Leveraging Customer Insights to Elevate the B2B Experience: An Interview with Hannah Hoyle from Funnel.io
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leveraging-customer-insights-to-elevate-the-b2b-experience-an-interview-with-hannah-hoyle-from-funnel-io
Hannah: As a Scaled Account Manager at Funnel.io, I'm responsible for a portfolio of around a few hundred customers. It's a really interesting role because it combines elements of both sales and customer success.
On one hand, I'm working to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities within my book of business. But equally important is ensuring that these customers are finding value in the platform and achieving their goals. So a big part of my day-to-day is acting as a strategic consultant, helping customers understand how to leverage Funnel.io's capabilities to drive their marketing efforts forward.
In terms of the types of customers I work with, it's a real mix. I have some larger, higher-value accounts that require more hands-on attention, but I also have a long tail of smaller businesses that I engage with on a more ad-hoc basis. I work with a lot of agencies, which I find super rewarding - there's something really energizing about helping these teams level up their data game to deliver better results for their clients.
Hannah: Data is absolutely essential to my role. With such a large book of customers, I have to be really strategic about where I'm investing my time and energy to drive the greatest impact.
A key data point I'm always looking at is customer health scores. We have a model that takes into account things like product usage, support interactions, and sentiment data to give us a holistic view of how each customer is doing. If I see a health score starting to dip, that's an immediate trigger for me to dive in and understand what's going on. Is the customer struggling to find value in the platform? Are they experiencing technical issues? Have their goals or priorities shifted? By proactively identifying and addressing these risk factors, we can often prevent churn before it happens.
On the flip side, I'm also using data to spot expansion opportunities. If I see a customer's usage trending up or if they're starting to engage with more advanced features, that's a signal that they might be ready for an upsell conversation. The beauty of having all this data at my fingertips is that I can tailor my approach to each customer's unique needs and circumstances.
Of course, data is only one piece of the puzzle. Equally important are the qualitative insights I gather through my conversations with customers. I'm always looking to understand not just what customers are doing in the platform, but why. What are their pain points? What are their aspirations? How can I help them connect the dots between Funnel.io's capabilities and their broader business objectives? By marrying that human context with hard data, I'm able to craft highly relevant, value-driven engagements.
Hannah: Collaboration is absolutely critical in my role. Even though I'm the primary point of contact for my customers, I'm by no means working in a silo. Delivering a seamless customer experience requires tight coordination across a range of functions.
I work extremely closely with our Customer Success team, particularly my CSM counterpart who focuses on driving adoption and value realization at scale through automated campaigns and in-app engagements. We're constantly comparing notes and strategizing on how to deliver the right mix of high-touch and tech-touch outreach to keep our customers engaged and successful.
I'm also in constant communication with our Support team. They're often the first line of defense when customers hit a snag, so it's critical that I have visibility into those interactions. If a customer reaches out with a technical issue or a question about their account, Support will often tap me to follow up directly and make sure the customer feels heard and supported.
And of course, I'm always looking for opportunities to elevate customer feedback and insights to our Product and Engineering teams. If I'm hearing a consistent feature request or pain point from my customers, I want to make sure that's informing our product roadmap. Equally, if I have a customer who's doing something really innovative with the platform, I love being able to connect them with our Product team for a deeper dive. Some of our best features have come directly from those kinds of customer conversations.
At the end of the day, my job is to be the voice of the customer within Funnel.io. And that means building strong relationships and feedback loops across the entire organization.
Hannah: I think the days of the "spray and pray" approach to account management are long behind us. Today's B2B buyers expect a level of personalization and prescriptive guidance that can only be achieved through deep customer understanding.
As Account Managers, we have to be equal parts data analysts, strategic consultants, and relationship builders. We need to be able to look at a dashboard and quickly identify the key trends and action items, but we also need to be able to get on the phone and have a thoughtful, contextually relevant conversation.
More and more, I see the Account Manager role becoming a true strategic partner to our customers. Yes, we're responsible for driving retention and growth within our book of business, but we're also uniquely positioned to help our customers navigate complex challenges and capitalize on emerging opportunities.
As Funnel.io continues to expand its capabilities and as data continues to explode in both volume and complexity, I think the value of that strategic partnership will only continue to grow. It's on us as Account Managers to stay ahead of the curve, to be continuous learners, and to always be looking for new ways to leverage data to deliver meaningful customer outcomes.
It's a challenging role, but it's also an incredibly rewarding one. At the end of the day, my success is directly tied to my customers' success. And there's nothing more gratifying than seeing a customer unlock a new insight or hit a new milestone because of the work we've done together. That's what keeps me excited to come to work every day.
Our conversation with Hannah underscored the vital importance of customer data in driving personalized, high-impact engagements at scale. A few key themes emerged:
As B2B customer expectations continue to rise and as data continues to proliferate, Account Managers like Hannah will play an increasingly vital role in orchestrating the customer journey and driving long-term customer value. Her approach offers a compelling blueprint for anyone looking to leverage data to elevate the B2B experience.