This episode is part of a special series marking HiJiffy’s 10th anniversary, with team members sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the company. Joana Alves leads Customer Experience at HiJiffy, spanning the Onboarding, Customer Success, and Support teams. She talks through how each team has evolved, using automation to free up time for clients rather than to replace the human contact, becoming more strategic and proactive with Customer Success, and sharpening how Support prioritises the tickets that matter most, along with the moments that make client-facing work so rewarding.
Tiago Araújo (00:00): Hello everyone, we’re here on our celebration again of 10 years of HiJiffy, where we decided to talk with some of the HiJiffy employees. Today we have Joana Alves with me. Joana, thank you so much for joining us.
Joana Alves (00:19): Thank you, Tiago, it’s my pleasure.
Tiago Araújo (00:22): Before we start, Joana, and before we kick things off, could you share your role, on a top level of course, and what you do at HiJiffy?
Joana Alves (00:33): At HiJiffy, I’m Head of Customer Experience. In this department, we manage active clients from A to Z throughout their customer journey. For that, we have three very specialised teams. The first is Onboarding, who help with the implementation. Then we have the CSMs, who are the account managers and make sure the solution is always evolving for all clients. And then we have Customer Support, who ensure a quick response if there are issues or specific needs.
Tiago Araújo (01:08): Amazing, all the customer journey of HiJiffy, since someone signs that contract and moves forward with our solution. A quick question I had for you: obviously, while we’re celebrating the 10 years of HiJiffy, one thing that always sparks my attention is, from your perspective, what makes HiJiffy’s work culture what it is?
Joana Alves (01:37): Well, I would have to say that we have three pillars, and I’d say those three pillars are the founders, including you. Obviously, I think you build a company, and you’re very different from each other, and you build a company with the things that make you different, in a very successful way. So we have, first and foremost, a culture of always pushing for the best, pushing boundaries, delivering the best we can, and innovating, while working hard, but keeping a lot of respect for people’s lives. And I’m not talking about work hard, play hard, but about family life, making sure people have that balance, so that when they’re delivering, they’re motivated, they know they work within their hours and they see their work flourish, but they also have time for what they value the most, their family life. That, I think, is what’s more rewarding about HiJiffy.
Tiago Araújo (02:39): Amazing. Yeah. I think that, especially, not in my case yet, but the founders actually having a family themselves and seeing their lives in a different perspective. Obviously work is a very important pillar of our day-to-day and our lives, but there are others, and having that associated is what really engines and boosts creativity, the other things that are happening in our lives. So that’s super important.
One very interesting thing from you, Joana, was that when you joined HiJiffy, you went to a department that was Partnerships. Then you became Head of Customer Experience, a whole different thing, obviously, managing partners versus managing clients. And on top of that, Customer Experience is one of the departments that has grown the most in the last few years. So how has the way we support our clients and help them make the most of our solution evolved?
Joana Alves (03:48): I can make the distinction between the different teams, because they work in very different ways. Looking at Onboarding, one thing we did was apply a lot of automation. It’s not our philosophy to switch to AI in direct communications with our clients, so that’s not how we’re using it, but we are using automations to make sure our team has more time and also delivers a better service. In terms of onboarding, that translates into a faster onboarding. So there’s more time to meet with clients, to spend time talking to them, while other tasks, like setting up, are all done with automations. This brings us more agility on one hand, and enhances the client experience on the other, and that’s really key. Clients also see their value much faster than if we weren’t making use of these automations.
For Customer Success, one of the things we’re trying to do more and more is to be more strategic and more proactive. We see our teams being more and more active on business reviews, making sure they’re making the best out of the solution for the client. So the client is set up, they already have everything they need to be working, but we want to foster adoption. We want them to be almost part of the client’s extended team. So they spend a lot of time looking at client data and giving back to the client, making sure we’re the final piece in their tech stack and that we get the most out of their experience working with us. I think that’s the main thing for Customer Success.
And then finally, for Support, because Support is the team that needs to be very quick, we’re being more and more professional in the way we deal with tickets. So the whole ticketing system changed, and also our urgency matrix. We’re not looking at all tickets the same way; we make sure the most relevant or most impactful tickets are seen faster, and the other ones have different types of SLAs. With this, we make sure that when a client really has a pain, we’re on it as fast as we can.
Tiago Araújo (06:08): Amazing, all those teams and the way they work is just amazing. One of the things I wanted to ask you is related to this work of Customer Experience. You work very, very closely with our clients, and I’d like to know what are the most rewarding moments of building those relationships with our clients.
Joana Alves (06:33): I think that’s an easy one. What makes me most proud, and the team too, is that everyone who works in a client-facing role really likes people, really likes the business, really likes to create these relationships. When I see that sparkle in their eyes, it’s when they go to an event and have a really good meeting with clients, and they leave those meetings and tell me, “I left my screen and I’m able to hug my clients.” That’s really rewarding for them, and I’ve heard them actually saying this to me. One other thing is when I receive an email from a client saying that a specific person, that CSM or that Onboarding Specialist, really made a difference for their own teams, for their own hotel, and that the way they work on a daily basis and their operations are better after whatever they did. That’s really, really rewarding, and not only for me as the Head, but for each and every one of our people working with clients.
Tiago Araújo (07:38): Amazing. And now, talking a bit about moments of being proud, and I’m very curious about this answer, what’s your proudest moment at HiJiffy?
Joana Alves (07:54): My proudest moment, I’d say I have two, because I can’t disconnect one from the other, and you’re going to see why. The first proud moment is when I look back and see that on Hotel Tech Report, for Customer Success or Customer Support, we have a 4.6 out of 5. This is actually something that translates, point blank, the work the department is doing. But not only that, HiJiffy being seen as one of the references for the hospitality sector in terms of chatbot and guest messaging, it also translates our capacity, and the capacity of the department, to do a great set-up, a great implementation, but also to support clients on their journey. That’s really, really good.
But I think that’s not possible if, looking back, I didn’t also see that the department has barely changed in almost the last year, and we have almost the same people. So I can see that people are happy and enjoying working in our department, and that’s really good. That tells me that the work we’re doing, actually making the lives of the people in the department possible and better, is working. And that really makes me proud, not only me but the leads we have on each of these teams.
Tiago Araújo (09:21): Of course. Joana, amazing story. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for being part of these 10 years of HiJiffy.
