Who is Nathan?

Meet Nathan Thomas, Customer Success Manager at Eko Health!

About Eko Health

Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Eko Health, Inc. (Eko) is a leading digital health company advancing how healthcare professionals detect and monitor heart and lung disease with its portfolio of digital stethoscopes and AI detection platform, SENSORA™. The company’s FDA-cleared technologies are used by hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide, allowing them to detect earlier and with higher accuracy, diagnose with more confidence, manage treatment effectively, and ultimately give their patients the best care possible.

Nathan’s CX Journey

Nathan’s CX Journey is far from linear, but a constant thread runs through it – his desire to connect with people and make them happy. At 18, Nathan started as a comedian doing stand-up and improv while living out of his car. Soon after, in an effort “to get his life on track,” he began taking classes at a community college and eventually enrolled at the University of Washington to study journalism. “As a student, I had the unfortunate experience of working as a debt collector,” Nathan jokes. “But I ended up getting a 5-star Yelp review – there had never been a positive Yelp review for this company.” Using his newfound skill set, he transitioned to tech sales after graduation. Though successful at his job, Nathan realized that he didn’t want to be the one making the sales calls, but rather the helpful one who’s around after the sales calls have been completed. In May 2023, he got the position of Customer Success Manager at Eko Health.

Asked what excites him most about customer experience, Nathan answers, “You might guess from the whole comedian thing, I’m a bit of a people pleaser. If I can get people to laugh or smile, that means everything to me.” Humor aside, Nathan really cares about his job. Working in the healthcare space adds another element to this, he says. “Not only do you want the customer to be happy from a revenue or review standpoint, but you also want the product to work for their patients because a life could be at stake.”

The CX Team at Eko Health

Based near Seattle, Nathan heads a fully remote CX team with agents in Indiana, Los Angeles, and the Seattle area. Communication across departments is critical for the healthcare tech company and Nathan makes routine trips to Eko Health’s headquarters in Berkeley, California to meet with the founders, engineering, and production teams. Necessary during the Pandemic, the remote/hybrid model continues to be ideal for Nathan, expanding his geographical search options for talent.

Hiring New Agents

The main quality that Nathan looks for in agents on his team is empathy. “There are people who you can tell have the skills but seem preoccupied with hitting revenue,” he states. “Well, that’s great, but what about the customer experience?” Looking beyond immediate returns, Nathan views exceptional CX as a long game – strategies must be sustainable and reevaluated from one year to the next. His agents are encouraged to “wear empathy on their sleeve,” so Eko Health’s customers feel they are being taken care of in every interaction.

Fostering an Open Dialogue with Agents

Nathan is a self-described “very involved” leader. He and his team primarily use email and phone to communicate with customers (they also monitor a separate VIP email line). Understanding that in managing CX, open dialogue leads to clear context about a situation, Nathan says, “I work directly with my agents. I’ve got to know everything in and out. Because when I’m on a call for a big project, the customer needs to feel that I know what I’m talking about and that we are all on the same page.”

Nathan encourages his team to go into each customer interaction with a “read the room” mindset. Experience reveals that some want a professional manner while others appreciate a “buddy” dynamic. “It’s about anticipating what your customer wants,” Nathan explains. “Either way, I want the call to be productive and the customer walk away satisfied and feeling comfortable.”

CX Philosophy: Focusing on Efficiency and Optimization

In healthcare, time is critical. Eko Health’s customer base wants support that is fast, simple, and efficient. “We work with bedside nurses and clinicians who have said to me, ‘You’ve got to save me time, or I can’t do this,” Nathan reveals. He is in constant rapport with engineers in an effort to reduce the number of clicks needed to use a product. The post-purchase leg of the CX journey often requires the most attention from Nathan and his team. Eko health could lose a customer if after three months, they find that the product isn’t making their job any easier. To further optimize processes, he focuses on streamlining workflows and training for busy healthcare workers. “I even have our customers bookmark pages on our website so they can shortcut access to information,” he adds.

CX Team Success Factors

Leveraging AI for Healthcare Technology

Eko Health is a leader in AI technology for heart and lung disease detection. “AI is part of our system; it’s built into our FDA approved product. AI is the core of who we are.” Nathan goes on to discuss that while AI raises questions around ethics, he doesn’t see this as a problem for Eko Health from a technology standpoint. “It’s straightforward – our AI is machine learning based on heart and lung sounds.” They are also exploring other ways to use AI internally – here, Nathan highlights Chat GPT extensions focused on making support pages more seamless. Still, the company is aware that AI remains controversial and has devoted a Slack channel to disseminating news on the topic.

CX and Human Connection

Nathan wants to believe that despite all the changes happening, CX will always center on human connection. “In our hearts, we’re going to know when we’re interacting with a real person,” he says. “I’ve been on websites that are AI generated, and answers to support questions led me down a certain path.” Nathan isn’t completely dismissive of using AI in CX, however, and sees it as a valuable tool in basic customer support inquiries. “Every company has a version of ‘is it plugged in?’ Automated answers to simple questions would take so much weight off agents so they can address support escalations,” he maintains.

Advice for CX Leaders

Nathan sums up his advice for aspiring CX leaders by saying “establish a relationship, read the room, and be honest.” Transparency is also important. When you are open about information, people are more understanding when a situation isn’t going as planned. “I’ve built relationships where customers depend on me,” Nathan says from experience. “They trust me and know I’ll do everything possible to make it right.”

Tech Stack

Slack

Zendesk

Mixpanel - “We use Mixpanel for our utilization.”