Can a hug get you to the top of the 2016 Red Herring Top 100 European technology companies

Can you hug your customers? If not why? Is the new measure of customer intimacy a hug

Educated Change Ltd was chosen as a 2016 Red Herring Top 100 Europe Winner

To me, winning celebrates our customers and how they appreciate our approach to customer intimacy. As one of the founders, our first customers were friends, people I knew extremely well, I could hug them not just shake their hands. Now 4 years on, we are proud that hugs still are a measurement of our success. We have a metric of success: Does one of our 30 employees know the customer well enough and cares enough about them that a hug feels natural?
The hug is a symbol of Customer Intimacy. Our product is intimate, we spend 1 hour a day, thinking about each person we work for. Our service starts with a multi-hour interview so we understand the customer’s 4 Quadrants, the 4 areas of their lives that they communicate about everyday (Personal, Professional, Thought Leadership and Legacy). In each of the 4 Quadrants we try to get the WHY; Why are they are a thought leader in a field? Why are they saving the world? Why do they have a particular job? This insight allows us to read an article from our customer’s perspective and then provide our customer with ideas on how the material applies to their 4 Quadrants, who should they share it with and across what platform to communicate the right message at the right time to the right audiences. We offer a digital personal assistant program and after a short time we know our customer well enough to share a hug.
Customer Intimacy at Educated Change is focusing on our customer an hour a day, using our Top 100 technology so that no time is wasted. At that precise moment our customer is the only one that matters, we understand, we anticipate, and help simplify their social networking communications so they can create digital influence. With our focus on intimacy and technology, we understand what our customers want, how they want it and ultimately what they care most about: what their customer care about.
Red Herring understood the intimacy and technology of our product. Out of 1,200 privately financed companies in the European Region they looked at, we won. I like the fact that Red Herring have been doing this since 1996 and we have won the same award that Alibaba, Facebook, Google, Kakao, Skype, SuperCell, Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube won.
“In 2016, selecting the top achievers was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “In fact, we had the toughest time in years because so many entrepreneurs had crossed significant milestones so early. But after much thought, rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Europe to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Educated Change Ltd embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture.”
Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technological innovation, management quality, overall business strategy and market penetration. This assessment was complemented by a review of the track records and standings of similar startups in the same verticals, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Europe.

Congratulations Educated Change team, partners and thanks clients for the hugs.