Customer Success is a hot button topic wherever you look right now, and having worked with them for years we know Instapage stay on top.
They use NPS feedback to close the loop with users, improve support, and help inform their product roadmap (more on that here).
This week we’ve been speaking with Justin Duke, who leads their Customer Success operations for Enterprise customers. He talks about learning from mistakes, working across departments, and getting out of the reactive frame of mind.
What was your biggest achievement in 2018?
Because our Enterprise offering is relatively young (having started in late 2017), our biggest achievements have been around realizations and course corrections we’ve made from experimenting and making mistakes throughout the year.
For example, the Enterprise solution at Instapage is made up of three departments: support, customer success, and professional services. In the early days, the lines were very blurred from a CSM’s point of view around what they should own when it comes to support related tasks and project management tasks related to pro services. In the beginning, we were spending a lot of time in our inbox and in Asana (our tool for tracking projects for pro services) and not enough time being proactive as CSMs.
This lead to long hours and no significant feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day–we knew something had to change. And so we started letting go and delegating more. We also started booking more time for projects in our calendars that would move the department forward instead of letting the day get away from us (which can happen when you’re in a reactive frame of mind).
I’m not saying the lines between our three departments are crystal clearly defined today and sometimes other people’s needs should be addressed over our own tasks, but it’s something we strive towards on a daily basis.
What are the biggest challenges you see coming in 2019? How are you planning to overcome them?
The biggest challenges for 2019 are centered around the level of service we want to provide to our customers. We’re only so many people and we only have so much time in a day. It’s also funny how the better you are at your job, the busier you are and the more people want your time and input.
So does that mean we should pull back in some cases? It’s definitely something to consider. Learning where to draw the line (especially with customers) is hard because our natural reaction is to say ‘yes’ to everything. But this isn’t sustainable–and so we have to make the best decisions that both serve the customer and our company. This will allow us to continue to hone in on the perfect blend of service for customers and sustainability for the team.
The Instapage Enterprise Team
What’s new and exciting at Instapage right now?
We have a great feature that’s rolling out this month that’s going to offer 1:1 ad to page personalization that we’re very excited about. In 2019 we’re focused on making it as easy as possible for customers to drive higher conversion by providing the solutions necessary to dramatically increase the relevancy of their ad clicks into the post-click experience.
Doing so is not only essential for creating highly profitable digital campaigns but also required if you’re to delight your future or existing customers when in the rare case they do decide to engage with your advertising.
What tools are you loving at the moment?
We currently use a combination of Mixmax, Grammarly, Calendly, and Totango throughout the workday.
Mixmax is a great tool for tracking how effective your outreach is in addition to their features which help us engage with our customers. Among other things, Grammarly helps us with grammar and spelling which is key for communication. Spelling Wednesday correctly no longer involves saying ‘wed-nes-day’ in our heads 😉
Calendly is the easiest and most intuitive scheduling tool we’ve come across. Since we work with companies all over the world, not having to check what timezone someone is in is a massive time saver for us.
And then Totango is our current CSM tool which offers a robust platform for monitoring customer health, outreach, and anything else we want to track–it’s almost fully customizable which is a big plus for us.
Tell us a little about your approach to customer success, do you automate everything or take a more personalised approach?
We use a combination of both personalised and automated engagement. When it comes to getting the word out about a new feature, we’ll definitely automate that where it makes sense. However, we also take the time to make sure our customers understand the features we roll out through either 1-to-1 meetings or instructional videos (so those that want to learn on their own time can do that).
For videos, we currently use Snagit in conjunction with Screencast. It also allows users to quickly label an uploaded video to the cloud so that when we share that with a customer, they can share that with their internal team and quickly identify what it is before hitting play.
Is there anything else you’re dying to share?
We’re currently hiring customer success managers here at Instapage! Come and be a part of something special where your voice matters and the work you put in makes a direct impact. It’s not only a place where you can be yourself but a place that fosters your best self. If you or someone you know would be a good fit for the position, please check it out!
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