What to Expect When Adopting New HR Tech: Navigating Global Customer Care

Customer care is evolving, driven by the “Shift Left” philosophy — a strategy that empowers customers with self-service tools and the knowledge to address HR tech challenges independently. The “Shift Left” philosophy is built on giving users early access to self-service tools. This allows Phenom to engage customers in beta for testing with the purpose of rolling the tech out to Phenom’s entire user base. This is a collaborative and innovative approach that provides high-tech solutions that are always backed with high-personal touch customer support. Our Global Customer Care (GCC) team has adopted this method to help talent acquisition, management, HRBP’s, and HRIT teams move from a reactive approach to support to empowered Phenom users.  

Chapter 2 of Customer Obsession Day 2024 highlighted GCC’s journey from basic implementation support to becoming a trusted partner in customer success. The session emphasized giving stakeholders, especially C-suite leaders, clear visibility into platform performance, and connecting technology investments to ROI and productivity gains. Customer feedback has been pivotal in refining tools and processes, ensuring solutions address real-world needs.

As Melissa Kellerman, Director of Global Customer Care, shared, “It’s been an incredible journey over the past decade and a half, filled with growth, innovation, and a deep commitment to improving the customer experience.”

Let’s explore how this transformation — from building a customer-centric foundation to adopting structural changes — has redefined the approach to customer care.

Watch the complete video here, or continue reading for the highlights from Chapter 2.

Building on a Customer-Centric Foundation

The evolution of customer success at Phenom reflects a journey built on solving real HR challenges of finding talent faster and developing employees to their full potential. Phenom’s mission has always centered on understanding and addressing the needs of HR professionals through innovative solutions that deliver phenomenal experiences. 

This commitment has strengthened over time, leading to the development of the "shift left" support model - an approach that combines advanced self-service tools with high-touch expert support. Through early access programs and beta testing, Phenom collaborates closely with our customers, using their insights to shape and refine solutions before making them widely available. 

From Foundation to Growth

As the foundation for customer success solidified, Phenom's attention turned to scaling its support infrastructure to match the expanding needs of talent professionals to manage and support the entire talent lifecycle. Initially, Phenom's primary focus on customer success was helping new customers get started with implementation. While this was effective for initial onboarding, it became clear that as the product evolved, the customer care strategy needed to expand. Recognizing the growing complexity of customer needs, Phenom began broadening its services, setting the stage for a more diversified approach to customer support.

Expanding Global Reach 

As Phenom's customer base grew internationally, the need for a comprehensive global support strategy became paramount. This strategic expansion led to the development of a robust support model built on three essential pillars:

• Localized Support: Establishing regional teams to guarantee customers receive personalized solutions customized to their cultural and operational needs.

• 24/7 Availability: Expanding across time zones provides seamless, round-the-clock assistance.

• Enhanced Customer Connections: Localization allows for deeper customer engagement, fostering trust and long-term partnerships.

This expansion represents a cornerstone of Phenom’s customer-first approach, ensuring every organization, regardless of location, benefits from its solutions.

Evolving Support Structure

As Phenom's global presence expanded, the need for specialized support teams became evident. This led to a strategic restructuring of customer care into three distinct yet interconnected teams, each designed to address specific aspects of the customer journey:

• Customer-Focused Team: On the front lines, Technical Support Account Managers (TSAMs) and Tier Leads serve as dedicated customer advocates. These experts not only manage day-to-day inquiries but also develop a deep understanding of each customer's unique needs, ensuring personalized and proactive support throughout their journey.

• Product-Focused Team: Working in close collaboration with product and engineering teams, support engineers bring technical depth to complex challenges. This tight integration ensures rapid problem resolution while providing valuable insights that drive product improvements and innovation.

• Technical Backend Team: Behind the scenes, the backend team analyzes support patterns, orchestrates platform upgrades, and develops self-service tools. Their work focuses on identifying trends and creating scalable solutions that enhance the overall customer experience.

This three-fold support structure creates a comprehensive ecosystem where each team's expertise complements the others, enabling Phenom to deliver both the technical excellence and personal attention that modern talent teams require. Through this approach, customers benefit from specialized support that evolves alongside their growing needs while maintaining the high-touch service that has been a hallmark of Phenom's customer success philosophy.

Empowering Teams Through Self-Service 

Global Customer Care restructured its internal teams to provide both technical support and product-focused support effectively. It became clear that teams also needed to have access to the necessary resources to learn independently, regardless of their location or technical expertise. 

