Microsoft just released a feature that kills my tool. What should I do?
Hi there IndieHacker Fam!
TLDR; Microsoft Teams just released a Premium version feature last week (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/intelligent-meeting-recap-in-teams-premium-now-available/ba-p/3832541) that basically provides exactly the same features in my product for an additional $7/user/month. I have lost sleep over this and tried to research more to decide whether I should totally pivot or keep going at it. I finally decided to reach out to the IndieHacker community to get some advice, constructive criticism or just some encouragement.
Background: I am working on an AI Transcription + Summary/Key Topic Identification + Analytics tool for sales and customer success teams in SMBs and startups. AI Transcription and Summary/Key Topic Identification is not new. Companies like Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai have been around for a few years. And of course with GPT-3.5 and 4 now, the key topic identification has become even easier to develop. My value proposition was to aggregate the data across calls and help sales and customer success teams give the most relevant data and urgent customer issues to the product and engineering team as quickly as possible (as a B2B software Product Lead, I know how mission-critical this is to developing software that customers want to pay for. Being quicker to prioritize and launch the right features = 10-30% increase in revenue per month).
Before the news was announced, I have been getting overwhelmingly positive feedback for such an AI tool that transcribes calls and recordings and converts them into actionable insights. I have spoken to dozens of prospects - who were not just keen (you know, the usual kind, friendly albeit patronizing 'OK sign me up!') but said things like: "Wow! I wish I could have bought this 6 months ago!", and got them on my Beta Tester list. In the recent few days, many people who I have pitched our tool to have been telling me about the Teams Premium 'Intelligent Recap' feature.
I won't say I didn't see this coming. But I thought I had enough time to build a niche, captive audience before it did. Here's some of my own analysis below:
Strengths:
- Teams only provides info on a per-call basis, but does not aggregate this info into a proper team-based dashboard for let's say your head of sales or product to review. The features provided by Teams and potentially Google Meet and Zoom seem to be more centred around the call/meeting experience and gathering info from the calls + sharing it with team mates. It provides you with AI-generated tasks and notes but it does not deep-dive into insights across the teams like Talk Time Per Attendee, which is what we do.
Risks:
- Now that Teams has released this, I am 99% sure Google Meet and Zoom will release their own versions. Doubling down purely on those AI Transcription, Summary, Key Topics features seems a lost cause for sure. Plus, I don't know how far they will go in terms of Call Analytics. It seems quite plausible they would have it in their roadmap some time in future.
Opportunities:
- Not everyone uses Teams still, and also not everyone might upgrade to the Teams Premium Plan. Teams Premium Plan has been out for a while but doesn't seem like a ton of startups or SMBs have subscribed to it.
- Potentially, I could focus much more on the conversation/customer analytics aspect and invest more resources into integrating with all the Video Conferencing Platforms to perhaps pull their data, rather than ask users to upload it themselves into our platform
- Another focus area that we have is to focus on AI tips while doing calls, meaning it will auto-generate prompts based on where the call is going. For eg: in a sales call, when a customer asks you a difficult question, the AI will be there to guide you with some potential answers -> But this also looks like its right up Microsoft's alley
I really am lost. I also wonder what other AI transcription SaaS companies are going to do about this (if anyone has any insights or been in similar situations before). All comments/roasts/feedback/encouragement welcomed T_T
So 5ish years ago I was working for a company who's main product was an add-in to Office, which they'd been selling for 10-15 years or so. Microsoft started offering tools to do the same thing before I left. In that case, the company had been around for some time so their tool was still a lot more sophisticated at least at first. The product is still around, though to be fair there's been some downsizing and acquisitions etc. and it wouldn't surprise me if the founders decided it was a good time to exit and retire before the MS product really matured.
But ask yourself what does (or could) your product do that the MS product doesn't. If the answer truly is that there's really not much, then maybe it's time to shutter your product - but that's probably not the case. Also don't concern yourself too much with what you think they might have on their roadmap - you might scare yourself over something they may not implement for years if ever.
Even if the offering is quite similar, maybe you can come up with a way to differentiate your pricing structure - as you say the feature is part of a plan your target audience is often not subscribed to; maybe you can't beat the per user pricing of MS but you can double down on features for a particular type of user or use case (you mention sales & support specifically, while MS is probably much more general).
Another thing: Sales and CS are often talking to people in a variety of companies, and sometimes they are probably having to use the communication tool preferred by their customer / prospect. A tool that works across multiple providers to provide the same day may have particular value to them even if all of the vendors end up with similar tools that work for their platform only.
Hi there @lgaud - I am glad to share that I have dug deeper and spoken to 40+ people before pivoting into a Customer Research Platform powered by Gen-AI. A lot more valuable pain points to solve now. If you would love to see a demo, please visit: https://getcradar.framer.ai/ - and happy to have you as an early user if it solves any of your pain points at all :)
I love your take and experience on this! You are absolutely right. This is the time to really dig deep and do some soul-searching on our end, and I think we can definitely find something that Microsoft doesn't want to do (at least for a few years).
