As Timewax’s Customer Success Manager, Lesley has an important role within our organization. He takes care of the onboarding and training of new customers, advises existing customers and does “health checks” to ensure that they continue to get the most out of the Timewax software. But how exactly does this work in practice? And what drives him to dedicate himself day in and day out to our customers?
For this blog article, we interviewed Lesley to find out what customer success management means to him.
What does your typical working day look like?
“Mainly from a lot of different sessions with clients. For the onboarding of new customers, I help set up Timewax, host Q&As and provide training to a group of key users to get to know the program inside out. They will be responsible for the first-line questions internally and if they cannot resolve them, they will come to me with their questions during the onboarding”.
The sessions with existing customers mainly consist of feedback moments. For this, Lesley looks at the client health reports. “There I see how customers plan, which applications they use and whether the number of people who log in is in proportion to the package they purchase” (and therefore to what extent they use their Timewax tool). That way “I can understand how customers use the platform and proactively help them get more out of it”.
In addition, Lesley also does “on-site meetings, especially larger customers request them. That offers more focus; due to corona, online has become the standard and that is sometimes difficult. It is more focused on the purpose of the meeting and therefore leaves little room to really talk to each other”.
Finally “I am also involved in internal affairs to improve our own processes and discuss how we can improve Timewax. For example, for basic training I am setting up an online academy to get the customer up to speed even faster. That way they can see the value more quickly and use Timewax to its full potential”.
What do you like about your job?
“It’s a bit of everything, that’s the fun. I talk to many different clients in completely different industries – from established IT companies to hip startups. They all have different wishes, different ideas about how they want to use Timewax. The product may be standard, but the customers want everything. That means listening carefully and being creative in order to come up with suitable solutions”.
“I always ask new clients ‘why do you need Timewax?’ Timewax is a tool and it is not going to plan for you – it depends on your input. We have ideas about how that works best, but we would like to hear from you how you like to use it. What is valuable to you? That’s an important question to figure out. And then we will ensure that you can get the most out of it. This is how we do it together. We have a fixed product, but a customer has a certain idea and together we will move towards a beautiful and well-functioning Timewax environment”.
“I also like that we are a small company. Mark shares his ideas and asks everyone for input – in large organizations you have twelve layers in between. That academy, for example, is with me and I can wear it on my own. I like that a lot. There is always something to do and we are all busy improving our own organization in terms of structure, processes and so on”.
What do you see yourself growing into?
“When I started 2 years ago, I was mainly concerned with the process and getting to know Timewax. That made it a bit more difficult to show customers new functionalities. My first year in particular was therefore development focused on backend developments. But now – since last year – we are working much more customer-oriented and we are also better able to include them in our developments. Now I am more concerned with the meta level, with the organization, the product and the customers themselves”.
“Customers are sometimes even overwhelmed by all the new functionalities. This also includes a communication plan, to properly involve customers in our developments. It would be nice to spend more time on that”.
“I still spend a lot of time training now, which can be a bit repetitive. It would be nice if I could partially let go of that through the academy. Then I can focus more on consultancy and clients that we are in danger of losing, to see what the reason is and how we can solve it. If I can go out more and show customers a Timewax face, then I can literally collect the feedback and contribute even better to customer success. It only makes work more fun!”
