Ensuring customer success in Dynatrace ONE

Mike Croke is a Customer Success Manager and leads the LGBTQ+ community in the Dynatrace Barcelona Lab

What’s your name, and what do you do at Dynatrace?

My name is Mike Croke, and I manage a team of Customer Success Managers in the North region in EMEA as part of Dynatrace ONE.

What path has brought you to Dynatrace? How has your career evolved within the company?

Where do I start? 😊I am Irish originally but moved to Brussels in 2001 and worked for Cisco for about 15 years, mainly in a partner relationship management role but also dabbling in change and project management. I decided at one point that I had had enough of northern European weather and moved to Barcelona, where I worked for a couple of tech companies before finding my way to Dynatrace in 2020.

I started as a Customer Success Manager working with high-touch UKI accounts but quickly moved to Premium, working primarily in the North region. After about one year, I was promoted to manager of the region. I now have a team of 9 Customer Success Managers reporting to me that inspire and motivate me daily!

What are you currently working on?

My daily focus involves supporting my team and ensuring they have everything they need to serve their customers, helping them grow within their roles and the company, and helping them evolve and grow as people where possible. Then we also have internal team projects focused on streamlining processes, creating new ones when we see the benefit, and contributing to growing the business overall.

As part of the leadership team, I’m always looking for ways to motivate and recognize the efforts of our CSM organization and celebrate its success!

What do you like about working at Dynatrace?

The best thing about Dynatrace is what attracted me to the role at the beginning: the people I work with.

The culture at Dynatrace is incredibly collaborative and supportive, and I think this is a result of our rapid growth in the past two years. Everyone recognizes the steep learning curve we all face and, as a result, are very eager to help the new hires coming in the door behind us and, of course, existing colleagues!

The culture here is unique. I recognize this and really value it!

What was your most significant achievement at Dynatrace?

I am very proud to have been a founding member of the Dynaspace for LGBTQ+ at Dynatrace. This ERG is vital for employee recruitment, talent retention, internal networking, and creating safe spaces, resources, and programs for people to bring their authentic selves to work.

One of the outputs of this ERG was our first Dynatrace Global Pride Day, and to celebrate this, I organized an event in the Lab in Barcelona. This involved branded Dynatrace SWAG, an educational quiz on the LGBTQ+ community, games, and party snacks. To see everyone (and I mean everyone) wearing the Dynatrace Pride T-shirts in the Lab that day was really an emotional moment for me, something to be remembered!

Why is it essential to create an LGBTQ+ space in tech?

I have worked in companies with ERGs and seen the benefit they brought to the LGBTQ+ community. When I arrived at Dynatrace and saw we didn’t have anything currently in place, I made it one of my goals to create one.

The challenges we face as a community are numerous and vary quite dramatically from one region to another. As we can be more or less ‘invisible’ as community members, we often experience homophobia directly without people knowing that what they’re saying directly impacts us.

The biggest challenge is ensuring that we can bring our authentic selves to work without feeling there will be negative career impacts in doing so. The way to do this is by spreading awareness and promoting inclusivity.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Well, I am lucky to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Barcelona, so this gives me many options.

I love spending time at any of the many beautiful beaches we have close to the office and exploring the city with my partner Mario. We’re both avid gardeners, so tending to our vast jungle (inside and outside) also takes some time, and when there is any time left, my real passion is cooking. I am either already eating or planning what I am going to eat next. I love food and how it brings people together. 😊

Ensuring customer success in Dynatrace ONE was originally published in Dynatrace Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.