Here are the tools Phenom provides every customer to manage their own technology, 

• Phenom Explorer (LMS): Access structured learning paths that build technical expertise and platform mastery through on-demand training modules customized to each user's pace

• Phenom User Community: Connect with power users worldwide, sharing knowledge and best practices through an active community platform

• Support Portal: Navigate an extensive knowledge base of technical documentation, guides, and solution articles

Visibility Tools for Platform Health

• System Health Monitoring: Receive real-time alerts and updates about platform performance

• Performance Dashboard: Track key metrics and system stability through intuitive dashboards

• Sandbox Environment: Test and validate changes in a secure environment before implementing them in production

These complementary tools ensure teams can both master platform capabilities and maintain optimal system performance, creating a foundation for long-term success with Phenom technology.

Enhancing Tools and Processes for Better Support

The evolution of talent technology demands more than just responsive support, and self-guided education - it requires an ecosystem that enables teams to thrive independently while having expert guidance at their fingertips. Phenom's support infrastructure combines self-service capabilities with strategic customization options that scale to meet organizational needs.

Phenom’s integrated suite of tools forms the foundation of platform success::

• Support Portal: A centralized hub for accessing product documentation, community forums, and self-service options.

• Phenom Explorer Platform: Designed for creating role specific learning paths that guide users from basic knowledge to an advanced understanding of how to optimize the Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience Platform across all roles — including Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, or HRIT. 

HRIT Hub: Consolidating HRIT’s ability to monitor system performance, access, and monitor integration health into one location, the HRIT Hub ensures customers can navigate support offerings effortlessly.

Managed Service Request (MSR): Strategic Platform Customization

Customization is essential for organizations to realize the full potential of the Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience platform. As technology needs evolve, the ability to tailor the platform to specific use cases becomes increasingly vital for driving talent success.

Understanding MSR Types

• Transactional MSRs: Through Service Hub and HRIT Hub, teams can independently manage straightforward updates and configuration changes, streamlining routine platform maintenance

• Professional MSRs: These catalog-based requests enable strategic customizations, from complex workflows to unique integrations, ensuring the platform aligns perfectly with organizational needs

Flexible Customization Options
Phenom’s MSR framework scales to match different organizational needs and implementation timelines:

• Advanced Support: Delivers access to two catalog MSRs monthly, enabling strategic planning and systematic platform evolution

• Premium Support: Provides twenty catalog MSRs monthly (non-rollover) delivering extensive flexibility to customize and optimize the platform rapidly

Driving Long-Term Value 

This approach to platform customization reflects Phenom's commitment to customer success. By providing flexible MSR options, organizations can confidently scale their talent technology to meet evolving business objectives. Talent acquisition and management teams can focus on strategic initiatives, while HRIT teams are confident in system functionality, ensuring their Phenom platform continues to deliver increasing value over time. Whether implementing new workflows, optimizing existing processes, or expanding platform capabilities, organizations have the tools and support needed to achieve their talent goals efficiently and effectively.

Bringing Visibility Through Monitoring

The foundation of platform excellence relies on clear visibility into both system performance and user experience. Phenom's monitoring tools provide just that - actionable insights that drive reliability and responsiveness:

• Sentiment Monitoring: Proactive sentiment monitoring across all logged support tickets enables our teams to identify and address potential concerns before they escalate, ensuring consistent platform excellence and customer satisfaction.

• Application Performance Monitoring (APM): Real-time visibility into platform health, integration performance for jobsync, applyflows, and , and system stability enables teams to maintain optimal operations and user experience.

This comprehensive monitoring approach ensures organizations can focus on their talent initiatives while having confidence in their platform's performance and reliability is being supported by Phenom.

Feedback-Driven Enhancements

Customer feedback is essential for aligning solutions with real-world business needs. Standard tools often lack the flexibility to meet diverse workflows, creating inefficiencies that hinder productivity. A seamless onboarding experience is equally critical, as complicated setups or inadequate guidance can delay adoption and frustrate teams. 

Even the most feature-rich products require usability refinements informed by user input to ensure adoption and engagement. Stability is another priority — technical glitches or unclear communication during critical processes can disrupt operations. Finally, acting on feedback builds trust, transforming companies from mere vendors into valued partners.

To address these challenges, organizations must take a customer-first approach, ensuring tools and processes evolve to meet user needs effectively. Phenom actively incorporates customer feedback to refine its tools and processes. For example:

• Requests for faster workflows inspired the streamlined MSR process, now segmented into transactional and professional categories.

• Insights on stability and reliability informed updates to platform monitoring and real-time communication tools.

Tailored Support Packages for Every Need

Bringing it all together. Phenom’s approach to customer care is a holistic one, and every organization has unique needs. To help our partners achieve their talent tech goals Phenom’s support packages — Standard, Advanced, and Premium — are designed to balance independence with personalized assistance, empowering customers to manage systems confidently.

Standard Support Package

The Standard Package, provided to all customers, delivers powerful self-guided support that empowers your team 24/7, 365 days a year:

• Comprehensive Self-Service Toolkit: Access a full suite of resources including the HRIT Hub, support portal, Phenom User Community, platform monitoring, and Phenom Explorer (LMS). These tools empower your team to independently assess and resolve technology needs in real-time without raising a support ticket.

