What Is Customer Success?
If you’ve contacted a company with a customer service issue in recent years you have likely been forced to deal strictly with automated, self service menus or impersonal scripted FAQ responses. While these tools can be effective and have their uses we think that helpful, personal support from real people still has a place in the world. That is why our Customer Success team is built on real people who are experts at helping people succeed and get the results they need. That's why we call it Customer Success. We're here to help you succeed. To do this, we take risks, operate differently and work on continuous improvement. We purposely don’t always follow the status quo or do what the other businesses are doing. Instead, we think of the times we’ve experienced bad customer service in our personal lives, and do the opposite for our customers. Get to know some of the real people that work on our team below.
If you ever have a question or issue that needs attention, contact us at help@inventables.com or via phone during business hours at (312) 775-7009 and we'll take care of you as fast as we can. Yes, we will answer the phone when you call, and we respond to all emails sent during business hours on the same business day.
Why it works so well
It’s not about us. We’re focused on your success. Everyone at Inventables is a maker and tinkerer in their own right, which is what makes the team so effective in helping our customers achieve their goals. We're all constantly working on our own projects and trying out new techniques, so we empathize very much with the frustrations involved in trying to bring a new idea into the world.
We’re part of a larger community. We’re doing our best to help grow and nurture that community. We are fortunate enough to get to do this every day. We understand that this stuff is hard. We constantly take a beginner's mindset and realize that we must be focused on helping all our customers regardless of their experience level.
Our Process
When you send us an email, it gets queued up in Desk, an app we use to help us manage the volume of communications we receive every day. Here's an example of what the interface looks like from our side of things:
Once your email is received, it gets assigned to a member of our Customer Success team who is then responsible for the case until it's completely resolved- which only occurs when the customer is satisfied with the outcome. We take customer issues very seriously, and treat every single one with the same level of importance. Sometimes it goes as far as doing a "root cause analysis" to figure out where we screwed up, and implementing new policies and procedures to prevent those things from happening again.
For example- if two customers say they were short a few washers in their 3D Carving kit, we don't just ship them replacement washers and call it a day. We investigate the process by which washers are counted and packed, and make changes to the process to ensure it doesn't happen again. All of our teams are constantly improving our processes and we value feedback from our customers as a very important piece of that puzzle.
We track and attempt to improve a number of internal performance metrics in Desk, including how long it takes for us to respond to a new case, and how long it takes for cases to be resolved. We also track a Net Happiness score aggregated from customer feedback. You may have noticed this little "temperature gauge" at the bottom of emails from the CS team- we take this feedback seriously and review the data every day as part of our process.
Our Team
So, who are the people who answer those phones and reply to all those emails?
Phil Lomac
Phil is our operations manager and head of customer success. He splits his time between stepping in to help answer emails and phone calls from customers and overseeing our warehouse and manufacturing activities. Phil is also a long time musician/songwriter who enjoys tinkering with different instrument designs and is currently prototyping a small line of stringed instruments made from various reclaimed materials.
Paul Stolz
Paul is our newest member of the CS team and handles the administrative side of things- refunds, shipping adjustments, and bookkeeping matters- in addition to tending the phones and email cases that come in. Paul's an avid musician and has been playing with some 3D printed guitar capo designs. When he's not at work you can catch him playing shows with his band Pool Holograph. Fun fact: Paul's bandmate Wyatt Grant is our warehouse shipping manager!
John Hayes
John is focused on resolving 3D Carving technical issues. He came to Inventables as one of our earliest customers, from way back when we had just started selling the original Shapeoko 1. Lately John has been testing the build instructions for X-Carve, making sure all the parts match up and no steps are missed. In his off hours, John's working on building a set of foot stools using traditional woodworking techniques and has plans to engrave the seats with mathematical designs using his 3D carving machine at home. He's also working on restoring a Honda CB350 motorcycle in his apartment's living room.
Samantha Alaimo
Our own Queen of Lasers, Sam is one of Inventables' longest-tenured employees and has worn a lot of hats here. She started her career as our Resident Designer and is also our Fabrication Lab Specialist, in addition to being on the CS team. Sam studied Design Objects at the Art Institute of Chicago and runs a little shop called Logan Lasers in her off hours, providing custom laser fabrication services.
Now that you can put a face to the names, drop us a line and say hi! The CS team is standing by to help you configure an X-Carve, order a Carvey, test out Easel, expedite shipping, or figure out which milling bits to use for a new project.
Oh, and some of those topics are good for discussion over at the Inventables forum as well. Check it out: https://discuss.inventables.com/