CSM secrets Of Influential Customer Success leaders

Finding and filling gaps, with Dana Soza

In this episode of CSM secrets with Dana Soza, we discover many things that make entrepreneurs, so different from the rest.

When she spotted the opportunity to be on her own, she just took the plunge and started Dana Soza Customer solutions a boutique consulting and career building firm for customer success professionals.

Key takeaways from this episode are:

1) She spots & sees a trend, (almost 2 years back) a big up tick in job applications for Customer success roles and it made her to offer her expertise and background in filling that gap.

2) She went on to get professionals from  "unemployed" to "employed" with Customer success. Starting from a simple linkedin article to a white paper to an e-book and then an entire company around helping newbies break into CS space.

3) Dana's love for marketing led her into building a novel concept yet something that people can digest easily. A Customer everything Club - that helps everyone "Learn your ABCs, Access, build, capture". And this is done in a pretty much automated, self service fashion where everyone can learn at their own pace.

4) Her thoughts on companies adopting CS is a suggested three step phase - Start, Grow, Scale. Discover CS, Iterate on what works, Scale with what is successful.

5) Building, Documentation & Operationalizing the processes and then automation is her mantra for scaling CS

6) For anyone building their career in CS, her advise is to first get their feet wet in a small company and then move to a bigger company to take your career projectory forward.

Finally, she likes to be remembered as someone that made a huge mark in People's lives.

 

 

From Customer services to Customer Success, with Jarvis

Jarvis has a very unique experience. His initial background was in IT services, from where he slowly grew up a leadership role in customer success. Referring to that, he says he was on the ground and rose from there.

Key insights from this episode are:

 

1) Transitioning from IT services to customer success gave him grass root opportunities and learnings that he could carry across - Some unique learnings across leadership, strategy, technology etc.  And be cognizant of issues at every level of growth towards succes.

2) According to him, strategy is not some big buzz word but his secret sauce to decoding strategy has been to make it consumable, and making it practical. If strategy does not meet execution, it is all but talk.

3) The approach to delighting customers and growth is always by solving small problems, one at a time and then scaling it to multiple customers.

4) Between a BPO and Customer success, the greatest difference is how you measure and perform on customer expectations, scoring and readiness.

5) About CCOs becoming CEOs, he feels that we are in the proof cycle and it is going to get more solidified and become a norm as CCOs have the real view into success, customer issues and also revenue.

And a lot more insights on how adoptions should be driven based on user personas, and how advocacy is about building success plans etc.

Tune in to this insightful podcast!

 

 

 

 

Scaling CS with Automation, Dickey Singh

This episode has a Silicon valley entrepreneur as Guest, Dickey Singh!

Dickey comes from a strong technical background and is 100% a builder at heart.  The product portfolio includes software to measure customer satisfaction and feedback measurement systems, that enabled the Who is Who of the industry such as Apple, Google, Salesforce, Gartner improve CSAT by significant percentages. And this was acknowledged by none other than the LEGEND, Steve Jobs!!

The key takeaways from this episode are:

1) Every product/service gets digitized over time and now is the time for Customer success operations & Marketing to ride that wave.

2) Scale is important for SaaS based businesses, and, that is not solved by giving more accounts to CSMs. Automation is pretty much the answer to scale.

3) cast.app delivers automations through personalization, replication of successful playbooks delivered to not just one/two but every customer or user of that product in an effort to replicate positive experiences

4) Automation is not for everyone, but his guidance is to start small and have a smooth hand over to human CS folks, where bots cannot absolutely do justice. Productivity is specifically one area to look at.

5) Replicating while club experiences and those moments of truth for a business are the key drivers of automation. Companies should strongly look at the WHY.

6) The tip of iceberg where we see Chief Customer officers being made CEOs, is about to become big. Simple logic behind this is that the cost of acquiring a new customer is about 6.4 times more than retaining and growing an existing customer. CCOs are best suited therefore to help grow the NRR and this is just common sense given the nature of business shifts we are seeing.

And finally his favorite cartoon character that represents a good CSM? Remy, the Mouse! Listen to find out why!

 

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!

 

Customer Value Led Growth with Markus!

In this episode of CSM Secrets, we speak to Markus Rentsch, CEO of Re-Markable.

Mark is a strong advocate of customer value led growth, where he fundamentally challenges the traditional approach of direct selling and instead, substituting with selling by value, as seen in his numerous Linkedin posts.

The framework, which is called as CVLG (Customer Value Led Growth), brings fundamental paradigm shifts to the way a company realizes growth.

Most important of all of it, is the premise that Customer Success is not a churn fighting organization rather help them deliver extra-ordinary value to end customers. And a customer that sees that value, scales.

In this growth model, organizations are creating a Helix which grows more and more.

Markus also runs a training academy and consulting firm, check out at the website: https://remark-able.at/about/

 

 

Metaverse and the shift in Customer Experience, with Guy Galon

In this episode, we chat with Guy Galon, VP customer success at Hysolate and Influencer and thought leader in Cutomer Success.

The key takeaways & insights from this episode are:

1) Three major shifts - Customer success becoming revenue center, the Technology shift brought in up cloud adoption changing the rule of the SaaS game, and customer success as a critical player in delivering first time value and hence retention and growth.

