I'm a manager of Pantheon's Customer Success Engineer team. Pantheon allows teams to deliver Enterprise-level WordPress and Drupal sites with agile workflows, scalable infrastructure, and a lightning-fast content delivery network. I joined the company in 2019 and have helped our company headcount grow from 120 to 650 employees known as "Pantheors"! (it's a portmanteau of Panther and Meteor)
How big is it?
We have 141 people under the entire Global Customer Success umbrella, and I manage 8 direct reports.
Where are your teammates located?
All over the world! Pantheon is a remote-first company, but we also have physical offices in Manila, San Francisco, and Birmingham, AL.
What does your team do? What are you responsible for?
My team supports Pantheon's customers through chats, tickets, an emergency phone line, video conferencing, and sometimes even Twitter!
Above everything else, honesty is the most important piece. I share with my team when I take mental health days, so they know it's ok (and encouraged!) to do the same. I have weekly 1:1 Zoom meetings with my direct reports and most of the time the conversations are not work-related.
Strong remote cultures are built on strong connections.
Strong connections are built with Hailey.
A few years ago, Pantheon had a marketing slogan that went "Put the Human at the Top of the Stack" and in the same way that Pantheon's product focuses on the people who use our tools, as a manager, I put my people at the top of my stack. I see my job as taking care of our Pantheors who take care of the customers.
"Put the Human at the Top of the Stack" and in the same way that Pantheon's product focuses on the people who use our tools, as a manager, I put my people at the top of my stack. I see my job as taking care of our Pantheors who take care of the customers.
Figuring out a way to make time for team members to focus on longer tasks (like professional development) while making sure our customer queues are maintained.
We recently had our first in-person meetup since the pandemic in Manila, The Philippines.
85 Pantheors attended 30 training sessions over four days.
We've played Jackbox on occasion, and we have a games slack channel where people will set up sessions to play together. I'm not much of a gamer these days
All the time! I lead our daily huddle where we first discuss any blockers but then it quickly transitions into a quick break away from never-ending customer support. I like to play jokes on the meeting attendees; I've tested out my new "artisan microphone" which is actually a tin can on a string and I've joined the meeting in a tank top and sunglasses the day before I went on vacation.
“The 100x Leader” is a book that I feel took my management style to the next level. I worked in the Food and Beverage industry for 12 years before I moved into software, so a lot of how I think about taking care of customers comes from Danny Meyer's "Setting the Table."
The most important thing for a leader is to deeply understand how your team members perform their job from their perspective. I got the chance to work in our Philippines office for a week but maintained my US schedule. This meant I was working from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am in the local timezone, which is the same schedule a lot of our Philippines-based employees work. It gave me much more insight into the challenges that come up and opportunities to make things better.
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