Why We Built a Community for Customer Engagement? And What Does It Mean for You?
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“If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.”
— African Proverb
“If you want to GROW fast. And far.
Grow together.”
— How things work in the Information Age
It was March 2019. We had been working with some of the leading digital brands across the globe for over five years. We observed the innovation driven by the product owners and growth marketers in these brands. The sheer scale of growth driven by our customers was inspiring and we were looking for ways to share these stories with other members of the community.
Surprisingly, there was no platform that brought together digital growth marketers and product owners and enabled them to freely exchange ideas, learn, and network.
So, we created one, and #GROWTH was born!
We invited some of the brightest minds in customer engagement to share their insights at a full-day conference. More than 200 up-and-coming customer engagement and growth leaders came together to learn. The evening was spent networking with the leaders and peers. The practitioners and leaders went back feeling inspired to put their learnings into practice.
Over the years, #GROWTH has expanded to 30+ cities and helped thousands of growth marketers and product owners learn and grow.
The learning goes on
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, we replaced large physical gatherings with virtual events, but the learning continued. One silver lining was that growth folks could now transcend physical boundaries and learn from the best in the space – irrespective of their country or time zone.
That was when we introduced #GROWTH Academy, the hub for learning tried-and-true customer engagement frameworks from industry leaders. These courses helped leaders innovate with customer engagement strategies to grow their businesses.
In the wake of all the uncertainty and disruption, we observed two key macro trends emerge across industries:
Businesses moved towards customer-centricity, valuing customer relationships over acquisition.
We, as individuals, evolved to become community-focused, valuing our network and relationships for our growth and sense of purpose.
The former led us to triple down on customer success and provide 1:1 strategic support to our clients, helping them build long-lasting relationships with their customers.
The #GROWTH properties were already providing 1:many learning opportunities for individuals.
As we interacted with more folks from this space, we realized that community members cherished the learning experience and wanted a way to share their knowledge with others in the group.
The idea of democratizing knowledge seemed to be a common motivation for leaders who wanted to pay it forward.
They wanted to know how they could come on board to share their learnings and experience. Some had even put together frameworks for specific customer engagement disciplines. These frameworks, created over years of being in this space could save someone who was just starting out, the trouble to learn everything through trial and error.
Inspired by the feedback, we aim to build many:many relationships. That’s what we’re bringing to you today.
Say hey to #GROWTH Community – a peer-to-peer learning community to tap into the collective expertise that’s out there.
#GROWTH in a nutshell
#GROWTH aims to bring the people and the learning to one place. You can choose to learn based on your goals and needs:
- Resource library: A collection of the best resources created by expert practitioners – videos, podcast episodes, quick insights, and more.
- Academy: Certification courses where you can learn the frameworks that helped the best experts drive growth.
- Events and conferences: Opportunities to network with and learn from the best minds in the space.
- Newsletters: The latest and best growth discussions, resources, and strategies in one bite-sized email.
- Mentorship and peer learning: Discussion forums, AMA sessions, mentoring, and a whole lot more.
- Leadership program: The Customer Engagement Leadership Program (CELP) is a series of cohort-based courses to enable up and coming growth professionals with the skill and knowledge they need to become growth leaders.
And there’s more: As the community grows, we’ll continue to add offerings that best serve its members.
The goal is to create an inflection point in the careers of young growth professionals by providing them with playbooks from leaders and increasing the scope for serendipitous connections.
We’re on a mission to help future leaders in customer engagement accelerate their growth. This can happen only if the community comes together to support and raise all of its members. Together, we can pave the way to innovate and re-build customer engagement for the modern world.
If you feel the same, welcome aboard.