Ask Me Anything, with Vivian Toledo

In a recent AMA on the Community-Led Alliance community, Vivian Toledo, Head of Customer Value and Success at Construmarket, shared her insights on how customer success and community managers collaborate.

The goal of this AMA was to delve into the dynamic relationship between customer success and community management roles within organizations, as well as provide practical advice for optimizing collaboration and maximizing impact.

If you missed this AMA, don’t worry—you can check out the highlights in this article! Also, join our Slack community to stay up-to-date with our latest news, including any upcoming AMAs.

Is there a specific instance where you implemented a customer onboarding and adoption strategy at Construmarket that stands out to you? If so, how did this strategy contribute to long-term value realization for the company and its customers?

At Construmarket, we’ve taken a dynamic approach to customer onboarding by developing a hybrid model that caters to high, mid, and low touch clients. This strategy allows us to tailor our onboarding experience to the specific needs and engagement levels of different customer segments.

For our high-touch clients, we provide a deeply personalized onboarding experience, complete with one-on-one training sessions and dedicated support to ensure a seamless integration of our tools into their workflows.

Mid-touch clients benefit from a mix of personalized guidance and self-service resources, giving them the flexibility to explore our tools at their own pace while still having access to our support team.

For low-touch clients, we’ve built an extensive library of educational content, including tutorials, webinars, and FAQs, enabling them to self-onboard effectively.

In addition to this, we’ve rolled out a Customer Education program aimed at empowering all our users, regardless of their touch level, with the knowledge and skills they need to maximize the value they get from our solutions. This program includes a series of structured learning paths, covering everything from basic features to advanced functionalities.

Handling situations where customer expectations don't align with organizational capabilities can often be tricky, and a little awkward. Can you share a scenario where you navigated a similar situation at Construmarket? How did you find a balance between meeting customer needs and managing expectations?

I had a pretty memorable situation, here, at Construmarket with this. Last year, there was a client who was all in on using our platform in ways we hadn’t even thought of yet. They were way ahead of us, and we just weren’t there yet.

Navigating this required a blend of transparency, empathy, and creativity. I initiated a candid conversation with the client, acknowledging their innovative ideas while also clearly outlining our current limitations. It was crucial to validate their needs without making promises we couldn’t keep.

We got creative, finding ways to get close to what they wanted with what we had. And we looped them in on our future plans that matched their vision.

It was all about keeping it open and working together to tweak their approach to fit our current features. It definitely taught us a lot about balancing customer dreams with reality, all while keeping the trust and conversation going.

Community insights can be invaluable for refining products and services. Can you share a recent example where feedback or insights gathered from Construmarket's community directly influenced enhancements to your offerings, better aligning them with customer needs and preferences?

By the end of last year, after hearing from our community during a webinar, we realized how crucial it was for everyone to be able to take their checklist reports and work with them in their own way. So, we rolled out a new feature that lets users export their reports straight into Excel or PDF.

This came about because they told us they needed a better way to share and dive into project data. It's all part of how we're keeping our ears open and making sure our tools really work for the main reason we exist, the client!

How would you explain the benefits of an official advocacy-community program to help Customer Success Managers understand the positive impact it can have on their goals/roles, etc.?

I believe that to get your Customer Success (CS) team on board with the advocacy-community program, how about starting with a small trial run? This way, you can show real, hands-on results like better engagement and happier customers. You can track the good stuff – like more customer shout-outs or smoother renewals – and share these wins with the team.

Plus, setting up a way for the CS folks to hear straight from customers in the program can really hit home how much it's helping. When you tie it all back to what the CS team cares about, like keeping customers around longer and making their jobs easier, it'll be a no-brainer for them to see the value.

I’m curious about the role of community engagement in your customer success strategy. Can you talk about a time when leveraging community engagement initiatives led to notable positive outcomes for Construmarket and its customers? How do you approach and nurture these community relationships?

I must say that community engagement is actually a big part of how we keep things humming along at Construmarket. There was this one time when we rolled out a series of webinars tailored to our customers' needs, and the feedback was phenomenal.

It really strengthened our bond with them and even sparked some awesome collaborations. Our approach? It's all about listening and staying connected. We make it a point to dive into forums, social media, and events, always ready to lend an ear and offer support. It's like nurturing a garden, you know?

Regular care and a bit of sunshine go a long way in keeping the community vibrant and flourishing.

Given the diverse range of customers Construmarket serves, could you share a memorable experience where you tailored your approach to customer success to meet the unique needs and challenges of a specific customer segment or type? How did this customization impact the overall success of your initiatives?

When working with Carrefour, a major supermarket chain here, we encountered a unique challenge that demanded a specialized approach. Understanding the complexity and scale of their operations, we developed new features specifically designed to streamline their processes and improve customer engagement.

This customization involved integrating advanced inventory management tools and personalized marketing strategies to better align with their business model. The impact was significant, leading to improved operational efficiency and a more satisfying shopping experience for their customers.

This experience highlighted the importance of adaptability and bespoke solutions in achieving customer success in diverse market segments.

As someone deeply involved in community engagement, how do you personally measure the success of community initiatives in terms of enhancing customer value and success at Construmarket? Can you provide specific metrics or indicators that you find most valuable in this evaluation process?

When it comes to measuring the success of community initiatives at Construmarket, here’s how I personally look at it:

Engagement levels: I keep an eye on how actively our community participates in discussions, events, and feedback sessions. High engagement often indicates that our initiatives are resonating well.
Customer feedback and satisfaction: Direct feedback from surveys, forums, and one-on-one conversations really helps gauge how our initiatives are impacting customer value.
Retention and loyalty: Monitoring repeat interactions, customer loyalty (like referrals or testimonials), and reduced churn rates gives us insight into long-term value creation.
Innovation and Improvement Ideas: The number and quality of suggestions for product or service enhancements coming from our community is a great indicator of a deeply engaged and invested customer base.
Social media metrics: Increases in followers, shares, and positive mentions related to community initiatives suggest greater brand value and customer success.

Each of these metrics offers a piece of the bigger picture, helping us understand and enhance our community’s impact on customer value and success at Construmarket.

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