As VP of Client Experience Management, my job is to develop a strategy based on the research, customer data and feedback my teams analyze and report on. I also share information that is relevant to a particular department, like product development or professional services. I have a master’s degree in mathematics. So, I started out my career working with data and making decisions based on the numbers. In my first job after university, I was a software engineer at IBM. I then made the change from software development to worldwide customer support.
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I came to DocuWare in 2018 to establish the customer experience department. My job includes leveraging data to convert it into actionable insights upon which decisions can be made, fostering a customer-centric mindset, and collaborating with the UX (User Interface) team and almost every other department at DocuWare. Ultimately, we want to get to know our customers — their goals, their daily challenges, and their dreams. I manage four teams: Client Solutions which develops tools, mostly for Partners, that fall outside our core solution; Customer and Partner Experience which collects, analyzes and reports on customer and Partner research; Business Applications which manages our internal customer relationship software and data warehouse to optimize our business-relevant processes and provide data used for reporting and analytics by various stakeholders; and Customer Success which contacts our customers on a regular basis to learn about their experiences and satisfaction as well as to guide them in the right direction for all their software needs.
As our reach extends to native-language support across multiple markets, my teams work to deepen our understanding of the business culture in these countries. Then we can be conscious of country-specific differences and create a much better client experience.
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At DocuWare, we consider both users and DocuWare Partners to be our clients. I’ve learned that nothing is more valuable than a customer or Partner who is enthusiastic about the solution. Every customer takes their own journey to digitalization and that informs their experience. That’s why every touch point is important.
To keep the information flowing and current, our Customer and Product Experience team conduct monthly surveys that measure our clients’ overall satisfaction. We also gather customer data through online surveys and telephone interviews conducted by our Customer Success team. Customer Success talks with our customers about their current needs and how we can better address them. In addition, when we survey Partners, we read every comment and use them as a reference when developing new educational programs for both customers and Partners.
My team developed many of the product, process and service improvements that benefit our customers. These range from making the DocuWare website even more user-friendly to crafting an FAQ page for our preconfigured solutions. When customers had concerns about the support ticket process, our UX team worked with user testers to come up with a new concept that streamlined the process in response to information my teams provided.
Getting new customers up-to-speed
We’ve also improved our new customer onboarding process. At DocuWare, onboarding starts from when a customer is first interested in us, to signing the contract, getting the solution up and running, and developing an ongoing relationship with them. We don’t just ask for feedback; we use it to determine whether we are on the right track with product development, software support and customer communication.
New customer issues we resolved in direct response to customer feedback include:
- Creating a cross-departmental task force to improve communication around software configuration. We streamlined the process and restructured it to make sure plans and expectations are aligned.
- Establishing one central contact point for each customer during the onboarding phase.
- Conducting a special kick-off call.
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At university, my fellow students were mostly men. In the beginning, I intrinsically felt that I had to work much harder to prove myself and show that my knowledge and intellect were equal to theirs. This diminished over time and at some point, my perceived non-acceptance dissipated.
That’s why encouraging more girls and women to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education is important to me. I teach IT classes for primary school students and discovered that when we separated the boys from the girls in this age group, the girls learned better.
I found that boys aren’t afraid to use technical terms, even if they don’t understand their meaning. The situation is quite the opposite with girls. They assume the boys know more as they are more vocal about it and so are hesitant to put themselves forward. However, when taught separately the girls were given the space to discuss these technical topics more openly without risk of embarrassment.
For me personally, working in technology perfectly combines my strength of analytical thinking with the freedom to work creatively, leaving me room to focus on what I enjoy. Since it also requires thinking outside the box, it never gets boring and gives me the opportunity to constantly learn.
Still, there are far too few women in STEM professions. We must find ways to inspire and guide girls/women toward STEM subjects. We can do that by giving young girls an honest and realistic view of what their long-term professional life might look like. Offering this perspective on possible future careers and strengthening the self-confidence of female students in their everyday school life will allow them to break through the cliched image that science subjects are primarily for boys.
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We have a worldwide pool of users who participate in providing guidance and feedback. We never develop product enhancements and process improvement strategies without consulting customer and Partner feedback.
Product Tester Program
DocuWare product testers influence the development of our solution. Users test new products before the official release. Because we get input during development, DocuWare is more user-friendly and in alignment with customer needs when it is released.
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Our door is always open
We welcome feedback from our customers at any time. US customers can send feedback to CustomerSuccessAmericas@docuware.com. Customers from EMEA which includes Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as Australia, New Zealand and Russia can send feedback to CustomerSuccessDACH@docuware.com.
