"I believe the pandemic has simply accelerated the process of moving towards digitalization."
Stefan van der Vlag is the founder and CEO of Clever Messenger, a chatbot builder and marketing suite for Facebook Messenger and Instagram. Clever Messenger helps you automate sales, marketing, and support conversations on these platforms. With 12 years of experience in online marketing, Stefan has a deep understanding of how chatbots can drive business results. Under his leadership, Clever Messenger has become the leading chatbot builder for Facebook Messenger and Instagram, with over 10,000 customers worldwide.
Stefan has always been fascinated by the potential of new technologies to change how we live and work. He started his first business in 2008 as a University dropout helping businesses by selling digital products at Warrior Forum. Stefan loves marketing and building chatbots that make people’s lives easier.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Stefan van der Vlag: Thank you for having me! I’m Stefan van der Vlag. I’m the Founder of Clever Messenger. Clever Messenger is a chatbot builder and marketing suite for Facebook Messenger and Instagram, helping you automate conversations on these platforms. Businesses use Clever Messenger chatbots to automate sales, provide stellar customer support, qualify leads, and improve conversions, (like shooting over reminders when someone left their cart). You can integrate Clever Messenger with third-party SMS and Email services to add more channels to your automation.
We make it easier for our customers to set up chatbots faster, build messaging flows, onboard customers with less effort. In a nutshell, we help businesses and marketers save time and money and achieve their marketing goals faster. We do this by delivering niche/industry-specific templates and Flows (that’s what we call a string of messages/automation).
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Stefan van der Vlag: I believe the pandemic has simply accelerated the process of moving towards digitalization. The world was already witnessing global change, but with the pandemic, lockdowns, stay-at-home campaigns, people’s expectations of digitalization have just gone up. Businesses now need to be more focused on automation and streamlining processes as much as possible.
They need to build systems that work together and can be easily integrated without human intervention. I believe chatbots are an excellent tool to help businesses automate their marketing and customer support efforts. Since people have accepted e-commerce as a core part of how they shop, the game has changed. Digital marketing is now more focused on building relationships with customers and having a good conversation with them (and not just a broadcast).
So, in conclusion, I think businesses need to build their marketing automation and customer service strategies. They also need to figure out how to grow and scale their businesses with less effort, more efficiently.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Stefan van der Vlag: I think there is no need to be scared of the pandemic anymore, but you should prepare for something new coming up. You should prepare your business for future events or effects that might come up – the war in Ukraine for example. The pandemic revealed that a lot of companies don’t have a financial runway. So I’d start with building that when possible. Then, of course, I’m biased, but having good online (and automated) customer service keeps you in control (don’t wait until customers start calling, keep an eye on your product page and support messages) because you can emphasize 24/7 availability.
As mentioned before, the world will continue its digitization, and most businesses will need to catch up with their competition. The pandemic has enforced this even more, and it’s become clear that staying at home (and working on your business) is an advantage. So build a website, grow your social channels, build email lists of customers (an important asset), chat with your customers and automate everything. And focus on building your business, not on keeping it afloat.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Stefan van der Vlag: We’ve seen a massive influx in the uptake of our products during the start, which now normalized and leveled out a bit. We feel this has to do with everything being forced online and names of people not being able to manage their support channels anymore due to the massive influx of new online customers.
I did, however, pose some challenges, where others were suffering because they didn’t get any customers anymore; we were suffering due to scalability issues. We’ve now taken a look at our departments and have doubled down on writing SOPs, and we’ve decided to write our app from the ground up to serve bigger crowds. It’s been a long road, but we’ve already started to see the results, and it’s been much more rewarding than expected!
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Stefan van der Vlag: I think one of the things we’re learning is to be very flexible, take a breather and take a 30,000 feet view of the situation. Identify big bottlenecks first and work your way down. That’s what we did after identifying the lack of scalability as a big problem. From what I’ve seen, those who have been proactive about learning and growing will benefit the most in 2022. Make sure to keep an open mind towards situations, I’ve never expected a Pandemic to hit, and now I’m keeping my eye out on other possible ‘threats’ that can happen. Writing out scenarios and SOPs where we can scale our business quickly before it happens will be the best way to keep afloat.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Stefan van der Vlag: The entire world is opening up to the internet even more, not just consumer-to-consumer or business-to-business but even government and NGOs to the public! I expect everything to become online and businesses becoming less reliant on people. Virtual reality is still not as widely adopted as it could be, and I’m not entirely sure if this Metaverse and Web 3.0 will work out.
But that’s what they said about the Internet in the 90s. So Who knows? We see that everything that the internet has to offer is used more and more, not just online e-commerce but even regular offline stores are using it, for example, with AR marketing on smartphones while you browse through their store. 2020 was when the world switched its focus completely to online shopping, and 2022 is when online shopping will become just as easy as offline.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Stefan van der Vlag: That’s difficult to say because some days I work more hours, others less. But 60% of my waking hours are spent in front of a screen. However, I take a break every 2 hours and go to the gym. It has proven very valuable as I feel amazing afterward!
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Stefan van der Vlag: I don’t use Stories in the workplace that much; I use metaphors to explain what I mean and get the point across. A metaphor like: “We’re working like a well-oiled machine, we just need to add more gas to go faster.” may sound cheesy, but it gets the point across, and you’re saying it as it is but with a friendlier tone.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Stefan van der Vlag: The biggest challenge is that we’re all still learning. New things are popping up every day, and it’s always changing. There’s no ‘one way’ of doing anything. Getting your people to understand this and accepting change is a big part of leadership. I always say change what you can, when you can, and accept what you can’t change!
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Stefan van der Vlag: I’ve dabbled with NFTs, but that took a lot of energy and time, which I couldn’t afford. I want to get into the advertising side of things a bit more and improve it. I managed to grasp it, but I feel we’re still lagging in scaling our ad spend and ads. So, that’s next on the list, scaling our ads.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Stefan van der Vlag: Everyone’s been too busy with their stuff and probably didn’t have the time to look at these stats or issues that employees have been facing in the workplace. Maybe some of this would have been solved long ago if they did. Company culture is essential and should be ingrained in the company’s DNA and how it operates. When this happens, employees feel valued and motivated to work towards a common goal. It would definitely take more than an intro course about ‘how to behave in the workplace’ or ‘team building.’
I believe that those numbers are going to rise as well. People want more from their jobs. They don’t just want a job; they want fulfillment and purpose. Those things cannot be found in how many hours you put in or if your boss is overly critical. It comes from Within us all; we should ask ourselves what we can do for the world and seek happiness from within.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Stefan van der Vlag: I would want to be able to read minds so that I could understand what people are thinking and how I can help them. The superpower would be useless if I couldn’t figure out how to help people. So, the next step would be to learn more about psychology and human behavior. After that, I can put it into practice and help people in a more meaningful way.
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Stefan van der Vlag: Success for me is being happy and content. I know that sounds a bit cliché, but it’s true. I don’t want to be chasing after something that I can’t achieve or doesn’t make me happy. For business, success would be continuing to grow and reach more people. Being able to help more people and make a difference in their lives. And, lastly, being able to do all of this while staying true to myself and my values.
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Stefan van der Vlag for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Stefan van der Vlag or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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