National Customer Service Week is in full swing in the UK, with companies of all shapes and sizes celebrating how well they serve their customers. As an organisation with community at its heart, we just couldn’t let this week pass Tyk by!
As such, we’ve grilled our talented Tyklings about what they’re doing to make Tyk’s users extra happy. We want every user’s experience of our product to be a positive one. Lofty goals like that tend to take quite a bit of work behind the scenes.
We’ve asked Adam Cavanagh, our Vice President of Sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, to explain what that work involves. Adam oversees all of our customer-facing client relations, with a team of eight (soon to be ten), helping him. Let’s hear what he has to say about the customer experience (CX).
How do you ensure a customer-focused approach in the work that you do?
When working with every client, we try to understand what they are trying to achieve. That means understanding their company, engineering and product goals. Then we look at how Tyk can help them achieve success. It’s all about delivering personalised service with the client at the core, not trying to push a one-size-fits-all solution.
In order to understand our users properly, we spend time with a number of different teams within their organisations, building up an understanding of their goals at each level. From our side, the client has an account manager, the commercial team and support from consultant engineers who love to get into the technical detail. The client has access to some incredibly smart people, all focused on helping them to achieve their goals. It’s a three-pronged approach to delivering a comprehensive, customer-focused solution.
What does delivering a positive customer experience mean to you?
Our aim is not just to make users happy, but to delight them. That’s the flag in the ground. Many clients come to Tyk seeking a solution to problems that they’re trying to solve. That can mean they’re going through trying or difficult times as an organisation. Our goal is to help them solve those problems and to ensure that they feel delighted with the process of doing so.
It’s the same approach, regardless of the size of the client or the nature of their business. We put in the same amount of effort every time. The whole team takes great pride in delivering an experience that leaves users feeling delighted.
You’re on the front line helping clients achieve their goals with our product. What do you like about this kind of work?
For me – and I know that this is true across the commercial team – there’s a huge sense of satisfaction to be had from having such a big impact. Tyk is a B2B2C solution and as we’re industry-agnostic, we get to impact millions of people around the world, through sectors from banking to healthcare. The work that we do on a daily basis supports our clients to succeed, which in turn supports their customers to achieve their own goals. So the ripples of the super customer experiences that we’re delivering spread outward.
Can you provide a recent example of delighting a client?
Absolutely! We recently worked with a large financial institution that had a very specific problem in their team agenda. Fixing it was going to require a lot of architectural oversight and input, as well as careful governance.
As Tyk was already working very closely with the client, we were in a strong position to help. An alternative team had spent six months trying to solve the issue and not managed to do so. We stepped in to help, writing a simple plugin that took just two weeks to deliver and be production ready.
The client couldn’t believe how quickly and how well we solved the problem. They were delighted to receive such support. To me, that’s what delivering a positive customer experience is all about.
