Behind the Scenes at Altissia: Elise, Account Manager

Passionate about languages from a young age, Elise naturally found her way to Altissia as an Account Manager for the Belux (Belgium-Luxembourg) and DACH (Germany-Austria-Switzerland) markets.
Elise helps our partners, mainly universities and companies, to bring their language training projects to fruition. As a go-between for our clients and our in-house teams, she makes sure that Altissia’s platform meets the high linguistic expectations of our users and is constantly keeping up with the changing needs of the market.

Can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do at Altissia?

I’ve always been interested in language learning and the cultural richness that goes with it. I think growing up in Belgium, a trilingual country, and learning foreign languages since primary school certainly helped with this.
At university, I studied Germanic languages (English and German), and today I work as an Account Manager at Altissia. My work involves helping our clients, mainly universities and companies, to make sure we develop projects together that run smoothly and helping our platform’s users have all the tools they need to reach their language goals.

What languages do you speak?

I speak four languages: French, English, German and Dutch.

What are the key factors to ensure the quality and success of the projects you manage at Altissia?

One of the key factors is to take the time to listen carefully to our clients in order to really understand what they need from their language training. That’s what allows us to develop tailor-made projects that meet all their expectations.
Listening to our clients also means gathering their feedback in terms of new developments or upgrades to the platform and relaying them to the appropriate internal teams in a structured and comprehensive manner. This is how our platform continually evolves to be as close to our clients’ (and the market’s) needs as possible.

What is your secret weapon to ensure the success of your projects?

For me, the main aspect to making a project successful is to be there for our clients and to be flexible during the implementation of the project. We need to be able to regularly assess the progress of a project and, if necessary, to change our way of working according to the results we’re seeing.

What are the main challenges or problems that you or your clients face and how do you solve them?

When working with an online platform, there are occasional technical issues on either our end or on the client’s. Luckily, we develop our product in-house, so it’s easy to get hold of the technical team and quick and efficiently resolve any problems.
Sometimes, we also encounter pedagogical issues, such as keeping our learners motivated or encouraging teachers to adopt the platform as a teaching tool. Altissia’s teams have therefore developed a whole series of communication, motivation and teaching tools to help us and our clients tackle these challenges.

What do you like most about your job?

I really enjoy being in contact with my clients on a daily basis and brainstorming together the best ways to implement their project with Altissia. The diversity in the projects we work on also makes the job very interesting and forces us to constantly rethink our methodology. The expected results and the groups of users vary greatly from one client to another.

For example, it’s very different to help an L&D (learning and development) manager to improve their employees’ language levels at a company compared to supporting teachers and assistants to integrate the platform into their lessons as a teaching and assessment tool. On top of that, I work in a multilingual environment, but I particularly enjoy that, too!

What difference does having a single point of contact make for your clients and how does it work at Altissia?

Giving each client a single point of contact allows us to establish a relationship built on trust. They know who to talk to should they have any questions, and they know that this person is working to make their project succeed, understanding every tiny detail. This also means we can make sure our clients’ needs are properly conveyed internally.
Altissia’s Account Managers also regularly get together to discuss their successes and any difficulties encountered when implementing their projects. By doing this, we can learn from all of our experiences and keep on improving our methods for supporting our clients, who each have specific needs and objectives.