Name: Zuora CEO: To Win Customers, Focus on Service, Not Just Product
Uploaded: 2018-09-05
Duration: 5 min 41 s
Description: It's all about focusing on the customer's needs, says Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo.

[ MUSIC ] So Tien welcome. Thanks. Just tell us a little bit about Zuora and the subscription economy. Well, the subscription economy is this idea that you and I everyday that passes we have to buy less and less stuff to meet our needs. Whether it's to get from point A to B Whether it's entertainment, whether we wanna see some movies, or listen to some music, or whether we want you to do work. More and more we're pulling out our phones and accessing Uber, Netflix, Spotify, Salesforce, Google. And that's what we mean by this subscription economy, that we're moving away from a business model that's based on selling you more units. To a service that actually meets the outcome, and what we do at Zora is we're a software platform that powers companies in the subscription company. So what, Ting, is your company's mission? Well, you have to have a mission these days, and what is the thing that binds, we have over 1, 000 employees, we call ourselves ZEOs. The idea that Maybe the company only has one CEO but has over 1000 ZEOs that have a common vision and a common mission. Our vision is pretty simple we call it the World Subscribed, right, that whole idea we talked about that every company can be in a subscription economy, and our mission is to help companies be successful, that's why we wake up this is the thing that we do every single day, help companies be successful One at a time. In a subscription economy. What is the responsibility of a company that provides us service, or a platform company, to make sure that it's customers are using Using that platform for good. Well there's a bunch of things, right? Obviously, you have to ask yourself, how does your product and service make the world a better place, right? This is something that you have to be able to look in the mirror and And then every employee of yours that joins the company needs to have an answer to that, right? And secondly we looked at is, obviously there's an investor class that is giving you money and there's an accountability to making sure they get a decent return on that. But just as important is employees. I think today, we all have choices of where we wanna work. Right it's not the old model where you go to comapany when you are finishing college and yo work there for 40 years. I mean that's not the modern system, people have choices and so why should they work in your company verses another company. And so there is an obligation for the company to make sure that this place. Allows anybody that joins to become their very best, right? Cuz that's why people ultimately are working. So you worked oracle and then you went to salesforce and you kind of grew up and became a sort of mature leader at salesforce which is a company that is known for Social responsibility and embracing that, and diversity and inclusion. Did you learn anything at Salesforce that you have applied at Zora? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Mark is genuine in this. So, when you think about With starting a company. Befor ewe had revenue. I mean you had a foundation in place and we did a launch across the street to YMCA with Colin Powell with a starter program. And this was weaved into the DNA of the company. And so this whole theory, no this whole premise Of inclusion, this whole premise of diversity, this whole premise of connecting the employees into the community on a global basis, and this whole premise of giving the employees a balance between focusing on the company and then taking their time out and focusing on community events through volunteering efforts or anything that they want Is really, really important, and so we've adopted a lot of those principles inside of Zor as well. How important is it with the employees who you hire, that this is a company that is sort of Of socially responsible. Is there any way to measure their interest in that? You can think of it that way. You can think of it in terms of we a better hiring hit rate if you will, if we have this. But I like to think about it a little differently. You're trying to build a company that's vision oriented. You're trying to build a company that's mission- oriented. You're trying to build a company that, look, frankly speaking, it's, we still have a lot to figure out. It's going to be a lot of hard work to figure these things out. We've done a lot of hard work over the last 10 years, but we expect, because we're trying to create a new space, new concept, a new category. Subscription economy, which will help the biggest names and biggest brands in the world to say let's help you transform your businesses. And a lot of these things aren't figured out yet, and we need employees that are signing up for that mission. And so to find people to care about society, that care about social responsibility, you're going to find people who are more mission oriented. And more committed to the mission that we have. Do you believe it's important to speak out on controvertial, social, and political issues? Yeah, I'll be honest. We're early in this journey. The first few years of the company were about survival at most, right? Trying to build a company that's sustainable. I think we went public only two, three months ago So we're now on a different stage. And so a lot of these things are actually new to us. I think the way we think about it is there has to be a separation of Is it personal, or is it corporate. Inevitably the companies is allowed to have set of personal opinions but the corporate opinion has to be something that we came together As 1000 plus employees and talked through and agreed upon, and it's a core set of values for the group. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Zuora CEO: To Win Customers, Focus on Service, Not Just Product

It's all about focusing on the customer's needs, says Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo.