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Fast Company
10 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Negative reviews are your best source of feedback
Acquiring new customers has become increasingly challenging and expensive. Customer acquisition costs have risen substantially in the last five years, and they're still climbing. Attention is scarce, and even a great product isn't enough to guarantee customer retention. The fastest growth can be found not by pouring more money into marketing but by turning your existing users into advocates. And we found that at our HR tech platform, which offers a suite of technological solutions and assumes all risks and obligations associated with engaging contractors, the insights that lead to the highest customer retention come from addressing negative reviews. Handled correctly, a one-star review can go from being a blemish on your reputation to a goldmine of insights that can drive product improvements, bolster user satisfaction, and ultimately, fuel growth. Here's how. The economics of listening Your current user base is a treasure trove of opportunity. These users have already navigated your onboarding processes and understand your product's value. Engaging with their feedback can lead to enhancements that can make them champions of your brand. According to a Capital One Shopping report, 99% of American consumers read reviews before buying, and 93% say reviews impact their purchasing decisions. A CouponBirds survey found that 96% of consumers leave feedback at least some of the time, and 44% do so always. Reviews are a very loud source of business intelligence—a real-world focus group if you will. For instance, at our company, we once received an angry message from a freelancer claiming we were withholding their payment. Our initial reaction was confusion. Everything looked fine. But after digging in, we discovered the real issue—the client had failed to approve the task. At the time, our system had no failsafe. If clients went silent, freelancers got stuck, which caused numerous payments to be delayed. This message led to a product change—after a fixed time period, work now would be auto-approved. This tweak made our platform more efficient and trustworthy, not only for freelancers, but for businesses too. Every user is a potential advocate It can be tempting to only focus on decision-makers. But anyone who interacts with your product can become a powerful amplifier. A Kenyan contractor doing translations for $300 a month might not be on your CRM radar, but their experience matters. A single post on a Reddit thread, a comment in a WhatsApp group, or a Trustpilot review can influence dozens of prospective users—especially in industries where reputation travels fast and word-of-mouth is gold. That's why we treat every review seriously, regardless of where it appears—Google Play, the App Store, Trustpilot, or email. We reach out, ask follow-up questions, and even track users down on other platforms to ensure their voice is heard and their issues addressed. It only takes one frustrated customer sharing a bad experience to damage trust. Instead of letting that happen, why not use the opportunity to turn the customer into an evangelist for your brand? In addition, negative feedback can impact a company's culture. When engineers or operations teams see complaints go unaddressed, morale suffers. It has been well-documented—including by Harvard Business Review —that employees lose motivation when their work is publicly criticized and nothing changes. Getting to solve a problem for unhappy customers can become fuel for the team building the product and a motivated team will deliver better results. Four steps for turning feedback into growth #1: Know who's speaking Everyone sees the product from a different angle—and their complaints address divergent priorities. A workflow bug might frustrate your end user but never reach leadership. A missing report might annoy your buyer, even if it doesn't block usage. Categorizing feedback by persona—technical user, business buyer, etc.—helps you decide what to fix first and what's noise. #2: Build direct escalation paths The support team sees issues long before they reach the C-suite. If a complaint surfaces twice, it shouldn't need a third time to get flagged. Give customer-facing teams a clear path to share feedback with product, legal, operations—whoever can actually solve it. And empower them to identify patterns, not just create tickets. If your team has to 'make a case' to be heard, your users are already slipping through the cracks. #3: Ask better questions A complaint is an invitation to find out the root problem. Instead of doing a surface fix, get curious. What is the complaint a symptom of? Why does this matter? What downstream effect is it creating? That's how you find problems worth solving. We had a case like this. One HR representative told us our multi-currency setup was frustrating. We asked why. As it turned out, switching accounts required special permissions, delaying task creation and costing money. We redesigned the experience, enabling teams to work in a single window and assign tasks across currencies instantly. This change accelerated workflows as well as payments and led to happier clients. #4: Close the loop—every time When you resolve an issue, tell the person who flagged it. People remember when they're heard, and this builds trust and loyalty. A report by Qualtrics found that 88% of customers will likely recommend an organization after a pleasant experience. Don't automate empathy. Instead, respond like it matters, because it does. When handled with care, feedback becomes a road map—not only for a better user experience, but for longer relationships, a stronger culture, and building trust. You don't need to turn every user into an ambassador. But if you treat each one like they could be, you'll build a product—and a brand—that people fight to stay with.
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Rippling calls Deel ‘a criminal syndicate' and claims 4 other competitors were spied on, too
The fight between HR tech startups has heated up another notch this week as Rippling on Thursday filed an 84-page amended complaint in its lawsuit against Deel. The complaint accuses Deel of targeting, infiltrating, and compromising four other competitors, in addition to Rippling. The revised complaint doesn't name all of the four other alleged victims, except cryptocurrency-based tax and payroll compliance company, Toku. Toku is suing its competitor LiquiFilegal also alleging corporate espionage, and that Deel was involved. The complaint alleges that 'Victim-3 is a startup accelerator that previously partnered with Deel.' The complaint doesn't name, or even imply, who that is. (Y Combinator backed both Rippling and Deel but there's no indication this refers to the VC firm. YC has not yet responded to our request for comment.) The complaint also vaguely says that there are one or more additional victims who are 'one or more major competitors of Deel' in the employer of record market. A source familiar with the investigation believes that more witnesses will soon come forward at these other companies to offer details. (Deel did not immediately comment. We will update this story with its response once it does.) Rippling's amended suit also alleges that Deel's CEO Alex Bouaziz was the direct mastermind of it all, sharing screenshots of messages as its evidence. And, although this is a civil suit, Rippling is now implying that this could be a criminal matter. 'This case is about a criminal syndicate that operated from the shadows of a multibillion-dollar technology company – Deel,' the complaint reads. Rippling's amended lawsuit is now suing Deel under the federal RICO statute, as well as the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and California state law. The lawsuit directly names Alex Bouaziz, his father Philippe Bouaziz who is chairman and chief financial officer, and Deel's chief operating officer Daniel Westgarth. It's important to note that the lead attorney for Rippling is Alex Spiro of white-shoe law firm Quinn Emanuel. Spiro is a former prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. (He's well known in the legal world, and has his own Wikipedia page.) Using words like 'criminal syndicate' in a civil case would be a deliberate choice. According to the source familiar with the case, federal prosecutors are now actively looking into the allegations against Deel as well. An investigation, however, is not a conviction. But should charges be filed, Rippling is doing its best to set up Bouaziz himself as one of the people responsible. The complaint even goes so far as to repeatedly use the colorful language 'the Bouaziz Racketeering Enterprise.' Other than that, much of the amended complaint reiterates what Rippling has already alleged. To recap: a Rippling employee confessed to being a paid spy for Deel in an Irish Court, in an affidavit that reads like a Hollywood movie. The employee admitted in court to taking sales leads, product roadmaps, customer accounts, names of superstar employees, and whatever other information was asked for. The employee was caught in a Rippling-set honeypot, both he and Rippling say. Rippling is suing Deel, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and more, largely based on the spying allegations. Deel has counter-sued in a case that is less about denying Rippling's charges and making a bunch of its own claims about Rippling. For instance, earlier this week, Deel filed an amended lawsuit that claimed that Rippling was spying on Deel by having an employee 'impersonate' a customer to obtain non-public product information. Grab some fresh popcorn. This battle between arch rivals shows no sign of slowing.
