Complexity to Clarity With an Expert Team: Customer Success
As we move from the foundational stages of implementation to our customers’ ongoing journey, our series continues with a glimpse into the day-to-day of our customer success managers. In this next set of interviews, we spotlight the individuals dedicated to nurturing client relationships, facilitating growth, and driving continuous improvement.
Jennifer Sams
Senior Content Marketing Manager
Senior Customer Success Manager, Joe Riske got his start in the facilities world back in the days before facilities management platforms were a thing. With more than two decades of experience working in facilities, Joe brought his valuable perspective to the team. He also brought his own experiences using the ServiceChannel platform as a facilities manager, which helps him relate to his clients in an authentic, practical way. We recently caught up with Joe to talk about his approach to customer success.
How do you describe your role?
I’m a trusted advisor in helping my clients understand the platform and how it can help them become more efficient and save money — including using analytics to help them make data-based decisions.
From Teacher to Trusted Advisor
Tell us about your experience with ServiceChannel as a customer.
I spent the first half of my facilities career not using facility management software. When I moved into my second retail facilities management role, the ServiceChannel platform was already implemented, and I saw light years’ worth of difference between the old, archaic way of managing facilities versus the more robust and automated process that kept my workflow moving. I found that I could manage an immense amount more work with fewer people by using the automations and the efficiencies that the platform provided. It gave me more time back in my day — and it gave me more time back in my life since I wasn’t fielding as many direct phone calls for troubleshooting issues.
Creating Data-Driven Efficiencies
How does ServiceChannel bridge the gap between facility managers and service providers?
The platform gives facilities managers and their service providers an easy pathway to communicate directly with each other while consolidating all that information into a single place. Some of the features that help our clients become more efficient are automation, guided troubleshooting, multilevel invoicing, and multilevel proposal approval processes. Provider Search helps our clients find the right service providers using data to drive their decisions.
Streamlined Work Order Communication
Describe your process for learning a new platform feature.
I play with the feature in the system — I try to break it. Before I start discussing it with my clients, I make sure it works the way we say it’s going to work. Then, I use our sandbox environment on the client’s platform to introduce it. I run through the process of how the new feature works, make sure they understand it, and then help them identify how they can implement it into their daily workflows.
Feedback Fuels Feature Development
Tell us about a time when customer feedback resulted in an improvement to the platform.
One of the features that came from client feedback is refrigerant tracking. There was a need for clients to track refrigerant usage so that they could report it to their government officials and maintain compliance. We developed the feature as a direct result of our clients’ requests to fill that need.
Leveraging Team Expertise
What’s it like to be a part of the Customer Success team?
We all get along great. We’re like a family, and the success of our team is very much a collaborative effort. We draw from each other’s strengths — we understand what our own weaknesses are, and we know that we have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw from to help us learn. If I don’t know the answer, one of my colleagues probably does. It’s this culture of knowledge-sharing at ServiceChannel that helps us succeed as an organization.