Read time 5 mins
Author Maria Khoury
Hi Maria, thank you for taking the time out of your incredibly busy schedule to give us a sneak peek inside your world!
Let’s start things off easy - introduce yourself and what it means to be the Head of Operations at Tillo.
My background is working in start-ups to scale up businesses, mostly in the Software as a Service space, helping organizations scale their service teams as the company grows. This includes the processes and the systems, but most importantly, the people - I'm passionate about building high-functioning teams where each individual feels like their contribution is worthwhile and can achieve their full potential.
At Tillo, my remit is the Client Services, Onboarding, Supplier Management, and business support areas of the business. Ensuring that all our customer-facing processes that interact with each area of the business run as smoothly as they possibly can!
I've worked at several companies that SAY their people come first, but I've never seen it more true to life than at Tillo - always considering the impact on our teams is an important part of every decision we make as our company grows.
We've got a clear focus on what we want to achieve, but we have to be quick to adapt to any market or economic changes to make sure we're always ahead of the game - that keeps things pretty exciting.
We're constantly staying involved in the industry via conferences, speaking events, and our own in-house experts, making sure we stay well connected and know what our customers need - not just now, but what's around the corner that we need to be aware of to make sure we continue to deliver that industry-leading service.
Tillo has grown exponentially in the last few years, entering new markets such as the US and Australia; what has this meant for the Operations Team, and how have you handled the change?
When I joined Tillo in 2020 - we just had one person (Steven, who is still here!) running our first-line support with backup from our Engineering Team and Charley, who single-handedly managed all our client accounts. My role was incredibly hands-on, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way!
I knew we needed to divide out the key customer functions so we could focus our expertise and prepare ourselves to scale, so we set about building the processes and hiring the people that would get us to the 14-strong team that would help us serve the fast-growing customer base we have today, now with four members of the team in the US as well!
Although this is a proven structure I’ve put in place before, the international element was new to me and has shown me that no matter how robust your processes and systems are, if you don’t have a team that just relentlessly cares about staying connected and reaching out to our colleagues in all locations, the communication and collaboration falls apart. I’m super proud of my team and their willingness to ensure every single one of their colleagues feels connected at all times.
Customer Service is at the heart of everything we do and is built into each and every one of our Core Values.
What does this look like on a day-to-day basis for yourself and your team, and how do you ensure that these values are embodied at every level as Tillo grows?
This starts with the people we employ to be part of the team - hiring people who embody those values, especially around Surprising and Delighting our customers and Remarkable Passion, sets us up for success.
No two days are the same, and having a team that is passionate about supporting each other no matter what each day or customer issue throws at us is crucial.
Ask us about the peak trading period, and the team will tell you we thrive on that level of energy and high adrenaline when our customers need us the most and ticket volumes are at their highest!
Our Onboarding and Client Services Teams collect customer feedback at every touch point so that we can react and make improvements in real time. Our KPIs are focused on making sure our customers get the information they need in the least amount of interactions, and our team is constantly smashing their target of a 20-minute first response time from a real human being!
You’ve been instrumental in securing Tillo's first formal Customer Service Accreditation, which is a huge milestone not only for the business but also for the industry.
What was that process like, and what does it mean for Tillo moving forward?
I’ve worked towards the CSE accreditation at a previous company with great success; we used it as a driver of continuous improvement and a way to benchmark our successes. When I joined Tillo, we were less than the 50 people required to undertake the accreditation, and from day one, I said that I’d like to get us there when we’re big enough!
Once we grew to a team of over 50 people and I’d seen us consistently demonstrate many of the key criteria that would make us great candidates to pass the accreditation, I knew the time was right to put this forward to our SLT!
I knew that so many businesses SAID they deliver customer service excellence, but I wanted us to have a nationally recognized way to PROVE it to both ourselves and our customers.
This time, the application was different. In my previous company, I felt that a lot of the processes that helped us deliver customer excellence were driven by the customer-facing teams alone, and I was producing evidence that was primarily collected from those CS teams.
At Tillo, on the other hand, this was more of a mammoth task as I can honestly say that every single team in the organization could clearly demonstrate the pivotal part they play in ensuring customer excellence is a focus of each part of the organization - From the obvious teams like Client Services, Account Management, and Onboarding all the way to Finance, Product, People, Marketing and even our Data teams!
We had to produce evidence around 57 different criteria points, focussed on Customer Insight, The Culture of the Organisation, Information and Access, cooperative working with other providers, Delivery, Timeliness, and Quality of Service - and so much more! We then had an assessor come to Tillo HQ and interrogate different teams to make sure that all the evidence was lived in practice; he spoke to our customers, too, to make sure they felt the evidence submitted was a true reflection.
We were absolutely thrilled to be the first in our industry to achieve this accreditation - it’s a testament to all the hard work the team put in and will keep us working to find ways to stay at the top of our game. To maintain the accreditation, you have to demonstrate continuous improvement - something we’d strive for anyway, but it’s nice to be held to task by an official organization!
I’ve been asking this question a lot lately because it’s such a hot topic on a lot of people's minds - what impact do you think AI is going to have on the way you handle Operations at Tillo?
Is it the future, and if so, how does Tillo plan to utilize AI to improve the service we offer to our customers?
We’ve recently launched our AI Chatbot, which aims to serve up the content our customers need the most in real time, solve requests, and find the right agent without human interaction. However, we will never fully abandon any CS process into the hands of AI until we can be completely sure that our customers will still get the support they need without being stuck in any frustrating loops or having any friction at all that would be solved with human interaction.
I don’t feel like AI will take away the need for human interactions for a long time, but what it will do is help us automate the processes behind the scenes that allow us to focus more on surprising and delighting our customers with a more tailored and proactive experience.
With the CSE accreditation under your belt, what’s next for Tillo’s Operations Team? Any future insights you can share?
One of our key focuses for 2024 is to really challenge ourselves on what it really means to deliver API excellence - within the Operations team, we’re going to be looking at ways to support our industry-leading tech with the most easy-to-understand supporting documentation, and help guides that make our API accessible to anyone - no matter what tech resources or expertise they have available.
We’re also focussing on further upskilling our client-facing teams with more technical knowledge so they can answer any of our customer's more technical questions at the source without waiting to speak to an engineer.
And, of course, we'll be looking to re-certify for our Customer Service Excellence Standard with Compliance Plus Points; these are additional awards for areas of service delivery that no one else in the industry is delivering, so we’ll be looking at more ways we can innovate our service delivery and challenge ourselves to give you the most seamless and enjoyable experience that really does surprise and delight!
Thanks, Maria! It's been great talking to you and getting to hear a bit more about what you do and how Tillo's Operations and Customer Service teams are evolving as Tillo grows in the UK, US, and beyond!
