Monday Guest Diego Tjen-A-Tak-Y3-W18

Mohammed Alqaq April 29, 2024April 29, 2024

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Get to know Diego Tjen-A-Tak

By: Mohammed Alqaq | April 29, 2024 | Year 3 – Week 18/2024

Hey there! My name is Diego Tjen-A-Tak, born and raised in Amsterdam and I live together with my girlfriend, 3-year-old son (Zion), 7-months-old daughter (Alix) and our two cats (Puma & Oscar).

Many people think I’m Latin American or something, but nope. My last name gives it away a bit. My roots are Chinese, Indonesian, Surinamese and also Lebanese. But my mother always told me “You’re a world citizen”.

When I’m not working or with my family, I like to read books, eat sushi, practice Japanese or ride my motorcycle

We asked Diego to take us through a journey telling us about his career path, how he spends his workday, what advice he can share with someone starting as a customer success manager, and many other questions.

Enjoy reading this interview

Tell us about your career path?

I started my career in retail. During my studies, I worked as a sales assistant in Amsterdam at Adidas, PUMA, and de Bijenkorf (a luxury department store). When I was younger I had a real obsession for shoes. I even had Jeremy Scott’s shoes (search for the Panda and Leopards Adidas shoes). I also have some experience as a recruiter for a staffing agency. After graduation, I moved into Customer Success.

I think my experience in retail really helped me with building a foundation for a sales mindset, relationship building, collaboration, and communication, which are important skills for a Customer Success Manager.

How did you join Customer Success?

“I want to become a Customer Success Manager”, said no kid ever. I think that every professional who is now in Customer Success just rolled into it. The same thing happened to me.

After I graduated in Human Resources, I really had no clue what I wanted to do. I always had an interest in technology, but I also knew that I wanted to do “something” with people.

A few months after my graduation I was approached by someone in my network that worked at a company looking to hire a Customer Success Manager. He said that I would be a perfect match for the role. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Customer Success Management, but the job description looked interesting.

We had a few conversations, and I decided to join the company and that’s where my Customer Success journey began.

How would you describe the ideal CSM candidate?

Everyone in Customer Success has a different background, so I think there is no “perfect” background to become a Customer Success Manager.

However, I do think that there are a few skills that an ideal CSM candidate would need in order to succeed in their role. Here are some essential skills:

Relationship Building – This is important as you need to work with many different types of functions and characters.
Researching – You need to be able to do your research as you will spend lots of time doing discovery, analyzing data, and reading news about customers. So being curious is also important.
Time Management – You will need to prioritize your work very well and set boundaries to limit work that is distracting from your core role (which is making customers successful.

What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out as a Customer Success Manager?

Stay curious and keep learning. Customer Success is constantly changing and evolving. Stay educated by reading books or articles, watching videos, and connecting with peers through events.

Stay curious and keep learning

Can you take us on a journey describing what your workday looks like?

My average day would look something like this:

Start the day by reading the news so that I stay up to date about any trends in my customer’s industries or customer-specific news.
Check my email at the beginning and end of the day (1 hour max)
Customer meetings
Internal meetings
Lunch at 12.00 (this is my holy time, I don’t schedule anything else during this time)
Follow up on meetings with action items
Update CRM with any new customer notes (of course with the help of AI)

What makes you feel inspired or motivated?

I feel motivated by having a goal without knowing yet how to get there. I get a lot of energy from building things and seeing that it works. Building things from scratch, getting feedback, improving. The 80/20 rule really helps with this.

Next to that I also feel motivated by getting to know new people, learning from them, and eventually connecting them with other people in my network.

What’s one thing that people are generally surprised to find out about you?

I like to order sushi at home. Most of the time I leave some sushi for the next day so that I can eat it for breakfast. I’m really a sushi addict!

Who do you look up to the most?

Saitama (One Punch Man). He is funny, strong, helpful and down to earth.

What are your top 3 priorities now?

These are my top 3 priorities:

Work-life balance
Improve my AI skills
Grow my personal brand

What advice would you give to Customer Success Managers to grow and develop their careers?

Network, network, network! I can’t emphasize enough how important your network is. Whether it’s internally or externally. I have had many situations where having a strong network (again, both internally and externally) has proven to be so important.

If you don’t know something, there is most probably someone out there who has the answer. But knowing who to connect with, makes things a lot easier. So keep building your network is my greatest advice.

What’s your favorite book, and why?

I have read many books, but I would say Atomic Habits. The reason why is because this book really made a change to my life. I was impressed by the power of making small changes in my life. A specific example is practicing Japanese. I just practice 5 minutes a day, but I have done it consistently for over a year now and I can read Hiragana and Katakana (2 out of 3 scripts in Japanese).

» Check out the 10 Books a CSM should read to advance and improve their skills.

Have you had your “I’ve made it” moment yet?

No, not yet. I put a lot of pressure on myself, I don’t think that I will easily have an “I’ve made it” moment. However, I do have an ambition which is to start my own business sometime. I think when I land my first (big) customer that I will that moment. And yes, I know that I’m too hard on myself, there have been plenty of moments in my life that could been described as that “I’ve made it” moment.