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How we used Customer Support to build $9m Bootstrapped

Why Accelevents made customer experience its main feature: 'supported PLG' drove 25% of new business

Jonathan Kazarian · Accelevents

Published September 1, 2022
About this resource

Jon Kazarian, CEO of Founder of Accelevents shares:

- Service wins in a new category

- “Supported PLG” drove 25% of new business

- Measure what matters

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What you’ll learn

Jon Kazarian explains how Accelevents treated customer experience as a revenue-generating function while bootstrapping the business. He covers surviving the early period, using customer conversations at scale, and training teams to act on NPS feedback.

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Survive the early business

“so you know after this this unfortunate experience with the vendor we were using and realizing that we needed to find other technology to help facilitate the event and end up building out something to use for this first event and frankly it just it worked we got great feedback from the attendees from the organization that we put the event on and from there my buddy and I we decided to build a business around this so for the first uh four to five years here we were both working full-time in building this”
Watch at 01:53

Treat support as revenue

“infrastructure and org structure so this is um a interesting chart that Scott Brinker from HubSpot published a couple of weeks ago but I think it really hits the nail on the head here so he's talking about markdeck but I think this is applicable across frankly a lot of uh Enterprise Tech it's this idea that the last decade was really focused on SAS as we know it right build it one sold a thousand times but as that's happened technology has”
Watch at 05:45

Scale customer conversations

“trying to accomplish and it led to a much faster product Innovation cycle and then we also had a direct line of communication between our CX team and our engineering team so that the engineering team would get brought in immediately into every circumstance that warranted it and we could just get things revolved resolved much much faster so thinking about uh you know what else we went through from uh looking at this from a financial perspective we chatted with a lot of VCS over the past two years and when they would start to dig”
Watch at 10:06

Use NPS feedback

“company for the customer you're going to be recognized for that and that was just one of the mechanisms that we had in place to ensure that people were being recognized for their efforts you can also see here the significance of our CX team as a percentage of our headcount allocation so it made up 27 of our uh of our total headcount marketing was only four percent we only had uh yeah between three and five marketing people throughout the duration of this period we really relied”
Watch at 13:35

Train the customer team

“recognize each of those folks in their contributions to the business so with that um I'm going to wrap up and just you know share a little bit more we we really found a way to make customer experience that 10x feature for us and again it's not going to work if the product's not there but if you've got a great product it's an incredible way to make sure that you get people over that Cliff that you get that product adoption and that you're encouraging the the”
Watch at 17:24

Accelevents Revenue Growth

“Accelevents Revenue Growth”
Read slide 2

What does a great experience feel like?

“What does a great experience feel like?”
Read slide 6

Recurring vs. Reocurring

“Recurring vs. Reocurring”
Read slide 9

Events are stressful enough, we can help

“Events are stressful enough, we can help”
Read slide 16

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  • How we used Customer Support to build $9m Bootstrapped - Slide Deck

About the speaker
Jonathan Kazarian

Jonathan Kazarian

Founder & CEO · Accelevents

LinkedIn

Jon Kazarian is the Founder and CEO of Accelevents, a leading virtual & hybrid events platform. As CEO, Jon is focused on leading the company's vision and helping event organizers and marketing professionals transform their events through innovative technology solutions. 

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Slide by slide

Each slide with a short explanation of what it shows. Open the slide text for its exact wording.

17 passages

Customer experience as a growth advantage

  1. Slide 1Open deck
    Slide text

    … while our competitors diluted themselves with VC money How We Used Customer Support to Hit $9m Bootstrapped Jon Kazarian CEO, Founder of Accelevents Founder500, Sept 2022

  2. Slide 2Open deck

    Revenue accelerated through 2021

    Accelevents’ chart rises from $10,000 in 2016 to $8,700,000 in 2021, with the steepest increase between 2019 and 2021. The plotted annual values are $65,000, $190,000, $375,000, and $3,300,000 for 2017 through 2020.

    Slide text

    Accelevents Revenue Growth

Making CX a differentiator

  1. Slide 3Open deck

    Customer experience was the differentiator

    The deck contrasts competitors’ cumulative $1.6 billion in fundraising with Accelevents’ choice to make customer experience a 10x feature. Its central claim is that customer experience became the way the company competed.

    Slide text

    While 6 competitors raised a cumulative $1.6 BILLION… We made Customer Experience a 10x feature.

  2. Slide 4Open deck

    Three parts frame the talk

    The talk moves from unlocking customer value, to what happened when Accelevents invested in customer experience, to how the team built it. The roadmap previews service, product feedback, profitability, and the claim that supported PLG drove 25% of new business, alongside measurement, training, and company-wide involvement.

    Slide text

    Over the next 20 minutes: I’m going to show you Unlock Value What Happened? Building It Events are stressful enough, we can help 2 way street (real-time product feedback) CX became independently profitable “Supported PLG” drove 25% of new business Word-of-mouth became our biggest channel Measure what matters Train & Reward Get the whole company behind it Service wins in a new category

  3. Slide 5Open deck

    Software and services are converging

    The diagram traces three eras of martech, from standalone software and services toward platform ecosystems and composable components. Its arrows point to blended software and services as the current convergence, with composable enterprise approaches as a later direction.

