As an account manager for
a Fortune 500 high tech company
in the enterprise software space,
I'm responsible for managing an assigned set of accounts
to ensure their software deployments are running
smoothly and on a safe path for future upgrades, new
rollouts and key product integrations.
Each account demands
excellent communication skills across multiple teams,
precise attention to time sensitive details, and strict
adherence to company escalation procedures to ensure the
right resources are made available at the right times.
At the end of the day, the goal is to create satisfied
customers that are willing to give positive product
references on my company's behalf.
The problem with the software applications at my company
was, they didn’t allow me to track and
communicate key account
information in a unified, logical timeline fashion. In fact, my attempts to
use multiple spreadsheets & Word documents forced my
customers and co-workers to scroll through pages of text
& data in order to get just a basic overview of
important dates & deadlines. There had to be an
easier way.
The solution was Milestones Professional. As
a satisfied user of Milestones Professional for several
years now, I just knew this product was the best way for
me to solve my problem and satisfy the requirements of
my customers and co-workers with ease.
My
strategy involved the use of 2 different Milestones
Professional schedules: (a Customer Status Report & a
Support Case Tracking Schedule). Each schedule had a
distinct purpose.
1.
Customer Status Report Milestones Professional Schedule
This schedule gave me and my
account team an easy way to view the current status of
software upgrade projects, contract renewal/expiration
dates, customer satisfaction levels, as well as weekly
updates on general account activity…ALL ON A SINGLE
PAGE!!!!
First and foremost, the
ability to communicate key account details on a single page.
This is HUGE!
The ability to use a variety
of different symbols, combined with the schedule legend, make it easy
to track & communicate relevant account dates and events.
“Stoplight” columns make it
easy to see the overall satisfaction level of my accounts at
a glance.
The notes column gives my
team a quick way to view key account updates/highlights.
Milestones “symbol text”
feature allows me to annotate areas of my schedule for
further clarification.
Symbol hyperlinks allow me to
link additional documentation to various symbols. For
example: I link PDF contract renewal documents to every
software renewal symbol used on my schedule.
The “web publishing” feature
allows me to post my schedule on my company’s intranet site
so my team can get the latest status without having to call
me or send an email.
This schedule gave me the
ability to track and manage key technical support cases
so that each customer was informed of the
troubleshooting taking place, suggested workarounds or
resolutions that are proposed, as well as future target
dates to fix software bugs and develop feature
enhancements.
The ability to view
the overall support state of any given customer.
(The above schedule is filtered to show only
customer “AQ”).
“Stoplight” columns
make it easy to see both the severity of each case,
as well as the current state.
The comments column
gives my customer a quick way to see the latest
updates on each case.
Milestones “symbol
notes” feature allows me to keep detailed technical
notes about each case. They can even be printed out
on a separate page!
Milestones “sort” and
“filter” features allow me to view and report on
such details as (Severity 1 only cases, or cases
with customers on Version 5.0, or show all cases
with an action state of “in progress”, etc.
This is very useful!
KIDASA’s free viewer
is perfect! It allows me to share this
schedule with my customers. And for anyone too
lazy to use this viewer, I can simply paste my
schedule data into Excel or generate a PDF file to
send via email.
Thank you KIDASA Software for a
truly innovative product that allows me to improve account
communication & enhance the overall productivity of my work.
You’ve allowed me to simplify my strategy from a clumsy 14 file
approach (of both spreadsheets and Word documents) down to 2
very slick Milestones Professional schedules!
