First Time Attendees: Yappn and Hootsuite at #WPC16!

#WPC16 was a place for thousands of Microsoft partners from around the globe to learn, network and get inspired. We had the opportunity to meet with two innovative ISVs: Yappn’s Chief Sales Offer, Steve Taylor, and Hootsuite’s Marketing Manager, Omar Kaywan, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2016.

Who is Yappn?

Yappn is a Microsoft Partner that provides enhanced machine translation; a means for communications-as-a-platform and contextual tuning of language. Yappn supports the translation of e-commerce at a wide scale, as well as customer care and messaging platforms. They are able to translate in 67 languages in any combination.

“It's easy to set up an e-commerce site, but it's difficult to create an e-commerce site that is actually tuned to perform in your markets.  The toughest part – the last barrier -  is the language,” said Steve.

Yappn’s solutions are invaluable to companies who serve customers across different geographies and languages. Steve explains that “Someone in customer care can be unilingual, they can reply to a customer conversation in their language and it will translate for the customer into their native language.” This offers significant staffing benefits as companies will not have the need to hire based on language. Yappn’s solutions are powered by Azure, Microsoft’s integrated cloud service.

Why Azure?

We asked Steve, why did you choose Azure? “Global reach is very important to Yappn. We are supporting real-time translations in Asia, Europe and North America. We need to be able to deploy in those regions to avoid latency. Robustness in the environment is also very important, and Azure was able to assist us with that. Azure was able to provide us with scalability - look into customers that will bring more cloud consumption to us, and we don't have to worry about it because we just flow it into Azure. Lastly, Azure enforces security - we need to provide a level of trust that their data, whatever their data is, such as e-commerce product descriptions or social chat is secure in the cloud. There is still anxiety when we are putting things into the cloud, and Azure helps enforce the security around it.”

How was WPC?

As a first-time attendee at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Steve shared that his experience has opened his eyes to the real commitment to Partners from Microsoft: “As far as the Microsoft experience, the real authentic commitment to partners has been exciting and we have made unique connections based off the help we have received from the Microsoft Canada partner team, which in turn will help us grow our business.”

What’s next for Yappn?

What is Yappn’s view of the future of business? “Language is a platform for building and growing businesses.  85% of people are more likely to close a transaction online if the experience is in the native language of the buyer. Customer satisfaction rates go up. Even within a multicultural city like Toronto, you need to think globally. Local globalization will be the next thing.”

Who is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a leading Canadian provider of social media software. Their range of plans help individuals and organizations of all sizes, from small medium businesses to enterprises, safely and securely deliver measurable business results from their social media efforts. From growing and engaging audiences to analytics and reporting, their users can identify the ROI and have an in-depth views of campaigns.

What is their social media strategy advice?

We had a chance to sit down with Omar to chat about social media and social strategy as it applies to businesses. How do you engage with social media detractors or dissatisfied customers on social? Omar explains that the worst thing to do is ignore the negative comments. It is important to embrace the negative as much as the positive. Omar urges brands to learn to solve the problem without trying to be perfectly right: “Just provide resources to solve those problems; and if you are not able to, then you must accept that you can just be frenemies.”

Nowadays, social media strategy goes beyond the standard tweeting and posting. We asked Omar to explain Social Selling. “Social selling is not the “Walmart roll back” where you say “sale now” on social. Social selling is about engaging with the right audience, delivering the right content and building the right relationship,” Omar shares. “That's where you can see successful results. Social marketing is not your god given channel of yelling at your customers, it's about engaging your audience.”

What was their WPC Experience like?

Omar met with our team in great spirits – detailing how fantastic his WPC experience had been.

“The Canadian team has been nothing but rock stars. They have been helping us create connections with partners globally.” Hootsuite came to WPC locked and loaded with an engaging

What was your WPC experience like?