Emelie Blomstrand is a Customer Success Manager here at Leadoo 💙
I caught up with Emelie Blomstrand, one of our fabulous Customer Success Managers, based in Sweden 🇸🇪, to get the lowdown on how she’s found working for Leadoo so far..
Who are you and what’s your role at Leadoo?
“Hi, I’m Emelie Blomstrand and I’m a Customer Success Manager for the Swedish market,” explains Emelie. Described by fellow Leadooers as ‘Mother of Bots’, there’s not much she doesn’t know about creating converting chatbot solutions.
“My job is to work alongside clients to ensure their solutions are continuously optimised and working in line with their overall sales and marketing strategies, and to make suggestions for how they can get more out of their Leadoo solutions.”
When did you join Leadoo? How did you end up here?
“Well, I started in March 2020, just as the pandemic began! I actually applied initially for a marketing trainee position at Leadoo but Mikael (Da Costa, Head of Product) got in contact with me and suggested I might be better for the Onboarding Manager for Sweden role instead. I had previous marketing experience so it turned out it was a great fit for me. I think people aren’t always sure what an Onboarding Manager role entails, but when it comes to this role at Leadoo, it’s marketing through and through,” explains Emelie, “When I started, I was very much thrown in the deep end and was dealing with live clients almost straight away – I joined at a time when we had very few people on the ground and so it was all hands on deck!”
And working within a start up in its infancy is always a challenge, as Emelie quickly found out: “I’ll be the first to admit that it was definitely hard, but I had also set myself a goal when I started to learn as much as possible – I had a lot of questions, but these were soon answered when I got in and amongst it. Leadoo was brand new in Sweden at the time I joined, so I spent a lot of my first few weeks working with others on identifying the differences between our markets (Finland/Sweden) and trying to get my head around the product itself.”
“I got to know a lot about our clients at this time, and so in some ways being thrown in at the deep end paid off! Onboarding and operating during a pandemic was a big challenge – people were not at work, businesses had closed down or were cutting costs, so we had to get creative in our approach and our offer to keep growing,” Emelie adds, “It was challenging, but ultimately so rewarding – I learned so much in a short space of time. I am definitely grateful that we’re onto the next phase of our growth now and are scaling with an incredible team – it makes life much easier!“
“In August 2020, I made the move to Customer Success from Onboarding. This was great, especially for my inquisitive mind, as I got to see a different part of the process and things clicked even more, I had a much better understanding of the whole benefit Leadoo brings to our clients and our product as a whole. I really love working in CS and having the chance to build relationships with my pool of clients that I look after. I’m basically involved in more than one company’s growth at a time, which is amazing and gives me a real sense of satisfaction,” Emelie gleams proudly.
“But, the biggest selling point for me when deciding to accept the role was how Mikael explained his vision for the company and the way he intended the culture to remain a nurturing and fun but hard-working place where we really care about our people and our team. He explained his plan for the business, and I immediately got excited – my gut feeling was that this was something I desperately wanted to be a part of,” Emelie smiles.
What about the team you work with? What are they like?
“I’m part of the Swedish Customer Success team. I was initially reporting to Isatou (Director of Customer Success) but Artem (Customer Success Team Lead) recently got a promotion and now I report to him,” Emelie explains. Let’s go Artem!
“The team itself is just awesome. It’s been so exciting to be a part of, and I really genuinely enjoy working with them all. They’re fun, open-minded, very driven and experimental! We have a lot of fun together and are passionate about what we do, where we want to go and what we want to learn. A year ago we were only 4 people in Sweden so things were a bit crazy – it’s definitely a good thing that the team is expanding!” laughs Emelie.
What does a typical day in the life of Emelie look like?
“Well, I usually get up around 7, and the first thing I think of every single day is going to get the neighbours’ dog who I look after and love with all my heart.” Emelie gushes. Modi, a gorgeous little longhaired Chihuahua, is a regular feature in our #leadoo-pets channel on Slack, and is one of the many who feature in the group regularly.
“Once I’ve given the dog all the attention he deserves, I get myself ready and then usually grab a coffee and sit down to read some news or put it on the tv. I also make sure to catch up on the US news as I used to live there so I like to keep up to date with what’s happening over there,” says Emelie, “And I then usually spend time managing my admin for the day – checking slack, emails, preparing for meetings during the day, and planning out my tasks. I usually block specific time out each day to complete these tasks because I find it hard to do this ad hoc – I like to really focus on the work I’m doing without interruption!”
Emelie explains how she ensures organisation and structure to her day: “I make use of my calendar a lot! I even use it to plan my breaks out as I have a habit of not taking lunch if I don’t plan for it! I like lots of structure, and after a meeting I always make sure to leave myself a block of time on the calendar so I have time to do any follow-up work needed. This helps me keep on top of all the tasks needed for each client, as well as my wider responsibilities.”
“I try and have meetings in the earlier half of the day,” Emelie continues, “I feel like that’s when I’m most productive (as well as later at night, but that’s not all that convenient for my clients!). I also try not to have more than 2 customer meetings in a day (usually around 10am and 2pm) so I can dedicate the needed time to optimising the solutions whilst it’s still fresh in my mind.”
Afternoons, and spare time between meetings usually consist of optimisation work and making changes to customer solutions for Emelie: “ I might be answering client questions via email or my sales assistant, or discussing integrations or more abstract use cases where we might need to speak to the product team or other members of our Customer Success team to see how it can be done. Those are always the most interesting as our clients are always thinking up new ways they want to make use of our tools, and making it work for them is really rewarding.”
“I usually finish up my work day around 5 or 6pm,” says Emelie, “Sometimes I will go and work out or take Modi for a walk in my local area. I also love cooking so I normally visit the supermarket to grab whatever concoction I’m creating tonight. I try to do something fun with a friend or go for dinner at least one day in the week to keep it interesting. I watch a lot of sports, football (I support Arsenal!), American football (I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan as I lived in Minnesota!). I’m also obviously a crazy dog lady, and I spend a lot of time hanging out in the Leadoo Pets Channel!”
What’s your favourite part about your job?
“That’s a hard one, there’s lots that I like about it,” Emelie ponders, “I think my most favourite part of the job is working with challenges presented by clients, and trying out new things with our solutions – pushing it to the limits of what it can do all the time and working with clients to improve their use of the tools. I really value that working relationship I get to develop with my pool of clients, and my role is unique in that I get to see how things work on the inside of companies in a huge range of industries and actually share in their successes. I learn so much from every meeting and each use case is so different, so I feel like I’ll probably never stop learning.”
And lastly, can you summarise how you find working for Leadoo in no more than 2 sentences?
Emelie smiles, “A favourite quote of mine – I was born for a storm and the calm does not suit me. That’s a quote from Andrew Jackson. There’s a lot of things going on all the time and it’s so exciting. I love it!”
