SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Needle, the leader in advocate-powered customer experience (CX), announced today that in order to accommodate increasing demand for its tools and services, the company has focused on a series of expansion strategies, which include doubling its sales team to better serve its growing roster of enterprise clients.
In 2014, Needle doubled its business, largely due to increased demand for its CX tools and services from both large B2C and B2B enterprises. While expanding programs with existing clients like American Apparel, Autodesk, Carhartt, Norwegian Cruise Line, Overstock.com, Reebok, TaylorMade and others, Needle established new relationships with big name brands including Cisco, Eddie Bauer, hhgregg, Nikon and Telstra. Last year, the company also released the first-ever national study on brand advocates that shows why advocates are the biggest untapped resource for U.S. businesses.
“We have been very pleased with the Needle platform,” said Kevin Lyons, senior vice president and general manager of e-commerce at hhgregg. “In fact, it’s one of our highest performing digital marketing programs.”
Across its portfolio, Needle enabled more than 2.6 million live interactions in 2014. In each case, advocates – a company’s certified external customers and sometimes internal experts – delivered individualized, real-time chats with targeted online customers needing additional help to make their purchase decision. Needle introduced “near real-time” interactions in Q4 2014, enabling advocates to bring higher-quality content to more than 30,000 emails and product Q&As in December alone.
Needle’s software enabled its customers to deliver significantly better customer experiences as measured by Net Promoter Score (NPS). Across its diverse set of clients, Needle programs averaged 70 NPS or better – a score that exceeds many top-performing brands and industry benchmarks. These experiences also drove more than $300 million in net new sales for Needle clients in 2014. Needle looks to continue its acceleration in 2015, with advocate-powered interactions up 104 percent year-over-year in January.
“Our fast growth is a function of several important factors,” said Morgan Lynch, Needle CEO and co-founder. “First, we’ve built a platform that does what no one else can do: allow a company to identify in real-time which of their online shoppers needs help in order to convert to a sale and then match them, again in real-time, with an expert who can provide that help in the most trusted, authentic way.
“Additionally, in the last 6-9 months, we’ve seen the focus on improving customer experience accelerate tremendously. Omnichannel is hard and expensive, and driving more traffic to sites only to settle for two percent conversion isn’t a growth strategy. But marketing and e-commerce technology like ours, that can be deployed in 30 days or less, makes an immediate impact on the quality of the experience a brand can deliver, as well as their incremental revenue per visitor.”
New talent acquisition is also fueling Needle’s growth. The company recently hired leaders from eBay/PayPal, Amazon, Workfront (formerly AtTask) and others to strengthen marketing, customer success and product teams – and has expanded the Needle advocate community to more than 30,000. The most recent addition to the Needle team is sales veteran Lynn Jobe, who previously served as a regional vice president of sales at Lithium Technologies, and will now lead Needle’s growing Enterprise Sales capabilities.
“Lynn brings a unique set of skills to Needle, with a strong background in online engagement and community rooted in customer experience,” said Mike Montour, senior vice president of sales at Needle. “We’ve doubled our sales team and expect to double our overall sales again in 2015. Lynn’s background, along with her proven ability to build and lead high-performing teams, will put Needle in an excellent position to continue growing at a rate that exceeds some of the most well-known startups in our space.”
Current research supports the increased focus on and investment in improving online CX. A 2014 Gartner Survey found that 89 percent of companies surveyed stated that customer experience would be their primary basis for competition in 2016. In eConsultancy and Adobe’s 2015 Digital Trends Report, online marketers cite CX as the single most exciting opportunity for investment this year – a surprising 2-3x more important than content, mobile, personalization, social and big data.
“It’s clear that advocates can help brands deliver dramatically improved CX,” said Scott Pulsipher, Needle president and COO. “Online customers trust them because, even though they’re strangers, they share common interests. Advocates also have the deep product knowledge to make them highly credible. This is the future of e-commerce. Convenience and ease remain important – but in an ocean of choices, what consumers really want is a more tailored, connected experience. We’ve built the capability for brands to deliver this kind of awesome experience real-time. And as we roll out new products and services in 2015, we’ll continue to deliver solutions that help companies adapt and succeed in this next era of CX.”
About Needle
Needle helps companies bring the power of human connections to e-commerce. Founded in 2010, Needle’s software identifies online customers who need help making a purchase decision and matches them, real-time, with certified advocates who have first-hand knowledge of the products they’re considering. The result is a truly awesome customer experience that builds trust and increases satisfaction with customers, while delivering incremental revenue and long-term customer value for businesses. Needle is a privately held company based in Salt Lake City. For more information about how Needle works and for whom Needle works, visit www.needle.com.
