CSM secrets Of Influential Customer Success leaders

This is the last episode of the leadership masterclass podcast and the office is the one with highest responsibility: CEO. I speak with Prithwi Dasgupta, CEO of SmartKarrot, who has risen from the normal ranks of leadership to becoming a co-founder and CEO of SmartKarrot: Five key takeaways from this episode are: 1) What a lot of candidates that apsire to become a CEO miss - is the grind, the sacrifices and the risk/uncertainty. Glamorous from the outside, absolutely demanding on the ground. 2) A CEO needs to shed the ego and be ready to proven wrong again and again, pivot and move ahead with speed. 3) Hiring for the C-Suite is based on the challenges that a company needs to solve at that point in time and to pick the relevant candidates. Ofcourse getting into the C-suite (for other positions) requires some familiarity with the leadership because it gives a head start.  4) A CEO cannot be an all-rounder. However, if critical metrics can be defined for each function , the COE's job is therefore to they  measure them based on those metrics. Breadth definitely helps. 5) When it comes to handling opposition from the board, investors,  internal team, fellow leadership - a CEO always needs to take a balanced decision and not give in to any one pull. Now let us talk Customer Success, as SmartKarrot is about CS: Lightning Talk: In the long run, the success of CS will be measured by tangile outcomes and hence, CS needs to own post sales revenue. And SmartKarrot was born out of this vision and helps CS to achieve this specific GOAL. SmartKarrot also offers plenty of playbooks, tools, conversational AI and some custom built tools that bring tremendous benefits Customer Success managers. Check it out!  

In this episode on Operations, Mala Ramakrishan decodes the office of Operations:   1) A COO stands hand in hand with a CEO holding equal responsibilities for the overall achievement of the company's goals 2) Operations is all about execution of the stated strategic vision 3) A COO is responsible for Operations of all kinds, business, IT, program and revenue.  4) A COO needs to have a good understanding of almost all aspects of the business to be able to drive the results for each 5) Usually a COO holds dual responsibilities - Such as of Product or Sales (Sheryl Sandberg in Facebook) 6) AI is compelling and evolving for Operations to make better decisions and to eliminate manual labor. This and a few of her best and not so best moments in her career and ofcourse the rapid fire round! Listen in!

In this episode on Strategy, Dr.Michelle talks about one of the newest and evolving topics at the C-suite, which is Strategy. Traditionally, strategy has been defined to be something: a) That helps an organization retain its market share b) Prevent competition from capturing its market share. However, strategy is much more. It is culture, it is product, it is product evaluation, competitive analysis and much more. It is an entire framework for growth and goes beyond just revenue. Listen to this and a lot more in this very informative podcast!

Hello All, In this episode of leadership masterclass, I speak with Eugina Jordan, a champion for diversity and the voice of women in leadership. - In her early days, when she attended the MWC conference, what shocked her was a lack of waiting line in the women's restroom which made her realize there are so few women in tech/leadership roles and also made her write the book "UNLIMITED" - Depending on the size of the organization, it is good to setup an exclusive Diversity office under Chief People officer ; For smaller organizations, make every leader accountable for diversity by setting clear goals. -  There definitely exists a system (a biased one) which does not favor the under represented. The only way to overcome this is through persuasion and grit. - Women need to build their confidence and go after every coveted job and leadership roles - Instead of asking women to "Lean In", why dont we ask men to "Lean out" and sponsor a women for leadership roles? - Women need to understand that building a career takes the support of a village - Network, Community, Family and friends. Lean on them to grow in your career. - Find mentors and sponsors actively instead of waiting for the diversity office to find sponsors for you! This and a lot more in this episode. And do not forget to check out on her book "Unlimited" which is topping the charts in Amazon and is already a best seller!

In this episode of Leadership Master class, Jay talks about: How a simple zoom call (GTM plans based and customer outcomes, automation) started to serve the CS community grew up from 30 people on call to 75 and 150 and now a thriving and one of the largest CS communities How the community takes a wholistic approach to not where CS is going but where SaaS is going and to be able to ride the wave There is no one size CS fits all - depending on whether you are a product led growth, SMB/inside sale, Enterprise organization, follow the best practices of CS for each of these GTM models.  Organizations that were measuring results and focussed on their current customer outcomes, had 6 times longer LTV On how to structure a CS org, assign resources based on the needs of the problems you are trying to solve rather than following blueprints. Testimony for CS having an impact on GTM - By the time SaaS 60/70M most of new bookings come from existing customers.  A contract is the foundational element of a relationship. If you don't understand contract, you don't understand the business. Want reference customers? Dont try to wow them. Just try to deliver on the brand promise.  Try and make things simple for the customer! Onboarding must be a separate Ongoing , separate support from CSM which ties closely to product One big unspoken Digital CS/Scale CS - Building a central community hub where customers go for everything, is a form of scale CS and customer enablement CSMs should maintain focus on the ongoing customer issues and deliverables and not really focus on selling as it involves a different skill. AI will eat CS? No. AI is going to make us more efficient and effective at what we already do

