Our Unicorn of the Month for May is Ashton Liu, Director, Global Training & Documentation.
Ashton was awarded Unicorn of the Month for his amazing teamwork and creativity, and for being ‘always here and willing to help’.
Announcing Ashton as the Unicorn of the Month at our May Town Hall, Duetto’s Shelly Morales, Chief People Officer, said: “Ashton has been an incredible help getting the resource hub and the online training where it currently is. Our customer-facing teams now have a lot of content available to help them reply to customers and that they can also directly share with their main contacts. This is such a GameChanger for us. So, a massive thank you to Ashton for everything he has done for us!”
Commenting on his award, Ashton said: “Being named as Unicorn of the Month is certainly humbling. Everything we do here is a team effort, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t give credit to everyone who has helped me out along the way and to those who continue to support me. My goal is to pay it back ten-fold.”
We caught up with Ashton to find out more about his role, what he loves about it, what he did before and what the future holds for him.
Tell us a little about your role & your day-to-day activities at Duetto.
I oversee all of the customer training and onboarding initiatives at Duetto. Everything I do is aimed at creating a positive experience for new hotels that are just getting started with us. There’s a lot that goes into that and no two days are the same. Some days I’ve got back-to-back training sessions, other days I’m focused on content creation, and there are other times where I am strategizing how to build up the training team in terms of skill sets, systems, and processes. It’s always exciting to build something, and while we’ve done training at Duetto for years, we’re now building up a team with the sole focus of delivering quality training and setting up our customers for success. As you can imagine, it’s a challenging role but my hope is that everything I do has a direct impact on the customer experience.
What did you do before Duetto?
I spent years working in Asia at different startups in various fields from healthcare to software vendors. In my last role I was an account manager working with hotels using an e-learning platform. It was a great experience. I did a lot of onsite projects, working with hotels on installs, onboarding, and ongoing support. Despite having a slightly different background, it does give me a unique perspective on the challenges that companies face and the different ways that you can approach a problem. Healthcare services and hotel revenue management systems are very different domains, but you’d be surprised at how often I draw parallels between the two.
What do you love the most about your job?
Technology can be intimidating, and for someone deploying a new software for their company or hotel, there’s a degree of uncertainty that comes with it. I get a lot of satisfaction in taking someone through a journey where by the end of it they’re able to feel empowered by technology and all it can do for them. I’ve seen many people at the end of their onboarding comment about how positive they feel and how comfortable they are using Duetto, and you can just sense how it’s going to help them excel in their roles. This is what I think of when we talk about creating partnerships, and it‘s a great feeling.
If you could, what would you change about it?
I wish I could travel more. Before COVID, I did several in-person workshops. I enjoyed being onsite and building a rapport with people. Plus I think that after COVID, a lot of people are tired of webinars. I traveled again for the first time this year to meet with some of our partner hotels, and it was wonderful.
What's been your biggest professional achievement so far?
That’s hard to say. Even in just the last few months, I’ve overseen initiatives to translate our training content into multiple languages and completely restructured many of our internal workflows and processes. But if I had to pick one, I take a lot of pride in the role that I’ve played in bringing great people onto the team. It’s rewarding to take someone through the interview and onboarding processes, and then get to see them thrive and grow in their roles. It sounds cheesy but any manager will attest to the fact that people are the most important asset you have, and I’m extremely proud of the team we’ve built here at Duetto.
What does the future hold for you?
The entire field of Customer Success has evolved so much over the last several years, and it continues to change. I’ve been closely involved at every stage of the customer journey, which has given me a great appreciation for what it takes for a CS organization to operate effectively. Duetto for me has been an incredible learning experience, and I want to continue building teams and programs that create value for the company and customers alike.
Interested in joining our team? Check out our current open positions on our Careers page: https://www.duettocloud.com/careers