A Day In The CX Life With CCW Digital: Meet Claire Cowger, Sr. Customer Success Team Manager At Bitly

Welcome back to A Day In The CX Life With CCW Digital, a series where we take a look into the people, technology, tools and trends that drive the customer contact industry. In this series we ask employees just like you to share how they spend their workday–from wake-up routines to meetings and what’s on their dinner plate for the evening.

In this daily log we meet Claire Cowger, Senior Customer Success Team Manager at Bitly. If you've ever heard the phrase "link in bio" or clicked through a short url link in a social media post only to discover it's dozens of characters long (and pretty unsightly if you ask us), chances are you've heard of, seen or used Bitly. At Advertising Week New York, CCW Digital connected with the Bitly team to learn firsthand how digital enagegment and link sharing can help customer centric organizations promote their products and connect their commuities.

Today Cowger will offer up a first-hand account of what managing customer success looks like behind the screen, while sharing along the way how her fur baby, food and physical fitness help power here through what turns out to be a pretty busy Tuesday. 

Name: Claire Cowger

Occupation/Company: Sr. Customer Success Team Manager, Bitly 

Industry: Tech

Age: 29

Location: Folsom, CA 

Years At Role: 7

Daily Tasks: My time with Bitly has been focused on managing a team of five customer success managers (CSMs) and one onboarding manager. My responsibilities include creating and executing programs that promote product adoption and growth.

As I reflect, it’s been an incredible opportunity to work at Bitly and be part of the team that helps to grow our Connections Platform, a multi-product platform that helps brands and businesses of all sizes build meaningful connections with their audiences. We have millions of global users and hundreds of thousands of customers who use our branded links, QR Codes, and link-in-bio solutions.

We’ve recently launched some exciting updates including a new Customizable Dashboard for Bitly Analytics and our new API for 2D Barcodes. The new Bitly API for 2D Barcodes helps retailers and CPG companies create countless 2D Barcodes to scale hundreds of thousands of codes for seamless integration and efficiency across all operations.

Professional Goals: My professional goal is to lead a team of self-starting innovators who focus on customer health and retention. I also very much value learning from my mentors and want to continue to prioritize that element in my career while working my way toward a director-level position. 

Personal Hobbies: I love yoga, traveling, cooking, reading on my Kindle, hiking, and snuggling with my dog!

TUESDAY

5:30 am: My alarm goes off around this time and after an optional 10-minute snooze, I get up to start my day. I love to work out in the mornings, it helps me kick-start my day. So I get ready for the gym. My goal is to be out of the house by 6 am to go to the gym. 

7 am: After I get home from my workout, the sun is usually out and shining and I make sure to get outside with my coffee and enjoy some Vitamin D. I’ll start checking my Slacks and emails during this time too to catch up on anything urgent.

I’m based on the West Coast and a lot of team members that I manage are based on the East Coast, so I like to be up early to catch up on all of the messages and emails that are already circulating for the day. While I’m getting ready for my day I love to listen to different podcasts–I’m really into the Huberman Lab right now. 

8 am: My meetings typically start around this time. My top priority in this role is to ensure that my team cultivates exceptional customer relationships, advancing Bitly's best practices and fostering ongoing innovation with our product. Our goal as a team is to ensure that we are setting our customers up for success and growth across all of our products.

On Tuesdays, I start with one-on-ones with my CSMs to ensure they are set up for success for the week. I also like to check and see if they have any blockers that I can help them with. We also use our time to go through our Gainsight reports which give us insights into customer usage data, the health of the accounts, and where there may be possible growth opportunities. 

9 am: Around this time, I have a weekly sync with our Gainsight and RevOps teams to review the current projects we are working on. We are currently discussing working on version updates to a new program we launched in ‘Q4 which is an automated program running out of Gainsight to help target and improve the customer experience within their first 90 days. This also includes kick-off calls, automated emails triggered based on adoption, and calls-to-action flagged to the CSM/Onboarding team. 

10 am: I have an All Customer Success team meeting with my team of CSMs, my co-managers, and their respective CS teams. We cover updates we have from a leadership level for the team and also use this time as an open forum. Typically we talk through strategy for customer renewals and growth. We also touch on any blockers the team may be facing and use the time to be as collaborative as possible.

11 am: I use this time to meet with our Sr. Director of Customer Marketing. We sync on upcoming initiatives that we have to tackle together, for example, hosting customer engagement webinars on key topics. We also discuss new ways to get our community involved.

12 pm: I have more 1:1s with my CSMs and usually I try to squeeze in a break for lunch. During the workday, I need something quick and easy. Usually I meal prep on Sundays to have easy access to lunch and not take away too much time from my day. 

1 pm: Depending on the week I am pulled into many different meetings. For example, this past week I met with our product and product marketing teams to discuss new features we hope to launch as well as pricing and how we plan to go to market. In other weeks, I may be meeting with our legal team to discuss contract updates and more.

2 pm: My first meeting break of the day. As most of my team is winding their day down on the East Coast, I use this time to work on all the projects and follow-up tasks that were discussed in the meetings. This is my time to strategize on retention and growth as these are my two main focus areas. 

3 pm: I usually need to step away from screen time at this point. I like to go in my backyard (weather dependent) and lay on my acupuncture mat. This is also a chance to clear my head and think through some of the problems I am looking to solve. 

4 pm: As I wrap up the day, I get back to any emails and Slacks that have come in throughout the day that weren’t urgent. I also finish up any tasks or reports I am working on. 

5 pm: I love to cook! Typically at this point, I’m starting my dinner prep for my fiance and me. A typical meal is salmon, potatoes, and broccoli. If I am feeling fancy, I’ll whip out my homemade zucchini meatballs and pair them with zoodles. 

6 pm: After dinner, my fiance and I will take our baby (aka our Shiba Inu), Kiki, out for a walk. I usually get my steps in during the day with my walking pad under my standing desk, but nothing beats getting out to the fresh air!

7 pm: I usually open my laptop one last time to see if there are any other urgent customer emails or if there is anything I need to prep for the next day. This past week, I spent this time digging into a new AI feature we are testing. 

8 pm: This is my time to catch up on my guilty pleasure—reality TV. It helps me to decompress and get my mind off the busy day. 

10 pm: Bedtime and time to reflect on the day! 

Photo courtesy of Claire Cowger.

Know somebody who might be a good fit for our series? If you’d like to nominate a member of your team or highlight new initiative your organization is tackling through your work, email wandy.ortiz@cmpteam.com