Be your customer’s advocate and always do what’s best for their business, for their projects and for their goals.
Personality of the week: Ian Oscar, Customer Success Specialist, Fuzu.
You’ll probably draw a blank when I say Customer Success or maybe think I meant to say Customer Service. But did you know despite the two having similar names and overlapping in some ways, they are different and require distinct mindsets and playbooks to succeed? While Customer Service and Customer Success complement each other, Customer Success plays a critical role as the growth engine.
We spoke to Ian Oscar, a Customer Success Specialist at Fuzu about his role, how he has embraced this concept and why empowering and keeping our clients happy is a personal affair to him.
Kindly explain to us what Customer Success entails.
The definition is simple, but the implementation is another story.
Let me break it down for you, “Customer Success” is when your customer achieves their desired outcome through their interactions with your company or product (Fuzu). The concept of Customer success was necessitated by the birth of the subscription economy, the complexity of the products and constant product updates made it difficult for the end-users to use all the product features and get their desired outcomes.
A customer success journey entails, onboarding, running training sessions, check on the account’s health, answer user questions and troubleshoot the platform before escalating the issues raised to the product team.
Looking back, what was the turning point where you ‘had to join pursue CS’?
I knew about customer success while working as an intern at Fuzu and this was after two candidates failed to show up on their reporting date for the job. I was then given a week to research on it and present my findings to our leadership team and as they say it, the rest is history.
The success of your role hugely depends on building personal relationships. Personality wise, what would you say makes you good at your role?
My extroverted nature helps me to focus more on the clients’ needs and responsiveness to their requests which helps in building a relationship around trust and reliability.
What goes into preparing for a client’s training?
A great relationship between the Fuzu sales team and the customer success team is a prerequisite to the success of our clients.
Each client’s needs are unique and it begins a thorough understanding of the client’s needs as shared by the sales team. This is crucial in building a customer’s journey that not only guarantees the achievement of the client's desired outcomes but also great customer experience.
What kind of experience do you usually want our clients to get?
With the help of the Fuzu team we strive to offer an exceptional, value adding experience that consistently ensures the sustainability and continuity of a client’s business by availing the top talent in the market at their doorstep.
What would you say is the most rewarding part of the job?
I love receiving those thank-you messages. It assures me that I’ve helped the client and I feel satisfied with my work. I also feel powered up to work with the client and help them achieve more with our product. It’s a great feeling to be appreciated for the work I do.
You overcome a myriad of challenges to keep our customers happy and successful. From an expert’s point of view, briefly highlight how you navigate through the following scenarios.
A) The angry client (calls or emails to vent).
When I have a customer with an issue, I immediately respond to them even though I don’t have a solution ready. This way the client knows that they are being taken care of. Then, as I work on the issue, I send them updates and estimated time of solving the problem.
B) Client with unrealistic expectations
We get those a lot but the most important thing to do is to review the request and communicate to the client how soon it can be done. In very rare occasions, we might need the client to assign a new contract for the service to be delivered.
C. The ghosting client (liked the product but suddenly went quiet or doesn’t want to renew a contract).
As we scale, it is a bitter reality that some of our clients will churn based on internal or external factors to Fuzu. However, we strive to replicate the success across the board.
As the CS team, what is your guiding principle?
Be your customer’s advocate and always do what’s best for their business, for their projects and for their goals.
