{"id":33667,"date":"2023-10-20T14:31:30","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/how-we-worked-out-we-needed-to-pivot-from-software-to-service-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:31:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:31:30","slug":"how-we-worked-out-we-needed-to-pivot-from-software-to-service-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/how-we-worked-out-we-needed-to-pivot-from-software-to-service-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"How we worked out we needed to pivot from software to service &#8211; StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"445\" height=\"352\" itemprop=\"image\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/l_pivot-change-diamond-coal-445.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"l_pivot-change-diamond-coal-445\"\/><\/div>\n<p>LiveChatMonitoring has been growing rapidly, 25% month on month off a strong base, since pivoting and relaunching their business in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Originally launched in 2011, live-chat software cofounder Gavin Sloan thought it would be a customer service and sales breakthrough for his small business clients.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But after a few months, all began to struggle to resource the software well. Live-chat requires staff to be on call effectively 24 hours a day and many companies just couldn\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe knew  live chat was an incredible tool for converting passive visitors into active leads and enquiries, but often the biggest challenge is being able to resource it,\u201d Sloan says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUltimately clients would love it but struggle. Even if they can resource the software, staff leave for lunch or forget to check the system and no one wanted to be on it after hours, overnight or on the weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After offering the managed service for a couple of clients as an add-on, with his own team manning the conversations, Sloan realised every single client was struggling with the same issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Switching the branding and focus of the service in December last year, the company has taken off.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout 70% of our new clients come to us through referrals and the rest come through a couple of really proactive resellers we have out there in the marketplace,\u201d Sloan says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He says the management team of four are flat out in recruitment projects as they plan to grow the team from 19 to 25 team members within the fortnight.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone does whatever we need to as we\u2019re growing quite rapidly,\u201d Sloan says. \u201cWe\u2019ve a couple of major partnerships with guys with very large databases in the works, so the next year is going to be busy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He adds the 24\/7 nature of their service means they\u2019ll soon start exploring setting up centres in other countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LiveChatMonitoring has been growing rapidly, 25% month on month off a strong base, since pivoting and relaunching their business in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33667"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}