Increasingly, we hear our clients expressing the urgency of being able to connect and engage with consumers globally and in real-time, in order to make better informed, more effective, winning business decisions. We have read about clients grappling within their organizations establish consumer connection programs. For global companies with many product lines and mandates to reduce costs, this is a tall order.
Is connection and consumer empathy altruistic? No. It represents hard core imperatives to improve the bottom line and increase profitability. Achieving this imperative requires that all stakeholders, including suppliers and consultants, are focused on the same goals.
Something happened in our organization in the last couple of weeks that, honestly, made us humble and proud.
A lot of global service providers attempt to provide support by placing their Customer Support teams in one office, in a region with availability of low-cost, skilled workers, and have them rotate through three shifts throughout the day.
We have built our Customer Success team differently. Rather than following the standard model, our team is instead distributed globally across different local time zones, in order to provide support for projects being conducted in the very regions in which they live. When a client has a project in the field, our team provides regional support during working hours, conversant in the local languages, and knowledgeable of regional nuances for doing business. By having a regionally diverse team, we’re able to provide around-the-clock support on all conversations that take place over our platform.
To date, our Customer Success team is active in Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and the US, with more planned for the future.
Leading a decentralized team can be a challenge in terms communication and process control. It is harder to manage, but we know it’s worth it. Our clients connect with consumers around the globe. In order to provide them with the best service, we need to be around the globe too.
In the last couple of weeks, our Founder was encouraging the Operations team to think of themselves as partners in our clients’ objectives for success. One of our support team members changed his title in his email signature to include the words “Customer Success.” The other team members decided amongst themselves that they wanted to embrace the new name for their team, formerly known as “Operations,” rebranding themselves the “Customer Success” team. Management wholeheartedly endorsed this change, and since then the team has really embraced the importance they contribute to success of clients and, by extension, the success of our organization.
It is a nuance… qualitative for sure. And it is remarkable how a name can impact change in behavior!
They know that their number one objective is to make sure that every project is run to ensure that customers get closer to their goals and objectives. It is their role to ensure our clients’ success, however it is defined, in the consumer engagement game.
Management didn’t mandate this, merely encouraged the ethos behind it. This was a grass roots decision made by everyone in the team to endorse it. It is an external commitment of empathy to our own clients’ challenges. It reminds them (and the rest of the Discuss.io organization) why we do what we do.
We help clients make better, more effective business decisions because, with our help, they can connect and engage with consumers real-time conversations through an agile and efficient live video platform.
Start a conversation with us today about how our consumer engagement platform can help your company win. You know you can count on us being focused on your success!
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Karen Lindley is the VP of Global Customer Success for Discuss.io. She is based in Michigan and oversees the Customer Success team, serving clients all across the world.