TechCrunch
03-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Now Deel is accusing Rippling of spying by ‘impersonating' a customer
HR tech startup Deel filed an amended complaint on Tuesday in its ongoing legal battle against its arch rival Rippling that offers surprising new details about its own corporate spying allegations. Rippling sued Deel in March after a Rippling employee testified in an Irish court that he was spying on his employer for the rival in an affidavit that reads like a Hollywood movie. Rippling's lawsuit alleges misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and more, largely based on the spying allegations. Deel has since countersued, attempting to get the suit dismissed for technical reasons, but also making its own allegations like that that Rippling has also been spying. This amended complaint offers more details on what Deel means by that. Specifically, it alleges that one of Rippling's employees, who holds the job title of Competitive Intelligence 'spent six months impersonating a legitimate Deel customer to gain unauthorized access to Deel's systems to meticulously analyze, record, and copy Deel's global products and the way Deel does business for Rippling's own benefit and use.' The lawsuit is also full of insults hurled at Rippling's CEO Parker Conrad and his troubles at his previous company, Zenefits. At times, the complaint ventures into psychoanalysis territory. 'To understand Conrad is to understand Rippling,' the suit claims. It then goes on to speculate that Rippling has targeted Deel because Conrad is angry at Zenefits' VC backer Andreessen Horowitz: 'Sadly, it is now apparent that Conrad has made it his life's goal to exact misguided and petty revenge on those connected with Andreessen, including Deel, in which Andreessen owns a 20% share.' And the complaint alleges that 'Rippling has planted false and misleading claims about Deel in the press and with regulators across the country.' Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW This appears to stem from 2023, when U.S. Senator Adam Schiff posted a public letter asking the U.S. Department of Labor to look into how Deel was classifying workers. This after Business Insider published an investigation on the matter. Deel denied wrongdoing at the time and said a discussion with Schiff put the matter to bed. The amended complaint also provides at least one financial tidbit; Deel says it has been profitable for years and is generating over $1 billion in annual revenue. A spokesperson for Rippling says that the company is looking into the specific allegations of how the employee gathered product intelligence as described in the complaint. The spokesperson tells us that 'Rippling is unwavering in our commitment to fair competition and the highest ethical standards. We expect full compliance as described clearly in our written policies.' The spokesperson also alleges that the revised complaint 'backtracks' from some of the assertions in the original, including removing wording that implied Rippling had somehow obtained access to Deel's board-level information. While the lawsuit is an entertaining read (here's a link to it) about the level of a typical Bravo network reality TV show, Deel appears to be attempting to make a tit-for-tat case about corporate spying. But the two sets of allegations are not about the same thing. Rippling is accusing Deel of paying an employee to gather information from Rippling's internal network. The employee, who confessed to spying, has testified that he gave Deel information that included sales leads, product roadmaps, customer accounts, names of superstar employees, and whatever else was asked for. Deel is accusing Rippling of unfairly learning about its product and features from the product itself as well as the information it gives to its customers. Competitors have been buying each other's products as a way to keep tabs, one-up and sell against each other since the beginning of time. So it will be interesting to see how the courts handle Deel's lawsuit – if they rule that such tactics can go too far. In the meantime, Rippling's alleged catching of the corporate spy – which involved a trap, a smashed phone, and a honeypot – has already slipped into the tech industry's cultural lexicon. When Y Combinator grad Cotool launched an agentic security platform last month that, among other things, sets up honeypots, its ad was a spoof on how Rippling's corporate spy said he was caught.
