Empathy and Genuine connections for success in CS, with Hakan Ozturk

Hakan is senior customer success manager at Adobe!

Hakan has a gene that screams "creativity". How else do you explain the successful coming together of Photography, Writing Books and also creating digital content for CS?

For that his response to me was his favorite quote - "Creativity is contagious & Pass it on".

Key insights from this episode that really made an impact on me, were:

Sharing and helping others along the way is fundamental for any great CSM.

A north star question that guides him to pursue multiple passions all equally successful is: Am I being productive or am I being busy? This is subtle but very fundamental to success.

20% of the work will bring 80% of the results.

A prediction & a requirement will be that "Video will eat the world" and hence all efforts must be made such that content is digestible as videos. And his long term predictions are that automation & AI will dominate.

The website drivingcustomersuccess.com aggregates useful news and blogs from all over the world and serves on one platform for CS practioners. Because he believes in giving back to this growing community.

Contrast to general books, he specifically wrote one for How to become a Customer success manager, which is available to read for free in Kindle Unlimited.

For CSMs, useful skills according to Hakan are Empathy and building genuine connections, the ability to build trust and communicate with flair.

His favorite Cartoon. or movie character that represents a good CSM is Captain America, who is always there for his team driving, strategizing and helping.

A favorite quote: Erl Nightingale - We become what we think about.