Meet the Builder: Christian Stump
The state of customer service in our digital age can sometimes be a scary thing. It makes it all the more likely that when you do have a good customer service experience, you’ll remember it for a long time to come. It’s something that we deeply understand at Guidebook, and we’re determined to bring good customer service back into style.
We take the happiness of our customers seriously. So seriously, in fact, that we won two separate Stevie Awards in 2014 for customer service. At Guidebook, your Customer Success Associate will be with you every step of the way. In addition to providing customer support for clients and users, they also physically build guides themselves – and for that reason we call them “Guidebuilders.”
We’d like you to meet our Customer Success Associate team face-to-face. In this first-in-a-series we’ll hear from Christian Stump, a Customer Success Associate that has been with Guidebook for just over a year.
“Christian’s endless positive energy and attitude adds immensely to our team chemistry.”
– Jacob Wittenberg, Customer Success Manager
From Insurance to Guidebuilding
Before Christian came to Guidebook, he was working at a national insurance company filing auto claims for customers. Suffice it to say, people weren’t exactly happy to be needing Christian’s assistance – it usually meant something had gone terribly wrong. Regardless, Christian found that the work suited him.
“I really enjoyed helping people and getting them through their situations.”
At Guidebook, Christian helps out in much happier circumstances. And one of his favorite parts about assisting clients is exceeding their expectations.
Above and Beyond
One large corporate client of Christian’s was building a guide for an important industry trade show in Munich, Germany. The team was traveling from the US to Germany, as well as working with European colleagues to make sure the event went off without a hitch. Because of the high-profile nature of the company and the event, they were anxious for dedicated support – but were aware that time differences might make it difficult.
Christian, however, provided real time support for the event by working overnight for an entire week. He was able to assist with any last-minute changes or emergencies, and the client wasn’t stuck waiting for a response. Christian was able to troubleshoot several late night fixes that week, which made the extra effort worth it.
In Your Own Time
Guidebook’s desire to meet customers’ needs in real time extends throughout the Customer Success team. Christian is part of a dedicated group that provides morning support to clients, helping to cover client and user needs even if they’re not in our time zone. They take turns providing weekend support as well, making sure that Guidebook is there for customers when they need it most.
When Christian thinks about the various parts that make up Guidebook, he sees it as three-pronged approach. “Someone has to build it, sell it and maintain it. I like to think of us as the maintenance crew.”
Christian says that his favorite part of being a Customer Success Associate is “hands down the client and user interaction.” For him, the reward is in getting great feedback.
“At the end of the day it’s our job to make sure our users and clients are satisfied. That’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. We take a lot of pride in that.”
See how Christian helped create a killer guide for Optimizely’s user conference, OptiCon, in the video below.
