A day in the life of a working student in Customer Success
My working day starts between 09:00 and 10:30. At 09:00 the “Daily” takes place, where everyone in the team presents their tasks for the upcoming day. The interesting thing is that as the work progresses, I am able to decipher more and more of our developers’ technical buzz. After that, I try to prepare for the things ahead or plan my day in more detail. I start at 10:30 a.m. at the latest, because now the first visioncheckouts go live.
The next 1.5 hours are pretty intense: All visioncheckouts start their service at the same time. Here a dish is not served recognizably, there a drink is not deposited in the menu. During this time, I try to solve as many tasks as possible so as not to keep our developers from their real work.
We almost always spend the lunch break together, in 80% of the cases we go to the nearby “Tante Edith”, which sells balanced home cooking.
Back in the office, I create a rough report about the past day and share it internally with the whole team. This way, we can rejoice together about milestones reached and exchange ideas about possible improvements.
When the report is finished, there are usually a few hours left in which I am involved in current operational projects, or as I called it at the beginning: The “this and that”. Here, I take on projects that are close to my heart: For example, I analyze data, provide feedback to customers, submit feature requests to developers, or help optimize operational processes.
After work, I often stay in the office and take advantage of the pleasant geothermal coolness to get a few things done for university.
What it comes down to
When working in the visioncheckout operations team, it is important to keep in mind that many workflows and processes are only just being created, and as we grow, the number of construction sites we need to address increases.
In any case, it is important to turn on your own head and share your ideas and approaches with the rest of the team. Even if some ideas seem ridiculous to you (for example, giving a monthly cake to particularly motivated customers), most of them are well received. They are thought through by the team and often implemented in one way or another.
When implementing such ideas, I usually work independently, but if there are any questions, my colleagues are happy to help.
It often helps me to get to grips with the product by thinking about how customers or their guests interact with the visioncheckout and what technical and operational processes are behind it. This helps to counteract conflicts between customers, guests and the product at an early stage. In doing so, our developers support me with questions about the functionality and processes of the visioncheckout.
I also have the chance to be constantly confronted with new tasks and thus learn new skills. This includes, among other things, commissioning or the analysis of data.
It is always important for us to have a consistent communication within our team. Since we working students work on different days, but are usually involved in the same projects, it is always important that we coordinate and communicate progress openly.
The Customer Success Team
Work while studying?
In addition to the financial advantages of being a working student, working at visioncheckout also offers a completely different – for me personally more important – advantage: The refreshing application of the theory that you have learned at university: Be it statistics, computer science or business studies: I am constantly looking, like a dog looking for a bone, for opportunities to apply the sometimes abstract academic content in my work. Admittedly: It’s not all that easy. But, when an opportunity arises somewhere, both sides win: the visioncheckout and the university. Apart from that, it’s just generally motivating to work in an applied way.
Since many of the team are just out of university, it’s also always nice to get advice about the university: Would you pick this module or that? How hard is module ‘x’? In the meantime, I also see my colleagues at the visioncheckout as mentors for everything to do with studying. An additional advantage I enjoy especially in the visioncheckout team is that it is made easy for me to deal with the parallel existence of university and work. An important factor here is the flexible working hours and that the team shows great understanding for stressful phases during the studies.
What happens away from work
We also get together at regular intervals away from work, for example to do a few rounds at the Karlsruhe carnival right next to our office, to start a darts tournament or to sail on a catamaran along the Croatian coast. The focus is not only on fun and one or two Aperol Spritz, but on a team spirit in which people feel comfortable.
