CSM secrets Of Influential Customer Success leaders

To have an agency in life and to Impact people at large, with Josh

Josh is a force to reckon with in customer success practice. He does not just talk, he builds. Update.AI, the venture he cofounded aims to put AI at work to reduce the noise and enhance the overall customer success function efficiency.

 

Josh loves to build - Products & Teams, and his background in industrial engineering, science and Maths led him into entrepreneurship from very early on. He has held some stellar responsibilities in the past - from building products, to being a GM and holding advisory roles, he is a true champion.

In this podcast (which we actually recorded inspite of heavy rain and some noise), are some amazing takeaways:

 

1) The importance of having an agency and being able to impact people as a true calling. And how his love growing and teams and culture and mentoring keeps showing up as various entrepreneurial ventures.

2) How he finds his anchor point by focussing on 3S - Sharing his vision among his team, selling, and practicing self-love

3) How his personal experience dealing with multiple cross communication parties led him to think of introducing AI to cut noise and make the experience stress free for CSMs

4) His experience building Update.AI built on zoom and of the first app for customer success, in the marketplace. The tool helps CSMs to bookmark key moments & use AI to anticipate opportunities, churn, action items etc

5) Why relationship matters - because in a customer journey tough situations will happen, but having spent the time in building a relationship could prevent churn.

6) His own strategy of anticipating in advance and being prepared for tough questions

7) CS will grow; NDR will have the highest correlation to enterprise value than any other metric. And hence, CS becomes one of the most critical functions of the company as NDR is a CS only metric. CS should be given more agency in retentions, renewals, in ownership over selling to existing customers

8) His advise to other CS folks: Be able to build rapport, keep calm and be strategic to succeed in CS which is a people business.

And he is always open for mentorship and that is his greatest takeaway from everything he does.

 

This and a lot more in this amazing podcast!

The journey is what matters, do not be in a mad rush!

Karen Eisen, Senior Vice President of Alida, has a skillset combination that the rest of the world would die for - A career that started out in marketing and then pivoted to customer success.

According to Karen, marketing and customer success both require an understanding of human psychology to derive different results. And, she is a strong advocate of customer success being a value center and not taking their eyes of "Growth".

In this amazing, tell all podcast, Karen shared some key insights that are worth summarizing below and listening in full!

1) Marketing is the act of being curious about what drives people to buy and not stopping till you get the answer. Customer success has the exact same job too, but with different deliverables

2) Retention and churn prevention are long term strategies - and how she managed to reduce churn by a near 30% by tweaking and optimizing every step of the renewal process and mitigating risks with a Risk Specialist. 

3) Accuracy in forecasts and reviewing renewals consistently with the C-suite helps to meet revenue targets. Two main metrics - Net Revenue retention and Gross revenue retention and CS should never take their eyes off expansions and growth.

4) When meeting customer advocacy goals is a challenge, automation of feedback gathering mechanisms with creative ways of introducing polls and questions, actually keeps it going.

5) Curiosity, Emotional Quotient, Taking initiatives are three skills that aspiring candidates in CS need to build

6) And how her own X-Ray vision - the ability to see and hear beyond what is being said on the surface and have a clear sense of what is actually brewing, is a game changing skill that has helped her differentiate from others. 

And finally a cartoon character that mimics a good CSM would actually be a combination of Lisa Simpson for her work ethics, Road Runner for hard work and Bugs Bunny for the undying optimism!

This and a lot more, in this super charged podcast from a great leader in the CS practice. Do give it a listen!

 

Take the customer from Hypothetical Value to the real value, Alex Farmer

The guest for this episode of CSM secrets is Alex Farmer, Vice President of customer success at Cognite.  Alex is also the founder of Customer Success Excellence awards which separates out the doers that are propelling the customer success function forward with action. No theories please.

Check it out and nominate yourself at (EMEA and USA) https://www.customersuccessexcellence.com/.

Key secrets & insights from this episode are:

1) Customer success function is where the hypothetical value stops and the delivery of actual value begins. The role of CS is to deliver what was promised.

2) CS leaders will soon become full revenue leaders; high velocity, product led and high volume sales is here to stay.

Prediction Alert: CCO & CRO will become interchangeable and one in 5 years!

