Making customer succes a real succes: the ziggu way
“We try to figure out what customers need before they even realize they need it”
Too often, customer experience is just a good-sounding phrase written on a website. But as a company that offers a customer engagement platform for real estate developers, Ziggu takes the customer journey seriously. “With our platform, developers can give homebuyers a better experience. It would be a little absurd if we didn’t care for that experience in regard to our own customers”, Ziggu’s Customer Success Manager Laura Van den Bossche jokes. “Practice what you preach, right? Our portal gives people a great customer journey, and so do we as a company.”
Ziggu’s Customer Success is an a-to-z kind of approach, with Laura running like a thread through every collaboration with customers. The moment a new customer comes aboard the ship, she’s there. Whether it’s helping them find their way on Ziggu’s customer portal or translating their needs to the developers team. “It’s important to take the time for any questions or feedback a new customer might have”, she says. “I’m there for whatever they need. I’m the sympathetic ear, the helping hand.”
But her job as Customer Success Manager goes beyond lending a hand Laura explains: “At Ziggu, we’re not just reactive. We don’t just sit around and wait until a customer has a question; it’s important to be proactive as well. I keep in touch with them, I make sure to follow up. And I try to figure out what customers need before they even realize they need it.”
Customer Success in our DNA
Customer experience’ is a much-heard idea these days, and Laura admits it’s become somewhat of a buzzword: “Many companies claim to offer it, but not many actually do”, she says. “When we say we reply to our customers as soon as possible, it really is within minutes. When we say we’ll give them personal support, it really is personal.”
This approach is simply in Ziggu’s DNA. A necessity, according to Laura. “For Customer Success to be a real success, it has to be carried out by every single person in the company. I might be the CS manager, but everyone in the organization has to live and breathe it for this to work. It has to be part of the company’s culture. I wouldn’t be able to do my job as well if our founders didn’t understand the importance of CS. It would just be empty words, and I can’t work with empty words.”
A front-row seat
So no empty words at Ziggu, and Laura is all the happier for it. “When I started this job a little over a year ago I really hoped that Ziggu wouldn’t turn out to be one of those companies that says they are one thing, but in reality are completely different. I’m pleased to report that Ziggu is everything they said they would be”, Laura laughs. “During my interview, the founders promised they would give me a lot of trust and independence to fill in the job of Customer Success Manager as I pleased. And they made good on their promise.”
For Laura, the amount of trust given by the founders was an eye-opener. “In most companies, you first have to earn it, especially when you’re young”, says the 26-year-old. “The fact that Ziggu trusts employees from the very beginning takes a lot of guts from the founders. But it’s all part of Ziggu’s culture: we get to experiment, try new approaches and ideas, and if something doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. It’s part of the scale-up life, and it’s -besides fun- rewarding to be a part of that. I have a front-row seat to entrepreneurship; everything goes so fast, you have to think on your feet, but that’s where I thrive.”
