A day in the life of Box's Customer Success team
Leading the Customer Success organization at Box over the past eight years, we've grown from a small scrappy team to more than 200 people all over the globe. We have teams that focus on customer success management to product support, consulting and renewals. From London, Austin, New York and Redwood City, we strive to empower our customers to do amazing things with Box.
One of my favorite traditions from over the years is our quarterly CS All Hands where we come together as a team to discuss our strategy, align on our priorities and vision, share customer stories from the road, and most importantly, celebrate the outstanding work of our Boxers. Each quarter, we recognize individuals who truly represent our company value of "Blow our Customers' Minds." These "Blow Our Customers' Minds" awards are peer nominated and have expanded into four categories, including Team Player, GSD (Get S**t Done), Customer Delight and Innovation.
In the first quarter, we received 40+ nominations for 37 Boxers in our Customer Success team. I'm thrilled to introduce this quarter's winners, who I recently sat down with to talk about their day-to-day role at Box, career path in Customer Success and their top lessons learned from working with our customers.
Jon: Congrats on your CS All Hands awards! Tell us a little bit about your role at Box. What does your day to day look like?
Apurva Parikh: I've been at Box for almost 4 years, as Senior Customer Success Manager based in Houston, TX. My day is spent primarily working with our largest enterprise customers in Texas, helping my accounts realize business value from Box.
Veronica Chou: One of the things I love about working in Product Support is its cross-functional nature. A typical day is a mix of participating in engineering/product stand-ups, collaborating with other CS teams for specific accounts, and of course, working directly with our customers on their product-related questions!
Vinay Setlur: As a technical consultant, there are no days which are the same. We tend to interact with multiple customers on a daily basis who have different set of requirements, urgency, and expectations. It is a constant learning role as sometimes you get the freedom and opportunity to come up with some custom solutions and also learn some new technologies as part of the process.
Jon: How did you get started in Customer Success?
Ashley Bingham: I started on the Box Tier 1 Support team about five years ago and was one of the first five agents stationed in the Austin office. It was my first job out of college and growing a team within a new office was one of the most exciting times I've had at Box.
Denise DeJesus: This is my first job out of college, and I'm really lucky to start my professional career at a company like Box. I have a background in economics and statistics, but going into my senior year of college, I knew that I wanted to work in tech and try and apply the skills that I had developed throughout college in an industry that I knew little about.
Ellie Levine: My journey to Customer Success started back in college, when I worked as a front desk associate at a clinic. I started learning the ins and outs of being a customer liaison and advocate. I was simultaneously studying Anthropology, which fueled my curiosity in human behavior.
Juan Perez Carrizosa: Box is the first organization where I've "officially" been part of the CS org, and the one thing that has surprised me the most is how the team truly works to "Empower and Inspire Our Customers to Do Amazing Things with Box," one of our core CS values.
Jon: What is a memorable lesson you've learned from working with Box's customers?
Apurva: Our customers really look to Customer Success as the subject matter experts when it comes to Cloud Content Management. They want us to guide them and really have a point of view and to help them understand how Box can help them achieve business outcomes.
Ellie: Since Box customers span across every industry, I've learned how to ask deeper and more nuanced discovery questions to get to the heart of what my accounts do and how they define success. It's been a great way to gain knowledge on any industry from Media & Entertainment to Construction to Nonprofit and beyond!
Juan: There are no stupid questions:it's always better to spend a lot of time upfront to really understand where a client is coming from and what they are trying to solve before embarking on an incorrect path.
Vinay: Managing customer expectations is key for a successful delivery of a project.
Veronica: It’s a bit cliche, but it’s true - people won’t always remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. The customer experience is so central to our role, and even if we can’t always give them the information or answer they want to hear, it’s important for us to make sure they feel heard and cared for.