Isha Ball is an epaPRO expert from both sides of the customer/supplier fence. In her previous role at a leading End Point Assessment Organisation (EPAO), she specialised in training customers to use their customised epaPRO platform. Now, at Skilltech, she is making sure that every customer has the same excellent experience with Skilltech software, regardless of how differently they use the platform.
Isha, along with the rest of the Customer Success team, consistently gets incredible feedback from our customers, but what is it exactly that makes a great Customer Success Executive? We caught up with Isha to hear more about her day-to-day role, her experience in education, her goals for 2025 – and her love of kayaking.
Hello Isha! Tell us a bit about your role at Skilltech.
I am a Customer Success Executive at Skilltech, where my role is the onboarding and training of new and existing customers on our platforms. Every day, my role brings something different. I could be working on supporting documents to help customers, facilitating a training session or working on a new release and showcasing it to customers. My role is very varied, and I absolutely love it.
Is that variety a big plus point for you?
100%. All of our customers work so differently, too. At the moment I'm working mostly on epaPRO, and you'd think that would mean my job would be carrying out the same training, on the same platform, but it's not the case. One of the benefits of epaPRO is its flexibility to allow our customers to work in their own way. I'm constantly having to think on my feet: how does this customer use the platform? How can I help and train and support them in that? I love that we have such a variety of customers in terms of the standards that they deliver. No two days at work are the same, and no two epaPRO experiences are the same! We wouldn’t want everyone to be a carbon copy of each other, and I think that’s a massive credit to what Skilltech have designed and developed
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment, I'm recording training videos to help and support all of our EPAOs. I’m also learning about our new platform, Accolade, that will be coming out this year, so I'm ready to train and deliver on general awarding qualifications. I’m constantly updating and upskilling my own knowledge so I can support other customers.
What do you love most about your role?
I'm an outgoing person, and I enjoy human interaction, so I love face-to-face meetings with customers. Being able to look at customers’ current ways of working with the platform and recommending best practices is exciting for me. When I can look at things and think: “do you know what, if the platform did this, it would help this customer, but it would also support this customer in a different way”. Being able to think outside of the box is something that's very welcomed at Skilltech. Most of us come from EPA backgrounds, too, so we have that understanding of what our customers actually want and need from real experience.
Another thing that I love is the team I get to work with. We all bring something incredible to the table. Being able to see ideas flow between colleagues is amazing for me. It helps me learn. It helps me grow. And the relationships we have are second to none.
What do you think makes Skilltech solutions unique?
Skilltech allows customers to drive and lead development and I think that is unique to us. The fact that we listen is why a lot of customers choose us. Our new platform, Accolade, came from our customers wanting a platform for general awarding and qualifications that was easy and familiar to use, like epaPRO, because they like how intuitive it is, and how easy it is to navigate. We've also got a lot of other exciting developments in the pipeline that are driven from customer feedback. I think the fact that we listen, we take feedback on board and go on to develop solutions based on that feedback puts us in a unique situation.
When we talk to our customers, they say the support they get from Skilltech is like nothing they've had before with any other software solution. I think the fact that we really care is massive.
How did you get into end point assessment?
I've always been passionate about education. My background was in outdoor education (instructing on activities like canoeing, kayaking, climbing, caving etc for children’s residential trips) and I earned a qualification in customer service while I was in that role. In 2021, I went to work for an end point assessment organisation. That opened my eyes to how much apprenticeships offer to young people, and what doors it can open for them.
While I was there, I was working on epaPRO and training customers on how to use the platform. When Skilltech said that there was an opportunity to go and work for them and solely work with epaPRO (to begin with) I thought, “this is an amazing fit for me”. It's the direction that I wanted to take my career in and it was the best decision I ever made.
Now that we're branching out into qualifications with Accolade, as well as other developments further down the line, it's incredibly exciting, and I'm very passionate about it.
Do you still keep up with those outdoor activities?
We do! As a family, we are very outdoorsy. We all go stand-up paddle boarding quite often, we have our own kayaks, we go walking and scrambling. I'm very fortunate that my whole family loves being active outdoors as much as I do.
We know that the world of work is changing – how is Skilltech adapting and what are your goals for 2025?
It’s very clear that Skilltech is always adapting, and I think we prove that in our monthly releases [improvements and additions to the platform]. We are always trying to keep the platform up to date, moving with the times. One of the big things at the minute is with Ofqual and the requirements that they need from our customers, so we always try to help and support with that.
Perhaps our biggest development this year is Accolade. We are moving into the world of qualifications, which is exciting. There are a lot of other things as well in the background that I can't say too much on yet, but they are there, bubbling away.
On a personal note, I just look forward to seeing us grow as a company in 2025. My goal is to make sure that we're always giving the best level of support to customers and doing the best job that I can for them.
If you’re looking for an end point assessment platform that delivers excellent customer experience, listens to your feedback and grows with your organisation, look no further. Whether you specialise in apprenticeships or are looking to manage more general awarding/qualifications, Skilltech’s platforms streamline the process, bringing all of your essential functions into a single, intuitive platform. If you want to see how it could work for you, all you need to do is book a short demo to see it in action.
