It’s not Live Chat, it’s Messaging
The technologists scoffed at those early Slack valuations: “It’s literally just a nicer-looking IRC. The technology has been around for years.”
It doesn’t matter. Technology is only one part of the innovation puzzle.
Choose your own labels:
Users — Technology — Business
Customers — Technology — Business Model
Market — Technology — Business Model
There are a few versions of this Venn diagram rolling around, but the crux is this:
Innovation is about creating and capturing value.
There are three parts to that equation.
- The means to create/capture value (Technology)
- Who it’s creating value for (Users/Customers)
- How that value is exchanged (Business Model)
Innovation isn’t only about new code.
A company can innovate on any of these three levers to break away from competition and define its own market.
What Slack, Intercom, and Drift reveal about innovation
Getting back to Slack, Intercom, and Drift. These three companies are the darlings of the tech world. They’re all in the ‘remote collaboration’ space. And they’ve each carved out their place in a crowded, barreling-towards-commoditized market.
In order to hit the mainstream, products must “cross the chasm” (to use Geoffrey Moore’s term). This means a shift in the product and marketing strategy. Consumers have different motivations and needs that drive their behavior, and the product and its benefits must be tweaked appropriately.
Same Jobs, Different Impacting Forces
When we talk about Jobs to be Done, we’re referring to the progress a person is trying to make under certain circumstances, and what is preventing him from making that progress.
When Slack exploded in popularity, it’s not because groups of co-workers had never before needed to collaborate. The Job was already there.
It’s not because there was no viable solution. The technology had been around for awhile.
No, workers finally understood that this solution would help them get the Job Done, and were able to move past inhibiting factors.
But Slack, Intercom and Drift didn’t just convert non-chat-users to a chat solution. They set themselves apart from others that functionally did the same thing, and broke free from feature-comparisons.
Intercom isn’t live chat software. It’s a Customer Messaging Platform.
Drift also isn’t live chat software (with bots). It’s ‘the world’s first and only
Conversational Marketing Platform.
Often when a technology reaches the mainstream, margins shrink in exchange for volume. Niche products get more generic to appeal to a broader, more pragmatic user base.
But instead of acquiescing to the typical “lower costs, safer features” cycle of the technology adoption lifecycle, these three companies have introduced premium, desirable products to market.
In a world where Olark charges $17/agent/month for live chat services, a single Drift pro seat is $250/month — with the Enterprise seat sitting at an easy grand.
Drift and Olark aren’t playing the same game. Remember, Olark sells live chat software. Drift ‘changes the way people buy from your business’.
People don’t know what live chat will do for them. That’s just a solution. But do people want a [better] way to make money? Heck yeah!
Sell to Jobs, Hint at Forces
Jobs to be Done are stable. Although people may have different circumstances that cause them to seek out a solution at different times, we can innovate on helping people do Jobs better/easier/more conveniently.
But it’s not enough to just improve on a solution to get a Job Done. There are plenty of amazing inventions sitting on shelves right this moment. It has to fit with the customer and his situation, and there has to be the right value exchange.
You can look at the technology adoption lifecycle as being the circumstances affecting adoption of the innovation at a macro-level. In the early stages of an innovation coming to market, demand-generation forces are king. But as the product nears the chasm, other forces must be appealed to if the innovation is to reach mainstream adoption.
We often speak of theories that drive how consumers make decisions and products will behave in the market. But these are just that: theories that hold true until they’re proven otherwise. The creators of Slack, Intercom, and Drift could have turned away from selling their technology to new markets with new business models (oh yes, Intercom’s pricing model also differs from that of typical live chat providers).
Slack, Intercom, and Drift started with technology and pivoted on the customer they went after and how they communicated what they offered. Just because technology already exists doesn’t mean there is no innovation to be had.
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Andrea Hill is the principal consultant at Frameplay. Frameplay is an innovation consultancy that helps companies become more customer-focused and thrive in a rapidly changing world. Learn more at frameplay.co
