What are Vitor's biggest learning and reflections from the last four years in customer success? Together, we retraced his path from joining Funnel as a customer success manager to becoming a global manager for one of our customer success teams. In this blog post, Vitor discusses how his perspective has changed along the way.

What sorts of customer success secrets have you learned from your time at Funnel? Are there any unexpected events that reframed your views?

One strong memory I have is when the pandemic hit. It turned the world upside down, and you did not know what was going on. Working with our customers was no different. Our data said that most of our customers were healthy and thriving, but they started calling us and saying they needed to churn. It was an effect of the general panicked feeling, and it led many customers to pause everything they were working on until they could get a handle on things.

As the pandemic persisted putting sustained stress on our customers, we had to be even more empathetic in the way we communicate with clients and get creative in adjusting business offerings to meet the new demands and the financial struggles and uncertainty they faced.

In customer success, your main focus is always on ensuring that customers extract the maximum value out of the platform. In difficult times, you find yourself competing against other software tools that a customer might have, needing you to stay alert. This involves closely monitoring data and the behavior patterns of other customers to foresee what's unfolding.

Could you share an example where a mistake or oversight at Funnel turned into a valuable learning opportunity for you or the team?

When I became a manager at Funnel, it was the first time I was managing a distributed global team with people in Stockholm, Dublin, and Boston. With an international team, you often miss the personal connections that happen when you work in the same office. I did not recognize this dynamic at first, but we are now a lot more intentional about creating the space for those connections to happen and for the trust to be built virtually. We recognize that effective communication and clear goals and expectations accelerate our pace and enhance customer experience. The team's sense of purpose is now more profound than ever.

Reflecting on your journey, what advice would you give about the importance of feedback? How does it impact personal and professional growth within customer success?

Feedback is the most important source of professional growth in my opinion. I am lucky to work at a company that has career development talks and makes time for feedback sessions to happen regularly. Feedback is a part of the Funnel culture, so we don’t necessarily have to wait for these formal moments of feedback to happen. It comes very naturally from managers and also the people I am managing. A lot of companies talk about having a feedback culture, but I can confirm that Funnel has it.

From a customer success perspective, if you are a leader, I would advise you not to lose touch with the customers. Of course, you need to be very strategic as a manager, but you should not forget about getting into the weeds and engaging directly with customers to get a good understanding of what your team goes through so you can better manage and coach them. Make time to sit down, review emails, listen and participate in customer calls, and help out the team if needed. It will build a stronger team.

Want to be a part of the customer success team at Funnel? We are currently hiring a customer success manager in Stockholm!