Viktória Lukašek: With customer satisfaction, communication comes first

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Viky works in an IT company, even though she was not attracted to IT a long time ago. She has been a part of our company since 2012 and today, from the position of Senior Service Delivery Manager, she takes care of customer relations. She is also the ambassador of the Customer Success Manager of the Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia brand. What can you imagine under that?

How would you simply explain what the terms Service Delivery Manager and Customer Success Manager mean?

Our company provides IT services for a wide range of customers. The Service Delivery Manager is the point of contact for the person on the customer's side who is responsible for IT. It is one of the key roles that we supply to the customer as a company. It is basically a position that is in charge of communication with the client so that satisfaction is on both sides according to ideas and expectations. This position is about building transparent relationships, within which I can communicate, for example, unpleasant situations and problems. The pillar of Service Delivery Manager is Customer Success Management, which manages the customer experience for the duration of the cooperation. Companies that have successfully implemented Customer Success Management are more successful in retaining regular customers and expanding partnerships and delivered services. An important part is also the collection and analysis of data regarding the customer's current situation, as the improvement plan should be based on facts and not only based on individual experience.

Why is customer orientation important?

Customer satisfaction is a decisive factor in whether to decide again for our company or look for another IT partner. That is why it has always been an important point. As part of the agile transformation, Deutsche Telekom places greater emphasis on Customer Success Management, which is also becoming an even more important pillar of our company's culture in Košice.

The basis for this work, based on the job description, are soft skills, aren't they?

Yes, certainly. Of course, the person in this position should also be in the picture when regarding the finances, but communication comes first. Communication of the Customer Success Manager with the customer must be flexible, you must have good negotiation skills and be able to communicate in stressful and unexpected conversations. You need to think strategically and what is the basis, especially not to promise anything that you cannot fulfil. I have learned through practice that it is important not to take things personally, but factually. We each have different motivations and respond to other people.

In addition to communication, it is important to know the customer's expectations, environment, motivation, and strategy, where it wants to move. The larger the customer, the higher the demands.

Do you see educational opportunities in your field?

Definitely. Although it is not about technical certifications, it is still necessary to educate - in the way of communicating with a new client, in new situations ... It is foolish to neglect development in this topic, even if one thinks that he/she can communicate without problems in any situation. ITIL certification is such a standard for Service Delivery Manager.

Is your position connected with travelling?

Yes. Of course, it depends on the client, but travel is a must. In a pandemic situation, travel was abandoned and we moved on to virtual meetings. But before the pandemy, for example, I was required to travel monthly to customers in Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands. Business trips are simply part of this job position.

You have been a part of Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia since 2012. How did your career develop?

I got into the IT sphere after university study, I started working in monitoring, which is such a gateway for people who do not have a degree in IT. From monitoring I got to quality control, reporting, later I worked as an operations manager. So, I gained experience in finance and management and made myself clear what I want to do. I worked in various positions in the company and since 2019 I have been working in a complex position for a specific customer as a Service Delivery Manager. For this senior role, I gained experience in previous positions and accepted it because it was my expectation - greater complexity and greater responsibility that motivate and move me forward.

At the same time, you are a Customer Success Manager ambassador...

es, I was very pleased with this opportunity and I see it as such a nice award. I know my colleagues, they are all handy and work hard. However, I am glad that I am part of the ambassadors of the Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia brand, because there are fewer of us girls among them, and it was also the reason for accepting this job.

Have you ever had a vision of working in IT sphere?

Absolutely not. I am grateful to my brother, who worked in an IT company and attracted me for a long time. He explained to me how people work in such a company, what the corporate culture is like, and he was convinced that I would like the job and he wasn't wrong. I tried it and I took a fancy to this job.

What exactly do you like about Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia?

Our corporate culture. Even though I was dealing with something private or professional, the managers always found time for me and we managed to solve everything.

I feel support, willingness to communicate, an effort to solve things, I can be open in communication and I appreciate that we place emphasis on the customer.

If you want to invite Michal Rusnak for a cup of coffee, rather not. He is a tea lover He believes that a smartphone is the best invention in the 21st century, do you agree? Michal is also a huge fan of AI that will be a future game changer according to him. How did he start in Open Sovereign Cloud area?

Following the Skill shifter program, he switched Linux/Windows Admin to a new career path. There are several opportunities for development and personal growth in our company; so, Michal did it. Currently, he is a great performer for the Open Sovereign Cloud product to be inspired from

Why? Read more.

 

What Martin Palko, Chapter Lead admires about Michal?

“He has joined our team only recently as a finisher of Skill shifter program. Already during this program, where main emphasis is on self-study, Michal has demonstrated strong proactivity and quickly tackled challenging Kubernetes certificates. He carries on with this characteristic which helped him to overtake (with another senior colleague) whole monitoring stack of the product. With his operations experience he is always helpful to other colleagues.”