2) Customer Success owning Growth as a charter is a combination decision made based on the  size of the company, experience of the executives, and complexity of the product

3) A recommendation for CS is to start small, and think how to scale 3X to 10X more and eliminate bottlenecks that exist. And when growing fast, create specialties around specific areas such as PS expert, CSM expert, Retention expert etc

4) Get the process right before focussing on automation. Automation is critical for scale and his personal experience leveraging Zapier to integrate multiple internal tools for a seamless experience

5) Overall prediction - Metaverse will have a significant impact on customer experience, customer success and a few Unicorns are about to be born in this space. Along with a few big bang acquisitions duly to follow.

And not to miss the fun Rapid fire round. Do listen in and share your feedback, comments.

Employee Success is Customer Success, with Kristi Faltorusso

In this episode of CSM secrets, we speak with Krisi Faltorusso who is the Vice president of customer success at ClienSuccess and is also the in the Top 25 customer success influencer, two years straight in a row for 2021 & 2022!

Brand Kristi stands for Unconditional Giving, which does not surprise me given her stellar track record in a career spanning a decade in scaling & growing Customer Success.

The five key takeaways from this episode were:

1) The big shift in Customer success from performing internal activities to the external focus and delivering business values that have long term impact

2) No matter how you structure a Customer success organization, everything will boil down to an organization's capabilities to orchestrate its key objectives around that structure (such as only retention OR account mgmt + retention OR retention + upsells + cross-sells etc etc)

3) Why it is important to learn/listen to your customers and then create CS roles rather than starting out with too many roles in a customer success organization. Listen and evolve rather than assume.

4) A good CSM strategy comprises of nailing down customer pain points, the business value t a company offers and process optimization

5) AI/ML will transform the way we utilize data and will driver insightful decisions.

And we had our fun round where I asked her so many fun questions and she answered them all pretty undaunted!

Lets cut churn, with Irit Eizips

In this episode of CSM secrets, we have Irit Eizips, Chief Customer Officer and Chief Executive Officer at CSM Practice, a boutique consulting firm specializing in Customer Success strategy design and implementation services.

Irit's relationship with Customer Success is as old as the onset of the movement itself. Back in 2013, when the Customer Success discipline was beginning to take shape, Irit worked at Gainsiight, and was part of the early crew who defined the customer success strategy and propelled the business world to embrace what we all call today as the new normal.

With decades of strategy consulting, working with customers & executives alike, Irit has gathered so much wisdom and practical knowledge, which has now helped her venture develop numerous frameworks for Customer Success Methodologies.

Key insights for us to take away from our conversation:

1) The gradual evolution of customer success as a strategic component, a center to prove value and build partnerships with customers, rather than a churn fighting center

2) The key metric that CS should focus on is Net Retention Rate, which incorporates the impact of upsells, cross sells in addition to churn and downsell.

3) A less noticed but a significant contributor to churn could be internal to the organization with multiple functions such as Sales, Marketing and CS working in Silos..

4) The lack of a mature Sales to CS Handover process could be a cause of early churn and customer dissatisfaction. Companies should focus heavily on onboarding.

5) New-age companies might come not just with a superior product idea but also with other bells and whistles of which customer focus, customer success practice is an important element. And, how startups are able to take down large enterprises that completely miss the mark on customer success.

6) Her take on the future evolution of a robust tech stack for customer success and how a center of excellence for customer success is the new function to watch for in the future.

7) Key ‘must have’s for junior CS candidates include the 3 As - Adaptability, accountability & Analytical skills.

Now for the most surprising part. Her own favorite cartoon character is superwoman which according to her is the true portrayal of Customer success manager. 

 

Finally, do not to miss the part where she speaks of her family of extremely strong and driven women that have inspired her to break all prototypes and define a charter and life of their own. 

 

It’s a truly inspiring story of courage passed on to generations.

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.

 

Do not put people in boxes and limit them, with Shari

Shari is such a giver.

If there is a coaching or community building platform, it is hard not to see Shari in it. She plays a pivotal role in building the next generation of customer success leaders and in providing guidance for navigating careers in CS to many that seek mentorship.

Shari is a life time fellow of On-deck customer success and customer success coach at catalyst software where as a mentor she gets matched with an aspiring CS professional.

She is a strong, visionary leader and her perspectives on various matters customer success were compelling and hit the nail right.

Some key takeaways from this podcast that we recorded amidst her crazy schedule are:

1) As one of the founding members of Gain Grow Retain Shari shares the joy of being part of something that was created during the pandemic and the good fortune of seeing it grow to 6000 plus members in just a few years. The community and belonging was what everyone needed during the pandemic.

2) CS community is like no other practice - how the entire community thrives on sharing & caring and most importantly giving.

3) In 10 years, her vision is that every company, no matter what they do, becomes customer centric, has a CCO and looks at Customer success as a growth center. And how in 2-5 years, she sees the evolution of digital CS - given the scale and rapid growth of the adoption.

4) The top priority of her 2022 goal being re-segmenting customers given how rapidly business has changed and how time and again customer segmentation is very important.

5) A churn prevention strategy is to apply qualitative data coming from customer conversations to the quantitative data as seen by health scores etc, and not just purely be hung up on health score alone.

6) On tools, overall she is a proponent of a Customer Success Platform that provides the necessary tools and frameworks for a Customer Success team.

7) Regarding people & careers, her strongest advise - Do not put people in boxes because that approach has what has got us to where we are. And, particularly about women, any profession that a woman wants, how much ever unconventional it is, Is a natural profession for her. 

8) And, finally - her favorite cartoon character that mimics a good CSM - In fact two of them are Scooby Doo and Bugs Bunny! Why so? Find out from this podcast!