Jo Blundell: Building Brand Loyalty

We spoke with Jo Blundell about how Timely served their customers during COVID's tough times. When things were hard, Jo credits her success to leaning on her team's values and culture.

Jo’s experience reminds us to connect with the people behind the data. Within a SaaS company, people have all sorts of job titles and key results they need to achieve. By leaning into the humanity of your organisation and adopting the culture of your industry, you’ll move from being a transactional product, into something that makes people’s lives better. In our current economic climate, a human-oriented strategy could deliver more value by meeting people where they are.

Jo shares her top five lessons for serving customers in tough times:

Customers are our Sun - “At Timely, we had a great culture, and it was very much like, here's a big goal, this is what we're going after. It's all about the customer, and making sure that we're delivering a great experience. They were the centre of everything.”

The power of knowing what your customers stand for - Jo identified their customers at Timely were “people-people,” where trust, peer recommendations and industry reputation mattered.

The humans behind the brand count - “We're all people, and we respond to real humans. And I think we've got a lot more empathy for another person sitting in front of us, than an anonymous brand. And I think that's when our brand really felt like it fit is when we stopped trying to be a perfect brand voice.”

Dedicating energy to your team is key to international expansion - For founders launching overseas, Jo recommends spending as much time as possible on the ground with your team. “If I could have a do over, I would have spent more time in the UK market, working with the team that was there and making sure that everyone felt supported.”