Matt Hayles, Vice President, Revenue: Shannon, tell me about how you came to join the urllo team. What’s your story here?
Shannon Young, Customer Success Manager: Hey Matt! Sure, I’d love to. I joined the team about three years ago. I was using urllo’s redirector in my role at the time and was intrigued by the fact that an entire company could be based around URL redirects. I noticed the team was hiring for a CSM position and the rest is history!
Matt: We’re thrilled to have you! What’s your day-to-day like at urllo?
Shannon: Every day is a bit different, but everything I do revolves around our customers. I’ll start my day responding to any messages I’ve received from customers, then will have a quick standup with the team to go over what everyone is working on for the day.
I spend the rest of my day checking in on our customers, responding to questions and working on any projects we have on the go to ensure our customers’ voice is being represented.
A big part of my role is educating customers about new features, or helping them get the most out of the features they already have access to but maybe aren’t using to the fullest. Sometimes this is done one-on-one through email, meetings or a recorded video. Other times it’s creating documentation for our help center based on customer questions.
Matt: Since we’re talking about new features, I want to dive into urllo’s approach to product evolution. How do we make sure we’re building tools that really meet our customers’ needs?
Shannon: Honestly, it all starts with listening. I spend so much of my time talking to customers—whether it’s during onboarding, in troubleshooting sessions or even just casual check-ins. Those conversations are gold. I get to hear firsthand what’s working, what’s not and what would make their lives easier. That feedback doesn’t just sit with me—it goes straight to the product team, and it’s a big driver for how we prioritize what we work on next.
Matt: That’s awesome. I know as our team has grown you’ve been very focused on making sure every part of our organization is listening to customers. Can you talk a bit about how you’re doing that?
Shannon: For sure! Making sure the entire team hears our customers’ feedback is so important. It helps the rest of the team truly understand our customers’ problems, directly in their words.
We have a small group from a few different customer-facing departments that meets regularly to discuss what we’re hearing from our customers. We meet every Friday to go over what each person has been hearing and send a recap to the rest of the team. It’s also interesting to hear the perspective that someone on the sales or product team is hearing versus the customer success team. Often it’s the same problem described in different words.
Matt: Can you give an example of how customer feedback has shaped urllo’s product?
Shannon: Oh, there are so many examples! One that really stands out is partial path matching. We were hearing that our new and existing customers didn’t know every variation of every source URL that their audience was using. So our clients were having a hard time knowing which redirects to create. This was usually because the legacy redirector their in-house team had built didn’t include analytics, or they had found additional use cases that needed a bit more flexibility.
What they needed was something that could capture variations in paths so that more of their audience could get to their destination. But without having to individually define every redirect exactly, which they weren’t able to do.
As a team, we collected the feedback from our customers, and together we turned it into a feature that’s now a game-changer for a lot of our customers. Seeing it go from a conversation to a solution that helps so many people—it’s such a rewarding part of my job.
Matt: I love that example. What are some of the features you’ve seen resonate the most with customers?
Shannon: Oh, lost traffic reporting is a big one for SEO teams. No one likes losing traffic or missing out on conversions, and being able to quickly find and fix 404 errors is huge for keeping SEO rankings and user experiences intact. We have customers who are in this report every week to see where they’re losing traffic, so they can set up new redirects that point their customers to the right page. I think this one stands out for me because it solves such a specific, frustrating problem, and customers can see the impact right away.
Matt: I’ve heard that from customers as well. What’s an unglamorous feature that gets a lot of love from customers?
Shannon: I’d have to say audit logs. I know it doesn’t sound flashy, but it’s such a powerful tool for transparency. I’ve worked with customers who needed to trace every action in their account for compliance reasons, and having that detailed log of account activity was a lifesaver for them. It’s not just about solving a problem—it’s about giving people peace of mind, and I love that.
Matt: How do you balance what customers ask for with what’s feasible to build?
Shannon: That’s always a challenge, isn’t it? I work very closely with our product and technology teams, and we’re constantly improving our understanding of the challenges our customers are faced with day to day. In my role, I try to focus on understanding the why behind a request. Sometimes customers ask for a very specific solution, but when I dig deeper, I learn about the underlying problem they’re trying to solve. Sometimes we find the customer's initial idea is the right one, but more often than not multiple customers will have different requests that turn out to be about the same problem.
Matt: So once we understand the customers’ problem, what are the next steps with the team?
Shannon: Once we zero in on a problem that’s shared across many customers, we can figure out the specific solution that will have the biggest impact across the most customers. It’s about collaboration and keeping those lines of communication open, but it always starts from understanding what problem the customer is trying to solve.
Matt: That’s terrific. So once something new is live, what’s it like when you show customers new features or enhancements that they’ve been asking for?
Shannon: It’s the best part of my day! When I show someone a feature and they go, “wait, this is going to save me so much time!”—it’s the best feeling.
When we were first getting ready to launch the ability to manage redirects with tags in the dashboard, we gave early access to some customers that had requested the feature. During this time we worked with them to collect their feedback. There were a couple of tweaks to the feature that we hadn’t thought of but made perfect sense once they were mentioned. We implemented some changes such as being able to create and apply tags in the redirect creation form. With other points of feedback we were able to make what we already had in place more clear.
Working with customers to ensure the final touches of a feature are exactly what they need reminds me why we do what we do. And the fact that so many of these features come directly from their feedback makes it even better. It’s like, “hey, you asked for this, and here it is.”
Matt: Speaking of feedback, how can customers get their voices heard?
Shannon: It’s super easy. We send out regular user surveys where people can share ideas. The entire team reads everything, and I always follow up. But honestly, I’ve found that just reaching out directly—whether it’s to me or another member of the team—is the fastest way to get the ball rolling. Our entire team loves hearing from our customers. It’s such a big part of our culture here at urllo.
Matt: Thanks, Shannon. I love hearing how connected you are with our customers. It’s clear they’re driving so much of what we do here.
Shannon: Thanks, Matt. It’s a team effort, but I feel lucky to be on the front lines, hearing their stories and seeing how our tools make a difference for them. It’s what keeps me excited to come to work every day.
Matt: Is there anything you can reveal today about our roadmap? What can customers expect in 2025?
Shannon: I can’t share specifics, but what we’re focused on at a high level is making sure our customers can protect and strengthen connections everywhere. We were the first URL redirection service on the market and we’ve grown to be the leader in the space. But we’re never satisfied, so we’re already building the next big thing to help our customers across the entirety of their web infrastructure and link management workflows. It’s going to be another first for the industry. But that’s about all I can say right now!
Matt: It all sounds very hush hush. Thanks for chatting with me today. What are you off to do next?
Shannon: Thanks, Matt! Always happy to chat about our customers with you. I am wrapping up a couple items at work and then going to take my two dogs for a nice, evening stroll.
By Matt Hayles
VP, Revenue
Matt brings over 15 years of experience in building brands, acquiring customers and scaling revenue for growth-stage companies. An avid runner, hiker, skier and backpacker, he likes to explore the outdoors with his family.