Michal, what makes working for DT IT Solutions Slovakia appealing to you?

We have an opportunity to work with the newest technologies, as mentioned to develop new product from scratch (it all has started in 2022) and we are an amazing group of people on the project. We have great collaboration and wonderful social activities - lots of teambuilding, mutually agreed office day, meetups, and friendships outside of office. We have the SPIRIT

Marek Krafcik is a fan of Star Wars. His most favorite is mini-series Ahsoka. The one that appealed to him the most was the history of Arda by J. R. R. Tolkien, do you know it too? 

Marek agrees with Michal (and the rest of the world ) that  AI, Health Tech and Augmented reality will boost up tech revolution in the upcoming years.

But he likes to relax with a cup of cappucino with cinnamon after a hard day resolving an Open Sovereign Cloud issues. 

 

How does Martin Palko, Chapter lead describe him?

“When I have started on a new Chapter Lead position for Open Sovereign Cloud in May 2022 Marek has already been hired. He was one of few juniors within the team surrounded by seniors facing huge personal challenge to step his game up and fit in. Not only by his skillset but mainly by great attitude he managed to do that very well. He has become an integral part of PaaS Stream and I think it is a great start of his career in our company. He is always willing to give more than what is just required.”

Marek, what do you personally like about the project?

On the OSC project we are using latest and modern open-source cloud-native technologies and principles. I would like to highlight especially Go language and Kubernetes which are core technologies of this project. That’s what I personally like about the project. There is always something new to be learned from.

// Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management.

// Go is a statically typed, compiled high-level programming language designed at Google. It is syntactically like C.

Could you describe us the background of the Open Sovereign Cloud, guys?

Currently, we are working on a project with about 60 people worldwide, and we find it surprising that half of them is from Slovakia. It's wonderful that we are actively involved in the development of such a large project from scratch rather than just doing operational support.

If our team is separated into three streams, each member is assigned to a sub-team based on his or her knowledge, prior experiences, and personal preferences.

 

OSC 3 Streams are:

  1. onMetal (Infrastructure as a Service) – sub-team dedicated to software defined and bare-metal infrastructure.
  2. Gardener (Platform as a Service) – sub-team dedicated to development and maintenance of Managed Kubernetes environments in compliance with cloud-native principles, implementation of newest open-source cloud-native solutions.
  3. Software Services (Software as a Service) – sub-team dedicated to development of additional features, controllers, operators for Software Services such as Kafka, Kyma, PostgreSQL using Go language.

What are clients' top benefits from using Open Sovereign Cloud?

The main advantage of our product are data, technological and operational sovereignty. Meaning our customers have authority and control over encryption, usage and access to their data, transparency over access by the cloud provider’s or any other 3rd party and make IT decisions independently of the product decisions of proprietary providers. Data are stored and operations carried out within the EU in accordance with Gaia-X initiative. Having said that our target industries are healthcare and public sector in DACH region.

Our first customer Barmer – is one of the largest and most respected public health insurance providers in Germany with product IDP.

What team challenges as well as individual ones lie ahead?

Marek Krafcik

“As this environment is constantly evolving and progressing, we both need to consistently expand our technical skills to meet our individual challenges and ambitions. We must continue to adapt and learn new pertinent technologies because the IT world is known to evolve more quickly than any other industry.”

Michal Rusnak

“We want to emphasize that every member of our team is enrolling in classes and obtaining certifications in the technology being utilized on the project, such as Certified Kubernetes Administrator, which is well-known and regarded globally.”

Our team has a few significant challenges ahead of it, including enhancing the stability and performance of our product, creating new features, and bringing on new clients. But we are sure, we can handle it together.

About Michal and Marek

Michal Rusnak is officially part of Open Sovereign Cloud team since March 2023. He joined the second wave of Skill shifter program in 2022 where a group started with the Cloud technologies, especially with containerization technologies such as Kubernetes which is core of this project. Michal decided to join Skill shifter program last year due to his motivation to keep up with latest technologies and to step up in his career. Before this program he used to be a part of Linux / Windows administration team that was handling simple L1 tasks.

"I wanted to be a part of some bigger project and develop something on my own, " Michal adds.

Marek Krafcik

After his studies at University, he worked 3 years in IT as technician when he got an opportunity to work for DT IT Solutions Slovakia. During his job interview, he was asked it’s not a problem to work with Kubernetes and Linux. That’s how he became a part of OSC, now he is glad for this decision.

"OSC TEAM is wonderful group of people and the product we are developing from scratch is everyone’s baby whom all of us are proud of, " Marek thinks.

Author: Ivana Marcinková, Communication Specialist