Radical Transparency for Connecting with Customers, Carolyn Kopprasch, Social Fresh Conference 2015.

@CaroKopp #SocialFresh

Radical Transparency and Connecting with Customers


• Last month (August 2015), we had 211,520 monthly active users

• We have $2,789,388 in the bank• Joel, Our CEO, makes $175,000 per year• The last engineer we hired was offered $99.5K• We spend 67 cents of every $10 on hosting• Leo, Our COO, has 35% of company equity


Why Transparency?


Transparency Breeds Trust


Trust Builds Community


How Buffer does Transparency

buffer.com/transparency

http://buffer.com/transparency


1. Salary and Equity


2. Revenue


3. Pricing


4. Founder tweets and blogs


5. Diversity


Internal Transparency

• Emails• Books• Steps• Sleep• Self-improvement


Example: Transparent Pricing


Introducing Transparent Pricing

• Published December 2014

• 30,000 Views

• Thousands of shares

• Comments about trust

• Thoughtful questions


Example: receipt email


Example: Hack


Saturday, October 26th, 201311:25am


2 minutes later


–Johnny Appleseed

Type a quote here.

9 minutes after that


Transparency in Crisis• Email

• Social

• Banner on site

• Blog post with regular updates

• Tech Press

• Reply to all emails, tweets, comments


–Johnny Appleseed

Type a quote here.


The Truth is a Content Machine


Efficient Publishing

• Much less time on editing, getting permission• If we know it, we’ll share it• No risk of “leaking” something in a screenshot• No “public version”


Salaries Blog Post

• Consistently in the top handful of blog posts• Several thousand views per month• Thousands of shares, countless articles referencing it• Over 125,000 views since December 2013• In the month after it was published, applicants for our

open jobs more than doubled.


(Radical) Transparency Breeds (Radical) Trust


Regular Transparency is just called Honesty.

And that’s pretty great too.


Culture of Honesty• No Real time revenue dashboard?

Share what you’re doing, what you hope to accomplish, and why• No Open Salaries, Open Equity, Diversity Dashboard?

Talk about your values, how you make decisions, and how you’re changing what feels off.

• No entire “Open Blog?”Answer every customer email and tweet really honestly

• No Transparent email? Celebrate achievements, be open about struggles


@carokopp

Radical Transparency for Connecting with Customers, Carolyn Kopprasch, Social Fresh Conference 2015.

Social Media

Transcript of Radical Transparency for Connecting with Customers, Carolyn Kopprasch, Social Fresh Conference 2015.