Connecting clients to solutions: Customer experience at Yarris

For Hamish Goddard, Head of Customer Experience at Yarris, keeping clients happy is a comprehensive process. “I was working in restaurants and bars for a number of years while I was at university,” says Goddard. “That was good fun. It taught me the fundamentals of looking after customers in a fast-paced, systematic environment — what I learned there easily applies to the IT world.” Within Yarris, Goddard’s role as account manager is defined by facilitating customer and developer dialogue, connecting clients to the programmers who can answer their questions and solve their problems. Indeed, customer experience at Yarris is not defined by “service” alone; just as the purpose of a waiter is to connect customers to the dishes they ordered, Goddard connects clients to the solutions they purchased, the highest form of service typical of the extensive support Yarris offers clients.

As Goddard himself puts it, “you’re not just buying a license for our product, but you’re actually buying the involvement of Yarris’s staff to help you optimize that product and keep it running properly, with on-demand support available the whole way.” To ensure that customers receive only the most relevant, effective support, Goddard employs agile methodology to maximize the potential for software improvement. “We get a surprising mix of people involved upon receiving feedback. Our solution architects who provide technical expertise, the product owner who sets the overall improvement strategy, and customer experience leads who talk directly to the client, all get involved to learn as much detail from the users as possible.” By enlisting talent from all across Yarris, every actionable user recommendation sees maximum payoff when the program is patched.

This practice best captures Goddard’s approach to customer service as a facilitation role. “I don’t see myself as the one channel for customer feedback to come through — rather, I’m someone within the organization who’s keeping the customer’s voice at the forefront of everything we do. It really is a facilitator role, just making sure that we’ve got the relevant stakeholders involved in the conversation as much as possible.” Goddard’s humility and attention to service are central to Yarris’s style of account management — when asked what satisfies him most in the field of customer experience, he replied “anytime we release a major feature that’s been requested by the customer, and that feature is instantly used to their benefit, those sorts of moments are priceless.” By choosing Yarris for their management solutions, companies gain not only robust software, but outstanding support to optimize that software as well, leading to increased productivity and ease of use.