Recently, we sat down with Susan Eakle, Vice President of National Accounts, to learn more about how her role helps to steer RapidScale towards success and how she helps manage our network of partners and clients.
Susan has over 20 years in the Carrier communications and consultative spaces. Her positions have given her a myriad of experiences from back-office planning to front-end sales and business development.
What does your role entail?
I have three major hats that I wear for RapidScale.
The first is to care for our customers and assure that their experience is just the best we can provide. I lead our Customer Experience department and team members by providing structure, tools, information and ideas to focus in on the customer and their experience.
The second is around our Strategic Partnerships. This is one of our business segments that we’re seeing amazing growth with our Carriers looking to White Label our services. These partnerships require lengthy and in-depth strategy and tactical planning and execution. I head this up for RapidScale.
The last and extremely important hat I wear is as an active member of our corporate leadership team. From assuring our employees have and understand our 401k plan, to building or improving upon a process, to mentoring and developing new hires. I look to be of service to our entire RapidScale team however I can.
Your role is uniquely tied to the client experience, but how does it also support the partner experience?
Our customers find their way to us because of our partners. Caring for the customer’s experience has a direct connection to how these partners experience RapidScale. Having happy customers shows the partners their trust is justly with the provider. In addition, my Client Experience team eagerly works in tandem with our partner community whether that is an inquiry they are making on behalf of a customer or a renewal that assures the continuity of service for their customers.
Why is Partner Experience important in today’s market?
Partner, or Channel, sales is not new in the IT space, but it is new to many providers, especially cloud providers. We are ahead of the curve because our sales model is exclusively partner based and thus our knowledge around what a partner needs and wants is in our DNA.
How does this support RapidScale’s goals?
RapidScale’s vision includes providing personalized cloud solutions and to be the most customer-oriented managed cloud services provider. We can’t do that without putting effort into the customer experience. The great thing is that focusing on the customer experience pulls with it growth, loyalty, and collaboration with some amazing partners and customers.
Define success in your role.
Success in my role is dual faceted. Clearly, the increase in overall and per-customer revenue are definitive marks of my success, as it is RapidScale’s. Customer satisfaction and customer engagement improvements are also an important guide to measuring success. Overall, success for my role, success for our partners, success for our customers, and success for RapidScale are all absolutely linked and that’s a great thing.
Watch Susan’s interview below!
