As one of our earliest employees, EverTrue Customer Success Manager Courtney Camps has played a key role in the continued success of hundreds of EverTrue customers, including Boston University.
I spoke to Courtney about her experience helping to bring the EverTrue platform to the BU fundraising team. See the Q&A below, and check out our full case study to learn more about BU’s success with EverTrue!
What were Boston University’s biggest goals in starting to work with EverTrue?
In starting to use the EverTrue app and GivingTree, BU saw an opportunity with LinkedIn and social data and being able to harness that for their constituent records. They wanted a tool that was fun, easy, and could get them the information they needed in a really digestible way. There are a lot of different goals that BU had, but one is that they are in the middle of a very large campaign, and they are always looking for ways that technology can aid them in meeting their objectives there.
In addition to achieving their monetary and participation goals, and saving them time, which we are helping them do, BU’s goal is to be on the cutting edge of fundraising and technology—and I think that they’re there with our products. With their new media team that’s out there exploring new things, like their crowdfunding platform or their EverTrue Alumni App or how they send emails, everything they do is exciting with the purpose of appealing to their alumni across the spectrum. That is part of why they brought us into the fold.
To you, what defines customer success?
It’s really all about the relationship between EverTrue and the institution, and establishing mutual goals, mutual understanding, and mutual timelines. I also think that having a level of respect from both sides is really important. Both sides have to be really fired up about a relationship in order to make it work. Right now, for EverTrue, customer success is when we’re collaborating in order to be able to achieve particular goals that a school has identified in terms of how social data can augment their existing plans, and then it is about meeting those goals. It’s about having mutual goals and a mutual understanding of what we can do to get there. What’s great about GivingTree is that from day one, you are receiving an uptick in your data and getting new data that you couldn’t have gotten before. I think that being open and excited about those possibilities is also a really big component of success. You have to believe in that social data to use it.
What has been the most rewarding part of working with the BU team?
What’s really awesome about BU is that they have such a cool team. My relationship with BU started with Leah Davis on their new media team and Kristy Kime on their alumni online engagement team. Leah and Kristy have not only been incredible internal champions for EverTrue, but also incredible internal champions for trying new things, bringing in a new technology, and being creative (also Kristen Lundeen!). Since day one, they’ve brought energy and excitement, and have been so eager to help EverTrue develop by sharing advice and ideas with us. Their enthusiasm has been contagious, and I think it has now grown to their entire team. Scott Nichols, their Senior Vice President, is just an incredible leader. Steve Hall, Steve Witkowski, Pat Hewett, David Frew, Terry McManus… all amazing fundraisers and leaders.
And aside from having a big team, there’s just such an opportunity at BU. As a huge school, they have so many different constituents and there’s a lot of untapped potential. It’s a cool data set to be able to work with—every industry is represented, every company is represented, their map fills every single corner of the world. It’s incredible to work with a team that’s so creative and excited about understanding their data in new ways.