Our 3 main take-aways from Multimodal 2024

After signing our first UK customers, our journey in expanding Customaite has led us to focus on the UK market. As a team that is spending most of its funding on building the best possible product, we need to get as much out of our marketing budget as we can.

When asking one of our customers which conferences we should attend in the UK, there was only one answer: go to Multimodal. That is what we did and we’d like to share some of our learnings with you.

Lesson #1: Multimodal was a great success!

Although not being the cheapest place to be, we have never met so many interesting prospects and potential partners in such a short time. We had the opportunity to speak, participate in a panel conversation and were lucky to have one of our customers go on stage to share their experiences of working with us.

Success, however, is not only measured by sentiment. We aim to be fact-based in everything we do, just as our customers know from the management reporting we share with them. We set targets for marketing events to analyse potential ROI and identify improvements. Fact: we have quadrupled our initial goals in terms of qualified lead generation at Multimodal. Our customer success team will need to oil their wheels to keep up with the pace of new onboardings 💪.

Lesson #2: (Real) Product demos make all the difference

We didn’t have the fanciest booth at the conference and were a bit tucked away in a side aisle. We did bring some of our top people to the conference, including our chief of product and myself 😉.

We had live demos available at our booth and also did live demos on documents that prospects brought with them. We’ve stayed true to our beliefs and principles: AI is not a magical solution. It is still quite amazing what it can do for you if you find the proper use case and the right way to let it collaborate with real people.

A quote we received from a global logistics player at the conference was: “We talked to 40 companies and you are the only one that is offering live demos on our own documents”.

We were flabbergasted, maybe even more so when we heard that a competitor is promising 99.9% accuracy and a throughput time of less than 30 seconds but wasn’t able to show the product during the conference… They did have a much nicer booth than we did and obviously spent a lot more on advertising.

Lesson #3: Technology may be fantastic, but it’s the people that rule!

We consider ourselves lucky for a lot of things when it comes to people.

• We probably have one of the best development teams you can find and they are actually physically working together for at least 2 days a week.
• We are blessed with a customer success team that knows the ins and outs of helping companies transform and people undergoing change.
• Our customers are the best. We love to build long-term relationships that are based on trust and realistic expectations. We are not interested in short-term revenue. Our people go the extra mile together with their customers’ colleagues and build long-lasting results.

Our presence at the conference confirmed that we are on the right track. Robert Hardy from EORI UK, whom I respected and liked from the moment we met for his bright mind and entrepreneurial way of thinking, was showing ambassadorship for our product while we still even need to go live.

Chris Clayton from DB Schenker has been a fantastic reference during the conference as he honestly explains to companies what they can expect and what challenges they may face. He even shared his experience on the challenges of change management by taking the stage for a talk with a title that says it all: “Putting people at the heart of our game-changing customs transformation”. We celebrated our first birthday together at Multimodal, looking back on challenges and mutual successes. DB Schenker is the first one to take us all the way through Europe and we will be forever grateful for the extra pushes they gave us and the opportunities that came along the way.

Personally, I’m already looking forward to writing a blog post about our presence at Multimodal 2025 and what we have learned from that.

Thank you for reading! I’m looking forward to meeting you at the next edition of Multimodal. If you’d rather not wait another year to see what an AI assistant can do for your company and your people, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

We are happy to explain it and showcase it on your documents. Apparently, that’s a challenge that others are not yet willing to take.