Xerocon London 2019: Our people, our community

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At Xero, we support and invest in people, technology and leading education programmes.

That’s why Xerocon London was filled with insightful keynotes, engaging panels and dynamic sessions that highlighted this very message.

So to give you a flavour of what went down and what we learnt, we’ve collated some of our favourites below.

Customer. Centric. Approach.

In her keynote, Xero Chief Customer Officer, Rachael Powell, shared how we put the customer experience at the heart of everything we do.

“We believe customer success is about delivering a consistent, frictionless end-to-end experience for you across all our channels and product platforms,” said Rachael.

And Xero Central is a great example of this. By leveraging smart tech and AI, Xero Central anticipates your needs so you can solve your queries quickly and easily.

Since launching 18 months ago, it has more than 1.5 million visits per month with more than 9 out of 10 customer queries answered through personalised online content.

Continuing to demonstrate how Xero puts you first, Rachael announced the ability to share a case in the portal among your team members or other people connected to your practice so you can share learnings and reduce repetitive questions.

“And I’m thrilled to tell you that next week you will have the ability to do just that,” she said.

With this new development, you’ll also be able to connect and answer questions with like minded small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers through our online community discussion forums.

And finally Rachael walked off stage with a big bang by introducing Xero’s pilot customer feedback service which will collect and measure feedback for you, so you can provide even better client experiences. You can sign up to the pilot now at xero.com/customer-feedback-pilot

Championing women in STEM

It’s no secret that we’re passionate supporters of encouraging women into careers within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). That’s why we were proud to sponsor this year’s Ada Lovelace Day (ALD).

And we were thrilled to hear from its founder, Suw Charman-Anderson, at Xerocon London. Suw shared her thoughts on the role that all of us can play in encouraging diversity in our industry.

In her powerful talk Suw pointed out that 35% of STEM students are women, but that they only make up 22% of the workforce in their respective fields.

Female representation in large corporations is even worse, with female directors making up just 8.4%. This research, which included 22,000 firms across 91 countries, also found that increasing the percentage of female employees to 30% significantly boosted profitability.

There’s an abundance of evidence that more diverse companies are better at decision making – in other words, that diversity drives success – yet women are still underrepresented and underpaid. So, what can we do? The answer is simple: put more women in senior roles.

Finally, mentorships are a powerful tool for women to learn and share knowledge. Suw has recently launched the Finding Ada Network to help connect female mentors and mentees in STEM.

Suw’s campaign has brought a tremendous amount of attention to women in STEM, and we hope her talk gave you some practical steps you can take to start building a more equitable workplace for everyone.

Focusing on wellbeing for you and your teams

We touched on mental health and wellbeing throughout Xerocon. It’s something that we’re committed to at Xero and a must if we’re to continue building a community of purpose.

That’s why we were honoured to have Craig Hudson, Managing Director of Xero for NZ and the Pacific Islands, take to the stage to share his powerful mental health journey.

Craig’s story was followed by a wellbeing panel, hosted by Xero’s Director of People Experience, Jen Surtees. The panel featured health and wellbeing ambassador Bron Hudson – Craig’s wife – as well as Rachel Cockerton, Mental Health Lead Trainer at Aligned Minds.

“It’s important to create an environment where being yourself is admired and encouraged and where mistakes, fears and feelings can be more readily shared. That’s how we build a true community with a common purpose,” said Jen.