1. Offer a clever, practical lawn care solution: OtO targets common lawn care problems by integrating natural pest management and irrigation into a single automated solution, appealing to homeowners looking for efficiency and ease.
2. Use a direct-to-consumer strategy to educate customers: Ali decided to use videos and other information to educate buyers about this cutting-edge device, taking into account the lengthier deliberation cycle required for a non-impulse purchase.
3. Promote consumer advocacy and organic growth: Word-of-mouth and referrals are important OtO tactics. Customers are encouraged to share their great experiences through an app-based rewards program, which promotes organic development through referrals from neighbors.
4. Emphasis on quality in customer service: OtO prioritizes accuracy and speed in customer assistance, utilizing systems to track device data and enable agents to promptly address problems. This strategy upholds service level agreements while guaranteeing excellent replies.
5. Get ready for peak season with flexible training and resources: To help new agents catch up before the growth season, the firm has created efficient training resources. OtO can efficiently grow its customer support staff during times of high demand because to this flexibility.
Meet Ali Sabti, Founder and CEO of OtO!
The OtO Lawn smart device is the world’s first smart outdoor device that waters your lawn, while also applying natural solutions that keep your garden green and pest free, all from one compact device. Think of it as the littlest lawn assistant you never had.
A self-described curious child growing up, Ali learned to code while still in grade school. He remembers, “I fell in love with building products and websites and eventually put myself through school by developing E-Commerce sites.” He went to school for mechanical engineering, and then went on to create a device for Mount Sinai Hospital that detected lesions. His skills were noticed by the automobile industry and for the next 10 years he traveled to Japan and Germany for work. “Through that experience, I learned a lot about scale, manufacturing, and production,” he says.
By this time, Ali had bought a small house outside of Toronto. Like many homeowners, especially those who travel a lot, he faced the challenge of caring for his lawn. “You’re making the choice between devoting the time to being outside, watering, and going through the learning curve of figuring the best solutions to apply or your spending a lot of money to put in an expensive inground sprinkler and hiring someone to come out on a regular basis.” Knowing there must be a better way, Ali drew from his passion for building products to tackle the problem and in 2019, he founded OtO.
With working knowledge of the E-Commerce space, Ali determined that a direct-to-consumer business model best fit his brand. “I saw the opportunity to educate customers,” he says. “That’s one of the powerful levers that E-Commerce has for a product you’re just launching. Especially if it’s a product that’s not an impulse purchase and requires a longer consideration cycle. You can educate customers through videos and other forms of content.”
Headquartered in Toronto, OtO is a hybrid company made up of a core group of engineers. “We’ve been able to build an incredible work culture,” Ali notes. Members have the option to work remotely a few days a week, but Ali points out that building a physical product requires a physical location to vet and test it. “We have a lot of fun designing, developing, and working with customers. Because we are flexible, we see a lot of employees come to the office on a regular basis,” he says. The team is supported by remote and offshore workers located in Canada, the US, and Philippines.
OtO’s Growth Journey
Ali built OtO’s first prototype, with some help from angel investors, and was ready to make it public in March 2020 through a Kickstarter campaign. Then COVID happened. Ali remembers, “With the intention of doing a Kickstarter in a few months, I started collecting email addresses by running basic ads that directed to a generic website. Someone eventually reached out – they didn’t want to wait for the campaign and, noticing that we were using Shopify, asked if they could pre-order.” More similar requests were made, and Ali decided to turn on the purchase feature. By the end of the year, he had sold a couple of hundred units.
Early success was followed by further investment and three years later, OtO devices are on tens of thousands of lawns. “We really speak to that customer problem. We’ve been able to provide a real solution for people with a small to medium size lawn,” Ali says, noting that many of those early customers are still with the company.
Reliant on product development meant that OtO had to take debt in the beginning. “You have to pay that back before taking out profit,” Ali reminds. Consequently, all revenue has been reinvested into the business to sustain year to year growth.
Taking An Organic Approach to Boost Revenue
In neighbor-to-neighbor conversations, lawn care is a regular topic that comes up. People living in an area tend to face the same challenges related to watering their grass and outdoor plants. As a result, ‘word of mouth’ and customer referral are key to strategies that OtO employs to boost revenue. “We’ve taken an organic approach and created an app for customers,” Ali says. “They get a kickback when they recommend us. It gives people an incentive to talk about OtO devices with others.”
Fostering Customer Retention
Customer retention plays a critical role in OtO’s revenue model – the company deploys various strategies starting with making sure products deliver on their promise. “We have an incredible warranty,” Ali points out. “And we monitor the performance of our devices, because retention is about delivering on that value proposition over and over again.” Additionally, the company partners with homeowners on a subscription consisting of fertilizers, mosquito and tick repellent, and odor elimination solution. “It’s important for us to think about our products, and how they align with the interests of our customers.”
