Helping customers be successful using a software product is a job that requires an incredible amount of versatility in skill. The challenges customers have being successful with the product are rarely as straightforward as simply learning the product. A good customer success manager contains multitudes. This breadth of skill is a defining trait of Anastasia Fullerton, an Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Amplitude. A D1 Stanford Lacrosse player, tortilla chip connoisseur, and avid skier, Anastasia is also single handedly creating frameworks to help Amplitude customers be more successful. Please meet the Ampliteer, Anastasia Fullerton…
What motivated you to join Amplitude?
I was looking for a company where I could have real impact on achieving a common goal. I was a college athlete, so it’s been ingrained in me that collaboration, persistence and work ethic pay off.
I find it super motivating to be able to see the positive effect of my contributions. Working with a strong team is also key to my learning and growth. I need to work with people who aren’t afraid to challenge ideas, ask difficult questions or trust me to figure out a solution. It’s hard to have these candid relationships if you don’t enjoy and respect the people who surround you. It became very clear in my interview process that Amplitude was filled with super smart people who would help me get to the next level quickly.
Tell us about your role. How did you get into Customer Success?
I’ve always been someone who needs both sides of my brain stimulated to be excited and motivated. At Stanford, I had a great major-Management Science and Engineering—that was perfect for me. However, when I moved to consulting, I struggled to find that combination and wanted to find opportunities to be more creative in my day-to-day work.
When I came across Amplitude’s Customer Success team I felt immediately intrigued–a customer-facing role focused on analytics. I was super excited to find a position that encouraged me to flex my analytical, technical AND my interpersonal skills. Problem-solving is a strength of mine and the Customer Success team requires me to not only tackle different issues every day but also create and iterate on our processes and best practices.
Customer Success means something different at every company. What does it mean at Amplitude?
I looked at a lot of Customer Success teams when I decided to make a transition from consulting to startups. A lot of Customer Success Manager roles are really Account Management with a few extra educational touchpoints. But Customer Success at Amplitude–I quickly learned on the job–is a lot more than that. We get to help our customers fundamentally change the way they think about analytics and their product development processes. We get to discuss our customer’s product strategy and see first-hand how Amplitude helps them drive business outcomes. I love that I get to talk to customers everyday on a whole range of problems they’re working on like their experiments, the correlations they see in their trends, or how they’re trying to drive revenue.
My favorite moments are when I am speaking with a customer and they say, “We saw this interesting data point in Amplitude, so we made this change, and saw this improve!” It’s also exciting to be the internal voice of our customers. Our Product Development team takes customer feedback very seriously. It feels wonderful to show our customers that we have built a feature based on their requests. Another favorite moment of feedback we hear is, “I am so impressed by your fast release cycles. Amplitude builds things I want before I even know I want it!” It makes me proud to be a part of such a dynamic and innovative company.
What does an average day look for you?
It really depends on the day and that’s one of the things I love about my job. I always have customer calls, which can be focused on anything from setting up a customer’s data so they can answer questions, to improving their product analytics strategy, or aligning on how they are working towards their goals. I spend a fair amount of time on internal projects as well, like developing our Data Taxonomy Playbook or working on a new Funnel Conversion Framework.
Often, a portion of my day is devoted to cross functional work, like syncing up with our product team and discussing internal requests or working with product marketing to create some collateral for our customers. Our entire team also devotes a lot of time to our personal growth-so we discuss strategies / tactics and provide lots of feedback to one another. And of course, there are administrative things like emails and scheduling, too.
What’s do you find to be the most rewarding part of your role?
Seeing our customers be successful and driving a business outcome through an insight they found in Amplitude, and seeing my teammates grow.
If you could be a kitchen utensil, what would you be and why?
A spoon. I love to stir: it is multifunctional, it brings things together and it brings ice cream to my mouth.
Two words you’d use to describe Amplitude?
Mm, two words—brevity is not my strong suit…! I’d say hungry. Though not like the food hungry, like the growth and improvement hungry… although we do have a big community around eating lunch together (and snacks), so I guess the food hungry works, too! Short answer: hungry and hungry.
