First, it was COVID-19 that sent the support staff on short-time work or unexpected vacations. Now it’s the summer holidays that can drastically reduce the number of employees. Especially in companies, which work project-related, this can become a problem for customers. That´s why we work as a team.
The production of five new batches of AntiBiontex runs smoothly, and the quality department is satisfied. However, something is wrong with the documents and the necessary reporting to the authorities. Marie Müller-Meyer, Supply Chain Manager at PharBeyoMed Innovations, calls the responsible support person at her serialization provider. Unfortunately, she is unable to reach anyone. She writes an e-mail but only receives a response a few hours later. It says her request will be proceeded in approximately five days. Ms. Müller-Meyer is at a loss. She has no understanding of the procedure of her serialization provider. After all, the pharmaceuticals have to be shipped out and taken to the pharmacies.
Accordingly, the delivery date is urgent. The company cannot afford to postpone the delivery, and neither can the patients. Marie asks a friend from another pharmaceutical company and finds she is in a similar situation. If her friend has a support problem, she has only been able to reach her serialization provider via an online ticketing system for several months.
Overburdened Customer Success Teams
Of course, the situation of our fictive Ms. Müller-Meyer is overly exaggerated here. But quite similar scenarios have already occurred when our customers were dependent on the support of their business partners’ serialization providers. In this case, the Customer Success Team at tracekey will help as much as possible. In most cases, however, it is not possible to replace the support of the other providers completely. For example, access rights to the other system are missing.
Project-Related or in a Team: What Is Better for the Customer?
First of all, it is a big plus to have a personal contact person in the company. But, things can quickly get dicey, if the person is on vacation, sick, or in short-time work due to a worldwide pandemic. At least whenever the time is short, and deadlines have to be met, and nobody is available as a replacement.
In this case, it is also useless if the service provider has a support team of 50 employees, but the one employee responsible for the company is not available.
Therefore, we work as a team. It may be significantly smaller than 50, but it is all the better organized for that. All our Customer Success Managers are on the same level. If one fails, another team member is there for the respective customers and takes over if something urgent should arise.
In case of absence due to illness, the rest takes over. If one of our customers has a problem with another vendor’s system, we try to support them. After all, we are all about the customer’s success.
Why We Work as a Team
Of course, support teams that are working on a project basis can work just as well for the customer. If someone goes on holiday, they have to make a detailed handover to their colleague. If someone spontaneously drops out, the colleagues can take over spontaneously with well-documented customer support. Given that both work well, the customer may not notice any difference.
Customer Success Managers at tracekey work as a team right from the start. The daily exchange about customers and the joint work on tasks lead to the fact that even spontaneous absences of employees do not lead to any noticeable changes in the work with our customers. This makes our CS team much more flexible than teams that work on a project-related basis. What does this mean in concrete terms? Quick answers to e-mails, uncomplicated support on the phone, and no automated e-mails or problems that get stuck in the bulky ticket system.