This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Michael Heffelfinger, the Chief Customer Officer at DryvIQ, an unstructured data management company. Our conversation delved into Michael's extensive background in leading customer experience organizations, the evolving data challenges facing enterprises today, and the key metrics and strategies he employs to deliver exceptional outcomes for DryvIQ's customers. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:
Q: Can you give us an overview of DryvIQ's offerings and the types of data challenges your customers are grappling with?
Michael: DryvIQ has been in business for about 12 years now. We began as a file migration and synchronization platform for customers looking to move from one storage repository to another, such as moving data to and from on-premises file servers or cloud storage platforms like Dropbox, Microsoft 365, or Box. We built a strong reputation in that space for successfully completing complex, large-scale migrations for enterprise customers.
In recent years, we expanded our capabilities to address a growing market need by continuing to help enterprises migrate their unstructured data but better understand and manage it. This has become a huge pain point because unstructured data now makes up 90% of all enterprise data and is growing at a rate of about 50% year over year. Most companies haven’t had the tools or processes to analyze and manage it properly.
And now, with the rise of generative AI and tools like Microsoft Copilot, there's a newfound urgency around understanding what's in all that unstructured data, who has access to it, and whether any security or compliance risks are lurking there. If you have sensitive HR data or financial information in a SharePoint library that you thought was locked down to a few people but turned out to be widely accessible, that's a major liability.
We're seeing a lot of demand from CIOs, CISOs, and other data leaders saying, "I need to get my arms around this before it becomes a bigger problem." They want to be able to identify duplicate or stale content, ensure the proper security and retention policies are in place, and ultimately have confidence that when they unleash AI on this data, they're working with an accurate, relevant, and well-governed set of information.
Q: As Chief Customer Officer, you oversee a broad scope spanning pre-sales, professional services, support, and documentation. How do you ensure that the voice of the customer is being heard and acted upon across all those touchpoints?
Michael: It's a great question, and it's something I'm always working to optimize. In my role, I try to be the ultimate advocate for the customer and the steward of their experience across their entire journey with us.
One of the luxuries of being a more established company is having a lot of institutional knowledge and tribal wisdom about our customers' needs and pain points, particularly on the unstructured data migration side where we've been operating for so long. We've seen almost every scenario imaginable, so we have a strong point of view on best practices and navigating common challenges.
At the same time, as we've moved into this newer space of continuous unstructured data management, we've had to adopt more of a startup mentality in terms of really listening to our customers and letting them guide our roadmap. While we consider ourselves the experts in unstructured data, we’re still learning at the speed of our customers about the various challenges they face when it comes to this data.
The DryvIQ services, support, and sales teams are my eyes and ears when gathering customer feedback. We're constantly soliciting input through NPS surveys, CSAT scores, onsite meetings, and day-to-day conversations. And then we have a regular cadence of product council meetings where we bring together folks from services, sales, marketing, and engineering to parse through that feedback, identify themes and trends, and prioritize what goes on the roadmap.
We’ve always been dedicated to our customers and focused on their satisfaction, but closing the loop between what we’re hearing from them and how we’re actioning it in the product and our service delivery has paid off for us in spades. The more customer-driven we become, the more excited and interested our customers have been in collaborating with us. They see that we’re really listening, that their input shapes our direction, and that fuels more open dialogue and trust.
Q: Let's dive into some of the key metrics you use to gauge the health and success of DryvIQ's customer experience. What are the main things you're tracking and why?
Michael: At DryvIQ, our vision started with a North Star: to build an enduring company where every team member does the best work of their lives, to deliver better outcomes faster for all our stakeholders, including our customers, and to win at a meaningful mission. Our mission is to make unstructured data always business-ready by making it accessible, analyzable, and actionable at scale. For our customers, that means providing them with enterprise software and expert consulting services that enable them to reach their business outcomes faster. That said, there are a few North Star metrics that I'm always keeping an eye on. CSAT score and NPS are big ones - those give me a good sense of overall customer sentiment and satisfaction. Our CSAT score right now is a 4.9 out of 5, which we're really proud of, and our NPS is 68, which puts us in a best-in-class category compared to other SaaS companies.