Prioritizing Quality, Accuracy, and Efficiency
Ali prioritizes quality over quantity for customer service at OtO. Evaluating overall team performance, key metrics are monitored to ensure tickets are being closed within a timeframe. Ali goes on to say, “While we stick to SLA tightly, we also review the quality of responses, because ultimately, customer service is about getting the right response as quickly as possible. Time is important, but accuracy is also important.” Additionally, they send out post-purchase surveys, do spot checks, and listen to recorded calls.
Peak Season: Taking a Holistic View
While sales spike during the growing season in Canada and the US, OtO utilizes the talent of its entire team year-round to capitalize on opportunity. Engineers are constantly working on innovating devices while marketing explores ways to broaden the company’s visibility and reach. Ali notes that while they sell only to North America, customers are shipping units to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia.
Ali believes that empathy is the foundation of excellent customer service. “It begins with treating the customer in a way that you want to be treated,” he states. OtO’s products are tech heavy – in addition to compassion, agents must be highly trained and knowledgeable. As the company scaled, processes and resources were put in place to best serve customers with the understanding that technical aptitude leads to a quick resolution time. Ali explains, “We built backend tools to interrogate data relating to the device, how the device was used, solar energy, and motor currents. Our agents are then empowered with this information to help our customers at the point of contact in the quickest way possible.”
The Importance of Effective Training Tools
The development of tools, and systems for learning allowed OtO to streamline its training process for new hires. Ali says this was necessary because of the complex technical nature of the products, noting that otherwise, training would take numerous months. He elaborates, “We can essentially take an agent with zero knowledge of the OtO device and within 30 days, they are able to use the tools, troubleshoot, and help customers on their own.” Additionally, a short training block means agents can be quickly scaled to accommodate the peak season, which runs from mid-March through the end of September when weather is conducive to growing plants.
Looking Ahead: Key Goals and Priorities
Ali believes that the company is in a position to focus on the total solutions they are able to offer. Information gathered from backend tools has allowed OtO to anticipate the needs of customers and ultimately extend the lifetime value of their products even further. “We’re able to do over the air updates to both the app and device,” Ali notes. “Looking ahead, we will continue loading more features and providing more solutions.”
Advice to Aspiring E-Commerce Entrepreneurs
Ali’s advice to anyone looking to break into the E-Commerce space is “you don’t need permission to start” and “take shots on goal.” He notes that marketing and distribution in E-Commerce has drastically changed in the last 10+ years. It’s easy and inexpensive to set up a landing site, come up with clever copy, and create engaging content. Accounting his own experience, he says, “I stitched together a 20-second video of our device and posted it on Facebook. Someone called in to say it’s perfect, but why white? We hadn’t even given color a thought yet. Numerous conversations later and that person became one of our first customers. If I didn’t post that half-baked video campaign, I would have never found out what it takes to get people to convert.”
What Excites You Most About E-Commerce? As an engineer, I’m excited by the fact that a lot of E-Commerce is now analytical. You can run permutations and look at the result for statistical significance. Suddenly, psychology becomes quantifiable – you can quantify performance with numbers. As the tools continue to evolve, you're seeing marketing and customer service leaning more towards analytics.
Can’t-Live-Without-Tool? Shopify, hands down.
AI or No AI? AI is a great tool for brainstorming, especially during the divergent brainstoring phase, when ideas are coming from left and right, of starting a new project. AI is helpful when you don’t need to be locked into parameters or have the final answer, but are looking to broaden the available options. We have, however, shied away from using AI in customer service because with a complex product, you want the right answer quickly. But I am excited about the space. With how tools are growing exponentially, it’s only a matter of time before AI helps on that convergent side of design.
Key Hiring Trait? I always hire for hard work, ethics, and intelligence – the perfect trifecta for an employee. And curiosity – in my experience, the people who are curious and put in the work to use the available tools end up being the most successful.
Recent Book or Podcast? The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. And From Barbarians to Bureaucrats by Lawrence Miller is interesting within the context of scaling a startup in the E-Commerce space.
Favorite Thought Leader in E-Commerce? Mois Ali, Found of Native - I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him. Native is now a commodity product. While OtO is a specialty in E-Commerce, I find it helpful to look at an absolute commodity product to see how it is marketed.
#1 Challenge as a Leader? Being able to juggle how deep you must go into the different areas of the business at the beginning. But once you have your business figured out, you can bring in someone who is more knowledgeable in those areas and scale.
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