Agilio Value Award Winner Interview Series
Chris Walsh, Customer Engagement Manager – SME Division
Putting Customers First Award Winner
In light of our recent Agilio Value Awards, we sat down with the winners to chat about their awards, their roles, and what it’s like to work at Agilio. Here we speak with Chris Walsh, Customer Engagement Manager in the SME division and winner of the Putting Customers First Value Award.
Chris is regarded as very helpful and friendly by his team and customers; nothing is ever too much trouble and no question too tedious. Constantly mentioned as delightful to talk to by our customer reviews, Chris goes the extra mile to ensure that our solutions are a good fit for our clients. He is also a member of Agilio’s Culture Club – a group of staff volunteers working together to make the company a great place to work.
Could you tell us a little bit about your role at Agilio and what it entails?
I am the Customer Engagement Manager in the SME division, so I work in the Sales team. We’re primarily responsible for the delivery of customer sales, getting customers set up and providing ongoing support.
What’s your favourite part of the job and why?
I would say that the aspects I like most about the role are probably the reasons why I won this award; it’s engaging with customers. So, in the initial stage, we conduct what we call a “discovery call”. It’s where we listen to the customer, find out their requirements and guide them through their challenges to ensure that our solution is a good fit. It’s a stage of the journey that I find very rewarding.
Once we have ascertained that the software is a good fit for the customer’s business, we book a demo for them, and that is really our time to shine. It’s where we can show that we have listened to and understood their unique requirements and can highlight those particular aspects of the software in much more detail to show precisely how our software solves that particular problem. When you play it right, the demonstration is a confirmation of what was established on the discovery call, and that part of the journey is also really fulfilling.
With all that said, however, I was still very pleasantly surprised to have won this award. Coming off the back of lockdown and everything having changed so drastically, we had worked so hard to grow the business that, looking back, I can see why my team was considered for this award. But it was still a lovely surprise to have won personally. Customer and colleague feedback is one of the most humbling things you can receive.
Can you name a mentor or role model that you know personally who demonstrates the value of Putting Customers First?
In the early years of my time at MyHRToolKit, the Director of the company, Bob, invested a lot of his time into upskilling his team in terms of the systems we used, but particularly in terms of the patter we would use from a sales point of view. So, he taught me a lot about how you would typically interact with customers, what to do, and what not to do. He would explain the historical relationships we had with our partners and resellers and how to approach them in different ways.
So, I always have Bob’s advice in mind when approaching my current challenges and when I’m engaging with customers and partners in my day-to-day work. Our working relationship was instrumental in modelling my own customer-centric behaviours, and I even use him as a sounding board to this day when necessary. Almost all the time these days, I’m pretty assured in what I’m doing, but on the rare occasion I’m not, I can reach out with a quick call to explain a situation I’m having and how I would approach it and even though he’s a busy man he makes time and sometimes comes back with something I haven’t thought of or a way to steer it in another direction I hadn’t considered.
Being supported and guided by such an experienced role model at that formative point of my career was integral to forming my own approach going forwards. Having a clear example of an approach that has been proven to work and being given the skills to navigate change has been invaluable to me. The biggest issue facing SMEs these days is how they can quickly transfer the knowledge and skills from the few individuals who initially hold them to the wider workforce, so having clear examples of good behaviours and people generous enough with their time to pass them on is essential.
What are your hopes for Agilio in the future?
Going forwards, it will be really rewarding to play a part in one of the market-leading companies in the UK. Being involved in the one-stop software solution for the healthcare sector is a nice feeling as there is a bigger impact at play. Given the recent acquisitions in Europe, it would be really nice to see us becoming the market leader across the whole of Europe and see us fully branch out into further health or care sectors.
Thank you for your time, Chris. Do you have anything else you would like to add?
Nothing major, I would just like to say that winning this award has been really humbling, it’s the best recognition you can get. When multiple people, in particular your colleagues, have recognised these qualities within you and mentioned customer feedback to back it up, it’s just brilliant. It reconfirms that you are doing a good job and that your efforts are appreciated.