Keeping a finger on the pulse
Quarterly pulse meetings to stay the course
Designed to discuss work delivered and the ambitions for the future, pulse meetings are quarterly, semi-formal catch-ups between our Client Success Managers and their clients.
The work that we do for our clients, can roughly be split up into three parts:
Product
Building brand new or improving parts of your apps.
Maintenance
The things we do to keep your apps healthy and stable.
Support
Reactive, time-sensitive assistance for emergencies.
Generally, our clients are very involved in the Product part. They have a wish or desire for new functionality, or are experiencing problems with the way their app currently works. As the experts in their field, their input in the development process is welcome and invaluable.
However, customer insights into Maintenance and Support usage would vary widely, often because of their technical nature. We had the information, just not in an easy-to-digest format for our clients.
So, in order to bring more transparency and understanding across the board, we launched a new concept: pulse meetings. The foundation for these meetings is the pulse report, containing data from the previous quarter(s) in an easily viewable format. The pulse report is a a living document, shared with and always accessible by our clients. It is updated regularly but old data is kept, acting as an archive of previous quarters as well.
The pulse meeting’s real strength lies in the way we try to look ahead, though. We focus on recommendations for the future, to ensure we can continue to provide our clients the service that best fits their companies and products.
Pulse report: example of a Support Usage chart
By visualising support usage hours versus monthly allowance, it became clear that this client was often going into overage. The monthly allowance was raised for a while, to better account for these peaks, until changes were implemented that supported a reduction in monthly allowance again.
It also serves as a great opportunity to talk about what’s on the horizon. Exciting new company developments, exploring new markets, changes in staff, and so on. By sitting together and discussing these plans for the future, we are able to prepare and plan for upcoming needs in a proactive way. This means we can secure the needed resources and provide the right amount and type of support to turn the future plans into guaranteed success.
Planning is bringing the future into the present.
In this way, the benefit of the pulse meetings is mutual. We update each other, creating alignment which allows us to prepare for the future, rather than repairing the past.
It all starts with keeping that finger on the pulse.