If You’ve Ever Wondered What Continuous Discovery in an Early Stage Startup Looks Like, This Is It.

Well, how I apply it to our bootstrapped Shopify apps anyway.

It's hard to scale, but I've found that a personal approach brings more constructive feedback and helps with activation and retention.

It's all about building deep relationships with customers, and going above and beyond with speed in mind.

Because speed in Customer Support is the standard expectation for any top-tier Shopify app.

Step 1: Setting up Slack Notifications

Last month we set up Slack notifications to get more insights into our merchants' activities beyond just app installs.

This allows us to reach out quickly via email when they need help, with the right context and resources.

(You might remember I sent Bonjoro videos for our other apps which increased our reply and activation rates, but I only have so many hours in a day...)

The email results are promising so far.

My personal email open rates and replies are much higher than our automated emails: 84.9% vs 57.7%.

Step 2: Act as a consultant

From the moment you install our app, we act as consultants and start looking at your Shopify store, e.g.:

• If you're new to running pre-orders, have you set up your policies yet

• If you're already doing so, are you setting clear expectations for your customers

• Go through the purchase journey to see what your pre-order CX looks like

• Add custom CSS to match your store's theme style

• Answer any questions you may have beyond our app (about Shopify in general)

All of which help grow your business, but more importantly, build trust between us.

Step 3: Engage with questions that feel conversational

Throughout the process, I add these questions below to my email replies. I only include one to two at a time so it feels like a conversation, not an interview.

Over time, customers open up and share more of their frustrations and business challenges with us.

Some of the questions I'll ask you about:

• What's driving pre-orders/partial deposits to be a priority?

• What outcomes are you looking to achieve?

• How were you approaching this before using our Shopify app?

• What are your expectations of our app?

This, on top of our daily community engagement makes it very unscalable, but it has helped us become a domain expert in our category within a matter of months.

I might not be a CX or UX professional, but I believe if you’re an early-stage startup, consistently going above and beyond with a personal approach works well for Continuous Discovery.

Until next time,

Josiah