This year is our 15th anniversary. It feels simultaneously like just yesterday and a lifetime ago since SocialOptic went from an idea to a business with customers. I am profoundly grateful to those who have supported us along the way, and to those who encouraged me to take on the challenge of leading a business. It wasn’t something I had considered, but your encouragement was invaluable. I strive to improve each day and extend my heartfelt thanks to our early customers who placed their trust in us and remain with us today. Collaborating with you remains a joy and a pleasure!
Being responsible for providing work for a growing team is both a significant responsibility and an honour. Being free from the pressure of external investors, venture capitalists, and bank debts means we can focus on delivering for our customers. In this video I am joined by Paul, our Head of Product, to share more about SocialOptic and our journey.
Our ‘Work Together’ strapline is about us as a team, about how we work with customers, and about how we help our customers. People achieve more together than they can ever do apart. The key is building a shared understanding of challenges and opportunities, assumptions and insights. That is our day-to-day work, from employee surveys to wellbeing questionnaires, medical assessments, national consultations, project plans, mapping and collective decision making. It is the thing we do, and the thing we are obsessive about getting even better at. Our internal rhythm is built around feedback loops, and reflection to find improvement, but with space for innovating and trying fresh approaches.
Over the past 15 years, we have experienced significant growth. We realised early on that a smaller number of deeper, longer-lasting relationships is what we favour. Working with customers that we know and understand deeply is much more rewarding than having tens of thousands of users spread around the world that we rarely got to talk to. Our structure means we are able to choose our customers carefully. We aren’t the right solution for everyone; we work with people where we have shared values and know that we can make a tangible difference.
The COVID-19 pandemic placed us in an unexpectedly useful place to provide assistance. It was an episode that catapulted our capabilities and expertise to a new level, even if it often pushed us to our limits. We now stand on a solid platform supported by a dedicated, expert team, with customers we have worked with for a decade or more, and newer ones that we look forward to working with for that long.
Continual learning remains at the heart of our operation, and still I learn something new every day. We add dozens of new features to our platform every month, as we find more and more ways to help. We deeply appreciate our customers, and each wave of our customer survey is eagerly studied by the whole team. As you’d expect, we discuss every comment and every data point, looking at how we can learn and improve, and celebrating what we have done well.
’15 years of SocialOptic’ is about celebrating what has been achieved, looking back to learn and looking to the future to grow. 15 years ago there were no iPads, no TikTok, no Instagram, no Uber, no Slack, no Teams, no Air Fryers, so I don’t yet know what the next 15 years will hold, but I know we’ll keep learning and adding new features and technologies.
We are inviting everyone who has been part of the journey to join in by sharing a story, a thought or an insight. Please send a 15 second video to any member of the team and we will include it as we share more about the journey and our 15-year milestone.