Interview with Radka from Customer Support

Hi Radka! In Purple Trading, you take care of the Support Department, but there are many things we can imagine under the term customer support. Could you tell us more about your work in this department?

In a strict sense, we do customer support, so we take care of our customers :) Whenever a client has any inquiry or needs to solve a problem, they simply call us, a smart automatic tool takes the call, telling him all the options and after a while, the client is connected to us… No, I am just kidding! This is exactly what we don’t do and you’ll never experience this with our department.

Despite the fact that we’re a technology-driven company, we don’t even think about implementing any automatic tools and everything is free of any bots or recorders. We’re aware of the fact that our business is changing each day and the nature of client inquiries as well, therefore the old human approach proved to be the best for us.

And it’s not only about an individual communication with the client. As we know each procedure the client needs to overcome, we’re trying to improve our systems all the time, providing ideas to our technological department and only make life easier – not only to us, but also to our clients.

So, we can state that this is customer support as it should be. What are you mostly proud of at your job?
Of my team. I see the Support Department team as an information center. You never know what the person on the other side is going to be interested in or ask for. That forces us to educate ourselves all the time, to move forward and know the work of other departments. Usually, we’re also some kind of a negative-feedback bumper, being often a test of assertiveness, requiring a special combination of communication abilities. Finding such people is not an easy job and I am proud that we have been successful so far.

I need to admit that it does not look very easy. However, let’s take a look into the future. If you should introduce us your Support Department after one year from today, how would it look like?
It’s even more experienced, keeping the same values as today. My vision is to bring our company values closer to our clients. In my opinion, customer support is seen mostly negatively in the world. Try to call the number of a mobile operator and you’ll confirm my words probably. Customer is waiting all the time, is somewhere in the row, the operator does not get their problem and reconnects them to someone else all the time. And this is something we’re trying to change. We want to eliminate this arrogant and lengthy way of communication, making the orientation in our systems easier for the customer, not to overwhelm them with information, providing only important ones and simply to provide TOP service for our products.

I believe that you’re going to be successful. But let’s come back to presence.. It’s possible that we’ll be looking for a new person to our Support Department team. What should be the person like?
As I mentioned a while ago, looking for a new “support" guy is very hard. It should be, in particular, a person having sense for working with people, who is willing to improve on a daily basis and willing to do something more than just assist the client beyond their expectations. The rest can be learned if the person wants to.

In case we find such person, what kind of boss can this person look forward to? Tell us more about who really Radka Pevná is as a person?
I need to admit that I have never studied any management school, so my team leadership is based mostly on my feelings and empathy. At the beginning, it’s necessary to pay attention to people to adopt the philosophy of our company and to build trust. Then the freedom phase comes, so each part of the team works autonomously. More than a boss, I see myself as the most experienced part of the team, gaining new experience and abilities all the time, being here for the others who need help. So far, it has worked great.

These days, the world is caught by coronavirus pandemic, having crucial impacts and from the economic point of view, each company had to adjust to this situation. What impacts has the actual situation and limited mode to Purple Trading and your team?
We’re used to working together in a single office as one team and helping each other with more difficult and non-standard cases across departments, so I see this as the biggest difference. Now, we’re separated, so we call each other through videocalls more frequently to keep everyone in the team informed and to keep everyone in the loop when it comes to new features for clients, what kind of campaigns are running or what kind of changes we’re implementing, so no customer’s inquiry surprises anyone of our team.

And how is it going so far? Did you have to make any changes in the team? Implement new procedures or anything like that?
Our workload increased significantly as many people see the actual situation on markets as a big opportunity. So, in fact, we simply need to bite the bullet and we can’t avoid overtimes, having impact on other departments in the company as well. 

On the other hand, I realize that in these days, many people may have a different problem, being worried about their job, so I am rather glad that from the morning we can’t stop and relax to provide the best possible care to our customer and with regard to this, I am glad for that. Furthermore, at least we don’t think that much about the quarantine. 

Fortunately, we feel totally comfortable in the online world as each of us had certain freedom to work from anywhere even before,  so this has not surprised us negatively in any way and everyone sustains forced “home office” remarkably. Therefore, by now, we did not have to implement any special measures. Nevertheless, we’re in contact with our customers as much as possible and we pay attention to the fact that everything works as it should despite crazy markets.

I am fascinated by this extraordinary situation and I am waiting for the impacts of it also outside of the financial world not only in these days, but also in the future. I believe it may teach us a lot and we’ll appreciate freedom even more when the quarantine is suspended, as before, we somehow considered it as a natural thing.

Could you imagine working like this for example for the entire year?
It would be hard, but everything can be done if you have the right people with you. And after almost a one-month quarantine, I can confirm that we have such team! If such situation occurred in fact, the existing tempo and enormous interest of customers is unsustainable for our capacities from a long-term perspective, and we would have to find additional support members for our team, and continue in the simplification and automation of certain aspects. But it could be done.

However, personally, I believe that this situation will calm down soon and we will go back to “normal,” into our beautiful office we miss very much these days.

So, we hope it’s not going to be that bad and we keep fingers crossed for you also for the future. By the way, why do you think that there are so many satisfied people in our company?
It’s because we have the best HR Department in the world, taking care of us these days very nicely and paying much attention to the fact what kind of people we’re onboarding to our team. It’s not only about the knowledge and experience, but about something more, we call the “Purple heart.”
Thanks to this fact only, we’re able to keep our precious company culture and pull together as one team in better conditions or even in more demanding ones. Whoever would not believe it and would like to try to work in our company, he may come to check it. Naturally, only when it becomes possible… :)