• Expert Support Access: Get direct access to the Phenom Global Customer Care (GCC) team and product engineers for all support requests, with committed response and resolution times for defects and the ability to escalate when needed. All backed by a 99.5% uptime guarantee and proactive sentiment monitoring for support tickets.

• Continuous Learning and Community: Connect directly with Phenom's engineering teams and power users through Phenom Explorer and user community. Participate in global office hours and customer roundtables to share insights and best practices that help you maximize your Phenom investment.

• Proactive System Monitoring: Receive regular health check emails about system stability and performance, ensuring you're notified of any issues before they impact your operations. Plus, manage roles and access through HRIT Hub to maintain smooth operations.

Advanced Support Package

The Advanced Support Package elevates your support experience with priority access and enhanced monitoring capabilities to keep your HR tech stack running smoothly:

• Accelerated Support Resolution: Get priority case routing for all support requests with enhanced response times of 7 business days or less. Includes direct access to the Phenom Global Customer Care (GCC) team and formal root cause analysis for Severity 0 defects, ensuring critical issues are resolved swiftly and thoroughly.

• Real-Time System Intelligence: Gain powerful visibility into your platform's health with Application Performance Monitoring (APM). This self-service tool lets you evaluate integration performance and monitor system health anytime, anywhere - helping you spot and address potential issues before they impact your operations.

• Strategic Service Management: Take control of platform enhancements with two Tier 1 or one Tier 2 Catalog Managed Service Requests (MSRs) monthly. Plus, access technical consulting sessions to help you optimize your Phenom implementation and maximize ROI.

Early Access Advantages: Stay ahead of the curve with priority access to beta products and new features. Includes two general admission tickets to IAMPHENOM annual conference, connecting you with the latest innovations and industry best practices.

As Tumolo shared, this package “gives teams more room to customize their technology and align it with their strategic goals.”

Premium Support Package

The Premium Support Package delivers a white-glove experience with personalized, strategic support designed for organizations with complex HR technology needs:

• Dedicated Strategic Partnership: Work directly with a Technical Support Account Manager (TSAM) who becomes an extension of your team. Your TSAM provides technical consultation, best-practice guidance, and bi-annual on-site visits, ensuring your Phenom implementation aligns perfectly with your business objectives. Includes regular GCC reviews of support tickets, MSRs, and KPI metrics to optimize your platform's performance.

• Unmatched Response Times: Experience the fastest resolution times available with priority case routing and five business day service request resolution commitment. Get comprehensive root cause analysis for both Severity 0 and 1 defects, plus enhanced quality assurance planning to keep your platform running flawlessly.

• Maximum Platform Flexibility: Drive innovation with twenty monthly Catalog Managed Service Requests (no carry-over) to customize your platform as needed. Includes a dedicated sandbox environment for safe testing, yearly health checks, and technical consulting sessions to ensure your platform evolves with your organization.

• Advanced Monitoring with Expert Guidance: Leverage Application Performance Monitoring (APM) with personalized TSAM monitoring and alert guidance, ensuring potential issues are identified and addressed proactively. Your TSAM provides regular insights to optimize your Phenom instance for your specific business needs.

Real World Success Story: Sevita Health

Sevita Health, a healthcare organization managing a large talent acquisition team, sought to maximize the efficiency of their recruitment processes by fully utilizing Phenom’s platform. Recognizing the potential to streamline operations, the partnership began with a comprehensive review and optimization of their workflows to ensure the team could leverage all the platform's features effectively.

This included reintroducing key tools, such as the Phenom Chatbot, and refining communication workflows to align with Sevita’s operational needs. Pamela Holloway, Director of Talent Acquisition, shared, “By incorporating customer feedback, Phenom has continually refined features like catalog MSRs, simplifying processes and improving productivity for teams like ours.”

They also implemented a “train the trainer” model, empowering subject matter experts within their recruiting teams to cascade knowledge. This approach led to widespread adoption of tools like automated interview scheduling, which significantly reduced manual workload for recruiters. The result? Faster hiring processes and greater recruiter satisfaction.

A Commitment to Customer Success

Phenom’s evolution in global customer care highlights its unwavering commitment to innovation, customer-centricity, and meaningful partnerships. The ‘Shift Left’ philosophy continues to guide Phenom’s journey, serving as the foundation for scalable, customer-aligned solutions that evolve with user needs. From refining tools and processes to tailoring support packages that meet diverse needs, every step has been designed to empower customers and create impactful experiences.

Kellerman summarized this vision perfectly: “The future of global customer care is incredibly bright, and we’re focused on making thoughtful decisions that will continue to enhance your overall experience as a customer.” 

Interested in learning more about Phenom's support offerings? Connect with our team today or reach out to your Account Manager to explore how we can help elevate your talent acquisition experience.