ZeroNorth to strengthen focus on customer experience with recent addition to c-suite: Meet our new Chief Customer Experience Officer Mel Simons

Forging strong bonds with customers has been the red thread throughout Mel’s career. She began her journey into customer experience as a strategic key account manager, which later led her to take on leadership roles within customer experience: “I’m essentially interested in how humans interact and build long-lasting relationships. It has been a driver for me personally and professionally”, Mel explains. 

As she moved into managing customer-facing teams in SaaS companies, she quickly realised how integral making authentic connections is to keeping your customers happy when providing software solutions, “I think more and more companies are focusing on the human aspect of their business, and specifically becoming more customer-centric. They realise the customers are the reason why we’re all here. Everything else will follow.”
 

Creating strong bonds with your customers begins before they have signed the dotted line. For Mel, it’s crucial that every customer has a great start to their journey: “It’s important that customers feel like they’re in good hands from the very beginning, that they know what they’re getting, and that they’re getting onboard with a trusted partner that is going to make sure they unlock the full value potential of the software they’re buying.”

“The maritime industry is at a pivotal turning point in terms of digitalisation, and it is our responsibility to make sure our customers have a positive, transformative experience with our platform. It all starts with a smooth onboarding process, where the customer truly feels nurtured and taken care of.”     

Customer-centricity is ideally built into the very process of software development. One of the things Mel is most looking forward to in her journey with ZeroNorth is expanding on the strong relationship between our customers and how the platform itself is developed, “Customer feedback is key to building good software. It’s critical that as a company you’re able to translate the needs of your customers into simple, practical software that makes their life easier and makes it easier for them to make an impact. Our ambition to decarbonise shipping can only be realised insofar as our customers are able to use the technology we’ve developed.”

Adding to ZeroNorth’s overall mission, Mel says: “Of course, making an impact was a big draw card in terms of joining the team. I’m from New Zealand, we’re born part fish, and I’ve been sailing since I was 6 weeks old. I’m very passionate about the environment and doing what I can to help limit the impact of human activities. I figure, we all spend so much of our lives at work, why not contribute to something worthwhile at the same time, like reducing emissions from the shipping industry.” 

“At ZeroNorth we just help our customers make smart decisions. We make it easy to reduce your emissions and increase your profit as a company at the same time. It’s a win-win situation, powered by data. Data is so powerful in terms of improving the foundation upon which you make decisions, and it’s right there at your fingertips. You just need the right software to unleash the potential.”