Globe and Mail
03-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Why HR is burning out and the Toronto tech company offering relief
Toronto-based technology company Humi says it has developed the antidote to the high level of burnout the human resources sector is experiencing in the new hybrid work world. The company's suite of HR technology tools helps employers manage everything from onboarding new hires and managing benefits to payroll and scheduling time off. It's a break from the current fragmented approach to HR, says Humi co-founder and chief executive officer Kevin Kliman. '[We've been] managing people through disconnected systems. . . people inevitably make super costly mistakes,' says Mr. Kliman, who launched the business in 2016 with co-founder David Tong. 'Having a unified system to hire somebody and manage from end to end is such a massive benefit for businesses.' The HR environment was irreversibly changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Workforces dispersed, shifting to remote setups before settling into hybrid work environments. It's left a lasting effect. A recent survey by employment agency Robert Half of 1,500 professionals across Canada found that those in the legal and HR fields reported the highest level of burnout (59 per cent). Heavy workloads and long hours were the top factors contributing to their workplace fatigue. 'A lot of HR teams are quite lean post-COVID-19. . . the scope of the job has grown so much,' says Justin Bergeron, a senior HR consultant with Salopek and Associates in Calgary. 'It's not just about hiring and policies now. There's culture, mental health, hybrid work, engagement, deeper learning and development – HR teams are trying to support these increasingly complex employee needs with tools that weren't really designed for that world.' Humi has built its platform to serve this new version of reality for HR professionals. Originally created for bootstrapped startups with fewer than 10 employees, Humi is now used by more than 150,000 employees across 4,000 A Canadian businesses of all sizes. 'Over time, we continue to stack on capabilities to the platforms to handle bigger companies [and] a more diverse set of companies within the platform,' Mr. Kliman says. The company was acquired by Australia-based Employment Hero in January 2025 for a reported $100-million, but Mr. Kliman says Humi remains focused on the nuances of the Canadian market. 'There are a zillion SaaS companies that sell to the Fortune 500 and different companies across the world,' he says. 'We only sell to Canadian companies. . . all the logos that we bring in are businesses that you recognize in your neighbourhood.' One of those clients is Golf Canada, the sport's governing body, which started using Humi in early 2024. Given the rising popularity of its youth programs, Golf Canada has grown from 50 to 130 staff nationally. About 75 per cent of its staff are dispersed around Ontario and across the country, making its HR work more complex, says its chief people officer, Niki da Silva. 'One of our challenges is [ensuring] that we're servicing employees with the same level of professionalism and access to information, whether they're sitting next to us in the office or not,' she says. 'My team's not growing significantly, so we had to figure out a way to free up some capacity of the people and culture team.' Ms. da Silva says Golf Canada uses Humi for various tasks such as recruiting, onboarding, vacation, performance management. Humi also works with a network of 1,500 golf courses across Canada, which Mr. Kliman says is an example of how it's incrementally bringing on larger customers with more complex hiring needs. He envisions Humi reaching more than a million people on the platform within five to six years, up more than 500 per cent from today. Humi also recently launched a job marketplace called Employment Hero. 'For the last decade or so, people have relied on job boards to go out and find people to apply to their business,' Mr. Kliman says. 'With Employment Hero, we're actually going out and finding applicants' A 2025 Manpower Group survey found that 77 per cent of Canadian employers struggle to find the skilled talent they need. 'When you look across businesses, it's one of the largest costs,' Mr. Kliman says. 'If we can solve that problem, it's going to help in a massive way.' Humi taps into the ever-expanding role of HR professionals by focusing on the employee experience from hiring through to offboarding, says Mr. Bergeron of Salopek and Associates. 'These tools are not about replacing HR; it's about allowing HR to focus more on the human part of their work, be proactive, engage with their employees and offer that support that employees are looking for,' he says. Moving forward, Humi's challenge will be ensuring it can integrate with legacy systems and not overwhelm already time-strapped HR teams with complex onboarding processes. 'The best HR tech is almost invisible,' he says. 'It lets people do their jobs without adding extra friction.'
Geek Wire
02-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
HR giant UKG acquires Seattle-based employee scheduling software company Shiftboard
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Shiftboard CEO Sterling Wilson. (Shiftboard Photo) HR and payroll corporation UKG has acquired Shiftboard, a Seattle company that sells employee scheduling software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2002, Shiftboard initially built employee shift management software for healthcare clients and later expanded across several industries and use cases. Shiftboard has more than 500 customers, including BASF, Bridgestone, Daisy Brand, and Shell. The company raised $11.5 million in 2018 and reeled in another $8 million in 2020 after merging with Vancouver, B.C.-based SchedulePro. Backers include NewRoad Capital Partners, Voyager Capital, Fortson VC, and others. Shiftboard has about 50 employees across the U.S. and Canada. The company is led by CEO Sterling Wilson, who joined in 2015. UKG, based in Massachusetts and Florida, serves two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 and more than 80,000 organizations worldwide. 'For hundreds of organizations navigating some of the most intensely regulated industries, Shiftboard's industry-leading employee scheduling engine has been a game changer, unlocking new levels of efficiency, flexibility, productivity, and employee engagement in sectors defined by rapidly changing production demands,' Rachel Barger, president of go-to-market at UKG, said in a statement.