100% agree on the part of trying to predict their roadmap. I will also put double focus on the Ideal Customer Profiles (sales/CS/account management/product/design) and build features that MSFT will definitely not want to go into.
Assess the extent to which the new feature affects your tool. Determine if it completely renders your tool irrelevant or if there are still unique functionalities or value propositions that differentiate it. Understand your users' needs and preferences. Evaluate if there are alternative ways to address those needs, either by adapting your tool or exploring new features or enhancements that align with Microsoft's release.
Reach out to your user base and communicate openly about the situation. Inform them about the Microsoft feature and its impact on your tool. Seek feedback from users such as vlone ltd on their expectations and requirements moving forward.
Hi there @mateomateohudson11- I am glad to share that I have dug deeper and spoken to 40+ people before pivoting into a Customer Research Platform powered by Gen-AI. A lot more valuable pain points to solve now. If you would love to see a demo, please visit: https://getcradar.framer.ai/ - and happy to have you as an early user if it solves any of your pain points at all :)
Thanks for your advice! Yes, so the next 2 weeks I am spending extra time with customers and prospects to get deeper insights as to how we can serve them better. So far the customer feedback has been positive and they are actually criticizing the Microsoft Teams feature quite a lot! But of course, I know that despite the criticism, convenience is still king so if we don't build something special that Teams cannot/does not want to do, then we are still screwed.
Either way, it's a short breath of relief and we will continue crunching forward.
Microsoft is a giant and they have their own priorities. Their goal might be to improve the meeting experience rather than deeply analyzing the content of the meetings. Even if they decide to include more analytics, it would likely be broader and not as specific or as detailed as you could make yours.
Also, as you rightly said, not every company is using Teams and not every company using Teams will be quick to jump onto the premium plan. There's a wide market out there that you can tap into.
Here's a thought: have you considered positioning your tool as a "call intelligence" platform? Continue providing transcriptions and summaries, but really double down on the analytics part. Build more detailed reports, create trends over time, maybe even try to predict future customer issues based on the past conversations. All these are areas you can dive deep into while the big players might just skim the surface.
Hi there @LanafromCharge - I am glad to share that I have dug deeper and spoken to 40+ people before pivoting into a Customer Research Platform powered by Gen-AI. A lot more valuable pain points to solve now. If you would love to see a demo, please visit: https://getcradar.framer.ai/ - and happy to have you as an early user if it solves any of your pain points at all :)
Hi Lana, I am glad to get your perspective on this and that we are aligned in the analysis of the situation (so that it's not just the voice in my head thinking that).
I have been looking at those positioning of 'call intelligence', 'call analytics', 'conversation analytics' or 'revenue/customer intelligence'. Been bouncing these terms around prospects and the feedback I got was it may be either too abstract or they get it instantly. So this direction is definitely right, and we just need to perfect the keywords associated with it :)
I think you are building something different, and Microsoft won't be able to catch up with you if you listen to the customers and build features for them.
Hi there @sameedahmad- I am glad to share that I have dug deeper and spoken to 40+ people before pivoting into a Customer Research Platform powered by Gen-AI. A lot more valuable pain points to solve now. If you would love to see a demo, please visit: https://getcradar.framer.ai/ - and happy to have you as an early user if it solves any of your pain points at all :)
Thank you for the validation @sameedahmad - it means a lot. I will keep building.
Just because someone is doing it does not mean you should not.
Microsoft is mostly B2B for large enterprises.
Hi there @Kota - I am glad to share that I have dug deeper and spoken to 40+ people before pivoting into a Customer Research Platform powered by Gen-AI. A lot more valuable pain points to solve now. If you would love to see a demo, please visit: https://getcradar.framer.ai/ - and happy to have you as an early user if it solves any of your pain points at all :)
Damn right. Thank you for the encouragement and I do always love picking a fight with the big boys to be honest. Nothing more inspiring for founders and their teams than a classic David vs Goliath story.
What’s your planned pricing strategy?
It seems like you could sell into the sales manager and do just fine, especially as an indie
Also don’t forget that this is a very large market
Hi there @pr33t - I am glad to share that I have dug deeper and spoken to 40+ people before pivoting into a Customer Research Platform powered by Gen-AI. A lot more valuable pain points to solve now. If you would love to see a demo, please visit: https://getcradar.framer.ai/ - and happy to have you as an early user if it solves any of your pain points at all :)
Thank you so much for the encouragement. And you are absolutely right, the market is huge for such a pain point.
For pricing strat, I am going with the usual Freemium model: Free (45 min of transcription and low-tier analysis), $19/user/month (8h of transcription and low-tier analysis), and finally a Team Account which is $54/month (1xAdmin account for deeper analytics, 1xStandard account, both accounts have 10h of transcription).
I'm open to any suggestions! From my user interviews so far, it seems the conversation analytics aspect is something extremely interesting to sales/CS/account management/consulting folks. I could consider offering different packages for Transcription seats or Analytics seats.