But beyond those high-level measures, I'm also tracking many operational metrics around responsiveness and time-to-value. One of my big mantras is, "How do we deliver better outcomes faster?" So I'm constantly looking at things like first response time—how quickly are we getting back to a customer when they have a question or issue? Right now, our average first response time for a support ticket is less than 8 minutes, which is phenomenal.
I'm also really interested in qualitative feedback, particularly from individual members of our services team. We get so many unsolicited comments from customers raving about specific engineers or solutions architects who've gone above and beyond or whose expertise was critical to their success. For me, that's the ultimate barometer; when customers are so wowed by the experience that they go out of their way to acknowledge someone by name, you know you're doing something right.
At the end of the day, these metrics are leading indicators. The real proof is in the outcomes we deliver and the lasting partnerships we build. When I see customers coming back to us again and again or telling us, "We tried going with another vendor, but we came back to you because your team is the best at what they do," that's when I know we're firing on all cylinders.
Q: Looking ahead, what are some of the CX opportunities or challenges you're most focused on as DryvIQ continues to grow and evolve?
Michael: I've been in this field a long time, and I've seen a lot of CX organizations that are really good at being reactive and responsive but struggle to be proactive and strategic. They're great at putting out fires, but they're not always thinking two steps ahead about how to prevent those fires in the first place or how to turn every customer interaction into an opportunity to create more value.
That's the mindset I'm trying to cultivate at DryvIQ. Yes, we absolutely need to be there for our customers when they need us. But we also need to constantly look for ways to challenge the status quo and find new and better ways to solve their problems.
One of the things I'm most excited about is the conversations we're having with customers about generative AI and how they can harness it for real business outcomes. There's so much hype in the market, but many companies are struggling to translate the technology into tangible value. I think we have a real opportunity to be a trusted advisor and an action-oriented partner in that journey.
If we can help our customers cut through the noise, identify the most promising use cases, and put the right data infrastructure in place to support those initiatives, that's a game-changer. It's not just about being reactive to tickets—it's about deeply understanding our customers' goals and bringing them new ideas and approaches they may not have even considered.
So that's really the future I'm trying to build towards—one where we're not just meeting customer expectations but proactively shaping them, where we're not just responding to requests but driving real strategy and transformation with our customers. It's a big vision, but I believe we have the team, the expertise, and, most importantly, the customer trust to make it happen.
And honestly, what gets me out of bed every morning is knowing that the work we're doing has such a profound impact—not just on our customers' bottom lines but also on their ability to innovate, compete, and deliver better experiences to their own end users. That's what customer obsession is all about—putting their success first and measuring our own success by the value we help them create. Everything else is just details.
In Conclusion
Our conversation with Michael underscored the vital importance of proactive, outcomes-focused CX leadership, particularly in a rapidly evolving technology landscape. A few key themes emerged:
- Delivering exceptional customer experiences requires a deep understanding of the customer's unique context and objectives, which can only come through continuous listening, learning, and collaboration.
- While quantitative metrics like CSAT and NPS are important health indicators, the real measure of CX success lies in the tangible outcomes delivered and the strength of the customer partnerships forged.
- As AI and other emerging technologies reshape business processes and customer behaviors, CX leaders have a critical role to play in helping their organizations translate the hype into real-world impact and value.
- True customer obsession means always putting the customer's success at the center of every decision, interaction, and initiative - and rallying the entire company around that North Star.
As DryvIQ continues on its mission to help enterprises tame the unstructured data explosion and harness the power of AI, Michael's relentless focus on "better outcomes faster" will undoubtedly be a key differentiator. His experience offers a compelling playbook for any CX leader looking to elevate their function from reactive firefighters to proactive strategists and change agents.
The key takeaway? Put your customer's success at the heart of everything you do. Measure your impact not just by the scores and the metrics, but by the transformative results you help them achieve. Embrace the power of data and technology, but never let it supersede the power of human connection and understanding. And above all, never stop pushing to be better, faster, and bolder in the value you deliver. That's the path to enduring customer partnerships - and to a CX organization that doesn't just support the business but helps drive it forward.
