
And now on to the renewals.
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Customer success is crucial to renewals
JellyFish
This is a very different scenario, today, with the market downturn and all of that, right? So everybody wants to spend money only in absolutely important areas, which means you don’t want to buy a product that is not delivering extremely high value. That is where Jellyfish has to do more work in terms of reaching out to people, asking them if there is use, trying to get more adoption and all of that.They’re not doing that work…So that’s somewhere they’re losing it basically, at least for us. And so it’s a tough decision for us if we would renew, I don’t know. — VP of Engineering, $10B+ market cap software company
Read the full transcript here.
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Contract flexibility is increasingly key
Five9
Five9 is one of the best vendors I’ve worked with from a buying perspective…Mid-contract, our company had a little bit of a downturn, and I was looking for some cost savings. And I was 18 months into a 2-year agreement. I said, look, I know we’re not up for renewal for another 6 months, but I have to cut costs. I said, can we renew our contract now? Because I pay them on a monthly basis and was paying them double what I really needed. I said, please allow me to rightsize my agreement now and resign for another 2 years. And they let me…I’ve called other vendors up in the last 6 months trying to renegotiate. And some of them are just inflexible. Five9 is not one of those. — CIO, Finance firm
Read the full transcript here.
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Competitive pricing is a recurrent theme
Honeycomb
Price sensitivity is a big thing. If Honeycomb were to increase the price, it basically now becomes at our scale we’re talking about over a million in spending, observability tooling. So increasing the price now becomes a question of, is it really worth it? And we’re constantly debating against Datadog. We’ll take the hit from an engineering culture or environment standpoint. Given the tough economy, landscape and market that we’re in right now, that’s probably — as I’m thinking, we’re blessed to be in a great position to continue to grow at the same pace…but that has perhaps a short life cycle and we might have to make a decision. So price is probably right now contextually extremely important. — SVP of Engineering, $1B+ valuation technology startup
Read the full transcript here.
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For some buyers, the vendor’s risk profile is an important consideration
EBANX
So EBANX was more risky from the perspective of the economic downturn and how they were structured compared to dLocal, which is already on a stock exchange and building their corporate presence the way that they want to be public, while EBANX was more of a privately owned company that was still being steered by some internal turmoil of Brazil…Their relationship with the Brazilian government has been always a big disadvantage and advantage. — Head of Growth, $1B+ valuation fintech
Read the full transcript here.
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Rock-solid renewals feature a sticky experience and continued product innovation
Sendbird
After the first year, we signed a 3-year contract. And soon we are going to renew it again. We are very happy working with them. We are still working on adding new features. We have a lot of stuff on our road map. So they are like the extension of our engineering team, to be honest. We are really happy working with them. — Senior Product Manager, Telecom services company
Read the full transcript here.
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