At Monarch Black Hawk, Aaron Brown learned how much more you can understand when you sit beside the people doing the work.
By Aaron Brown, Customer Success Manager at CCT
When I walked into the meeting at Monarch Black Hawk, Wendy had a piece of paper waiting for us.
She had written down everything her team wanted to discuss. They knew Casino Insight well, and they had specific questions about how certain information moved through their audit and reporting processes.
Wendy was prepared. So were we.
I had recently moved into my role as Monarch’s Customer Success Manager, and this was my first visit to the property in that capacity. My job was to help their team get the most from the CCT solutions they already had; the best way for me to make this happen was by listening.
We went through Wendy’s list, then sat down at her computer and pulled up real examples. She showed me what her team was seeing in the system, what they expected to happen and where the results did not fully align with their processes.
One question involved how records moved from jackpot audit through daily activity. Another involved the way promotional chip activity appeared in reporting. We also found that an unpaid jackpot report needed a longer lookback period to accurately reflect the property’s outstanding liability.
Each request made sense on its own. Seeing the full workflow helped me understand how they connected and what mattered most to the Monarch team—including the operational context that could be difficult to communicate through separate support tickets.
Before becoming a Customer Success Manager, I spent years working on CCT implementations. I have been in audit rooms and cages when the pressure was high. I understand how one decision upstream can affect what an accounting team sees by the time the information reaches reporting.
That experience helped me ask better questions at Monarch. Was this a setting we could adjust? Did the workflow need to be clarified? Would additional training help? Or were we looking at something that required further development?
We found opportunities in several of those areas.
I did not leave Monarch with an immediate answer to every question, and I was not going to pretend that I had one. Part of taking care of a client is being honest about what you know, what you need to investigate and what will take more time.
What I could do was make sure we understood each request correctly and brought it back to the right people.
After the visit, I organized what we had learned into a 30-, 60- and 90-day roadmap. I worked with our Client Services team to address the immediate priorities, provide additional guidance and establish a path for the work that required development.
Over the following months, we made meaningful progress across that roadmap. The Monarch team gained greater confidence in its processes, and we developed a stronger working relationship along the way.
“Aaron has been amazing to work with,” said Chris Kramer, Director of Finance at Monarch Black Hawk. “His follow-through and partnership have helped us make meaningful progress over the last several months. He has taken the time to understand our team and what we need.”
Hearing that meant more to me than completing a successful visit. It meant the Monarch team knew they had someone at CCT who would listen, follow through and stay involved.
A support ticket gives us an important record of a question or request. It cannot always show the complete workflow surrounding it, the priorities competing for a team’s attention or the conversation that happens when everyone looks at the same screen.
Sometimes, the best way to understand what a client needs is to get in the room, pull up a chair and ask, “Can you show me?”
