Our professional team of Customer Success Managers (CSMs) offer qualified property management companies an open line of communication and a personal approach to ensure they get the most of Guesty and meet their business goals.
Want to know what that looks like? We spoke with Hadar Raveh, one of our Senior CSMs, to find out how she positions her clients for growth.
How many clients do you work with?
I have about 30 clients in my portfolio, with a diverse range of business models. Some have boutique hotels and aparthotels, some manage single units on behalf of homeowners and some lease properties that they then rent out short-term, so I’m really working with companies all across the spectrum.
The department divides the users up by geo, so I handle property management companies located in Eastern and Western Europe, specifically Austria, Hungary, Germany and the Nordics. It helps to be able to specialize in a specific region so that we can serve as experts in the local industry and use that knowledge to best assist our clients.
What have you found to be a central priority for Guesty users?
One major focus for clients is improving their communication with guests and facilitating an effective and professional reservation cycle. They want to know best practices for ensuring responsiveness and that their guests feel heard and tended to.
Another task that’s top of mind for many users is revenue management. Clients will dedicate a lot of their time and resources to understanding their market so they can determine optimal price points for their properties.
A third operational priority is cleaning and internal staff management, and we work closely with our users to ensure they set up ideal workflows to enable maximum efficiency.
Of course, each user’s priorities look a bit different and it’s our job as CSMs to familiarize ourselves with the distinct goals of every client and strategize accordingly.
When do users reach out to you as opposed to the Customer Solutions Team?
What Customer Success Managers do is really different from what the Solutions Team does. They are available 24/7 to tackle technical issues and guide users through using the platform on a very practical level. When users reach out to CSMs, they really want to work on the big picture: optimizing their use of the platform and finding ideal solutions for their day-to-day operations in order to further their larger business goals.
How would you describe your relationship with your clients?
We are consultants and trusted advisors while also enjoying a more informal and personal relationship with our users to build a strong foundation. It’s not all business. We develop a connection that invites communication and transparency and encourages users to reach out for help. We get to a place where there is genuine, mutual enthusiasm about company milestones, where users share every success with us, no matter how big or small, because they know we are wholly invested and are going to match their excitement. Their success is our success.
I’ve travelled all over to meet clients face to face, which is something I feel is really important for the establishment of a solid work relationship. It’s another reason why GuestyVal – our annual three-day festival – is so valuable. It really affords us the opportunity to get to know our clients better.
How do other departments “use” your knowledge of the end user?
We are Guesty’s internal representatives of our users, which means we can serve as a voice for our clients when it comes to the development of our product. When the product team needs to test certain features or enhancements, we can identify which clients would be most relevant and which companies would benefit most from those updates.
And it goes both ways. We are always happy to take our clients’ feedback back to the product team to give them a clearer picture of what users want and need for their businesses, and the product managers will then incorporate that feedback into their agendas. We are a user-centric company and base all of our decisions on what will benefit our clients, so having that direct line of communication with them is invaluable to us.
Is it usually clients reaching out to you or the other way around?
It’s both. Clients know they can come to me with questions, but my job is to ensure success so I’m also going to be taking proactive measures to optimize their use of the platform. This means looking into their accounts and making sure they’re effectively utilizing all of the tools and Marketplace solutions at their disposal, especially ones I feel particularly relevant to furthering their distinct business goals. It also means keeping my finger on the pulse and sharing any industry developments that I feel relevant to their operations, then discussing how best to respond to those developments.
The essence of being a CSM is to provide value on a daily basis and ensure our clients can reach their business goals through the usage of platform and services, so it’s a lot more than responding to questions. We initiate business reviews on a regular basis, which involves meeting with clients, showing them the data we gather from analysis of their accounts and then giving them the floor so they can voice their quarterly or yearly goals and we can come up with a concrete plan to meet them. We are thinking of our users around-the-clock, constantly strategizing on their behalf to make Guesty the engine that gets them to where they want to go and makes their business aspirations a reality.