Inside Infobip: Managing Customer Success in North APAC

So far in this series, we’ve gone “Inside Infobip” to take a deep dive into the various teams and functions that make up the world’s leading omnichannel communications platform. We’ve looked at the importance of Core Operations and Presales, but these functions mean nothing without one essential component – a customer. That’s where CSM, or Customer Success Management, comes in. It’s one thing to bring in a client, it’s another to keep them engaged and satisfied with your offering.

For this post, we spoke to Keat Yieng Tan, our Regional Customer Success Manager for North APAC (China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) to get a glimpse into what CSM means in that region, and how her team is working each day to deliver for our customers.

How do you define customer success in APAC? Well, it depends where in APAC you’re talking about.

Did you know?

Just as cultures vary around the globe, they also vary within the Asia Pacific region. This is key to understanding how customers interact with your brand — you have to know where they’re located and the associated cultural norms in order to understand who they are and how to engage them.

With 14 offices in the APAC region, customers from each country require different approaches, according to Keat. The CSM team needs to be mindful of the current political situation (e.g. trade war), history, religious aspects, and of course, language variations.

For Keat, her Customer Success Management career path began with an honors degree in IT Management from Multimedia University in Malaysia.

Prior to joining Infobip, she worked as a Systems Engineer in the semiconductor industry, and then as an Operations Consultant for a Microsoft partner. The knowledge and experiences she gained in these positions, coupled with an interest in the telecommunications industry, led her to an Account Manager position at Infobip while it was starting up in the region more than seven years ago. With support from her peers and superiors, she was able to grow into a managerial position.

Just as Core Ops and Presales can’t operate without Customer Success Management, CSM can’t succeed without close connection to other Infobip teams. Keat sees her role as a bridge between CSM team members and Sales, Presales, Core Operations and Profitability Management.

Keat believes adaptability is an essential skill for Customer Success Managers, be it adapting to new products, tools, and solutions as our company evolves, or to the diversified business cultures of countries and local team members we serve.

In order to be successful in handling client queries and issues, sometimes it’s not what you say to your customers, but how you say it to them. Putting yourself in a client’s shoes will trigger you to think about what you could have done to improve their experience, or how to avoid damage to the business relationship in the event of a crisis. When confronting a client issue or concern, Keat finds it helpful to start by having the desired end result in mind. This will encourage you to develop far-sightedness in your daily work.

How does all this integration actually translate to client success?

Keat points to a client, Xiaomi, an internet company with smartphones and smart hardware connected by an IoT platform at its core and ranked fourth globally in terms of smartphone shipments. Xiaomi is the youngest company on the 2019 Fortune Global 500 list. Currently, Xiaomi products are present in over 90 countries and regions around the world, and have a leading foothold in many of them.

Xiaomi became an Infobip client in 2015, at which point their business was just starting to expand internationally. They realized they had to grow their messaging capabilities in order to compete globally, so they came to Infobip to enable them to deliver verification codes to customers via two-factor authentication for added security and efficiency. Through Infobip’s solutions, new users can register for a Xiaomi account via one-click SMS registration, which takes mere seconds.

Today, their daily servicing consists of direct communication by the CSM and also a Presales Engineer, in addition to the typical support from the Core Ops team. A true effort by an organized “Account Development Team” (ADT) across internal teams ensures the continuity of success Keat believes so strongly in.

As a Regional CSM, Keat derives much satisfaction in contributing to a team which fosters a growing customer base for the company.