A New Seat at Our Leadership Table
There’s one thing that has created client loyalty at Foojee year after year over the past 17 years. That one thing has nothing to do with our technical stack, how brilliant our team is, or how much clients love our ability to fix a printer.
Clients remind us daily (no hyperbole) that they love our empathy. They use words like “approachable” “understanding” “patient” “easy”. And that’s no coincidence. I knew early on that if Foojee had any chance at succeeding, it was going to be because of the values and character each team member carried into each conversation with clients. Hiring the right people is by far the most important factor in our success today. That’s because hiring the right people is the prerequisite to delivering an amazing client experience.
The pursuit of creating amazing client experiences is why we’re doing something new. We’re creating a seat at our leadership table for a new role: Client Success.
Many B2B companies will have client success VPs, or directors, which is all great. But those roles are still kept out of some of the most critical and strategic conversations happening in the company. Very few, if any, place those leaders on the executive leadership team. And forget MSPs. We typically see executive teams at MSPs full of technical and sales roles. But where’s the representation of the most important variable in your business?
Our leadership team meets at least weekly, quarterly, and annually. We’ve long been running on EOS, and have seen tremendous results since the first quarter we implemented it. But EOS doesn’t go into detail on WHO should have a seat at the table. We already have our COO, Justin McGough, our Director of Operations, Jeremy Price, our Director of Business Development, Josh Graves, and me. Placing Client Success on the leadership team is something we’re trying, because we believe the client experience should be in every defining conversation at Foojee.
Ideas are cheap though. Now that the theoretical has been established, the real challenge is finding, again, the right person to lead our company in this role. I won’t wax poetic on the cocktail of ingredients necessary to pull off this ambitious new responsibility. You can’t tease these qualities out of someone. It’s got to be who they are when they wake up in the morning.
We were blessed to have Anna Walker join our team as our first client success manager in 2024. Not only has she exceeded our expectations, she has continued to reinvent what client success should look like at Foojee over the past 2 years. I love that she’s an outsider. She had no experience in IT or the MSP business before joining Foojee. She just brought herself, her Navy Officer Leadership, her vision, and her impeccable attention to detail. In hindsight, it’s no surprise we’ve selected her to be the new Director of Client Success at Foojee.
And yes, in addition to being promoted to Director of Client Success, in January she joined the leadership team, and has already created a vision for how the client experience will improve over the coming weeks, months, and years.
We’re thrilled to have her on our team, and thrilled to have her leading the most important variable in our company’s success, the client experience. Thank you to our members of the Foojee Service Plan who have placed your mission critical trust in us over the years. These changes represent a continued investment in our partnership, and we’re excited to continue working together as we redefine the IT department for small business.
Welcome to the table, Anna!
-Lucas Acosta
