Meet the Team
The Professor Is In: Meet “Professor” Alex Pukos, FloQast’s Customer Support Wizard
FloQast’s customer success team is full of eminently-qualified professionals, but to FloQast employees and users alike, one name, in particular, stands out.
Pukos.
Recently promoted to Customer Support Manager, Alex “Professor Pukos” Pukos’s role within the company extends beyond just working with clients to ensure they’re getting the most out of FloQast. In nearly two years with the company, Pukos has evolved into a go-to-guy for virtually every department, helping troubleshoot office-related issues at the FloQast Ohio (FloHio) office, creating demos to help FloQast users move past third-party integration issues, and, of course, solving support tickets.
As the third part in our look at the FloQast Customer Success team, I recently spoke with Pukos about his day-to-day responsibilities, working with clients, and being a vital internal and external resource here at FloQast.
It seems like you do just about everything, but what are your formal day-to-day responsibilities at FloQast?
As a company, we have always insisted on delivering world-class customer service to our client base. Our CEO, Mike Whitmire, commonly quips that “we put the ‘Software’ and the ‘Service’ in SaaS. Most companies just provide the software.”
I wasn’t working on the Customer Success team the first time I heard Mike say that, but I took it to heart. I jumped at the opportunity to launch a new vertical within our Customer Success department that was solely dedicated to Customer Support. That’s what I do every day now: Tackle the incoming tickets from our clients when they have questions or issues about our software and various third-party integrations. I do all of this through a combination of email, screenshots, animated GIFs, phone calls, and screen-share meetings.
What’s the process like if a client has a third-party integration issue?
We know that our clients’ success in FloQast is contingent on their success with third-party integrations. We are the experts on our own platform, of course, but we also take it upon ourselves to master all of the ERP, Cloud Storage, and SSO providers that we integrate with. We have full-demo instances of each so we can best troubleshoot and recreate errors. This allows us to send the most useful screenshots/GIFs that are uniquely tailored to our clients and their specific technology suite. If we can help it, we’ll never have them reach out directly to those third parties for Support. We know that we can provide them the highly-specific support they need (typically hours or even days sooner, I might add!).
How closely does your team work with clients?
I have hundreds of touchpoints with our clients each week. They vary from one-click resolutions to multi-week projects. Some of my favorite interactions are with our “regulars.” These folks are the ones in charge of mastering FloQast at their company, so they constantly turn to us for advice and resolutions. You come to build a relationship with them over the course of your exchanges, and you know you’re making a quantifiable difference at their company. It’s a good feeling when a client emails our generic [email protected] email address but says “Hey Alex…” They know you’re on the other end of that email, and you’ll help them succeed.
What’s the most fulfilling part of your job?
Becoming a trusted resource, both internally and externally. To me, it’s incredibly rewarding to solve problems for our clients. I have the power to flip a bad part of their day to a good one and make sure they’re getting everything out of FloQast that they can.
Being a resource to the client is a given, but I also hope to be a trusted internal resource for my team. The nature of my job allows me to interact with so many of our departments here at FloQast. Some of our best and brightest employees have taught me so much about software, accounting, customer success, product development, you name it. I strive to turn around and pass that along to the rest of my team. “Professor Pukos” is a nickname that was bestowed upon me by a couple of colleagues. I’m a fan of both alliteration and nicknames, so I always have a good laugh about that one. But it’s also something I take very seriously.