    Slide text

    Software & Service https://lnkd.in/eGVFVWM Credit to Scott Brinker

Designing a great customer experience

  1. Slide 6Open deck

    Define the service experience

    A strong customer experience combines fast replies with knowledgeable, honest, and proactive help. The list also calls for innovative solutions that draw on the team’s expertise.

    Slide text

    What does a great experience feel like? Sub 30 second response times Extension of your team (resident expert) Honesty - what can and can’t we do Innovative solutions (brain trust) Proactive approach - surpassing expectations

  2. Slide 7Open deck

    Help customers unlock more value

    Accelevents describes value creation as onboarding, education, consulting, and customer events that teach customers to use the product. The slide reports 87% logo retention versus 16% for competitors.

    Slide text

    How are you unlocking value for customers? Onboarding Training & Education Consulting Services Customer Events “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” 87% logo retention vs. 16% for competitors.

CX profitability and retention

  1. Slide 8Open deck

    Customer experience supported growth

    The company’s bet linked a profitable customer experience department to lower churn and faster product improvement. The slide reports a 15% department profit margin and 87% logo retention versus a 60% industry average.

    Slide text

    What Happened CX department had a 15% profit margin We placed a bet. CX Profitability Mitigate Churn Accelerate Product 87% logo retention vs. 60% industry average. Create customer relationships to drive product innovation

  2. Slide 9Open deck

    Service revenue changes the margin

    The comparison assigns 91% gross margin to recurring revenue and 82% to reoccurring revenue. It frames the latter as service work that brings in revenue again, with a lower margin than recurring software revenue.

    Slide text

    Recurring vs. Reocurring Recurring Revenue = 91% Gross Margin Reocurring Revenue = 82% Gross Margin

  3. Slide 10Open deck

    Fast support can be measured

    The support dashboard pairs a 25-second median first response time with a 9-minute median time to close. It also shows 96.4% of conversation ratings in the two positive categories, making speed and customer feedback visible operating measures.

    Slide text

    Customers don’t wait.

  4. Slide 11Open deck

    The team grew with demand

    Unique website visitors trend upward from January 2019 to October 2020, with the sharpest climb near the end of the period. The chart marks the first and 27th customer experience hires along that growth, without labeling exact visitor counts for each date.

    Slide text

    It happened fast. Unique Website Visitors (Jan ‘19 - Oct ‘20) 1st CX Hire 27th CX Hire

Building the CX system

  1. Slide 12Open deck

    Customer experience goes beyond support

    Support responds to problems, while customer experience proactively looks for ways to help. The slide recommends documenting and training consistent systems, monitoring and improving them, and celebrating the team’s wins.

    Slide text

    Customer Experience ≠ Support Build systems that ensure a consistent experience. Monitor → Test → Fix → Replace. Customer Experience ≉ Support Document & Train Be proactive Celebrate wins & Hire Within Support waits for a customer problem. Customer Experience seeks opportunities to help customers. Treat your CX team like heroes and celebrate wins together. Treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customers

  2. Slide 13Open deck

    Build the team around clear measures

    The five-month team plan ties compensation to customer and team outcomes, service revenue, response time, and G2 reviews rated 4.8 or higher. The staffing chart places four customer experience leads under a director, with headcount allocated across CX, engineering, sales, marketing, and operations.

    Slide text

    Designing a World Class CX Team in 5 Months KPIs tied to compensation NPS Team Retention Customer Satisfaction (prof. serv.) Professional Services revenue Median Response Time - chat G2 Reviews (4.8+) Headcount Allocation

  3. Slide 14Open deck

    Train and document the work

    The examples show a structured knowledge system for onboarding and ongoing learning: customer experience training, regular quizzes, an internal knowledge base, and product release notes. This gives the team shared guidance as the product and company change.

    Slide text

    Train & Document

  4. Slide 15Open deck

    Celebrate employees who show company values

    Accelevents Aces are peer shout-outs that recognize employees for demonstrating company values. The examples connect recognition to impact, community, compassion, and courage.

    Slide text

    Accelevents Aces

  5. Slide 16Open deck

    Reinforce the three-part framework

    The recap returns to unlocking customer value, the results of the customer experience bet, and how the company built the function. It highlights service, real-time product feedback, profitability, supported product-led growth, measurement, training, and company-wide participation.

    Slide text

    Over the last 20 minutes: I’m showed you Unlock Value What Happened? Building It Events are stressful enough, we can help 2 way street (real-time product feedback) CX became independently profitable “Supported PLG” drove 25% of new business Word-of-mouth became our biggest channel Measure what matters Train & Reward Get the whole company behind it Service wins in a new category

  6. Slide 17Open deck

    The speaker closes with thanks

    Kazarian closes by thanking the audience and identifying himself as Accelevents’ CEO. The final card leaves the audience with the company and speaker behind the customer experience story.

    Slide text

    Sept 2022 Jon Kazarian CEO of Accelevents