Temitope Oyewole — Director of Customer Success

Building connections and maintaining relationships comes easy to some people, and Temitope is one of these people ( keep reading… She shares an interesting story that confirms this :-)).

This gift along with her ravenous hunger to learn and grow led her to join us as our Director of Customer Success

In this instalment of People of Appruve, we learn about Tope, — our newest addition to the team.

• What role do you currently occupy at Appruve?

Director of Customer Success.

• Where are you from and where do you currently stay?

I’m an African and I currently live in Lagos, Nigeria (winks)

• Tell us a bit about yourself

My late mum enjoyed telling stories about my childhood, one of the stories that stayed with me and have shaped my life/career a great deal was that one time I went with her to the market as a 3 / 4-year-old, I went missing because I had found “a new friend”. She would say “everyone was your friend, irrespective of how old they were. In fact, the older they were, the closer the friendship”.

Building relationships has always been at the core of who I am! I measure my success by how many lives I impact, or who I make smile.

• How did you find your way to Appruve?

I heard about Appruve from my husband, he told me they were recruiting for Customer Success. To be honest, I wasn’t looking to join another company after my last work experience but I went ahead to do a bit of research about Appruve anyways. That was when I fell in love with the company — but more with the impact!

I knew my work would matter here, for the growth of the company and for the financial inclusion of people at the bottom of the pyramid in Africa.

At that moment, I knew I had to apply!

• At what moment did you know you wanted to work at Appruve?

Erm… I had an AHA moment during one of my research about the Appruve. I stumbled on one of the video pitches by Kwame, Co-founder & Head of Product, the pitch focused on how Appruve is democratizing global opportunities for Africans! And I was like “Hell yes! I want to be a part of this!”.

• How did your previous work experiences prepare you for your role at Appruve?

Although I have more than 5 years of experience working in customer-facing roles, I wouldn’t particularly say that any of my previous work experiences prepared me for my current role at Appruve.

You have to understand that this is a new industry for me, and more importantly my second time of doing Customer Success in a purely B2B context.

So, I’d say what really prepared me for this role more than anything else, was my ravenous hunger to learn and grow. For example, I enrolled in several certificate courses just before I resumed work this month, and quickly became certified (CCSM) in under 2 weeks!

• What are you most proud of?

My recent accomplishment of becoming a Certified Customer Success Manager in 2 weeks!

• What do you like the most about working at Appruve?

The people.

I love the people I’m working with! Ambitious, small, and nimble but willing to go far and beyond for one another.

• When you’re not working, what are you doing?

I’m reading a book or binge-watching a series on Netflix

• What did your previous career or roles you occupied look like?

I started off my career as an early employee at MAX.NG (Techstars NY ’15) where I was leading all sales and customer support efforts.

My role before that was a Customer Success lead at Atlas Designery — an ed-tech solution for Universities looking to migrate their learning environment online.

We were working with some major Federal Universities in Nigeria at the times and we had to provide them with a packaged solution that included support for the students.

So, my day-to-day tasks revolved around; student enrolment, engagement and sales, ticketing, community management, and customer experience.

It sounds like a lot, yeah? Especially because I was a one-man team mostly. But I thoroughly enjoyed the role! This was when I realized I had finally found my calling — Customer Success!

• What is your vision for the Customer Success function at Appruve?

Haha! I remember this being a part of my interview questions.

I am just going to tell you what I told Paul, Appruve’s CEO; To build the most customer-centric Reg-tech business in the industry.

Customers will choose Appruve over other companies, not just because we have a great product but because Customer success is top-notch.

How do I know this is possible? You would agree with me that great Customer success is not commonplace for most businesses in Africa. And so, I think that it can easily become a defensibility strategy for any business. My work will revolve around obsessing about the customer and coming up with innovative ways to achieve customer satisfaction and happiness!

• What has your first month at Appruve been like?

To be honest, it has been a huge learning curve! I’ve had to learn about the industry and how my work fits in.

But here’s the highlight of my experience this past month:

We were on a call with a popular startup about their expansion plans into other African markets and how we could serve them.

After listening to the company for about 15 minutes or so, we assured them of our commitment to, not only, provide a seamless business verification process but to also assist them with customer acquisition and regulatory concerns within those markets.

This sealed my conviction about Appruve and my big vision! We would always go above and beyond for ALL our customers!