Empathetic leadership with Rebecca Nerad

Rebecca Nerad is an expert on Customer Advocacy, and she has led that charter from the front in her career spanning 2 decades. This episode should actually be titled Customer Advocacy 101,   for all the insights she shared on how to actually foster a culture that puts customer advocacy as a key CS metric.

 The top 5 takeaways from this episode are:

1) The transfer of power to a very informed buyer and the apparent end to an era of selling massive software with huge AMC costs. Enter cloud, SaaS and all the information publicly available that warrants a relationship led growth.

2) In customer advocacy,  remember that the entire conversation is about demonstrating customer's success.

3) Make the customer look good. A good practice in Customer advocacy would be to include it in the contract phase and get the customer buy in from the word GO.

4) Rewarding CSMs with spiffs when they get a customer to vouch for the product is a great practice as well!  And rewarding customers with free PS hours, access into user community would be a double sided motivation too!

5) While CSMs are the champions of CS metrics and goals, customer success itself must be something the entire organization commits itself to.

And her own mantra of "Empathy" and how she has created a brand image around that. And ofcourse, her favorite cartoon character as CSM is DORA!

Do listen in!