SalesTech Interview With Jill Sawatzky, Vice President Of Customer Success At PROS
By Sudipto Ghosh | SalesTech Star
Tell us about your journey in Customer Success. What attracted you to join PROS?
My journey in customer success started in project management through a role I had early in my career at IBM. I moved from project manager to customer success program leader, which at the time was a new role that IBM determined was needed as the company transitioned to cloud and subscription-based business models.
So, I built their Customer Success organization and blueprint, and served as its leader for three years, which was an amazing experience. Following my experience at IBM, I took on the role of customer success director at Citrix to do the same thing — build and lead a Customer Success function and department for the company, as it had also made this significant transition to a cloud and subscription-based business model.
PROS is a truly interesting company, and the opportunity I have taken with it is to define the next generation of customer success. PROS is much further along in its transition to cloud and subscription-based models than either IBM or Citrix were when I first came on board with them, which is really compelling. PROS has fully made the transition to cloud. The company does not have the same growing pains as a result.
PROS already had established a customer success role within the organization prior to my joining the team, but it lived within Professional Services. Now, as an independent, dedicated function under my leadership, Customer Success is a peer organization to Sales, Services, and Product Management, to really ensure the voice of the customer is properly represented and fully heard.
Therefore, my mission at PROS is to define this next vision and strategy for what customer success is in today’s marketplace for PROS, given the success it has achieved to date. I am excited to lead a team of amazing professionals who deal with our customers day-in and day-out, and who are truly passionate about supporting and anticipating customer needs based on their business objectives.