Leading With Empathy
By: Bianca Ker
Tags: SaaS, Data Visualization, Enterprise Software, Customer Success, Data Analytics

Make CS the heart of your data driven company

Customer Success is one of those jobs that your grandparents give you a quizzical look when you try to explain that no, you’re not in Customer Service and no, you’re not in Sales, and yes, you work in this thing called “Enterprise Software”.

My entire job is working with people, solving their problems, and often (because I’ve always worked in startups), it’s being the bearer of bad news. The bad news can take the form of a timeline adjustment, perhaps a feature that didn’t make it into this sprint, or that a customer has chosen not to renew. Either way, my job is often a combination of Therapist, punching bag, and Technology-Shaman.

The entire point of Enterprise Software is to make the jobs of the people that work at big organizations, easier, or at the very least, more effective. We’re not saving lives, but I do like to think that maybe we’re helping people get home in time for dinner with their family, friends or dog. That’s the crux of it, and if our entire mode of existence is to help people, then we should be leading with empathy. Empathy for those that have never been tasked before with learning a complex new software. Empathy for those that were experts in the old way, and are being forced into using a new tool their boss gave them. Empathy, because they’ve got a deadline, and your product just made an update, and now they can’t find anything.

In the world of startups, we’re constantly rewarded for the “move fast and break things” mentality, but often the thing that we’re breaking, is our own product, in an effort to constantly optimize faster. We strive to strike the balance between delivering new value constantly to our customers, enticing new logos to our platform, and not forgetting that our current users have to still be able to use the platform they purchased.

Companies that build Customer Success teams that lead with empathy, humanize their help tickets, create forgiving and evangelizing customers, and promote platform engagement that just can’t be replicated with an automated product tour (that 99% of the time you skip).

I’m the Director of Customer Success, at a burgeoning new data analytics company called Panoramic, and I know every user on our platform. When they have a problem, they tag me personally, and some even text me (please don’t do this, unless you send funny GIFS). Is it scalable? Definitely not! But we’re the setting tone for how we treat our customers now, that will allow us to scale, with the intention to maintain that same level of interaction and intimacy with each of our customers, even once there are thousands of them. By leading with empathy we acknowledge that our customers are not just logos and renewal dollars, they’re human beings who put their necks out to purchase our product instead of someone else’s. They’re ambitious leaders who are jockeying for a promotion. They’re overworked marketers spending late nights creating reports, and they’re creatives who are trying to marry their creative vision with performance data. Somehow we got lucky enough to work with all of them, and I’ll keep answering their iMessages, in-app tags, and phone calls until a Help article or automated Zendesk ticket offers them more value, (and a better response time).