Why You Need To Get Face-to-Face with Your SaaS Customers with Amit Mishra of iMocha

Episode Summary:

In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Amit Mishra, Founder and CEO of iMocha, joins host Phil Alves. iMocha (formerly Interview Mocha) is the world's largest skills assessment solution API platform, helping organizations build winning teams and empowering them to thoroughly assess employees as well as candidates.

Amit is the Founder and CEO of iMocha and was previously the Director of Business Development at Ecotech IT Solutions. He is also the Founder and the former CEO of Radix Business Models. He shares how he came up with the idea for iMocha, why you should offer as much value as possible to your customers, and why you should utilize time at the beginning of your business. He also delves into the necessity of connecting with your customers face-to-face, even if you’re just a SaaS business.

Guest at a Glance:

Name: Amit Mishra

What he does: Amit is the Founder and CEO of iMocha, the world's largest skills assessment solution API platform. He has also been the Director of Business Development at Ecotech IT Solution. He is the Founder and the former CEO of Radix Business Models.

Amit on LinkedIn

iMocha on LinkedIn

Topics we cover:

• The origins of iMocha
• Why you should go with the customers who bring the most value
• The struggles of trying to focus on too many SaaS problems
• Connect with your customers face-to-face
• Don’t waste time simply waiting for funding for your SaaS startup

Highlights:

How and Why iMocha came to be

One of the biggest problems Amit found when hiring and interviewing people for his own company was the lack of interview skills and charisma. Because of this, he decided to come up (while drinking a mocha in a coffee shop) with the idea of building a SaaS company that would help entry-level candidates give the best interviews they possibly can.

"We were having a mocha coffee in a local coffee shop in India, so we decided to call it Interview Mocha (iMocha). Once we dug deeper into it, we realized it’s not just an interview problem, but it’s a problem with skills. When we onboarded customers, we realized skills were the biggest problem we needed to solve.’

Go with the Customers Who Bring the Most Value

Amit explains that, when getting customers for their service, they tried to make sure they were providing them the best value and were offering the best they could. This involved boosting SEO and making sure the best channels were being utilized for it! It’s important to look into who your customers are and figure out why some are sticking around and why some are leaving. This is a great way to figure out your weaknesses and strengths.

Connect With Your Customers

Even if you have a SaaS business which rarely interacts with customers, go the extra mile and connect with them anyway! As great as SaaS channels are, customers will always warm up to a business faster if they speak with an actual person; nothing beats the human touch, and your customers will greatly appreciate the gesture!

‘We thought that SaaS was a mechanism where you create something, you create a website and people will come and put their credit card in, and you do not talk to them. The good thing that we did was, we started not only to sell but once a customer became a customer, we connected with them on Zoom or Skype calls, asking them about their problems and how we were helping them. The output and insights that we got were phenomenal.’

Don’t Waste Time, and Take Risks!

Amit admits that, during the pandemic, he realized that a mistake he made at the beginning of iMocha was taking too much time to raise money. It is advisable, then, that when you start your business, don’t waste time missing out on opportunities, especially if they require a certain level of risk. Be relentless and take risks! You never know what the future holds, so it’s best to be prepared for anything!