The Everyday Leader podcast features inspiring individuals building and leading teams across Africa. Listen to episodes on your preferred podcast platform here.
About our Guest
This episode’s conversation is with Marion Samantha Wambui from Nairobi, Kenya. She is an experienced customer success leader who is passionate about technology and obsessed with customers. She’s worked in the tech space for the last 6 years, and loves the idea of building technology that offers solutions. At Raise, she works with startups in the African ecosystem where she supports these businesses to grow.
Everyday Leadership in Action
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Samantha:
Promotions require both strong performance and trust: During her first two years at the Kenya-based startup, Raise, Marion served as the Customer Success Lead. During the this time she built trust with the co-founders and management team by working hard and being a team player. When it came time to review compensation and restructure the team for continued growth, the conversation to gain additional responsibilities, and a “manager” title, was a more straight-forward decision.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) can help set expectations across teams: In her new role, Samantha has leaned heavily on developing and following SOPs to ensure the right communication channels are used and the right issues from customers are escalated within the teams. This helps her manage her team and work streams, while aligning with her manager when appropriate.
Customer councils provide a structure for customer advocacy: In her role, Samantha has overseen the creation of a customer council that gives an opportunity for the customer perspective to be considered for every major product strategy decision. This initiative is alongside efforts to make her customer success team more easily available to customers during their engagement with the Raise platform. These strategies have helped capture insights from customers that have led to important improvements and new features.
The Everyday Leader is a podcast featuring conversations with leaders from across Africa’s companies, organizations, and governments about their experience managing teams and projects throughout their careers.
Know of an “everyday leader” in your company or network? Nominate them here.
Marion Samantha Wambui: Customer Success Manager, Raise