When My Company Botched Its New App Rollout, We Learned A Critical Lesson About How to Serve Customers. Communication is everything.
This story appears in the June 2022 issue of BIZ Experiences. Subscribe »
It felt like we had done everything right. We did our research. We asked our customers what they wanted. We built what they told us. Then, on May 10, 2021, we rolled out our new product and expected a lovefest.
Instead, that rollout launched a firestorm.
And yet, what I learned from the launch set up Calibrate — my metabolic health business — for lasting success. To date, we've grown to more than 20,000 members, raised more than $125 million, and brought in $20 million in sales last year. None of it would be possible without this failure.
Let me go back to why I founded Calibrate. After working in startups, a broken back led me to health care. I was leading strategic partnerships at a digital pharmacy when my mom told me she needed to lose weight to get back in control of her health. As I helped her find a doctor, I discovered research that combined medication with intensive lifestyle intervention; it worked, but it only existed in a clinical setting. I saw an opportunity to bring it to a larger market, and I launched Calibrate in June 2020 to do just that.
Related: 4 Simple Ways to Communicate Better With Your Customers
In the beginning, we didn't have the time or resources to build our own app — so we white-labeled an existing product. Then, once we received our Series A funding, we developed our own app, informed by research we'd done with our members.
When we were ready to launch, we automatically migrated our members over to the new app. But we hadn't considered the shock this would cause. We'd spent a year asking members to develop daily habits using that first app, and then yanked it away — along with features they'd come to depend on — without anticipating the impact of this change. They were mad. Really mad. I spent the next two weeks in a Zoom war room with my team, talking to members — I personally spoke to hundreds of them—to hear them out, regain their trust, and help them find workarounds in the new app.
I quickly realized the silver lining. It was a sharp reminder that business isn't about acquiring members; it's about driving results for those members. Results require trust, and trust is built through communication — or over-communication when you're moving quickly.
Related: Before Launching a Business, Ask Yourself These 5 Questions
After my wake-up call, I built a fully integrated product marketing team that over-communicates with our members at every step along the way. We also hired an engagement product team, a research team, and a user experience design team to help us identify new ways to iterate and distribute our messaging to our members.
Meanwhile, as we grew from 150 team members to 650, I took the lesson from our app launch to heart and we focused on building trust through frequent internal communication. We attacked this with the same intentionality we'd developed in response to our app launch. Having learned that we would have to be as clear, simple, and repetitive in our internal communications as with our members, we developed Calibrate O/S. It's a growing set of documentation on the way we work, how we make decisions, and why we work the way we do — everything from feedback to "user manuals."
We ask each team member to share their own "user manual," an ever-evolving account of what they love doing, what they're great at, what they hate doing, what they're terrible at, what motivates and impresses them, and what they're working on. Mine includes my Enneagram type (Type 2: "The Helper"), my star sign (Virgo), and how I like to get feedback. The idea is that sharing our strengths, weaknesses, and interests creates both vulnerability and self-awareness that makes it easier to work together.
I know we'll always be iterating how we work — both internally and externally. Thanks to the app launch, I know it's not enough to just communicate. We have to over-communicate to build trust — the only foundation of a team and a company that drives real results.
