We sat down with Rick Hensley, Todyl’s Chief Customer Officer (CCO), to hear how he got his start in cybersecurity, why he chose Todyl, and the tips he has for being the best in customer service.
I was ROTC in undergrad, so after college, I reported for duty to do logistics in the Navy. It gave me great leadership experience. As an Ensign, you’re in charge of 60-70 people, most of whom are older than you are, which was unique for me as a junior officer.
After six years of service, I moved into the private sector, joining Corning Fiber right around the dot-com bubble. September 11th came right after. The combined difficulties of the bubble and 9/11 led me to serve my country again, this time as a civil servant.
The NSA funded my cybersecurity graduate degree to do cyberwarfare for the US Air Force. Simultaneously, I was a Naval Reservist, doing cybersecurity at the same national intelligence complex on the weekends. After about six years, a small cyber startup came to visit me as a vendor. I was ready to move on and joined them to use my understanding of the government space to help broaden their reach. That company was Endgame.
I ran the customer-facing side for Endgame for about 10 years until they were acquired by Elastic. A few months later, a friend reached out with another opportunity to join a startup, Grayshift, which I preferred over bigger companies. I ran the customer side there for about four years and left once Grayshift was acquired by Magnet.
As luck would have it, someone reached out to me about another great startup opportunity, the role here at Todyl. I lived near Denver and Todyl was investing in their customer service team. It was a perfect storm.
The alignment of my background with Todyl was ideal, but I also needed the company to want what I could bring. Fortunately, John Nellen built Todyl as a customer-centric company from the get-go. There was already an established culture of customer success, a deep desire to grow partners’ business, and a need to do it at scale. These were just a few of the right ingredients that made Todyl very attractive to me. It was immediately a fit for both sides.
It’s not super complicated... helping our partners scale and grow is what makes us scale and grow. To do this, we need a systematic, disciplined approach. Success playbooks, systems, enablement tools, and procedures create momentum for our partners, like a flywheel that keeps executing after we get it moving.
Additionally, I love tech support; it’s the true embodiment of customer service. I’m a self-described “service before self” person. To be good at tech support, you need that mindset. Often, “empathy” is a running joke in tech support, but I’m a true believer in it.
I’m eager to grow out automation to empower and mature the team while fostering the courtesy, curiosity, and customer focus a support organization must provide. It’s not hard to win new customers but keeping them happy after the purchase is where we need to thrive. It’s fun, but hard work. I’m looking forward to building capabilities to do it better and better every day.
Another key aspect of the customer journey is onboarding. The faster we can get customers successful with our solution, the better chances they will be long-term partners with Todyl. That’s why I love working with Heath and the incredible Onboarding and Deployment Engineering (ODE) team. At the end of the day, Todyl’s success is dependent on the success of our partners, so I intend to focus heavily on the criticality of the ODE team’s work.
Beyond that, Todyl University and partner education is another big focus. Reducing “how to” tickets submitted to tech support indicates a knowledgeable customer base. The less that partners need help directly correlates to their success.
The last major focus area for me is community. We just brought on Ken Patterson to help grow a thriving community for our partners. MSPs have a real passion for technology and helping people but can require additional guidance on the business side. The good thing is that there is plenty of opportunity for all MSPs, so competition between them tends to be less critical. I want our community to be a safe place where partners can come, share, learn, and help each other, both with the Todyl product and how to successfully go to market.
For me, it’s got to be the absolute focus on being the best, one of Todyl’s core values. Not only is this value on Todyl being the best, but helping our partners and their businesses get there too. People here don’t stop; they just keep pushing, and that’s very hard to recreate. It’s intense, hard work, but it makes you push yourself to accomplish more every day.
I have a couple of grown kids—my son is in grad school getting his PhD and my daughter just finished her freshman year in college. My wife and I have always had our lives revolve around our kids and therefore their hobbies tended to become ours. Fortunately, both of my kids like being outdoors, hiking, and such, so being in the Denver area worked well for us.
We also love family game nights. We usually pick trivia and strategy games, but nothing beats a good belly laugh from a ridiculous game of Pictionary. These are my happy places – family, outdoors, games. That, and binge-watching shows with my wife. We often watch mysteries, suspenseful shows, or thought-provoking movies, but a good zombie movie never hurts.
Service before self is a core tenet for anyone in the post-sales organization.
The last company I worked with offered a mobile phone forensics solution that primarily served law enforcement. While I was there, the pandemic turned the world upside down. There was also a lot of unrest about the role of law enforcement in the US. Regardless of where you sit on that issue, our customers were suffering through difficult, long days.
Imagine being out in daily turmoil, returning to the office, and having an issue with mission-critical software. But this wasn’t just software working, this was literal life and death. On many occasions, our software helped save young women from sex trade and kids from kidnappings, solved murders, and more. When a law enforcement officer needs to use it and there’s an issue, they get very animated. Combine that with civil unrest about the role of law enforcement and you get incredibly upset customers.
I believe fully in putting yourself in your customers’ shoes so you can appreciate where they are coming from and respond accordingly. It truly redefines how you think about empathy. Our goal is to just serve the best you can. Being positive, upbeat, helpful, and patient are all parts of the service persona, and you need them every time you meet with customers.
