“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon
We’ve learned a lot throughout this series about how crucial diverse teams are in protecting our clients. Nearly everyone experiences different pain points and provides guidance on a unique challenge.
Today, we’ll learn how our customer experience team approaches the ever-evolving demands of the industry and what it takes to offer a seamless experience with Armor. As part of “A Day in the Life,” in this blog, Patricia Picco, Vice President of Customer Experience and Operations, provides a unique perspective on how her team is protecting customers and providing a personalized customer journey for each customer or partner.
What does your job title entail?
My team focuses on all aspects of the customer and partner experience. We are the overall service delivery arm of Armor. The goal is to create processes and procedures that result in a fantastic customer journey. From the time they choose Armor protection through what we call the “customer life cycle,” we strive for exceptional customer support with every touchpoint and interaction.
The way we do that is through proactive customer and partner relationship programs. We like to get in front of things instead of waiting for there to be an issue. We learn as much as possible about customers and partners to tailor our service delivery offerings to whomever we support. We also aim to keep our skills as cutting edge as possible, so that we always anticipate the strategic movement of our customers and partners.
What does your day-to-day look like in terms of what you do for Armor?
There is no typical day for me. My day changes with the ebb and flow of what’s happening in the business and what’s going on with our customers and partners. My job is very fluid in the way I support my teams. My focus is to ensure I equip all my teams with whatever information, skill, and technology they need to provide top-rated service.
If I were to categorize anything as “a typical day,” for me that would include providing guidance and strategy. I focus a lot of my day on what we’re going to do next to improve, to be more efficient, and look at how we’re advancing technically in a very dynamic and changing market.
What one word would you use to describe your job? Can you expand on why you chose that word?
Autonomous. I feel like I am empowered with freedom and accountability to impact the workplace and the outcomes we get for our customers and partners.
What problem do you help Armor customers solve?
The biggest pain point I see on a pretty regular basis—especially in cybersecurity—is customers not knowing how to navigate this technical-forward, vision-forward problem. Everyone has cybersecurity on their mind, so making the right choices has a huge impact on their organization.
The skill sets and availability of people with those skill sets is diminished currently. So the pain point is customers not knowing where to go to strengthen their security posture in an ever-increasing risk scenario.
How do you address those pain points?
I focus on making sure that we are always looking at what’s next in the industry and trying to make sure we have the forward-looking information to help from a guidance perspective.
Our service delivery teams are always expanding their security knowledge, so when they’re working a ticket or meeting with a customer or partner, they know how to help navigate a very confusing and, frankly, little-understood area.
What are some pain points in your day-to-day? How do you address them?
Balancing knowing where the customers and partners are right now—and helping them in that moment—as well as seeing where they should be and really trying to help them get there.
My motto is to first “meet the customer where they are right now in their life cycle.” That takes an investment of time and a drive to be intimate with each customer or partner. It is critical as the foundation because I’m always striving to get them to that next maturity level of cloud security.
How is your role evolving as the threat landscape and/or cloud landscape evolves, and where do you see the industry in 5 years?
My role is evolving by looking at operations differently. It’s very much about expanding my team from a traditional secure, infrastructure management and hosting operational team to a multi-faceted one that not only knows the infrastructure management side, but also knows how to manage in the most secure way—no matter where the customer chooses to put their workload.
From where I sit, I see even more investment in how to handle huge amounts of data. Not only will there be needs for tools and infrastructure to handle this data, but there will be further evolvement of the appreciation of this data. With this, I predict a move from traditional prevention to more of an assumed breach security model. Especially given the newer regulations that have higher monetary impact on companies if any of this data is compromised.
That is where we’re going and what we’re trying to understand and add to our toolkit. I need to have customer-focused professionals that have a 360-degree security mindset. Not only are our customers challenged on where the market is going, but they rely on Armor to stay way ahead of them. Bottom line, we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs without ensuring the experience of our customers and partners is outstanding.