Melody Grelat is a Customer Success Manager for Duetto in Europe. She was awarded our Unicorn of the Month for her amazing teamwork, the relationships she has cultivated with both clients and her fellow Duettos, the impact she has on the success of her customers, and the respect she shows for her colleagues, clients and her role within Duetto.
An experienced hotelier, Melody joined Duetto in September 2018 after many years working in hotel revenue management in on-property, cluster and regional roles.
We caught up with her to learn more about her experience, what her role as Customer Success Manager involves and what she loves most about working for Duetto.
Tell us about your experience prior to joining Duetto.
I was a hotel revenue manager for more than six years. I worked for boutique hotel Qbic for one and a half years. Then I worked as a cluster revenue manager for Z Hotels in London, before I moved to a regional revenue manager role in France, working for ApartCity, a chain of long-stay apartments.
From there I entered the world of hotel technology. I worked for Hetras PMS as a customer success manager for a year. I heard about Duetto working for Hetras as we had a shared customer – Village Hotels.
I really liked what Duetto was doing and when I discovered there was an opportunity to work here as a customer success manager it was the next obvious step in my career.
What attracted you to Duetto?
It’s a revenue management platform so for me coming from the industry it was a great move. But what I really liked was that Duetto was an innovative company. It’s very relaxed but everyone works really hard and has the freedom to do more than if you work for a big organization. Everything you do, everything you say matters, and your voice is really being heard.
I wanted to work for a company where I could make a difference. And I really liked the fact that I can have customers all over the world. You can discuss revenue strategy with them. So I also liked the fact that I was still a revenue manager, but I work within the tech industry and speak to other revenue managers about our strategy.
What does your role as Customer Success Manager entail?
I take care of customers in the UK, Italy, France, rest of Europe and North America. My role is to support our customers to ensure that they are getting the most from our applications.
We speak about their revenue management strategies and I support them in building it in the application so they can get the best results possible.
What's your average day like?
Every day is very different, the only change that has occured is that we stopped travelling since covid hit back in March 2020.
On an average day I usually have quite a few customer success calls. We cover any questions they have, we speak about best practices in Duetto, our customers’ strategies and the best ways to implement them in the application. We might also discuss new projects, for example if they are swapping out their PMS or they want to change their segmentation. We talk about strategy and how Duetto can help them navigate COVID-19. Every conversation is different because all our customers are different, they each have very specific projects and different ways of working.
I also spend a lot of time with other Duetto team members, customer success is very much in the center of the organization and we are the voice of the customer, we therefore need to ensure that all of our efforts are coordinated and centred around our clients.
How has working for Duetto lived up to your expectations?
The past two years and a half have been everything I was expecting and so much more. A few weeks after I joined, I travelled with Joyce Galvao [Regional Director of Customer Success, EMEA] to visit our client Warwick Hotels in Geneva. I barely knew anything about the system then and I had to take notes and participate in that meeting. At that moment I knew that Duetto was going to be a hell of a ride and that it would be everything I was expecting and much more.
And this was exactly what I was looking for, we are a small team but everyone is lovely, super hard working, smart and we are always here for each other. I work with people who have so much knowledge in what they do and in our industry, they teach me so much every day and I am very grateful for our amazing team and this incredible company.
What’s the best day you’ve ever had working for Duetto?
I have quite a few days that come to mind, but I think the best day I had was last year in January when the NH Hotels team traveled to London for the new opening of the nhow London Hotel. We had a two days workshop with them and it was absolutely fantastic because of the energy and the amazing conversations we had with them. Beyond that we really socialized and got to know all of them as we had lunch and dinner together every day in the amazing brand new nhow London Hotel. So, for me, that was one of my best days because it was really challenging, it was really interesting and I loved the social interaction we had with the NH Team. That was like the perfect day!
What piece of advice would you give to someone looking for a career in hotel tech right now?
If you’re looking at working for a hotel tech company I would choose a company that can really make a difference to hotels right now, a company that can really help hotels this year.
Then I would say just be very clear about the company you want to work with. Be very clear about the role you want to have within that company. Be very focused and go for it!
Interested in joining our team? Check out our current open positions on our Careers page: https://www.duettocloud.com/careers