Subscribed 2017: Day One Highlights

At our first ever Zuora User Summit Day, Rachel English, Director of Customer Experience at Zuora, and Tom Krackeler, SVP, Products at Zuora, kicked us off with a warm welcome — a fitting introduction to a day focused on Zuora’s customers and Zuora products.

Marlene Summers, Vice President, Customer Support Services & Community at Zuora; Robert Hildenbrand, SVP, Global Services at Zuora; and David Reiling, VP Global Customer Success at Zuora shared their thoughts on how Zuora customers could get the most out of their Subscribed experience, tips for a successful enterprise go live…and the craziest support tickets they’ve ever seen!

The goal for our User Summit? For our customers to connect with other users and get real advice from Zuora experts and real answers to their toughest questions and use cases.

The jam-packed schedule included 35 sessions across 6 tracks to provide advanced user training by role for Billing & Payment Ops, Finance Ops, Zuora Admins, IT/Developers, Pricing & Growth Managers, and New to Zuora. And in our Learners’ Lounge, customers got to meet one-on-one with Zuora developers, finance team members, product managers, and more.

Here are just a few highlights from sessions ranging from Agile Pricing and Packaging Strategies with Zuora to Understanding Zuora’s API Framework, Prevent Subscriber Churn with Zuora Insights, and What are the 9 Keys and Why Are They Important.

“Support is evolving from break-fix to community-based transparent interactions. And automation.” – Marlene Summers, Vice President, Customer Support Services & Community @ Zuora

“It’s all about adoption. Doing programs without adoption doesn’t get you anything” – Robert Hildenbrand, SVP, Global Services at Zuora

“ZEAP — Zuora Early Adopter Program — gives more direct access to the Products team and more opportunities to impact product direction.” – Tom Krackeler, SVP, Products at Zuora

“Pricing and packaging is an iterative activity. 60% of our customers change their pricing at least once a year.” – Richard Sawey, Senior Solution Architect at Zuora

“SOAP & XML are the past, REST & JSON are the future.” – Kevin Lussie, Senior Solution Architect at Zuora

“Think of a subscription as a lifetime relationship you’re managing with your customers.” – Nishith Agarwal, Lead Consultant at Zuora

“Your invoice can be the most important touchpoint that you have with your customers so you want to make sure that it’s accurate and you’re minimizing any customer dissatisfaction. Billing should enable you to scale your business” – Natalie Kalas, Customer Success Manager at Zuora

“Getting promotions are not enough to keep you motivated long term. How do you stay motivated every single day? We’re in an on demand economy, we don’t feel connected enough, even if we’re getting paid more… it’s because it’s not your calling.” – Marlene Summers, Vice President, Customer Support Services & Community at Zuora

“The power of the promo code! You can generate unique codes and enable code redemption, but if you can’t do promo codes automatically, it can pretty convoluted. If you live in Excel spreadsheets, it breaks down very quickly” – Chris Drew, Product Specialist at Zuora

“As consumers we’re not looking to buy more products, we’re looking to tap into services to meet our needs, to do the work we need to do. The companies who are leading are moving towards this shift.” – Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora

“Linking orders to invoices is important for the process of revenue recognition.” – Chris Bruner, Product Management at Zuora

“If you think through where subscriptions are today, it’s put the customer at the center of your business. You may have thought you were customer-centric before, but now your customers are really telling you what you need to do to better serve them.” – Gene Finley, Senior Engagement Manager at Zuora

“How easy is it to cancel a subscription? This is something that customers *are* looking for.” – Julie Hodge, Engagement Manager at Zuora

“Your net retention rate should inform you not only of potential revenue lost, but also of expansion opportunities.” – Kevin Suer, Product Director at Zuora

“There are 3 levers to grow your business: get more customers, retain customers, get more money (better monetization).” – Facundo Chamut, Chief Product Officer at Price Intelligently

Stay tuned for the winners of our Customer Awards! And for Day 2 of Subscribed 2017 with our keynote, breakout sessions across four tracks, CIO Exchange, CFO Summit, and, hopefully, more delicious wine and cheese. Knowledge, insight, inspiration, and good fun! And did we mention the drones?? See you tomorrow!

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