SupportNinja provides customer experience and back-office outsourcing solutions for tech companies and startups around the world. Pulse 2.0 interviewed SupportNinja CEO Craig Crisler to learn more about the company.
Craig Crisler’s Background
What is Craig Crisler’s background? Crisler said:
“My business career started in Santa Clara, California, at the age of 15 when I founded a company that I ultimately sold at the age of 18. Since then, I have scaled more than 12 startups, with four successful exits. In many ways, my role has always been one of the producer – think music. I orchestrate and organize high-power teams to achieve success and scale effectively.”
“My personal journey in overcoming addiction transformed how I show up as a trusted business leader as well as a partner to clients, teams and investors. I have an empathy-informed mindset, and my perspectives may be considered idealistic or unconventional at times, but they are always rooted in reality, gratitude and connection.”
Formation Of SupportNinja
How did the idea for SupportNinja come together? Crisler shared:
“The three original founders of SupportNinja, Connor, Cody and I, came together about 8 years ago after I had decided to walk away from a company in the AI space building an LLM using handwriting. We all had experience using remote teams and outsourcers in our careers building and scaling innovative companies. We all believed in the power of a global workforce, but had been sorely disappointed in the inability of outsourcers – especially the larger and traditional firms – to be supportive and reactive to our needs. They were not nimble and innovative enough to benefit us. We knew then that there had to be a better way to outsource. That was the beginning of SupportNinja.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Crisler’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Crisler reflected:
“I struggle with this one as there are so many great memories…”
“We joke that we can survive anything: a major earthquake destroying a second-story production floor on one of our sites with no injuries and teams back up and working within hours, surviving and thriving in the Covid era as we wanted to move to remote work prior, and it only made our dreams of a remote-first workforce a reality, volcano eruptions with no service interruption, numerous typhoons. The list goes on. Ninjas not only survive, we thrive in adversity and challenge.”
“I am also proud of how we have broken down the walls in traditional contact centers between agents and leaders. In the early days, many agents did not believe that we wanted their feedback and were genuinely surprised that the senior leadership team was accessible to them. They would panic when I would schedule one-on-ones to check in. ‘Am I in trouble?’ was almost always the first question. I love how we have changed the narrative and created a culture built on transparency, empathy and trust.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Crisler explained:
“We enable fast-growing companies to quickly and seamlessly scale their operations by providing value-centric, tech-enabled outsourcing solutions for their customer experience, technical support, content moderation and data processing needs…with a couple new solutions launching soon.”
Challenges Faced
Have there been any industry challenges in your line of work recently? Crisler acknowledged:
“Antiquated outsourcing models no longer serve modern businesses, and the days of race-to-the-bottom labor arbitrage — and sacrificing service quality for cost savings — are over.”
“The advancements, and subsequent hype, about Gen AI are also having an impact on our industry. Many outsourcing companies see AI as a threat to their business model or are racing to ‘productize’ an AI offer.”
“We are taking a slightly different path. At SupportNinja, we believe people + technology are better together. It is in our DNA as a company to consistently drive value to our clients. Rather than focusing on AI as a solution to make our services more valuable for us, we view technology as an opportunity to drive more value for our clients.”
Evolution Of SupportNinja’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Crisler noted:
“Technology is the backbone of our services. It enables and protects our team, our clients and our organization. We approach technology not as an afterthought but as an integrated process to drive innovation in the lifecycle of our clients.”
“Unlike traditional outsourcing players, we don’t see technology as a cost-optimization play. We see technology as a value-driving and revenue-growing strategy.”
“Technology products by themselves are not the solution to our clients’ problems, they are part of our broader enablement strategy that encompasses people, process and technology.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Crisler cited:
“I can think of three significant milestones for SupportNinja that really stick out… “
“Early Days Enterprise Customers: In the first couple of years, we attracted some enterprise customers who had confidence that we could offer something different in the space, and this propelled us forward – fueling significant growth. They drove us to push to where we are today – to ensure clients are always able to scale with us when the need arrives”
“Acquisition of Bolton Remote: The acquisition of Bolton Remote and the subsequent expansion of our TaaS (Talent as a Service) model were also a turning point. They solidified our Outsourcing 2.0 vision. That vision acknowledges that outsourcing in its traditional forms fails to meet customer needs and embraces a new approach that drives value in more ways than just labor arbitrage.”
“The Expansion of the Leadership Team: Our initial exec team was made up of the founders. But another significant milestone was when we brought on seasoned outsourcing executives who shared our vision about the future of outsourcing – namely Jacob Moetler (our CFO & COO), Brenda Poquette (CPO) and Ken Braatz (SVP of Information Technology). The addition of these experts was a major step in moving us to our next stage.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Crisler about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“I just went to the retirement party for our main point of contact here in Seattle with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is now known as the Gates Foundation. She took a chance on SupportNinja in the very early days when we were an unknown but innovative startup. Her SupportNinja team has been with her for seven years and literally cried when she announced her retirement. This team has evolved with her, and what they originally did is drastically different from what we do for the organization today. This kind of long-term relationship is the cornerstone of our business. We are long-term strategic partners with our clients.”
“Our new clients often come to us when their pace of growth is outpacing their ability to meet customer demands. One example is a well-known AI company. This company was in desperate need of support due to their unprecedented growth rate. They were scaling at the speed of light and as a result they were inundated with customer requests, and they had little to no CX infrastructure or the teams to provide support. This resulted in their very highly paid AI engineering teams having to respond to support tickets. We stepped in and remedied that problem by building a CX team and innovating improvements to their processes and systems. The company was so happy with what we did that now we also hire escalation specialists worldwide to support their forum moderation.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Crisler assessed:
“The TAM of the outsourcing industry is huge. The global BPO market was valued at $280.64 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4% from 2023 to 2030.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Crisler affirmed:
“As a value-centric outsourcing provider of tech-enabled people solutions, SupportNinja:
— Fuels growth for our customers by offering agile, highly customizable solutions that transform challenges into opportunities
— Leverages a strategic mix of human talent and state-of-the-art technology to deliver best results for our clients
— Gives our clients access to skilled, scalable, high-performing teams with relevant subject matter expertise
— Collaborates with our clients to create strategies that help their businesses to achieve key outcomes and scale according to their needs
— Continuously works with clients to set goals, measure success, adjust strategies and uncover new efficiencies
— Offers multiple outsourced services, enabling simplified management, consistent quality, better integration and enhanced communication
This is the antithesis to traditional outsourcing, where the focus is on providing optimized value creation for the provider and assumes short-term relationships with clients.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Crisler concluded
“SupportNinja is positioning to be the leader in Outsourcing 2.0 and change the way the world views outsourcing. We believe that labor arbitrage under antiquated models of contract value optimization for BPO clients should be abandoned. With SupportNinja, value-driving, tech-enabled people solutions is the norm – a model SupportNinja is working to make the future standard in outsourcing. This entails multiple countries, multiple lines of service and building deep strategic ties with our clients.”
