As part of our employee spotlight series, we’re introducing you to key PeopleFluent team members. This time, we’re chatting with Sebastian Nice, Customer Success Manager at PeopleFluent. Seb’s been with the company since 2019 and when he isn’t working with clients, he’s exploring the great outdoors in Oxford, UK, or meeting his favorite celebs at a Comic-Con.

Hey Seb! So what’s your role at PeopleFluent?
My main role is owning the customer lifecycle with a focus on building long-term strategies for clients—and I do that in a couple of different ways. It’s really about building rapport, building trust, and understanding what the client's business objectives are. Ultimately, it’s about working with our customers to help them achieve those objectives. I do that by engaging them in regular meetings and executive business reviews to help nurture those clients.

I’m also the single point of escalations for clients. So, people will contact me if there are any support escalations or any other product feedback. It all comes down to being their general advocate across all of PeopleFluent.

I get to interact not only with the clients, but with many different internal stakeholders as well. I deal with many of the teams in professional services, support, and management. It’s nice that I get to have those internal friendships as well as the external ones.

Before PeopleFluent, what did you do for work?
I was working in the education sector as a business development and account executive. I would essentially travel to different schools and multi-academy trusts selling them SaaS products in the form of communication systems for schools. So, for example, if your kid is truant, you could text in and find out if they'd come to school or view their attendance and report cards.

I was doing that for four or five years before coming to PeopleFluent. Prior to that, I did things like customer service and account service work for banks and a whole range of different places. I’ve always seen customer service as my true love—being able to form those relationships, getting to know people, coming to understand what their needs are, and to just be someone that can help. That’s really what I've always enjoyed.

What skills are needed to be successful in your role?
Listening is probably the biggest skill. A lot of times, you're listening to your clients and assuming you know what they want. It's also important to be organized so you can prioritize inquiries as they come in. Stakeholder management and patience are other key skills you’ll need as a customer success manager. It’s also about being able to build rapport and making sure people trust you and feel comfortable working with you.

How would you describe your team dynamic?
Because we're all customer success managers, part of that is delivering excellent service. The team dynamic is really about helping each other and making sure everyone has the tools and the opportunities to succeed.

Because there are four of us on the team, including our manager, it’s very, very tight-knit in terms of making sure that everyone's happy and that we're all on the same page. That way, if there are any questions or any needs that we should meet, we can address them. It’s nice to be part of that type of team. It's nice to be part of somewhere you can ask what you might feel are stupid questions, but not get shot down for it. You can express yourself a bit.

What’s your favorite work perk?
Working from home.

What’s your favorite aspect of your job?
I've got a little bit of sales in me, so I really do enjoy working with the professional services team. It allows me to identify new customer needs and offer them the different services we have. It could be things like projects that they’re working on to enhance and optimize their client's sites, or, it could be change requests. Essentially, what they're doing is changing part of their platform in order to accomplish one of their projects. That could be like a graduate application process or a piece of learning that they're looking to coordinate.

I really enjoy working with the professional services team because they're really fun to work with and it’s typically short-term projects that you can enjoy. Plus, they're really helpful from a technical point of view—I haven't got much technical experience. It's great when I can get the client speaking to someone technical and they can interchange and I can mediate that. That’s a really important part of my role, the mediation and making sure our clients are talking to the right people.

Favorite movies or shows that got you through the pandemic?
I absolutely love the TV show Succession. I’m also listening to the Adam Buxton podcast. He's a UK comedian who speaks to a lot of different types of people—comedians, filmmakers, musicians, and also people who aren't necessarily celebrities but are subject matter experts in their fields, like psychologists.

Then all of the Star Wars series, and The Mandalorian. Hamilton the musical got me through lockdown as well. I hadn't seen it before. I'd never seen it on Broadway or the West End, but I saw it on Disney+ and absolutely fell in love. For probably about a year, I would just listen to the soundtrack when I was doing my admin.

What are you doing when you’re not at your desk?
I'm a big, big Star Wars nerd and I’m big into science fiction and fantasy series. I've got loads of signed memorabilia as I go to a lot of Comic-Cons. I’ve been known to dress up as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones. I’ve met Kit Harington, the guy who played Jon Snow—it was probably one of the best nights of my life. We went to the season 5 premiere of Game of Thrones at the Tower of London. They projected dragons on all of the towers and all the stars were there. I also met Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the guy who played Jaime Lannister.

I've got loads of pictures of me meeting cool people like Benedict Cumberbatch and William Shatner from Star Trek, plus a few different Star Wars and Game of Thrones stars. I very much have the heart of a geek.