Electric’s new Chief Customer Officer, Ellen Terchila, is joining us to tackle some of the biggest challenges to exist in modern IT.

Over the last few years, the strategic importance of IT has increased considerably for almost every type of company. From hybrid work to security, business continuity, artificial intelligence, data management, and business expansion, IT leaders are behind the scenes of the most important technical decisions taking place in the world. To-do lists have become neverending, as a result — and the risk of burnout is high.

At Electric, we’re on a mission to free-up IT bottlenecks around common tasks that could otherwise be outsourced and automated. Turbine, our IT support platform is what differentiates us from other options on the market. Our growth has centered around the orchestration of people and technology to handle complex IT tasks at scale. Customer experience is the true heartbeat of our business.

Welcome, Ellen 👋

Ellen is joining Electric at the perfect moment, right as we announce our $90M Series D funding round, following our $40M Series C raise in July 2021.

“Electric provides a suite of solutions that every small business needs to increase their operational efficiency, secure their employee and company data, seamlessly onboard and offboard employees and get clear insight into their IT infrastructure. The new round of funding will allow us to continue to deliver on our mission of providing exceptional service to our customers and reduce their overall costs,” said Terchila.

Ellen’s track record empowers Electric to achieve this goal. Her past accomplishments include:

• Scaling customer success operations from $40M to $300M — while consistently beating retention and expansion targets, and increasing NPS

• Running a team of 100+ across multiple functions including account management and customer success

• Successfully leading 6 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) integrations within her function

• Managing international customer success team expansion

• Developing teams to their fullest potential and creating opportunities for growth

In the Q&A below, she shares more about her experiences.

Building Next-Gen IT Customer Success Leadership with Electric

Tell me about your personal ambitions. How does your move to Electric position you to achieve these?
Ellen: I’ve spent my career focused on building and scaling best-in-class customer organizations and providing a delightful customer experience. I’m joining Electric to apply the skills I’ve amassed over the years to an exciting company in a stage of rapid growth — something I proactively sought as I considered the next step in my career.

Where is Electric in 5 years?

Ellen: Electric will have successfully taken advantage of the opportunity in front of us now, at this moment. We are well positioned to dominate a market in which the sky’s the limit, as we provide a suite of solutions that every company requires to be operationally efficient.

What do you bring to Electric as an accomplished CCO that contributes to Electric realizing that 5 year vision?

Ellen: My ultimate goal is for our customers to consider renewing their contract with us to be a no-brainer, because we’ve made their jobs easier and they can’t imagine doing business without us as a partner alongside them. The process of implementing and supporting customers is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and I’m responsible for ensuring that the services we provide are personalized for the customer’s business and long term success.

What is one thing about CCOs (or, more broadly, customer teams) that most people misunderstand or improperly assume?

Ellen: That we exist just to do the job the customer expects us to do. The strongest contributors to my teams have been those that are willing to challenge the customer — to push them to think bigger and to bring them new and fresh ideas they haven’t thought of. We are in a unique position to be able to suggest strategies and trends that we know are helping other Electric customers to be successful. In order to be a strong partner, we should not just execute on the status quo the customer is expecting. The most effective customer teams take it one step farther and act as a consultative partner.

What do you do for fun?

Ellen: Traveling is my passion! I’ve been to more than 40 countries, and I love experiencing how other cultures live, and a big part of that is researching local restaurants to try along the way. I am an avid reader and can often be found with Kindle in hand. I love spending time with my niece Morgan and nephew Emerson, and consider my unofficial title of “Aunt E” to be one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had.

Follow Ellen on LinkedIn here.

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