A day in the life of KEY ESG customer support

Day in the life of KEY ESG customer support

We sat down with Jess, a member of our ESG team, to see how the team supports our customers in their journey from data collection to ESG reporting. The following questions and answers provide an insight into how we work with our customers.

What does your typical work day look like?

There are a few streams in my work. Firstly, my main responsibilities are customer-facing. I usually spend my days onboarding new customers, taking them through our app and helping to set them up to start collecting their data. I am also responsible for responding to customer queries (through both intercom and email), helping to guide them in the right direction on ESG matters. Moreover, I also spend some of my time checking that companies have completed data requests, and reviewing the data that has been submitted, so that reports can be completed on time.

Secondly, within the ESG team, we are constantly working to improve our workflows and processes, so that customers are always provided with the support that they need in good time.

Finally, we work on back-end research of ESG regulations, frameworks and metrics to help improve the app with new features and datapoints. We make sure that the research is placed into a digestible format, so that we can pass it on to our software development team to implement into the app. This stage also requires us to ensure that the research is presented in a format that allows new features and datapoints to be easy-to-understand for customers, when implemented.

What does the onboarding process entail?

We give them a demo of our app, walking them through how to use all of our features, the data they need to collect and where they can go to find the data. We also often explain to customers why they are being asked to collect specific datapoints. The onboarding sessions provide our customers a great introduction to the app, and they always talk about how intuitive it is to use once they get started!

What are the main challenges that customers face?

Often, customers are not familiar with what carbon accounting entails, and where to find the necessary data inputs. Sometimes there is little access to activity-based data, or any data at all. For example, companies may have access to the size of their office space, but not their electricity usage.

How do you help customers with these challenges?

We usually point them to where they could find existing data and provide guidance around the next steps based on that. In the case of the example above, we would help them to come up with an estimate based on the square feet of the office, using the appropriate emissions factors. An example source of these emissions factors that we have been using a lot lately is the PCAF (partnership for carbon accounting financials) database.

“Submitting some data is better than submitting no data.” 

Jessica Webb, KEY ESG Customer Success Manager and ESG Analyst

Do the challenges customers face vary by sector?

Definitely. For instance, we have manufacturing companies that have heavy scope 1 and 2 emissions but don’t necessarily have a large scope 3 footprint. We also work with some financial companies that are primarily focused on their scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 is more difficult because there is less research and data out there. However, we have made a real push to ensure that we are the top software provider for scope 3 emissions, because we know that companies and investors are becoming increasingly focused on it. We want to make it easy for them to tackle emissions upstream and downstream in their value chains.

Have our customers given you any feedback?

The main feedback we get from customers is that they love the functionality of the app. Our fund manager customers love being able to see all the data from each of their portfolio companies lined up in one easy-to-read report. We also hear a lot that our ESG software is very simple, allowing customers to easily navigate their processes from data collection to reporting and improvement.

“It’s just intuitive; one of the easiest apps to use.”

A KEY ESG customer

But also, our customers often tell us that they appreciate having the available resource of our ESG customer support team at their disposal. The 1 on 1 time that we give them makes either the transition to KEY ESG or the beginning of measuring ESG data on our software incredibly straightforward.

What is your favourite part about the job?

Being in front of our customers. I just love interacting with them and helping them to find the data they need to start tracking and improving their ESG performance. Also, explaining to them not just why carbon accounting is important but also helping them to improve their carbon footprint is incredibly fulfilling.

At KEY ESG, we believe that supporting our customers in the improvement of their ESG performance is of paramount importance. If you would like to find out more about how we support customers through their journey from data collection to ESG reporting with our easy-to-use app, contact us or request a personalised demo.