Who is ikas?

Mustafa Namoğlu, CEO @ ikas

ikas is a headless e-commerce platform that enables small businesses to create multi-currency online stores, integrate marketplaces, and sell everywhere. ikas’ API-first approach allows ikas to integrate with all of the e-commerce tools you know and love like Klarna, Afterpay, Stripe, and beyond. 

Check out ikas’ Customer Story >

Active Customers? Maybe: The Challenges

• Unable to effectively track customer usage and activations
• Unable to track key growth metrics i.e. NRR
• Company-wide fear of the unknown
  

Before Vitally, the ikas team struggled to efficiently and accurately track their customer data—more specifically, they were not able to track if customers were actively using their product and key metrics like net revenue retention (NRR).

“Before Vitally, we were not really able to track whether our customers were actively using [ikas]”, said Mustafa. “So since we couldn't track those [metrics] in one single dashboard, with an easy looking user interface, we were having some issues. Since those customers were not really activated, we were facing possible churns.”

While ikas’ desired outcome was to increase NRR and reduce churn, amongst other growth KPIs, first they needed to effectively track key customer data points. 

“What is more important than increasing your net revenue retention is to actually be able to track [NRR] in the first place,” said Mustafa. 

As their customer count continued to grow, it exceeded the limits of what their Customer Success team could track and manage with a spreadsheet. That’s when they began their search for a dedicated Customer Success software. 

On the Right Track: The Solution

• Ability to track key metrics from a single dashboard 
• Consolidated all customer data and made it accessible it in real-time, by any team member, anywhere in the world
• Multiple departments within the organization can coordinate within the platform
  

Once ikas implemented Vitally and had the ability to start tracking their customers’ activity and success with ikas’ e-commerce platform, they were able to facilitate continued use and activations. That’s when they began to notice a flywheel effect. 

“Since our customers are actively using our product, they also saw more benefit from it. The more they used our product, the more they told their peers about our product,” said Mustafa. “In turn, bringing us more customers and revenue. So at the same time, we both prevented churn and we started making more revenue because of this word-of-mouth effect.”

With Vitally, the Customer Success team at ikas was able to consolidate the key metrics they needed to track into a single dashboard. 

“I think the great thing with Vitally is being able to track multiple things from one single dashboard,” said Mustafa. “For us, it’s NPS, customers' activities, growth KPIs like MRR, customer comms, and some other important sales slash marketing metrics. So, it's really great to have all those in one software and also one single dashboard.”

Beyond unifying and tracking all of their customer data points, the Customer Success team at ikas is also empowered to easily make decisions and take action based on this data. 

“We started to talk about data instead of personal guesses and personal wishes. It's always good to have those KPIs and data about the customers’ progress and success,” said Mustafa. “Vitally indicators are also super beneficial because they're preemptive. You have to have the signals before so you have a chance to prevent the churn.”

The product team at ikas also leverages Vitally’s REST API to track critical customer activities within their product. 

“The product team uses [Vitally] to track which parts of the product [customers] are using,” said Mustafa. “You can trigger lots of events and send data with the API to Vitally. For example, we can track whether our merchants have connected their payment systems or their shipping systems. It's an indicator that they will be more likely to use the product.”

Not only is the ikas team able to see their key growth metrics and customer activities in one tab, they’ve also been able to get their entire organization on the same page. 

“[Vitally] is the first app I check every single morning because I just simply go through the customer list just to check things like their general NPS ratings, their gross merchandise value (GMV), etc.—I make sure they're using our product and making sales using our platform. Vitally helps me discover this super important information and data super quickly…” said Mustafa. “Our Customer Success team uses Vitally to manage and oversee the customer data, our sales director uses Vitally to see MRR growth and the customer account growth, amongst other sales and growth related metrics.”

For ikas, one of the biggest benefits of Vitally is the ability to have multiple teams work in coordination within a single platform, resulting in huge cost savings. 

“Almost all of the teams can benefit from one software, which is a great thing,” said Mustafa. “The value for money is definitely huge.”

Ultimately, being able to track and consolidate their customer data into Vitally’s platform has shed light on blind spots and has resulted in actual business value for ikas. 

“Our biggest problem was tracking customers, seeing if they're actively using our product, and if they are properly onboarded. We’ve reduced our churn rate because we can easily see early signs of possible churn, and we have the chance to prevent it,” said Mustafa. “One of the most important things is customer satisfaction, being able to retain customers and drive word-of-mouth marketing… To have great customer satisfaction, you need to have great Customer Success software, and Vitally is definitely one of the best out there in the market.”

Why ikas Recommends Vitally to Other Customer Success Teams

• Feature-rich and easy to use with a great user interface
• Most value for the price
• Felt supported by the Vitally team, made it easy to purchase internationally
  

Why Vitally over other Customer Success platforms? When ikas compared Vitally to other solutions side-by-side, the choice was obvious, not only because of the software itself, but the team behind it. 

“Vitally is one of the most feature rich and easy-to-use alternatives,” said Mustafa. “They also really helped us regarding onboarding and pricing.”

For ikas, the return on their investment in Vitally has been huge. 

“I think the value for money you get from Vitally is priceless…” said Mustafa. “The long term effects of satisfied customers go beyond a single metric like NPS. So the return on investment is definitely huge.”

See how Vitally can help you scale CS efficiently as your book of business continues to grow, unify customer data from across your tech-stack, and help you create world-class customer experiences so you can delight more customers with a free personalized demo. Get started with a free trial when you schedule a demo today.

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