The True Value of Customer Service In The B2B Scene – FAQ With An Expert

It’s been a long time since the status quo of customer service shifted from “good-to-have” to absolutely necessary. Even the smallest of businesses strive to create and leverage a customer success department in order to meet the needs and expectations of their clients and provide service along the way. In hospitality and travel, so many different software and tech solutions are being used on a daily basis. This is why hotels and travel companies expect constant support from their providers and means to communicate issues, as well as to build and solidify trust between companies.

Our own client success department has grown significantly throughout the years. We pride ourselves on having a solid team of passionate representatives, who are constantly providing support to our clients from around the globe. Last year, TrustYou won the level III certification of Hotel Tech Report’s Customer Service award, which acknowledges our constant efforts and drive. Since our core mission is to help companies listen to feedback, we first implemented this mission in our own activities. 

Katiane Di Schiavi is TrustYou’s customer success expert and the VP of Client Success, with an extended experience in this field. For this “FAQ with an Expert”, we asked Katiane questions that unveiled the true importance of customer success, the issues that our Client Success Team department deals with, as well as the reasons why she loves her job and believes in the value of this field of service. 

What impact does client service have on the overall company’s success? What do you think is the actual value of this dedicated department?

I prefer to think the other way round: What impact does our team have on the overall success of our clients? We are only successful as a company if we fully support our customers in their journey to excellence. Our mission as a company is to help clients make better decisions based on data.  Our team has a similar mission within the company: provide our Product and Engineering teams with customer insights on how to serve our clients better. 

We are the voice of hoteliers within TrustYou. We listen to clients’ needs and understand patterns. We talk to clients and dive deep into their questions. We guide them through our products so that they can benefit from a very flexible and powerful platform.

The superpower a Client Success manager has is to reduce the “time to value.” We enable the shortest path between signing a contract with TrustYou and observing the first results: better scores, more reviews, and more bookings.

Your team deals with hoteliers and hotel staff on a daily basis. What are the most difficult issues that arise and how do you deal with them?

Every hotel, independently on whether they have an internal IT department or an external IT provider, will eventually have technical questions. Hoteliers need to make sense out of data to make better decisions. For that, they use a myriad of “management systems.” Once all these systems are in place, hotels can track the digital footprint of their guests: when a guest books a room (PMS), for which daily rate (RMS), what this guest consumed the last time they stayed at the hotel (CRM) and how they evaluated their stay (ORM).

In one sentence, I could easily mention four different systems that work either in silos or talking to each other via an API (Application Programming Interface). Can you imagine how hard it is for someone to understand how they all work together?

For instance, let’s say you want to send surveys to all your guests automatically. You connect TrustYou with your PMS. Data flows directly from your PMS to our systems and surveys are reaching guests at the proper time, either during their stay or after they left your hotel. Now let’s say a PMS has changed the way they format a specific data point on their side and your guests’ data is no longer being sent to TrustYou anymore. Sounds like a hard question to solve only by reading the Help Manual, correct? That’s why we are here!

Name the top three most important features that define an excellent customer support system. 

Empathy is number one. 

We believe our customers are doing the best they can with the current knowledge and skills they have and that their problems are ours. We believe our customers have the best intention and that they are helping us shape an excellent product to solve pain points of all hoteliers.

Quality is number two.

Our agents are all in house and trained frequently. They work every day along with product managers, engineers, and account managers. They understand the products inside out. They know our clients’ needs and are able to translate tech language to hoteliers’ language.

Efficiency is number three.

Among other channels to reach out to us, we offer live chat, which is a handy option when a fast resolution is required. Our team is spread across North America, APAC, and Europe, covering different time zones. On top of it, we keep improving our Help Manual, which enables our clients to find their own answers without having to wait for an email or call back. 

We also have a Bot that helps clients find the right answer from our Help Manual with only one click.

What draws you to this area of work and what do you like most about it?

I love working with and for other people. I truly believe that a great customer experience can bring smiles to people’s faces and make their day better. What I love the most about Client Success is that it never gets boring. Every day I solve new questions. Fix processes out of place. Tweak workflows that are not working. Understand the client’s concerns. Listen to their pain points. When we find a solution together, that has the power to make my day!

What is TrustYou’s client success department’s mission for 2020? 

This year we are reaping the fruits of little daily improvements we’ve been performing since our foundation.  Our service is recognized for its excellence, and as you mentioned, we were rewarded with a level 3 Hotel Tech Report certification, which shows us that we are on the right track. We are on a mission to reduce the time to value to our clients in all markets we operate. How do we measure that? User engagement, user adoption, and our loyalty.

How confident are you in TrustYou’s CST team and approach?

2020 has started with a special flavor: we’ve already gotten a sneak peek into our product roadmap for this year and we can’t wait to see our clients’ face when they see the upcoming improvements and changes in our platform. I am enthusiastic that the future will be full of new achievements and I also look forward to finding solutions to any challenges that pop up along the way. 2020, bring it on!