This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. This week, we’re looking at at industry that’s only becoming more and more important as tech becomes more prevalent in the world: digital, online security and authentification.
Okta – Securing the world’s online identities
Back in the day, before this crazy thing called the Internet (I know, did that time ever exist?), you used something called a key to open a door. It was made of metal and could be cut in certain configurations so it was unique to your door (or unique enough).
Nowadays, the same concept still exists, but everything is lifted online. Instead of metal keys, we have online keys that are tied to our identity so that we can access only what’s ours and no one else’s. Okta has turned this into a science and extends its capabilities to both protecting workplaces, as well as their customers.
The Software Itself
You can see from this screenshot of their product page that they have a multitude of products to suit different needs. That’s one of the advantages of their software: it’s not really industry specific and can be packaged up to serve different jobs.
They do have Workforce Identify and Customer Identity, which we’ll dive into a little bit deeper.
At any point in a day, more mature, larger organizations won’t only have hundreds – if not thousands – of employees logging into their company’s applications. There might also be contractors, visitors and other entities that might have specific use cases for having temporary access.
Workforce Identity allows companies to bolt on a user-friendly SaaS to their applications that facilitates getting access to digital and online services, saving their own IT department the headache and hassle of managing this themselves.
Customer Identity tackles the challenge of allowing external parties – whose level of IT savviness may not be clear – to log into their own portals that you supply them. This in itself is a gargantuan piece to tackle. Software developers work in teams to build the back and front end so that this works as it should. Okta takes care of everything in this case, include the installation, configuration, testing and customer support.
Job Description Example
This is a job listing for a Customer Success Manager in Sydney, Australia:
Let’s go through each of the dot points:
- you’re the go-to person for your customer. You help them get onboarded and manage escalations should they occur.
- become the trusted advisor for customers, being the one they turn to for any questions regarding the application, making sure they get the most bang for their buck,
- make sure you link up with the business stakeholders so that the application is inline with what they want to use it for,
- be the one who spreads your knowledge about new features,
- if you see risky behavior, pick it up early. Seeing good behavior? Point it out and make it a habit in them.
- Check the customer health through product usage.
- be the focal point that helps with the renewal process,
- be the voice of the customer and champion their needs cross-functionally.
- be super chummy with sales to sell and position the Success Services component of the business.
What They Care About
Like most tech-forward organizations, they work hard to keep their employees happy. Benefits are numerous – as per above – and they also have advisors who work in Okta who’s sole purpose is to help you make the most of said benefits! That’s something I haven’t seen before and shows that they really care about their people.
Online security might not be a field that you’ve considered working in, but if it’s in a company like Okta, it sounds like you’ll be well looked after. ☺️