One year as a Customer Success Engineer aka the “Bridge” at Leadfeeder

Have you ever wondered what working as a Customer Success Engineer looks like and what we do on a daily basis? If yes, here comes my story of how I joined and became the “bridge” between Leadfeeder customers and the developers at the company.

What is a customer success engineer?

A Customer Success Engineer manages the customer-facing, technical parts of the onboarding and everyday process. For example at Leadfeeder, helping to install the website visitor tracking product, answered customer questions, problem-solving, and provided training to internal colleagues.

Why did I become a customer success engineer?

Last year around this time I started to look for a new work opportunity. 

My top “wants” were:

1) Tech industry (I changed my career from law to tech) 

2) Challenging enough to keep me interested 

3) Half-technical and half people/customers facing role

4) Fully remote

I inserted these ideas into LinkedIn and came up with a lot of suitable positions. However, one of them stood out for me - Customer Success Engineering at Leadfeeder. 

There were a lot of requirements for this job - be able to read code, call an API, have some experience coding, have an understanding of CRMs like Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Dynamics, have worked with Mailchimp and Active Campaign, and many more, while also being outgoing and comfortable to do client calls to help install Leadfeeder product, answer questions of and provide training to client-facing colleagues. 

In exchange, I would be able to work from anywhere in the world if I cover the European time zone for a salary that would allow me to do that. I applied for this position and within a couple of days, I had the first interview where I found out that it was a completely new position so I could co-create it. 

Exactly the challenge I was looking for. Two weeks and four interviews later (including a live API calling coding interview), I was hired and started my Leadfeeder journey on June 1st, 2021.

The idea for the position was to become sort of a “bridge” between developers and customer-facing colleagues. So I started building the bridge and until today when somebody asks me what I do for a living, I tell them that I am a bridge. 

And let me tell you it is a great conversation starter.

How was my learning period at Leadfeeder?

I started to work with the dev teams to understand the Leadfeeder product and its integrations. All the developers have been super friendly, helpful, and patient which allowed me to progress fast in my “bridge” career. 

I used the technical knowledge I gained from the developers with my business-facing colleagues and clients. I answered their questions as another layer of support and went on client calls to help them install the product or solve issues with integrations. I also started to participate in the development of the new products, albeit not by coding. 

When I felt comfortable with the main Leadfeeder Website Visitors product, which is by the way, super awesome and you should try it out yourself 😆, I started running training for my business colleagues so they can also obtain a better technical understanding of the Leadfeeder products in less technical jargon. 

What does being a Customer Success Engineer look like?

During my first year of work at Leadfeeder, I learned to understand the entire lifecycle of a SaaS platform product. I was supported by Leadfeeder to learn as much as possible, including doing my CIPP/E GDPR training and certification, as well as my current Salesforce and other CRM in-depth training. 

Looking back, I believe I co-created my position of Customer Success Engineer into a truly useful role in intra-team communication.

Why is being a Customer Success Engineer awesome?

Working for Leadfeeder helped me not only grow my career as a Customer Success Engineer but also helped me to develop personally. I learned from my business colleagues how to be more empathetic to our clients and how to make them heard and taken care of as a lot of times that is exactly what the people working for our customers (companies) need to solve their technical problems. 

I also started to learn how to be a good leader, which especially in a remote-first company might be difficult.

On top of that, I have gained the freedom I dreamt about and for which I changed my career to do. I can now live anywhere in the world and I am taking an advantage of it. 

I also gained colleagues all over the world who are more like friends — I hope to go visit some of them one of these days in the future.