Two months in the life of a Customer Success intern

You may have heard that some companies have a customer success team. Maybe you’ve wondered what working on such a team actually involves. I wondered about just that before starting my 3-month internship at Airtame.

Now more than two months in, here’s what the internship has been like. I hope that it’ll help paint a picture of what a 3-month internship could mean for you.

What is Airtame

Airtame is the name of the company itself, as well as the name of the device they produce. The device is used for wireless presentations and digital signage within businesses and educational environments (Airtame’s customer base).

The role of customer success

In order for users to make the most of their screens with Airtame, the Customer Success team offers support via live chat, email, and phone calls.

Other than support, the team focuses a lot on finding new creative ways to improve every stage of the customer journey. The goal is to make sure that people know about Airtame’s different streaming and signage features, and that they’re comfortable using them.

What you get to work on

The first day was a lot about getting to know my teammates and talking a lot with my main supervisor.

You’re also presented with both Airtame devices, models 1 and 2. A very important step to feeling confident is to familiarize yourself with the different configurations and features of Airtame. Asking lots of questions is encouraged!

By the end of the first week, I’d become familiar with the following tools:

• Intercom is used by CS for live chat, answering emails/ongoing support cases, managing any pop-ups and storing help center articles. It’s the main tool used to talk to customers and curious leads. By the end of the first week, I’d got the hang of how to use Intercom (e.g. “macros” or “saved replies”, “tagging” colleagues, writing notes, attaching documentation, etc.).
• Shopify is used by the CS and logistics teams to keep track of orders placed on Airtame’s website. You may need to check the status of a shipment and change info such as the receiver’s address in case anything was input incorrectly.
• Aircall is a desktop and mobile app used for talking to customers and leads over a call. Customers and leads can call Airtame’s support line to talk about anything from “what can Airtame do” to “there’s an Ethernet issue”.
• Pipedrive is mainly used by Airtame’s account managers but is also a platform that CS teammates can check. It has info about customers but also resellers, which account manager is in touch with whom, how many devices they’re using, etc. This is great for finding out more about a customer who may have bought from a reseller rather than from our website.

The above tools “talk” to each other, so that relevant information from one tool is sent to another.

On any given day a colleague would maybe ask me to jump in on a phone call, helping to cover chat, etc. Otherwise, the program was mostly up to me.  It’s definitely nice that you get to manage your time so that each day is varied.

Project-oriented

In addition to assisting with support, I was involved in a customer appreciation project. I researched what should be in a tentative customer appreciation package (e.g. coffee mugs, Airtame posters, etc.). This also involved contacting suppliers regarding bulk pricing and figured out what shipping would cost us.

Another project was reviewing Airtame’s help center articles to make sure they were understandable, no links were broken, etc. Additional tasks that came up during the internship included helping with office inventory organization before Airtame moved locations, coming up with creative ways to get more customer testimonials, and of course, getting the chance to write this article!

Teams within Airtame have started to collaborate on more project-based work that involves people from different backgrounds in order to come up with a wider variety of solutions to projects such as “how do we get more customers educated and using an Airtame Cloud”.

Gaining tech expertise

I’ve definitely learned a lot about how wireless screen sharing works. In this period of two months, I’ve probably gained more technical knowledge of AV systems than I had in my first 22 years!

I can now give you the rundown of Airtame’s hardware, software (app) and cloud management platform. I now understand and can explain how devices are able to wirelessly “discover” and communicate with each other, the significance of different WiFi frequencies, the benefits of Ethernet, and the role that physical installation and network setups play. This was all new to me when I first started out, and I know it’ll definitely help in any future tech-related job.

Talking to customers like people

I’ve also received regular feedback on how to phrase messages in a way that shows empathy. Everyone on the CS team avoids sounding “robotic” at all costs. It takes effort, especially if a customer feels that the product doesn’t have something they expected (e.g. 4K support). But at the end of the day, customers are happy to know that there is a polite and “real” person who’s happy to help.

Final thoughts

A key takeaway in this process is that communication within a company isn’t always perfect. The more a company like Airtame grows, the more effort has to be spent on alignment. That means more meetings and more time before an idea materializes into an established company activity.

Fortunately, a big part of the Airtame solution is encouraging customers to have better, more effective meetings, so this extra focus on them as Airtame, as a company, grows means that we get to practice what we preach.

In the end, I can wholeheartedly recommend this internship, as it offers a chance to leave the theoretical world of the classroom and apply yourself in a hands-on way. The internship can also count in terms of academic credits (as was my case), so there’s an extra bonus there. The atmosphere at Airtame, accompanied by a variety of challenging and creative tasks, have made time fly by!

Being exposed to so many different facets of the customer journey at Airtame, I feel that the steep learning curve has kept me busy, curious and prepped for the wider work environment.

Want to work for Airtame? Check out our careers page. We’re hiring!

Interested? Let’s talk.