Founders Stories: Meet the entrepreneur bringing the customer service revolution to craftsmen
Welcome to this edition of Founders Stories, where we sit down with our portfolio co-founders to talk what they’re building and why it matters.
Kaare Beck-Fischer is the founder of Maguru, a marketing and communication service designed to create a beautiful customer experience for craftsmen like carpenters, plumbers and electricians.
After five years working at the largest Scandinavian directory publisher [the company that used to publish the Yellow Pages] helping explore new business models, Kaare became convinced that poor marketing was the biggest barrier to craftsmen growing their businesses.
He quit his job to build a marketing tool designed for craftsmen from scratch together with Founders.
Maguru [marketing + guru] initially focused on helping craftsmen to market their services better. But it became clear that the bigger barrier to growth for craftsmen’s businesses was actually poor customer experience.
Communication tends to be ad hoc and takes place via calls and texts, meaning it’s easy to lose track of what’s been agreed. At best it is inconvenient.
That’s why Maguru just launched a new app. They want to drive the same standards of simplicity and transparency in comms between craftsmen and their customers that companies like Airbnb pioneered in the travel industry.
In the app you find craftsmen sorted from highest customer satisfaction score. There’s also a timeline of all communications and the option to contact the employees of the company directly via phone and messaging. Meanwhile, all the documentation is in one place — with everything captured automatically, no data entry or uploading necessary.
Kaare believes that this will drive more repeat business and more referral business, while the end customer has a much better customer experience.
Watch our interview or read the transcript below as we discuss Kaare’s path into entrepreneurship, shifting customer trends and how Maguru is revolutionising the customer experience for craftsmen.
About Founders
Founders is a startup studio. Together with exceptional entrepreneurs we build products and companies that radically improve how people and organisations work. Our portfolio includes Pleo, Duuoo, Kontist, Son of a Tailor, Maguru, LifeX, Reach, Wonderwerk, Headlight & Donna.
But enough about us, back to the story! 😉
Q&A with Kaare
Can you explain a little bit about what Maguru is?
Maguru is a marketing and communications platform for service companies.
So who is it for and what does it do for them?
We help them provide a better customer experience to their end customers by helping them interact better. This means they see more repeat business and more referral business, while the end customer has a much better customer experience. That goes all the way through the customer journey. So before you find a company, but also, during the job and even after you will see an improved customer experience.
What is the problem you are solving?
Most people have had a bad customer experience when dealing with service companies. Around 80% of customers say that they are satisfied with end result of actual work, but only 20% say they are satisfied with the customer experience. It is basically very difficult for service companies to provide good customer experience, so they need help.
What’s filling the gap right now?
If they’re not using Maguru, they’re basically not communicating a lot and lack of communication is one of the main factors that hurts the customer experience from the end customer perspective. We reduce the cost of communication, so they communicate a lot more and in a more transparent way.
Why is this a problem that you care personally about solving?
In the Danish B2C market alone, there are 1m transactions. I think it’s strange for such a commonplace thing the process is also fundamentally broken. I want to fix that.
What were you doing before you founded Maguru?
I was responsible for business development within the largest Scandinavian directory publisher, the company that used to publish the Yellow Pages, where I worked for five years. I spent time exploring new business models there, but ultimately it was a matter of innovator’s dilemma and I ended up starting from scratch with Founders.
What does the name mean?
The name is an abbreviation of marketing guru. We started with marketing and later moved toward doing more communications on the platform as well.
What do you think are the biggest trends impacting this space right now?
One is an increased level of digital maturity, even with service companies. They are kind of late to the party, in terms of being digital. But they are getting there. Another thing is that data is moving to the cloud, so we can do a lot of interesting things with all the order management systems, with all the accounting systems, and the final thing is the need for transparency.
It has not been very transparent in terms of marketing and communications in the past but customers are pushing for transparency because they have come to expect it.
Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like to work at Maguru?
Our culture is something we have been very intentional about. Especially this thing about transparency, everyone buys into that value, its a fundamental thing in the company, that we want to drive transparency where there has been none, essentially. So that’s really important. So everyone who is in Maguru subscribes to those values. Apart from that, we strive to find the right balance between work and private life, social life and so on. We want people to be here for the long run. It has to be sustainable for the long run. It is a startup, it is tough, but it’s not a sprint, it’s more like a marathon.
Maguru
To stay up to date with the latest from Kaare and the team you can follow Maguru on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Video work by Jonas Smidt Mogensen — you can see more of his work here!
