Kim Kiefer is Mindsight’s Director of Customer Experience. She sat with us to talk about Mindsight’s approach to customer relationships and how they maintain a positive relationship.

Mindsight is a managed service provider (MSP) that focuses its strategy exclusively on engineers at the expert level who deliver technology services to clients. Kim, Director of Customer Experience, shares her thoughts on customer service and being proactive rather than reactive. She also shares some stories.

What was your path to this role, and what skills did you acquire along the way? Has your career always been in the tech industry?

I’ve been working in the industry for just over 20 years. With the advent of VoIP, I began in voice but moved to data. During my career, I have worked in almost every department. Some may find this a nightmare resume with no specialization. However, I found it to be a great way to gain insight into the business. After years as a managed service customer, I was fortunate enough to have experienced customer touch from the initial interaction through to participating in ongoing technology roadmaps. This has enabled me to understand and learn about the pain points of both internal and external customers. I have also been able to improve my ability to work with my team to create long-term, positive customer relationships.

You are a Director of Customer Experience. What is the difference between “customer experience” and “customer services,” and what does it mean for Mindsight’s clients and prospects?

Experience is a sign of longevity, and I aim to create customers for life. Throughout my career, I worked as a project manager for over ten years. This helped me focus my attention on service excellence. I learned how to multitask effectively, maintain a high level of team performance, and communicate with people of all backgrounds and personalities in order to achieve a common goal. This means that for Mindsight, our customers, and myself, I will be a resource that listens, executes, and cares.

If we don’t deliver what customers expect, they will be disappointed. Does this mean we have dropped the ball in reality? Not necessarily. We failed to ensure that the customer understood what we said. Perception is reality. It is the same for internal customers who are associates dealing with customers. If associates do not have clear expectations and are not given the guidelines and processes they need to care for customers, there is a high chance that unhappy customers will result.

I have found that unhappy customers are often the most passionate and effective advocates. It is important to jump in and fix things when they go wrong, and IT is bound to have some issues. Lack of interaction is what I see as the main reason customers seek out new partners. When you say service excellence, it doesn’t mean that nothing goes wrong. It means that when something does go wrong, you do everything to fix it and take the necessary steps to prevent it from happening again.

Some approaches to customer service can make the whole business look cliche. While positive and motivating images of people climbing mountains or rowing boats are great, it does not necessarily mean that you have an organizational culture that fosters a good customer experience. Every company claims that their customer service is unique, but without a process and passionate team behind it, it’s just another hollow pitch.

Do you have any embarrassing stories from your career? What are some of the details you can share and how you managed to turn a bad situation into a positive one?

One project that I managed stands out from the rest. It was a simple project that we did often: a migration from physical to virtual (P2V). We wanted to impress this customer who had never done a project before. We also engaged a partner that specialized in this deployment to make sure this was a “non-event.” One of the most important things I learned from the kick-off call was they chose to do this during their busy period (ugh). It gets even better…

The gear was custom-built, and certain components were on backorder with no estimated delivery date.

The expert partner that we hired failed to mention that he would be away for almost every phase critical of the project and without access to messaging.

Our customer placed a large order in a hurry and requested that we expedite the project schedule.

We were able to keep everything on track. The gear was tested and programmed; an expert partner was available to install and cutover. Everything was stacked and racked, the data was migrated, and we cutover. Nothing. The hosts were not communicating. It was done flawlessly in the lab several times.