Yohan Loyer started his job at Gorgias as the first Customer Success Manager for Europe. His current position is EMEA Partner Manager, with the goal of growing Gorgias’ presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The role boils down to building meaningful relationships and being a reliable, trustworthy partner for our agency partners.
In this interview, Yohan tells his story and we learn more about his internal career development and the environment Gorgias provided to nurture it accordingly.
1) What is your role at Gorgias right now and how do you find it?
My role is to help our ecommerce agency partners:
- Understand the value of Gorgias
- Keep Gorgias top of mind when recommending customer service solutions to their customers
- Identify customers that are a good fit for Gorgias
As a social person who likes to interact with other people and has hands-on experience working with Gorgias customers, this role is a great fit for me. There really is no chance to be bored in Partnerships!
2) What did you do before Gorgias? What is your educational and professional background?
I did my undergraduate degree in international business in New York, where I got a scholarship to play for my university’s soccer team. Then, I did my master's in Business Consulting and Information Systems Management in France.
Right after university, I worked as an IT consultant and then moved to Salesforce as part of the EMEA customer success team in Dublin. I worked as a Customer Success Manager (CSM) for 3.5 years, when my main focus was helping the company’s customers get the most out of the Salesforce platform and resources.
Apart from that, I have always been passionate about new technologies and how they impact the world, so continuing to work in tech and ecommerce at Gorgias is not a coincidence.
3) How did you find out about Gorgias and what made you apply to work here?
I was looking for a role in a fast-growing company in the ecommerce space with an innovative product, strong company culture, and competitive package. I did some research online and found out about Gorgias on an ecommerce blog, if I remember correctly.
Gorgias had everything I was looking for. They were also hiring for their first Customer Success Manager in Europe at that time, so it was perfect timing for me to apply!
4) What are the roles you had at Gorgias and how did they change over time?
I was initially recruited as the first Customer Success Manager (CSM) in Europe. We already had one Onboarding Manager in Europe when I joined (Emna Charfi, who is now the manager of our Customer Success team).
She was already working as a CSM with some customers (on top of her main role as Onboarding Manager). Even after I joined as the first full-time CSM in Europe, she continued as the CSM for some of our largest customers while I onboarded.
After a few months, I took over as the Customer Success Manager for our largest European customers for about 1.5 years, before transitioning to the Partnerships team last July.
I worked closely with Louis Lavedan from the Partnership team when I was a CSM, so I got to see what Partnerships was like. When he moved to San Fransico, taking over his role as Partner Manager for EMEA seemed like a logical next step.
5) What training and resources did Gorgias provide to help you in your new roles?
The Gorgias team has always been super helpful and available with me and new team members in general.
Learning directly from colleagues has definitely been one of the highlights of my onboarding and overall experience with Gorgias. Whether it is answering questions on Slack, sharing screens, recording Loom videos, or jumping on a quick call, there is always a Gorgian ready to help!
6) How did your manager (or others at Gorgias) help you upskill and grow yourself?
The two managers I worked with both have hands-on experience with Gorgias customers and partners, and a genuine desire to be helpful and see their team members grow. They are always reliable and helpful when needed, which builds trust and promotes a culture of feedback and transparency.
Gorgias as a company is obsessed with scaling and automating processes, and my managers have definitely lived up to those values and helped me become more efficient and see the big picture when working on projects.
At Gorgias, we are also lucky to have a best-in-class product and grow at a very rapid rate, which comes with a lot of super interesting challenges and opportunities. The company has a really unique positioning with an obsession for customer satisfaction, which all contribute to a great environment to work in.
7) How can you connect your experience with Gorgias's core values?
My experience at Gorgias so far has been very much aligned with our core values, especially “Customer first”, and “Maximize your impact”.
We live and breathe for customers, automate time-consuming tasks, share best practices with the rest of the team, and try out new tools and processes — all with the end goal of providing a better product and experience to merchants who use Gorgias.
Our managers highlight Gorgians who are living up to our core values weekly on our Slack channels, so we get to see first-hand all the great things our team does in accordance with our values.
8) What is your favorite thing about working at Gorgias?
As someone who worked closely with customers for all of my career, I think that my favorite thing at Gorgias is our huge focus on customer experience and satisfaction. Making our customers happy and successful, independent of their size, is our target and biggest investment as a company.
Whether it is reviewing our processes to make sure they benefit our customers, going the extra mile when helping our customers out, finding workarounds, prioritizing product features, or letting our customers get on a call with our highly available success and support teams, we are always doing things with our customers’ interest in mind.
9) If there is one thing you would like to change about the company, what would it be?
I guess it would maybe be the name of the company (haha). Simply because it’s hard to pronounce. Also, people don’t read or hear “Gorgias” for the first time and instantly know what we do.
10) What's next for you at Gorgias (and how is Gorgias helping you get there)?
As I started my new role as EMEA Partner Manager recently, my focus is becoming a great Partner Manager, first and foremost.
We have a pretty good presence and network in Europe, but it’s still in the early stages compared to the US. I am learning and getting a lot of help from our US team who built a very strong market presence and brand in the US, and I am super excited to help develop the Gorgias brand and customer base in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa!
Interested in joining Yohan and the rest of Gorgias team? Check out our jobs page to learn more about our benefits, interview process, and open roles.
