Building for success: Namecheap’s CEO discusses our commitment to being a customer-first, product-led company

A product-led company is one that first and foremost builds solutions that respond to customers’ wants and needs. Monumental work has gone into pivoting as a company and maintaining our drive toward being product-led. 

On International Product Day, People Director, Anna Quirk , sat down with CEO Richard Kirkendall to talk more about what it means to be a product-led company. In this interview you will read about the company’s journey from a small reseller to its current position as the second largest domain registrar. Throughout it all, Namecheap’s DNA has always stayed the same: focused on its customers.

Meaning of being product-led

Anna Quirk: International Product Day is a great opportunity to recognize the idea of Namecheap as a product-led company.I’d like to pick your brain a bit more about what it means today to be product-led, why that's important, and how it may be distinctive in our space.

Richard Kirkendall: At a fundamental level, being a product-led company is really about creating instruments and tools for our customers. We first put our customers and then our products at the forefront; you can’t measure the success of one without the other. 

I think the story of becoming product-led goes back to Namecheap's beginning.  

It was always about our customers. In the very beginning, we were operating under eNom as a reseller. Most of the products we put out were white labeled, which means they weren’t ours.  So we were providing some great customer support and marketing our platform as a product base, but it really wasn’t ours, and tailoring those products to our customers was tough. 

Becoming a product-led company today is actually about putting the customer at the forefront - not just in terms of customer service, but via these tools and products that we build around and for them. Being able to take their feedback and adjust. It's just completing the full circle of doing what's best for our customers, especially because we've kind of lacked that capability in the past which meant we weren't a true technology company that was able to deliver its best.

Milestones conquered

AQ: What do you consider some of the big milestones in that journey?

RK: Wow, there've been a lot of milestones. I think it started with making the decision to update our mission: to become a true technology company. I think it started with that declaration, and after that came the next steps required to actually update our DNA accordingly. 

AQ:  You mentioned that to be product-led, having customers at the forefront is critical. Are there any particular challenges that we faced in being able to put our customers at the forefront?

RK: I think the entire process has been a challenge. Like changing who we are, changing into product teams, focusing on the technology, hiring developers, and especially hiring different capabilities for each product. I think all of that was a challenge, but it was necessary to take those steps.

As far as being able to deliver products effectively? I think we're still on that journey. We've seen the changes we made back then come to life presently. They're not perfect, but I'm starting to see the way that we're building, the pace that we're keeping, and our release timeframe starting to improve. 

The level we are at right now is proof that it was the right decision to shift our focus. We showed that we're able to do this, and that we're going to be successful at it going forward.

Challenges faced

AQ: We’re talking a lot about putting customers in the forefront.  One of the things that I'm always fascinated by is design thinking, where the whole design process requires a customer-centered thinking structure. Has this customer-driven approach been hard for our teams to learn?

RK: Well, I'll start by saying that what we tried to do with our platform was, I believe, something new. I mean, we started at the fundamental level of (DNS) and we tried to solve customer problems that have existed for the 20 plus years that I've been in business —  and before that even.  

The main problem is that DNS is a hard thing to figure out in general for most people.  Even big companies like Google struggle to help customers interact with and understand DNS.  Using this example, we had to start by imagining and then thinking about the DNS problems the customer is experiencing and solve those specifically. 

Part of the conceptualization has to start with design. You think about the customer and the problems you're trying to solve, and then you build these tools —  and in our case, a platform —  around them. 

We design the customer journey around how people will interact with the tools that we think are going to be useful for them. And it all starts with design thinking. We've done this with our launch of our new platform - we've put that in front of customers. Everything wasn't perfect, but now we're getting their feedback, and we continue to design around them. 

Ten years ago, our UX team was really small, like five or six people.  Now we’ve got a big team and we’ve made a commitment to designing around customers and our technology, our developers, and everybody is on board with that and following that approach. Now we're at a point where we have something to put in front of customers, and we're able to execute on their feedback and see what the problems are. And we still continue to think about their experience. We take their feedback, and we continue to design the tools around them.

That's the approach.

AQ: It sounds like we didn’t flip a switch and say, ‘Okay, now everybody's going to use this different approach.’ It grew organically. People learned how to be more customer oriented, and design around that or use a process that put customers’ needs first.

RK: It wasn't easy. You had to get everybody to buy in and follow this approach. And credit goes to our teams that they did it, even though there was sometimes friction, as I mentioned.  It was tough at first, but we all bought into it. 

Things took us probably longer because we were so committed to designing around the customer, you know? But I think it was the right decision, especially at the very beginning of this journey.  Because if you start off with a concept and a design that hasn't been developed through the eyes of the customer, I think you're starting off on the wrong foot. It is essential to do things the right way. It sometimes takes longer because it is a bigger commitment, but I also think it's the right approach.

Importance of feedback 

AQ: As an Operations team, we try to mirror Namecheap’s customer approach by building our solutions around what our internal customers want or need.  But one of the things we struggle with internally is getting feedback from them.   

RK: (Laughs) That’s one of the hardest things in business to solve! If you think about it, you can build the coolest thing in the world. But if you can’t get your customers to interact with it, you’ve got a problem. 

AQ: So how, currently, do we know what’s working for our customers, and is there anything that has been particularly successful in getting that feedback?

RK: Currently, our live chat is the biggest customer feedback channel. I do follow and interact with customers on Social Media as well, but we get delivered customer feedback from Customer Support every day and we talk about it in the feedback room, so we’re constantly looking at that, discussing it, and evaluating it.  

The Marketing Team gets feedback through other channels as well.  But obviously, the most valuable way of getting feedback is having conversations with customers.  So I reach out on Twitter, I make statements, I write about new things.  You’ve just got to be out there and engaged with the customer.  I mean, it’s a hard thing!  But that’s the way that customers start to trust you - you start to demonstrate that value I talked about.  If you try to do this in a really “corporate” way by spending a bunch of money on PPC, it’s not going to get you the results you want.  You also miss the chance to talk to the customers and explain the value you can give them.  

Nothing will get us closer to the customer than reaching out and listening to their complaints first and foremost - and also their praise when we get it.  Customer feedback is not something that you can sit back in your chair and let come to you or throw dollars at.  You’ve got to go out and chase it, you’ve got to go out and work for it.  You’ve got to work for those customers and be there when they need you and want to talk.  

Conclusion

In my experience, I’ve always found success by being as close as I can be to the customer. Because even if you’re not making headway today, you’re positioning yourself for success tomorrow.  If you’ve got your ears to the ground, you’re listening to what’s going on, you’re listening to your customers, and you’ve built things in the right way, then when someone else fails, you’re there to fill the gap. 

You’ve got to build up that engagement and ultimately build up to success. It’s not a one-step process.  Some people do get lucky, but if you talk to 99% of successful business owners, they’ll tell you the same thing: it takes a lot of hard work and you’ve got to be ready and engaged to take advantage of the opportunities when they come.

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