A while ago, we asked our customers to write reviews about their experiences working with us . With an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 and ten reviews submitted and published within two weeks, we were humbled by the responses. As our CEO, Toffer Winslow wrote, “Perhaps the thing I was most proud of…was just how frequently our customers commented on the high quality of StackState employees they interact with and the caliber of service we deliver.”
Which is the exact reason why we decided to invite StackState’s Director of Customer Success, Martin Lako. On a daily basis, Martin and his team work with our clients to guide and assist where they can. Their goal is to make sure our customers get the most out of StackState and implement observability in an effective way. That’s not always easy, because the organizations who use StackState can be large and their IT environments are often quite dynamic.
To give you a little bit of background information: The StackState observability platform is offered as both a SaaS and a self-hosted solution. Self-hosted solutions are often used by enterprises with complex IT environments consisting of many different technologies supporting business-critical applications. That means StackState not only needs to be implemented very carefully by Martin and his team but that the team also needs to be aware of the various tools and technologies in the stack. They can then provide StackPacks, or packaged integrations, in order to enable StackState to ingest data from many sources. They also, of course, work with many different teams and stakeholders.
When things get complex, you might expect that it is challenging to maintain a high level of customer service. Nothing could be further from the truth for Martin and his team, as evidenced by the customer reviews many have written on G2. One customer said: “The StackState team listens to what their customers need and has fantastic customer support.” Another customer said: “Vendor/Friend with which I would like to grab a beer!”
In order to share with you how Martin and his team (and other StackState employees who are working directly with customers) are able to retain a high level of customer service, we were eager to ask him a bunch of questions. What does the customer success team do to keep customers happy, even if onboarding can be very complex? How does he deal with different time zones in supporting a global customer base? How does he make sure he and his team continue to deliver the same high level of customer service in the face of rapid growth?
My team wants to be involved even before the deal is done. What's coming up? And how fast can we deliver them value? Because that's what we’re looking for and that's always what we strive for.
Martin Lako, Director of Customer Success, StackState
Apart from talking about delivering excellent customer service, Anthony and Martin also talk about something completely different. Well, maybe it’s not completely different: if you want to excel at your job, it is important to spend enough time away from it. One of the ways Martin does this is by playing the guitar. What’s more, he started playing the guitar when was 40. In this episode, Martin shares why you are never too old to learn and provides his top tips for learning to play a music instrument.
Maybe we can grab that beer and also enjoy some great guitar music!
