The talent behind TalentLMS – A chat with our Customer Support Assistant

Steve Jobs gave us the iPhone, Marc Zuckerberg gave us Facebook, Chef Alfredo gave us Chicken Alfredo. But who gave us TalentLMS? Who are those mysterious elves that helped create your favorite Cloud-based LMS platform? And what are the some of the marketing, support, and QA people working behind the scenes to bring you the most satisfying SaaS experience?

In this series of posts, which you’ve already gotten a taste of, we’re having a look at the talented people behind TalentLMS. Today, we’re talking to Maria Logotheti, our Customer Support Assistant and all around nice gal.

Please introduce yourself to our readers. What’s your name and general background?

My name you’ve probably already gotten off the post’s image.

I am a Customer Support Assistant in TalentLMS, but also Quality Assurance Manager for our new application, Snappico.

I was raised in Athens, Greece and graduated from the University of Macedonia where I studied Marketing and Operation Management.

Trying to combine my love of travel with personal development, I found myself studying in Sweden and then working in Spain and Belgium for a couple of years. The contact with people from different backgrounds is something that I really enjoy, which is why I really enjoy supporting customers from all over the globe.

You are Support & Quality Assurance assistant in TalentLMS and Snappico. What does each of these roles entail?

I am part of the after-sales-support team for TalentLMS, which includes support for customers in our free and demo tiers.

I focus on our customers’ needs and my role is to come up with and propose features which they may have not yet discovered and to solve any problematic or unusual behavior noticed in their eLearning portals.

In Snappico, I am responsible for the quality of our content sets, trying to give to the reader the best visuals and information in a variety of topics.

How did you make this career choice?

The eLearning industry was unknown territory for me, but when I chanced upon it I saw that it was a big opportunity — and I haven’t ever regretted making the jump!

To some, a customer service role may sound like suffering through a mountain of customer complaints, but in reality (at least this is the case with TalentLMS) it’s nothing like that.

You get to interact with people from all over the world, with different needs and backgrounds, something which I find thrilling. Of course, not all interactions are great in the beginning, but having the power to turn them into great customer experience is an extremely rewarding feeling!

Do you have any examples of issues that were prevented or features that were improved thanks to the QA team?

Oh, yes!

For starters, the classic problem of accidentally deleting a user and losing all the data available about them.

The ability to undo a deletion was a complex feature, but also an extremely useful one, as our customers were often losing information due to an unfortunate decision that they were not able to undo.

Fortunately, our team managed to tackle it, and since 2016, we introduced a feature that allows our customer to restore their deleted users (or courses), and I am happy that now I can point this to any customers worried about some regretted or accidental deletion. Maria to the rescue!

What TalentLMS features do you think are most important in attracting new customers?

There are lots of features in TalentLMS I could talk about, as it was designed with flexibility in mind, but I will just focus on a couple of them that I have received the best feedback about.

The ability to build custom reports and then use the filtered list of learners to perform mass actions. This is a feature that results in substantial time savings for our customers — and we have received some great ideas to further enhance it.

Also the ability to map a user’s domain in their TalentLMS portal, and be able to customize it. In general, a little customization or coding can do magic in a TalentLMS portal, and our customers have all these ideas and contact us to help them with their implementation.

How important is customer feedback in what you do?

We use it fanatically to improve our business, product and the overall customer experience. After all, the best business decisions are based on data, not hunches, and customer feedback is the holy grail of tangible data.

You can gather real insight into how your customers really feel about the product or service you deliver and how satisfied they are with your offering.

The rapport that we have with our customers is truly special, they feel like members of the TalentLMS community (which they are) and they are more than willing to work with us, give their suggestions, and even dedicate time to help us improve the platform.

When their ideas become part of TalentLMS as new features, they share their enthusiasm with us, and that has a great bonding effect that you only get from software companies who listen.

Do you have some specific unexpected/funny/insightful story to share regarding this?

I love the relationship we have developed with our customers and how comfortable they feel to ask any question they have in mind, even if it is not related to their (learning) portal.

One of my favorite customers once asked me what’s the best way to cook an octopus! I was not sure how to respond at first, but, hey, we give support under any circumstance, so I shared my favorite recipe, and now I am waiting for my chocolate box from Australia!

What do you like about working in the online learning industry in general and at Epignosis in particular?

Epignosis was able to foresee the rise of enterprise and personal online learning and has built a series of products and services to make eLearning technology accessible and affordable to any company or organization worldwide.

Being part of a mission and working in an environment with young, positive and warm people, I really regard myself as lucky. Also when your customers treat you like a friend, starting their messages with “Hey Maria..” — I mean, isn’t that great?

What is it about your job that you love the most?

It may sound cliché, but it is the environment I am working in.

We spend much of our time working and it would be a pity to not feel happy. I thoroughly enjoy going to work, I like the challenges involved, I am friends with my colleagues and I feel 9-5 is the most creative part of my day!

If you couldn’t do what you do now, what would be the ideal job position for you?

Any other ideal job for me would look pretty similar to this one — it will again involve people and not numbers, satisfaction and not market trends.

I am happy to offer my skills and knowledge to help other people.

I get some sort of fulfillment out of making other people feel less stressed or helping them out in times of need. We have two hands. The one to help ourselves and the second to help others.

Plus, I have the chance to get direct feedback from our customers, something extremely valuable for the development of our products, and I feel like I have significant input in the whole process.

Where do you see yourself and TalentLMS in 5 years?

Soon I will have my one year work anniversary with TalentLMS, and I am glad that I am part of a fast-growing company.

Its people are the source of constant innovation and I wish, as time passes, to be more and more involved, and help create more of the features that keep TalentLMS on the top.

In 5 years I will have my six year work anniversary — which will coincide nicely with a new title in the company! I will be responsible for training our bigger 2021 support team.