As a member of the Success Team, I’m one of the first points of contact for potential customers, and I continue to support them as they onboard and start using Articulate products. My main focus is helping customers successfully purchase and use Articulate tools. Answering their questions quickly and effectively is critical.
Before joining Articulate, I worked for large organizations. They did good work, but were very process-focused, sometimes to the detriment of the customer experience. In changing jobs, I wanted to find a company that focused on results more than metrics; on customers rather than numbers.
I’m a strong believer that, if you do the right thing for your customers, the sales will follow. Articulate truly embodies this line of thinking.
I’ve brought up Articulate’s culture of productivity to former co-workers, explaining that we “just get things done” and “do what we need to do.” They take that to mean that we break corporate rules or do things counter to policy to finish our work. I have to explain that what makes us unique is that we don’t have any corporate bureaucracy we have to battle against any time we try to do something. Instead, we have a leadership team that puts the results at the forefront and doesn’t get hung up on the process of how we get there.
So our team responds to changes creatively and quickly. Here’s a quick example: In preparing for a big project, Tanya Storm, a member of our sales team, came up with the concept of “all hands on deck”: pulling in people from other teams to help answer customers quickly when things get too busy for us to address on our own.
Another time, we experienced an huge influx of emails related to a Tom Kuhlmann webinar—something we didn’t plan for! Being results-oriented meant that we were able to come up with systems as needed to handle the customer demands and maintain our own sanity. There wasn’t any need to “have corporate review this and then decide how to implement,” and frankly, there wouldn’t have been time.
On a day-to-day level, we work as a team to make changes and solve problems without having to cut through a lot of red tape. When someone needs time to address personal commitments, like caring for a sick kid or taking a well-deserved vacation, the rest of our team seamlessly covers for them to serve our customers in that person’s absence.
We all have our own style, but that’s what helps us meet the needs of our diverse group of users. I also think it makes us a stronger sales team, and makes Articulate a stronger company. To me, being part of a culture of productivity means being able to focus on doing what needs to be done sans red tape. This lets me meet the needs of our customers to the best of my ability.