3) When incentives are not aligned, the best interest of the business is compromised.  Insider secret: Alex solved this problem by incentivizing both Sales and Customer success and increased sales even if it meant double rewards. 

4) Metrics that matter: a) Velocity of conversion b) Net retention c) Logo Churn d) CSQLs e) CSAT

Now these metrics are spoken about through the podcast, so listen till end!

5) Customer advocacy: How they improved customer advocacy through special incentives for CSMs that could bring video case studies and testimonials.

This and a lot more in this really amazing, fast paced, Say more please, Podcast!

 

 

Step back & Reflect at tough times, with Ashna Patel

Ashna Patel is no new face to the customer success community. She is a top linkedin content creator when it comes to sharing customer success best practices, and insights.

This podcast with Ms.Ashna will take you one step closer to her, where she not only answers my questions, but she also gives a tiny peek into the amazing person she is in her response to my rapid fire questions.

Key takeaways from this podcast:

1) Pay attention to day to day challenges and creative ways in which you can solve them - These in turn lead into insights that will be timeless lessons.

2) In tough moments and tough times, just step back, pause and reflect. This will help with handling those moments with poise and ease.

3) We can sit and talk day about tools and BI but what is really important in Customer success is the humanness and the ability to understand customer sentiments

4) Who is keeping the monkey? Her favorite go to sentence for nailing down clear accountability in the organization and to establish clear boundaries

5) Finally, her own ability to navigate problems and find a solution and how it has helped her to accelerate her career in Customer success.

A session full of insights and practice advise. Listen in.

Helping will Sell, with Manuel A Harnisch

In this episode of CSM secrets, we speak with Manuel A Harnisch, Vice president of Customer Success at People Data labs.  In this very insightful conversation, Manuel shares many insights for CSM practitioners to adopt and deliver value to both customers and internal to their organization.

The main takeaways for CSM practitioners in this episode are:

1) Establish structure & operations when the organization is small

2) Do not have more than 2-3 accounts per CSMs to deliver exceptional results on CS metrics

3) When done right, CS can become a major force multiplier, which only startups are recognizing at this point

4) Primary metric is product consumption/adoption, NPS & CSAT scores are secondary metrics.

5) Understand the customer business, build customer intelligence rather than being selling focussed

And not to forget mentioning that his favorite cartoon character that closely resembles a good CSM is the Futurama Leela who is a badass, is sassy, is empathetic and holds people accountable.  

Such a fun and insightful conversation!

Align with the customer story, than the selling story - with Justin Strackany

Justin has a great and interesting background. Coming from a sales background, he beautifully articulates how bringing in a growth mindset and a sales framework into Customer success function has helped scale business and also build a CS that is actually a profit center.

Justin says being prescriptive,  coming to the team with a passion to learn and to nurture those dragon eggs till they grow are all key skills he is looking for in aspiring CSM candidates.

And the best part, his focus on diversity and the fact that he celebrates the hard work and dedication women bring to the team.

Turn the spotlight on Elephant in the room, with Ramya of Fusion RM

In this episode with Ramya Ragavan, she emphasizes one point - Navigate the unknown, deal with uncertainties. And no matter what the agenda of the meeting, proactively bring out the elephant in the room and address it. That seems to be her winning strategy and the reason for her success.

She also says - handle the curveballs, address the elephant in the room first, and just be curious in general.  

In this very insightful session, there are multiple takeaways for aspiring candidates on how to groom themselves for a future career in CS. 

Find connection points & navigate - Jeff Heckler

Jeff had so many insights to share with us that we actually extended the podcast by 5 minutes to hear it all.

The 5 key takeaways that we learnt from this podcast are:

1) Build an empathy muscle

2) Be honest about your mistakes

3) Find connection points

4) Bring a growth mindset

5) Customer success is about delivering value - both personally and professionally.

Jeff can be found in linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffheckler/

 

HANDLING CONFLICTS WITH CURIOISTY, WITH MARANDA DZIEKONSKI

In this first ever episode of CSM secrets, our first guest, Maranda Dziekonski, Chief customer office of Swiftly.Inc shares some key insights on what it takes to be successful in a customer success career, her tips and the trends she is watching in this space.

One of the critical insights she shares is that people in customer success profession need to be people oriented and need to be willing to develop a curiosity to resolve conflicts better.

Do listen in and do not forget to share!