Hi Nicole, please introduce yourself and the Customer Support Team.
Our customer support team currently consists of five employees. We have Cordula Iff (in the team since 2018), who is the project manager for the Mobile Event App (MEA) and Polario. She manages large and time-consuming customer projects, which often involve on-site service. Here, Cordula already has her own regular customers who count on her from the moment they place their order and enjoy working with her.
Continuing with Lena Lucke-Bernsdorf, she has also been part of the team since 2018 and is our onboarding manager for MEA and Polario. In other words, Lena teaches our new customers how to deal with our content management system (CMS) in the initial phase and how they can “run on their own” afterwards.
Gregor Mendel has been supporting us since 2020 and is always on hand when Customer Support needs help with customer appointments and content maintenance. He also supports us when very technical issues need to be clarified with the customer.
Our newest team member in Customer Support Mandy Stegmann is supporting us since 2021. She is a project manager for MEA and primarily looks after major customers for long-term projects.
Finally, there’s me, Nicole Sauter, Project Manager since 2016 and Team Lead since 2021. I’ve been with MEA and registr since the early stages, taking on the first major Polario projects. Here I am in close exchange with the customers and the development to discuss the first customer feedback for Polario directly with the conception and to improve it continuously.
How can our customers imagine working with Customer Support?
Depending on which service our customers book, they can have a personal contact person who knows the customer and his project. In the case of very complex projects, the cooperation can be very intensive over a longer period. In the end, we also like to be on a “first-name basis” with the customer.
What different service offerings/packages can our customers book?
If our customers only want a brief introduction to the system, they can book a 90-minute introductory workshop. Here we give our customers a brief introduction to the system. Customers can then start work immediately. If a few more appointments are needed after all, full-day workshops or an onboarding package can be booked. At the follow-up appointments, customers can continue to ask questions that came up during their first encounters with our system.
If a customer wishes a more intensive cooperation, he can book the project management in addition. In this case, a personal contact person is available to assist the customer. This person will deal comprehensively with the customer’s project and provide the customer with advice.
If the customer wants to be supported in setting up the app and maintaining the content, he can book content integration. One of us will then take over the creation and maintenance according to the customer’s ideas.
Polario and the MEA are both SaaS solutions. What does this mean for customer support?
After a learning phase, most customers maintain their content independently and only have contact with a Customer Support employee when questions arise. This gives Customer Support more time to focus on creating tutorial videos, webinars and help desk articles. This has the advantage that several customers can be helped at the same time. Also, we can help customers who have little experience with the creation and maintenance of an app.
The SaaS idea allows customers to create and maintain their content faster. This is because new content and changes are quickly created and made, which in turn saves customers important time and costs.
However, for large events or building the basic framework of an employee app, we are happy to help accordingly and are in closer contact with each other.
What can our customers imagine by Service+?
By Service+, we mean an excellent service that provides our customers and their team with the best possible support in building their own app. We do this to the extent that our customers require. We are happy to provide our customers with advice and support. However, you are also welcome to handle the complete app build yourself with our SaaS solution if this is what our customers want. Even if our customers do not book personal support, we would like to accompany them in the best possible way with the help of our tutorial videos, help desk articles and our service desk.
What other tasks does Customer Support perform in addition to supporting customer projects?
As mentioned above, Customer Support creates tutorial videos and help desk articles and holds webinars. However, these are not only created, but also must be constantly updated by us. After all, our products are constantly evolving. We are also in constant communication with Design and Development about new features and how to improve existing features. After all, we are closest to the customer and can thus best pass on the customer’s feedback directly.
Are there differences in how event and community projects are managed?
One of the biggest differences between event and community projects is the project duration.
An event usually takes place on a specific day or days. Thus, the project duration is clearly defined in advance and limited in time. As a rule, the days before an event are always a bit more stressful. Because on day X everything should be ready and perfect. During this time, there is always a close exchange between our project managers and the responsible event managers.
A community project, on the other hand, usually extends over a longer period, possibly even years. The goal here is to let the customers work more independently in the system. In this way, they build up a routine with our solution over time. The contact is less intensive over the longer project period than in an event project. At the end of the day, people have known each other longer over the years.
What lessons can you learn from working with MEA customer projects for Polario projects?
We have already implemented many event customer projects with MEA. Accordingly, we know what they value and can implement their wishes in our new Polario system in a more visually appealing and technically modern way. Many of our customers’ requirements could not be met at all with MEA, or only with a workaround. These can now be implemented more easily with Polario. We can quickly and easily show existing customers how to create their content in Polario.
We already had a few community customers in the Mobile Employee App, but fewer than we are aiming for with Polario Campus. This way, we can also score with experience for the Polario Campus customers, but at the same time still learn a lot from our customers. I think the field of application will be even broader than it is now. We are also looking forward to seeing what new ideas and challenges our customers will come up with. We are definitely looking forward to it!
