Ali’s New Joiner Experience: How IBM and His Flexible Mindset Eased the Transition

We recently met with one of our new joiners to the Customer Success Management team, Ali, who is based in the United Kingdom, and asked him to talk to us about his first weeks at IBM.

How has your IBM experience been so far?

I’ve only been with IBM for a short time, but I must emphasise how smooth the onboarding process has been and the extent to which it has settled me into the team. The combination of pre-onboarding, orientation, training, mentorship, and self-paced learning has proved efficient and informative. I was also delighted to hear about the IBM Employee Development Programmes offered to all IBMers. This dedicated, online career development platform places skills progression and growth in the hands of employees.

For instance, you can decide on your next career goal or opportunity and then simply work towards it using the extensive training modules.

What made you decide to join IBM?

In my previous role, I was a Solution Architect, focused on bridging the gap between business problems and organizational solutions. In my new role, I am doing similar work, but thanks to the technology focus of IBM, I’ve been able to expose myself to interesting software and tech like Hybrid Cloud. In this sense, now I will help customers not just solve their problems, but also acknowledge modernization, customization, and other areas that IBM can offer support to clients.

Navigating through life, I’ve always used the motto, “If you want to be successful, you need to work hard for it.” Looking specifically at IBM, I knew I wanted to work in this environment, and as such, I worked to achieve that goal. In my office, I have a whiteboard where I list my goals, visually, to ensure they’re always top of my mind. By doing this, when I’m feeling motivated, a quick glance at the whiteboard reminds me of what I’m aiming for and why my hard work is necessary.

If you’re putting in your best effort, you’ll get where you want and achieve what you desire. One of the goals I had on my board was to work at IBM in London, England, and here I am!

Can you provide an overview of your role?

As part of the Customer Success Management team, my focus is to apply my technical expertise to help customers address business challenges and achieve measurable outcomes with Hybrid Cloud and AI Growth Offerings. I am responsible for use-case identification, solution architecture design, minimum viable product (MVP) builds, and adoption of our IBM Growth Offerings and Cloud Paks, running on Red Hat OpenShift.

In addition, my role is to ensure a long-term relationship is kindled with clients. This is often achieved by building trust and opening the client up to the bigger picture of the solution. I am still very new to the role, yet I have already learned so much within my first weeks. Namely, I have been involved in RedHat, OpenShift, Hybrid Cloud, and much more.

What skills have been most impactful in your current role?

As the Customer Success Management role orientates around delivering customer solutions, it is vital to listen to what clients want actively and the questions they ask. Only once this information is gathered can a roadmap to a solution be formed. As many of the client projects we work on involve technology, having a certain technical capability has been quite useful. However, despite the tech prevalence, active listening, communication, and understanding of customer requirements remain the most useful and impactful skills I’ve used so far.

How have your hobbies influenced your job?

In my spare time, I break dance, train contortion, and help people to do handstands. These disciplines have taught me how to be both physically and mentally flexible. When starting a handstand workshop, the student will often have a closed mindset and simply believe they cannot do the exercise because they’ve never tried it before. This prejudgement acts as a blocker in their mind and stops the spread of solutions and motivation to improve their skills.

Comparing this to the Customer Success Management practice, when corporate clients come to us with complex problems, they have often categorized them as too difficult to solve. My role is to help them digest the barrier, show how it is workable, and provide realistic solutions through demos to prove to them that the problem can be solved.

Do you have any advice for those considering a career in Customer Success Management?

Don’t be afraid, and just apply. Sometimes the job description may sound overwhelming, but you need to challenge yourself in life. Just believe in yourself, apply to the role, and you will see how amazing the journey can be.

If you’re interested in learning more about Customer Success Management opportunities at IBM, visit our careers website and become a trusted advisor to our clients.