Boxer Spotlight - Ashley Brings Her Determined Self To Work
"Bring Your _______ Self to Work" is an important pillar of our Box culture. We're a pretty mixed bag of different backgrounds and values around here, so the blank is different for each Box employee. In this series, we'll interview one of our own to give you a look at our diverse family of Boxers around the world. Our Boxer this week is Ashley Bingham, Team Lead, Premium User Services Customer Success Team based out of our Austin, TX office.
Tell us a little about yourself and what you do at Box.
I have been working at Box for two and a half years. After graduating from UT Austin with degrees in Public Relations and Mathematics, I started in Tier 1 User Services and am now the Team Lead in Austin for Premier Services. I was one of the first 15 employees in the Box Austin office!
How does what you do contribute to the success of Box?
The biggest thing I do is make sure the Premier team is running smoothly. Premier is such a huge part of Customer Success and it's vital that our team provides the best service possible for our customers. This means making sure the team is positive, stays challenged, and is always ready to help a customer in need. Our customers are always changing, so we as a team have to make sure we are always innovating and providing the best support we can across the board. Being a leader on this team is ensuring that always happens.
How is Box culture/values reflected in your team?
The #1 value the Premier team emulates is "Bring your wacky self to work." Every single person on this team is remarkably different. What brings them together as a team is their hard working, positive personalities. They are always up for a challenge and want to make sure they are doing this job to the best of their abilities. It makes being their Team Lead almost too easy!
What has been the most exciting customer success story you have been a part of at Box?
The day the Internet went down. In other words, when DYN was having issues allowing traffic to major web sites, my Friday was suddenly a lot busier than I had expected. But the ability of the Customer Success team to proactively reach out to our customers to let them know we were watching the issue closely and would keep them updated was amazing. At the time, emails, Slack, and other major communication tools were either down or severely delayed, so that meant reaching out to our customers through phones and other means. That single phone call showed a huge responsibility to our relationships and how much we value our customers. The response from CS, which could have been slow since most of our tools were not working as expected, still blows my mind today.
Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, what’s been the most difficult challenge?
The biggest challenge for me has been continuing my relationships with the people all located in different offices, California especially. While getting to stay in Austin after graduation and having a chance to build this awesome office as been an amazing experience, it is hard to ensure that our team is connected to the rest of the company. We don't employ every team out here in Austin, so when we have questions that can't get answered face to face, we have to reach out digitally. Yes, we're a cloud company in the digital age, but face to face problem solving is something that should never be taken for granted. Making sure we can still do that as a global company, especially when building out a brand new office, can be a huge challenge.
How has Box helped your career development? One career lesson you would like to share?
So far, my career post college has pretty much kept me at Box, which is not a bad thing! I have had multiple opportunities to challenge myself, learn new skills, and really take the next step in my career. Every manager at Box is great at introducing me to new classes and opportunities to learn something new, whether it's through LinkedIn learning or Box-offered courses. My biggest lesson is to always take an opportunity to learn something new. Take any and every class that's offered to you and interests you just a little bit. Be a great team member and support all of your colleagues. There isn't room to be negative for any reason in your career; just try to take the positive outlook every time.
2017 is a big year for Box. What’s your biggest goal for this coming year?
My biggest goal is to shake up how Customer Success does things. We have increasingly grown each and every year, so our old ways of supporting our company are changing. We need to make sure we are ahead of the game in our field and offer our agents a chance to grow and build their skills within the team. This means updating and clarifying different and new product offerings as well as changing the way we manage our customers through the life of the account.
Hear more from Boxers working in Customer Success on The Muse!