Inside the S-Docs Intern Program That’s Boosting Customer Experience

Originally published in 2019 and lightly updated for clarity.

Key Takeaways

• S-Docs’ 2019 internship program gave University of Michigan and Michigan State students hands-on experience across sales, marketing, technical writing, and product development.

• Unlike traditional internships, S-Docs interns worked on real customer-facing projects, including documentation updates, lead follow-up, demos, product questions, and S-Sign enhancements.

• The program helped improve the S-Docs customer experience while giving interns practical SaaS experience and a potential path to future full-time roles.
  

In 2019, S-Docs welcomed seven interns from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University for a hands-on summer program focused on customer experience, product knowledge, and real-world SaaS work. That summer, we brought on seven of the University of Michigan and Michigan State’s brightest for a three-month internship to grow their knowledge and expand the ways we engage with our customers. The result was a happy team, plenty of new ideas, and better support for our customers. So let’s dig into the S-Docs internship a little more, shall we?

The Backstory

It all started when S-Docs Founder Dan Pejanovic was looking for a way to establish and build a connection with U of M in Ann Arbor, MI to foster relationships with upcoming graduates. University of Michigan has prestigious computer science, engineering and business degree programs which are highly sought after by top talent every year. He thought, why not tap into this pool of talent and build mutually beneficial relationships with these students over their years in Ann Arbor, potentially opening the door for future employment? With this idea, the S-Docs internship program came to life.

Forget Fetching Coffee

We all know the stereotypical internship involves grunt work and fetching coffee, but we wanted to offer our summer interns a different, more beneficial experience. Instead, our aim was to expose college students and recent grads to the inner workings of a SaaS company; more specifically the culture, work ethic and product knowledge of S-Docs. Our interns gain a real-world opportunity to figure out how to problem solve, learn new skills and manage multiple projects at the same time. Plus, we’re empowering the next generation of business and technical talent and providing them an arena to identify and exercise their strengths. Zach, our content and technical writing intern, summed up his experience by saying:

“I was responsible for updating documentation which directly helps the customers by informing them on our product and our best practices. Because it’s a more tight-knit team, we have more responsibility. That teaches you great work ethic.”

 

Boosting Customer Experience

The way we see it, our internship program has plenty of key benefits for everyone involved, but especially for our customers. Because we take a hands-on approach with our interns, they work directly with customers on a day-to-day basis and bring fresh ideas to the team. From qualifying leads and getting in touch with interested companies from the AppExchange to setting up demos and answering product questions, our interns have an in-depth understanding of S-Docs to better assist our customers.

Matt Fabian, COO, commented on how the interns assist with customers:

“They help our customers get the information that they need and help them better understand how our business works. We’re expanding our program each year, and we love the input the interns bring.”

Beyond following up with leads and interacting with our customers, S-Docs interns are involved with the product development itself. This summer, two of our software engineering interns Josh and Jasmine worked on the S-Sign product. Their focus was to support multi-signer workflows, which makes it possible for multiple users to sign the same document in a neat, orderly way. According to Jasmine:

“I enjoy enhancing the customer experience with S-Docs by helping build product improvements that the customer benefits from directly.”

For S-Docs, customer experience has always been shaped by more than the product alone. Clear documentation, responsive conversations, thoughtful product improvements, and a team that understands how customers actually work inside Salesforce all play a role. The internship program gave students a chance to contribute to those areas directly while helping S-Docs continue building a stronger experience for the people who rely on our document workflows every day. 

What Our Team Is Saying

As far as the S-Docs team goes, we couldn’t be more thrilled about the internship program. We gain fresh ideas and uncover new ways to solve problems from an influx of students with varying backgrounds and levels of experience.

And the consensus from our interns? They had the time of their lives, learning the ins and outs of marketing, sales, product development, and more. At the time, interns had an opportunity to continue to work throughout the school year, depending on class load, and upon graduation, there’s a foot in the door to be considered for a full-time position.

So here’s a special shout out to the Summer 2019 S-Docs intern class: Jasmine, Josh, Alex, Brett, Mark, Kelly and Zach. We and our customers appreciate all your hard work!