Yext describes itself as “the Answers company that’s on a mission to empower every company in the world to provide authoritative answers to every question about their organisation.” It achieves this by using AI to collect and organise a company’s information and deliver it — in the form of answers — to customers, employees, and partners.
Yext’s Answers Platform works by pulling in information, organising it into a Knowledge Graph and then delivering it via a set of platform services, including Listings, Search, Pages & Reviews. Brands as varied as Verizon, Subway, and Marriott — as well as organisations like the U.S. State Department — trust Yext to radically improve their business and deliver perfect answers everywhere.
But that’s what the company does, not what it really is. To figure that out, we spoke to Melissa Bickford, Senior Director for Northern Europe at Yext. Mel is particularly passionate about driving positive and effective culture where the team can thrive. This can mean anything from “Think Big” whiteboarding sessions to Career Development 1:1’s to taking everyone out for drinks to nourish relationships and have fun!
Let’s learn more, shall we?
How was your company born and where are you based?
Yext was founded in 2006 out of a one-room office in New York City, originally as a lead generation service. A few years later, our founders realised that there was a strong need in the market for a product like Listings to manage business’ digital properties on search engines, and from there we have expanded our offerings to include enterprise search, site pages, and reviews to create a full-platform solution.
Since then, we’ve grown into a global team with 11 different offices. I’m based in the London team.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
At times it’s been tough to recruit top talent - as the media, marketing, and technology industries are so competitive. Over the pandemic, we found that people weren’t moving jobs as often, but the recent recession has meant that top talent is now more available.
As a solution to the recruitment challenges, we’ve promoted more frequently from within and have focused heavily on developing our own talent. We strive to dedicate time and effort to creating a workplace our people love and where people are rewarded for their hard work. I love seeing growth and improvement within my team.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
This one is clear for me - it’s the IPO! The moment we were listed on the stock market was a huge milestone for the company, and the level of energy and excitement that came with reflecting on what we had built was immensely rewarding.
Having worked in this space throughout my career, achieving an IPO is momentous and often feels so far away - so it was an amazing achievement and testament to the growth of the company.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
We’re focused on developing a larger pool of ‘super users’ amongst our customers. We define these as people who can unlock all the possibilities of Yext’s platform and be an advocate for our offering within their business.
We see our customers as an extended family - and we offer them all our ‘Hitchhikers’ training program to help upskill them on our platform. This has been taken up by the likes of Specsavers, Häagen Dazs, and the Co-Op and many of our customers are now a network for each other to learn more about how to use our solutions to their advantage.
I’m also focused on developing my team over the next year. I think it’s crucial for every manager to figure out what their team members want to do with their individual careers and help to find them the right opportunities to drive that forward. I find it incredibly rewarding to help develop talent and see my team members succeed.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
We’re a super tight-knit, honest team. We collaborate all day across many different channels and I have the philosophy that no idea or question is ever stupid - I want to hear them all! It’s so important to practise curiosity, and knowledge sharing is crucial, especially when many of us share the same everyday challenges.
For example, we frequently collaborate on how to best manage complex strategic accounts, coming up with creative solutions to answer customer queries that surface all day, every day.
Although we’re a SaaS business, so not your typical creative industry, there’s a ton of room for creative thinking and innovation. We run “Think Big” sessions to brainstorm on a raft of subjects, no laptops are allowed.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
We are incredibly goal-driven and like to regularly share these between us to drive team accountability, whether it’s quarterly goals or weekly to-do’s.
We also believe it is helpful to get our broader EMEA team together on a regular basis - it’s really motivating to get the team under one roof and discuss our challenges, as well as get to know each other and have fun!
Interacting in-person is irreplaceable and has never been more important given the pandemic. We’re taking the same approach with our customers - and we aim to do as much in-person as our clients want to do. For example, I’m going to South Africa to meet with our customers over there - it’ll be a great opportunity to connect with them face-to-face and build important relationships.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
Put simply, COVID-19 accelerated our customers' digital transformation. Everyone needed to pivot to doing everything from home and doing it digitally overnight. The Yext platform came into its own, it was a very full-on period because of the nature of what Yext does. Our customers needed us more than ever. It was a turbocharged time of being reliable partners to them.
This brought us closer to our customers. We ran ‘Collab Labs’ and industry-specific roundtables to get us and our customers together; it was one of the most memorable customer programmes that we have run! That formed a tight community through a challenging time and connected our customers with each other too.
As a team, I feel that we grew closer during the challenging time. While I don’t think anyone is lining up to attend another virtual pub quiz or remote wine tasting just yet, they were creative solutions to building and/or maintaining connections as a team under very tough circumstances. We all felt incredibly grateful that Yext prioritised virtual events for the team and for our customers.
Which agencies or companies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
Lush is doing incredible things with sustainability and I believe they are leading the way in the industry on that front. They have a progressive, innovative approach with initiatives such as moving towards no one time use packaging - making it easy for their customers to effortlessly make sustainable decisions.
I also admire Hurr. I think in general we are moving towards a world where, as consumers, we own less but own well and rent when you don’t need to own something forever. In the spirit of sustainability I love what Hurr is doing - and I am a proud lender and customer. It’s a brilliant, female-founded, community to be part of.
What is one tip that you would give to other companies looking to grow?
Do not ever compromise on culture and talent: they feed each other and that feeds company growth. Our company embodies the values of ‘Think Big, Learn Fast, and Get Stuff Done.’ We live and breathe these words, bringing a sense of unity and a spirit of collaboration.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
Front and centre are the alliances we have with key strategic partners. We also find live and virtual events really important for engaging current and potential customers. Finally, we try to build organic growth as much as possible and a lot of our new engagements come out of brands we already work with as our own product suite has evolved and new offerings are created.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
Our Chief Data Officer Christian Ward recently presented on the future of customer experience being reliant on ‘zero-party’ data, meaning that businesses will use information like site search data to understand what their customers are looking for. This is where the industry is headed and it’s at the heart of what we’re working on as a business.
I also hope to see more female leadership across the industry. The CEO of the Co-Op group, Debbie Robinson, recently sat on a panel at a Yext industry event and she was inspirational. I believe we’re moving in the right direction, but the industry still has work to do to progress the equality agenda at a more senior level.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
‘Dare to Lead’ by Brene Brown - I recently ran a workshop in Paris on this book and gave everyone on my team a copy. It's a great read around the power of vulnerability and how to approach difficult conversations while staying true to your values.
I also listen to the ‘Diary of a CEO’ podcast by Steven Bartlett. I tend to listen to an episode on my commute into the office. A recent favourite was the interview with Whoop CEO, Will Ahmed.Now I notice Whoop’s on people's wrists everywhere - it’s such a smart concept around sleep health. Jay Shetty’s ‘On Purpose’ is also very inspiring and relatable.
Lastly, I had a fantastic 1:1 with Lexi Bohannon, my EVP, last week and she reminded me of how important it is to spend time with people you want to learn from to be a more well rounded leader for your team. During the pandemic, networking wasn’t such a priority, but now we can do it justice again. I am trying to have one coffee a month with someone new from a different business and honour that time on my calendar.
