Pros
The customer base is a great industry
Cons
I had the misfortune in thinking Turnitin was a forward thinking, open company who knew what it meant to be successful. By valuing their employees. I could not have been so wrong. I have never known an organization with so much backstabbing and mistrust. For the level of exposure and the industries this company reaches out to – they have no leadership or experience in any of their departments that know how to run a company correctly. The customers they have are only with them because there really isn’t yet a competitor in this space. Clients do not get timely support or their issues fixed. Sales and Account Management are almost taught that any query is too technical and should only be referred to by support. Sales Managers, Directors or VP and C-Levels at Turnitin don’t have direct professional relationships with their customers – and there is a real lack of understanding as to what it means to be a strategic partner in the EdTech space. Emails occasionally trickle down from unknown so called leaders – to the inexperienced regional sales director – who then clicks forward to an email referring to people as ‘reps’ who need to do XYZ or are not doing ABC. Customers constantly have restrictions and issues with billing and invoicing and support or responsiveness is the slowest I’ve ever seen at any tech company. There seems to be a group of people within the organization that are holding the reins on innovation or for others to shine. Recent reviews (probably from here on Glassdoor) saw an initiative put in place where 10 leaders got together to put a plan in place to be more customer centric. The summary and overview of each of these areas is not laid out to what action points are in place, but instead a serious of questions for each area as to what they need to consider. The problem Turnitin has - is that nothing is consolidated well and nothing flows through. Why breaking up ‘how to become more customer centric’ into 10 areas. All under people where some have the right intention and others are just on a power trip to think they are high flying executives – and none of these people have the experience or understanding to get the problems sorted. If you want to know what your customers think – ask your customers directly and implement NPS scoring. Instead you an illogical project plan being put together by highly visible people who like the sound of their responsibility rather than taking any action. What do you mean by Technical Success and Support? Why is the product internally seen to be ‘so technical’ that is scares off any employee that thinks they are not technical enough to understand the programs features or functions. It’s a SAAS product, it should not be that hard. Your integrations should be straight forward and yet no one, staff or customer can ever set them up or get them working with ease. There is no scalability with the products that can be sold to existing customers. Everything is based on the annual renewal and the pricing isn’t flexible, reasonable, or sensible. Who do you have within the organization that has experience and has worked for other SAAS companies to make them successful? There’s always plenty of jobs for the foot soldier positions – never anything to make big company impact and change. My advice to anyone looking to join Turnitin in a sales or support representative role – if you come from a SAAS background or any other education or publishing software company – then this is a huge backward step. If you are interviewing at Turnitin then take control of this process and don’t just talk to the hiring manager or groomed employer. Do what any open company should do and talk to the different teams across all the departments.
