MarTech Edge Interview with Julio Franco, Chief Customer Officer, Zappi

Welcome, Julio! Tell us about the challenges you faced during the early stages of your career that played a pivotal role in shaping your journey to becoming the Chief Customer Officer at Zappi.

Thank you for having me! I grew up a second-generation researcher with my father, who founded a leading research firm in Colombia, so you could say that I’m a consumer insights lifer.  I started my career during school breaks, taking on tasks like transcribing focus groups and conducting interviews – and my passion took off from there.

After I finished school, I joined my father’s firm as a junior insights analyst. I don’t shy away from saying that the most defining challenge of the early days in my career was to demonstrate – to myself and anyone else – that my success was my own and not a product of my last name. That gave me the drive to work harder than anyone else to become not just good but excellent at the job.

In the years since, the foundations I learned doing the job and my work ethic have been a major influence on my growth; I became a VP at a major research firm and built my own insights practice for a major corporation.

My first interaction with Zappi was when I was on the corporate side, and when I saw the agility it delivered through its innovative approach to research and the possibilities it would open up, I was sold. I joined the team in 2016 and currently lead the customer organization, helping researchers at over 300 global brands build best-in-class research divisions and teams.

As the Chief Customer Officer, which essential business divisions do you oversee, and what specific metrics do you employ to gauge the performance of each of these divisions?

In my role, I oversee all customer-facing teams to make sure our customers successfully adopt the Zappi platform and have the right skills, processes, and expertise to get the most business impact out of it. These divisions include Implementation, Customer Success, Customer Expertise, Fulfillment and Customer Support.

Our success is measured by how our customers grow and drive value for their own businesses using Zappi. We maintain partnerships with our customers, guiding them toward their objectives and helping to advance their skill sets along the way; we are successful when our customers are. Zappi’s difference is our dual expertise in both technology and research, so we help them move faster and better. Net Revenue Retention (NRR) stands as a pivotal metric, showcasing customer growth and their evolving ability to utilize our technology effectively for business enhancement.

How do Zappi’s AI-powered consumer insights enable brands to fashion more targeted ads and better products?

Simply put, we give them on-demand access to what their consumers think about their new advertising and product ideas. We help enterprises bring the voice of their customer into their creative processes so they can use real feedback and data to improve their ideas and put successful products on the shelves and effective communications on the airwaves.

In the short term, this fast insight helps brands go to market with confidence, knowing consumers have validated their ad and product decisions. Long term, we see brands use this agile research to create a feedback loop that learns from every new data point, so teams aren’t just answering immediate questions on single campaigns; they’re improving their work with every new idea.

Zappi was founded in 2012 as the first agile market research company. Where most research firms are service-led, we use machine learning to ensure high-quality data is delivered and then to model data into really digestible, predictive outputs. The result is that we’ve streamlined the research process from weeks to just hours, so research fits into the creative processes for brands in an iterative way.

Can you highlight some of the most effective strategies you implemented that significantly improved the customer experience at Zappi?

Absolutely. Our journey toward improving the customer experience at Zappi has been a mix of successes and failures, both of which have been instrumental in shaping our strategy. What we’ve found is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. We take influences from SaaS models with a product-led growth mindset and an easy-to-use platform, but we know that sometimes researchers need expertise, so we combine that with in-house research experts to consult with customers to solve hard problems.

Among our key insights, we’ve recognized that a top-down approach is valuable, but true success is cultivated from the bottom up. One of our most effective tactics has been investing heavily in onboarding so that beyond simply implementing and tailoring the platform for customers, we focus on helping them foster an agile mindset across people, products, and processes.

We’ve emphasized that agility in insights isn’t just about quicker fieldwork but about a clear organizational understanding of when and how to address business questions. Ultimately, we help customers achieve their goals and truly understand the capabilities of their data assets.

Could you describe your typical approach for evaluating an application to streamline sales processes?

We are an organization in growth mode, so we’re always on the lookout for innovative ways to enhance efficiency and help our remote team work seamlessly across all facets of our business. At the same time, we know that shiny objects can be distracting. Unless a sales application provides clear value and an implementation path, it’s very easy to drag productivity rather than increase it.

Our approach involves piloting potential solutions through clearly defined experiments, complete with a set timeline, success criteria, and a designated owner and core team. Similar to how we encourage our customers to evaluate us, we base our decisions on these results.

Customer retention is a clear driver of revenue growth; how do you employ upselling and cross-selling tactics to drive customer retention and ensure that customers continue to choose your brand?

Absolutely. History has shown us that our current customers are our largest engine for growth, whether they’re using us more in current lines of business, bringing us on to improve operations in other lines of business, or championing our partnership with their peers. To foster and amplify these partnerships, we have a clear philosophy we call V-HAG: Value, Health, Advocacy, and Growth.

This starts with the value our platform brings to the customer. But this isn’t a one-size-fits-all measure. It begins with understanding how our customer measures success so we can build an experience that meets their needs. Then, it’s continuously monitoring their usage and our relationship to maintain a healthy dynamic. Our focus on health naturally leads to advocacy. We actively seek and amplify advocacy moments, which span from testimonials and case studies to facilitated connections and referrals.

All of these efforts together translate to growth. We’ve developed comprehensive playbooks across the V-HAG pillars, empowering every team member to enact strategies irrespective of the customer or scenario. Through this dedication, we’re dedicated to ensuring our customers not only choose us but continue to thrive with us.

What innovative technology is Zappi currently developing that has the potential to usher in a new era in consumer intelligence?

This is where I get really excited. Historically, market research has been point and click; identify a new product or solution and survey consumers to understand its impact. It’s short-term and focused mostly on risk mitigation.

At Zappi, we want to deliver connected learnings and solutions to push the industry toward consumer insights fit for the current and long-term business environment. We were the first agile research platform, using machine learning and AI to produce survey results 10x faster than market research service firms, with better quality and at a fraction of the cost. There was a saying in research that when it came to quality, speed, and cost, you could only have two of the three; we proved everyone wrong! Not only that, but through our platform, we’re able to harmonize data so customers can analyze data sets across campaigns, markets, and executions within minutes. So, customers have market-wide learnings on demand.

Our tailored solutions, like Amplify (advertising) and Activate It (product development), help answer the short-term questions researchers have around validation and risk. But they go one step further to help teams optimize and predict in-market success and compare new projects to historical trends so they can get better with every new idea.

In the future, we’re creating new solutions to empower brands to harness historical data to predict market trends based on consumer input. It’s an exciting time to work in insights, and I’m excited to help make Zappi a catalyst for positive change.