Transforming the Customer Experience: A Fireside Chat with REGnosys and Old Street Partners, Part II

Jayna: Let’s keep talking about the team. You’ve grown rapidly over the last year, and it’s been great to have people actually carry out the ideas we’ve come up with. I’ve enjoyed working with Nic, who is often the first point of contact for new customers, as well as Nasir on the technical implementation side. And of course, Minesh, who spends a lot more time with customers than your typical CTO! How do you think the broader team has been empowered to deliver a great customer experience?

Leo: Above all, we are all aligned on what success looks like. The time we’ve spent together refining our annual and quarterly goals, and breaking them down through OKRs (objectives and key results), has been invaluable. 

REGnosys has a culture of team ownership. That means we hold ourselves accountable at all levels of the organisation when we need to deliver, without needing a carrot-and-stick approach. As an example - working with you to build out our CRM has greatly helped when we need to pass the baton and deliver multiple tasks for customers. Even though this is a slightly unglamorous task, everyone in the team is on board and we’re almost religious about keeping it up to date!

We’re constantly holding up a mirror to ourselves, examining where we could improve and ensuring we’re capable of achieving our commercial goals - whether through workshops, on-sites (and even over biryani at Nasir’s place!). And we invest continuously in learning and development - bringing in outside expertise, and being willing to embrace new tools if that can help us optimise and be efficient. 

Jayna: I was actually pleasantly surprised by how quickly we implemented new ideas. Not all founders I work with are willing to embrace change so quickly, letting go of the comfortable and familiar. It also meant I felt useful from day one, and like a trusted partner. Did that surprise you too? And is there anything you’ve learned during this process? 

Leo: We’re always comfortable with taking on feedback. We don’t pretend to be experts in everything. There’s a saying that I’m fond of - it takes a great deal of confidence to be the idiot in the room. As you’ve seen, when we don’t know something that’s relevant to our clients, we don’t mind asking for help, and we make the effort to improve.

We’ve enjoyed working with you to bring some of that expertise in - especially understanding how to develop that commercial mindset, putting the right sales tech stack in place, and setting the right commercial goals and strategy. Although we aren’t salespeople by background - and that’s been a good thing - we can’t grow sustainably without getting better at distribution.  I think above all else, we are technical experts and it shows. We can speak to clients in their language because we go that extra mile to understand their technical problems. 

I’ll put the question back to you, as I’m interested to hear - what else have you learned through working with us? 

Jayna: I loved your willingness to embrace feedback. I remember sitting round the boardroom in those first few weeks, thinking “I’m talking to people who’ve worked in banking for years and years, not an industry known for moving fast and breaking things. Are they really going to act on the tough feedback I’m giving them?” But you did, right from the beginning. It’s because you have a great culture, one that embraces new ideas. And you’re a team of curious, open-minded and genuinely nice people. 

I learned the importance of ‘show, not tell’ at every opportunity. Rather than explaining why we might want to revamp the weekly commercial meeting, for instance, let’s actually do it. I’ll run it and then the team will take it for a test drive and we’ll fix things that aren’t working. And the final version is achieved through constant iteration and feedback. 

Leo: That’s great to hear, and that means a lot to me because this is the culture I want to infuse in the company.

Jayna: It’s been great reflecting on the past few months and taking a moment to recognise what we worked on. I have one last question. What are you looking forward to in the next 12 months and beyond?