Investing in new tech and replacing current software can be a big undertaking. At Qualified, our biggest priority is the success of our customers. We've built our Qualified Success Architect team with implementation specialists who not only know the Pipeline Cloud inside and out, but are eager to partner with you and learn your unique business needs to create an experience that instantly starts proving its value.

But we get it––the implementation process for a new product might seem overwhelming and no one has time to waste right now. One of our QSAs, Stephanie Nguyen, sat down with us to talk through what implementation looks like when you're already using a conversational marketing tool, and just how quickly we can get you swapped out and ready to generate more pipeline than ever.

Steph, before we dive in, tell us a little bit about your background and how you joined the QSA team.

Steph: My name is Stephanie Nguyen, and I’m a Qualified Success Architect here. I joined in November so I’ve been here a little over a year now. My background was primarily in customer success and now moving into this role all things customer success but also go live, implementation, onboarding customers, continuing optimization, training, all that good stuff! 

What does implementation look like for customers replacing their current chat solution with Qualified?

Steph: Typically, we are implementing a lot of customers who have had other chat vendors before. A lot of that is perfect for a QSA because we know that the customer understands the advantages of the program. Obviously, with Qualified, it’s a little different. We hand-hold them through the entire implementation, we do a lot of the heavy lifting as we’re always telling our customers.

All of the customers that I’ve worked with that have previous chat vendors are really impressed with all of our implementation–what we actually take on and how much we actually understand the products because traditional CSMs don’t have this knowledge.

It’s good for customers to come to us as their QSA as their one-stop shop. We’re a trusted advisor and always know what’s going on in their account because we’ve done the implementation. We understand what it takes to optimize the program which really is that Qualified Advantage we’re always talking about. 

We’re always doing Whatever It Takes, so from implementation, we’re gathering everything we need to understand what it takes to build out the experience, what their goals are with the program, understanding their segments, understanding how their visitors are going to be split up, understanding what it’s going to take to have an inbound effort or outbound effort, and really creating this bespoke experiences for them. 

All of the QSAs at Qualified are amazing and we’ve done a handful of implementations. It feels like for the customer that they just have to answer some questions, put it into a machine, and we give them this result for them. I think that’s the best part about our implementation. 

How long does it take to replace a current chat solution? What’s the time commitment look like on the customer’s end?

Steph: For a customer who has already had a chat vendor I would say that initial go-live phase is somewhere between one and two weeks. Obviously, we’re optimizing thereafter in weeks three and four to complete that entire implementation but the first two weeks are when we really need more of the customer’s team on deck. 

‍For people like the web developer, the sales lead, marketing ops, demand gen, we typically ask for no more than two and a half hours of time commitment in those first two weeks. Then, when we go into optimization, that’s where the QSAs are going back to optimize experiences and really understand what the traffic is looking like and making little tweaks, we do spend a little more time with someone like the demand gen lead or Salesforce Admin and marketing ops for an additional two to three hours.

We know many customers wonder how Qualified integrates into their current tech stack–how does the QSA team approach integrations?

Steph: I have heard some concerns about the different integrations that Qualified has. I would say that we have a bunch of different integrations, but a lot of the tool stacks that our customers really need–marketing automation, sales enablement integrations, and Salesforce, are no problem. 

‍If there are integrations that we don’t have, it’s definitely something that the QSAs work with the product team on to see if it’s something we can get on the roadmap or we can understand the use case for that integration and find a workaround for those customers.  

What’s one thing you want any customer to know as they consider switching to Qualified from their current chat solution?

Steph:   One of the really cool things about being a QSA at Qualified is that we genuinely do Whatever It Takes. When we walk into the implementation we’re not really taking the time away from the team members who may not have high stakes in the program, but we’re primarily working with the champions of the Qualified program to really build out a program that they can see ROI on. 

We’re identifying those KPIs for them and making them visible in their organization because they’re going to get so many wins from this program. 

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Steph, thanks so much for walking us through the implementation process when customers switch from their current chat solutions! Read more about the Qualified Advantage here.