#BehindTheScenes – Get to know Alina, our Global Head of Customer Success

The evolution of customer success has been driven by the increasing importance of customer satisfaction and loyalty in a competitive business environment. This concept has transformed significantly over the years, from basic customer support to a proactive, holistic approach that focuses on customer retention, growth, and advocacy.

Technology has triggered a revolution in the way the customer interacts with companies, but innovation must come along with a compelling and frictionless customer journey. And at ID the customer is always at the core of our activity.

Have you ever asked yourself about the inner workings of a Customer Success Department? We invite you to go behind the scenes and meet the great people behind our ID Finance Customer Success Area.

Let us introduce you to Alina Dobrovolskaya, our Global Head of Customer Success. Her approach in this key area of the company goes well beyond just attending customer requests. Always putting the clients and business pains in the center, Alina finds the way to come up with new solutions.

During her 8 years at ID Finance, she has shown a strong track record. Starting as client support specialist, her involvement in the company and contribution to improving the customer experience has propelled her career path to the role of Global Head of Customer Success she has recently been promoted to, in line with ID Finance NDA of providing our talent with the necessary opportunities and tools for them to reach their maximum potential.

Alina, you are one of the most veteran team members of ID Finance. Looking back, what transformation have you observed overall? What has changed?

I would say that throughout all those years the perception of CS within the company has changed greatly for good. Today client support is one of the key departments to understand the customers’ needs. Together with the company’s growth and development, client support has evolved a lot too.

At first CS was just a team answering customer questions. Of course, they were solving important tasks, but did not really interact with other business units.

Now the Customer Service department is a store of valuable information for everyone. We began to perceive questions in support as an indicator of the comprehensibility of the service: in the rating of categories of the requests to customer service, the most difficult and unclear operations to the client come to the top.

In addition to the well-known support metrics, we have developed an interaction-per-application indicator that shows the ratio of support requests to the active client base. Accordingly, the smaller this ratio is, the more understandable our service is to the client, since there are fewer questions.

What do you think is the key to an efficient Customer Success Area?

For me, the key is trying to understand and proactively listen to the client’s pain or difficulty. It means that we always put the customer at the center of all processes.

Once you understand the root cause of the problem, you can start brainstorming on how to provide better solutions and improve customer experience.

That is why we are constantly categorizing and monitoring categories of clients’ requests and react immediately if we notice anything suspicious.

Another key point is to understand that improvement is endless, and it never stops. This involves regularly reviewing and analyzing the reporting metrics, customer feedback, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes to enhance the customer experience.

How does technology contribute to improve the customer journey?

Customer service benefits a lot from using technology in their day-to-day processes to offer faster, more personalized, and convenient support to customers. Automated chatbots, knowledge bases and FAQs as self-service options give customers an opportunity to find answers to their questions and solve issues on their own quickly, reducing the need for human intervention. At the same time our CS agents can spend their time handling more complex issues where human intervention is inevitable.

Each activity has a result. We are working for a highly technological company and have all resources to demonstrate the results visually. With the help of technology any task or change can be justified by the possible results it can bring. And before doing something, it is important to analyze the potential impact.

Besides the reporting automation and analyzing the results of any task, having our own IT resources gives us flexibility in developing new features for our customers and reacting to any issue immediately.

What role do data analytics and customer metrics play at ID Finance Customer Success area?

I believe a lot in numbers and consider that data analytics and customer metrics play a crucial role at ID Finance Customer Success area. Data is very important in both working with the client and the team.

On the one hand, customer service can get valuable insights from data about the needs of our clients. This data can be used not only to solve any problems during the flow but also to simplify the customer experience. And here I’m talking not only about the CS team but about the business as a whole.

Regarding the team, once you have clear statistics, you can use data to plan the workload and hire, you can set KPIs for the team members, set up a motivation system and of course measure results.

What do you like best of working at ID Finance?

Without any doubt, people are the most important asset at ID Finance. No matter what country and project I’m working for, we work every day within a team of very high-level professionals, and we can learn a lot from each other. You can achieve significant results if you have the right communication with other members of the team and we all listen to each other. As the manager of the Customer Success team, I like to encourage my colleagues to be curious, to investigate and to constantly ask questions to themselves.

I also love the flexibility you get to work autonomously. At ID Finance you have the trust of the managers to try out new things, to apply improvements. Personally, I have never found any obstacles to keep innovating. This is a huge advantage both in terms of personal and professional development.

Besides, at ID Finance there is a great working atmosphere. The company organizes many teambuilding activities. And we often organize ourselves after works where we have a lot of fun and get the chance to know each other on a more personal level.

What recommendations do you have for someone joining the Customer Success Team?

• I would tell her or him that Communication is a key tool for a successful customer service. Any problem can be resolved when people listen to each other. Be clear and precise in all interactions with customers and team members.

• Understand the product you are working for, if possible – start using the product yourself!

• Be proactive in sharing CS metrics with your team members, raise your hand if you notice something weird in customer behavior of type of requests. Customer Success is often the bridge between the customer and the company. Work closely with other teams to ensure that customer needs are being met.

• Try to learn about the industry trends. Having up-to-date information about CS tools and processes in other companies and similar products in the market gives you the possibility to provide the best possible support to customers.