Now, this is one of my very favorite topics. In today's discussion on Conversations with the C-suite, we have Aaron Thompson who is passionate about customer success and turning customer success into a revenue office.  Aaron introduced the concept of "Revenue acquisition cost", which is the cost you incur in acquiring newer revenues through upsells and cross-sells once a customer is onboard. This directly translates into something a Customer Success office should own. Key takeaways from this episode are: 1) The primary responsibilities of the revenue office is to focus on bringing in new revenue and in sustaining the same. 2) Profitability is the scope of a CFO and new customer acquisition is the role of the Sales/Marketing 3) Providing accurate revenue forecasts, designing strategies around bringing in new revenue, creating value added solutions are key for the success of revenue operations (RevOps) 4) The success of the revenue office is reflected in revenue numbers; and the overlap with CS is in how well CS enables revenue office to meet their numbers 5) RAC - Revenue acquisition cost is under values. While Customer Acquisition costs are usually very high, RAC could prove to be a great opportunity to build momentum in revenue without such high costs during initial acquisition. 6) And the focus is more on upsells & cross-sells and not usually on renewals, which is a given and almost requires no additional costs. 7) Customer Success managers could be account managers or Not. However, revenue responsibilities are primarily with account managers and they should continue to have the leverage in all accounts to own it end-end. 8) For anyone that aspires to be in the CRO office - a good track record of having walked the customer's pain points and designing new strategies in problem solving will go a long way in ensuring a success in their careers.  This and many takeaways from this insightful Episode!

In this episode of "Leadership Master class - Conversations with the C-suite", we feature Geoff Hollingworth, CMO Rakuten Symphony.   Geoff Hollingworth is a new age CMO. The way he has adapted marketing techniques for the B2B segments using B2C techniques, leveraging social media, humor and people centric approach to marketing are a breath of fresh air in the B2B space. Check out the amazing content that Rakuten Symphony puts out under his stellar leadership.   In this episode spanning topics from marketers being psychologists, to using levity in even serious business settings and all the way up to ChatGPT replacing marketing significantly, there are so many lessons to learn.

The key takeaways from this episode on Product:   Product office is not a standalone function that sits to define WHAT to build; rather the primary role of the product office is to collaborate with customers, and define what is the most critical problem to solve in that market space. It is important to always combine the product and technology office into one unit and have an agile development model that combines the WHAT(Product) and the HOW (Tech) Product managers are not innovators, but they are the "process owners" that are responsible for the overall process of discovery, working with customers and the market needs. Different companies require the three stellar pillars of a product - Innovation, Execution and Evangelization in different percentages.  It is easy to identify a fad and a need, in early stages. How? Who is adopting it - Technology evangelists OR customers? There is no one founding day; Founding has to be a continuous process and you essentially stick to a problem for several years - till the point where both customers and market knows what they want Get obsessed with the problem and stay with it for long; Abstracting the problem statement into a product vision which is long term & inspirational is very critical If you have the right vision, right execution model, you can be successful with the fund managers for long enough a time Progress is important than perfection. Go launch with the MVP because customer is also new to the product and has not experienced a solution such as what you are introducing Keep all the complexity and much of the innovation at the backend. Keep innovating faster but keep in mind the customer might not like it. Your pace of innovation can actually be a shock than a surprise.  AI is going to be critical, no matter what product you are in. You cannot ignore AI. AI/ChatGPT is a great augmenting tool. It may not completely replace humans but it adds more time compression  Big companies or small companies both are ideal places to innovate and build products if they have the right priorities.

In this exciting, absolutely informative session on Startups & VC Funding, Rajeev spoke to us exclusively on various topics related to Startups.  I categorized them into 3 major buckets: Idea, Team and Funds.  1) There are no blueprints to get funding. If you have a good idea,  approaching a VC through a trusted source or a referral is the first and most important step to get VC's attention 2) It is important to find the best fit VC for your ideas as not all VC funds are made the same. 3) When listening to your ideas, VCs are always looking for the thought process behind the idea and the homework that has gone behind it. 4) The first wave is usually a good time to ride than a second wave where the market potentially gets over crowded and over funded.  5) In a founder, VCs are looking for someone who is a good team player, that is willing to form a great team and share the rewards/stakes. 6) Startups are hard work and requires significant sacrifice on all fronts. A lot of new entrants seem to think Startups are "cool" but the real deal is startups are just hard work. 7) It is important to build a culture of execution where everyone is hands on and can talk about the product/technology with depth. Culture is very important. 8) Companies do not get sold, they get acquired. Execute well and the right deals will come. Do not enter a startup with an end goal of IPO/M&A from Day One. 9) Even when you nothing but just an idea, when it comes to securing funds, there is tough negotiation. So founders need to know their numbers very well. 10) VCs do enough due diligence - hence have a clean track record and reliable referernces. 11) Even solopreneurs with no team to give with them can secure funds, if they can show a path to forming a team eventually. 12) A founder's focus should always be to increase the total value of the company ; which would mean forecast well for the next 2-3 quarters,  13) VCs never want to fire a founder unless there is a huge gap in action Vs plan. 14) In terms of exit, if a idea is not working take the VCs help and either transition or optimize. 15) VCs even help resolve conflicts among founders. Ultimately VCs take a lot more risks and responsibilities when funding someone else's idea Vs running their own startup. It is high time to appreciate that.

Catch me on this podcast with Anika Zubair, VP of Customer Success @ Karbon for some amazing insights on how to scale CS through genuine human relationships and her own insights on the power of networking.

Hello Success Family,   After a while, I was able to resume some great conversations with the customer success family!   I have been obsessing over the topic of scale, especially in times of downturn like the ones we are in. How does CS continue to scale, without increasing costs and yet at the same time not lose business?   One answer that came out was the use of AI and automation in the creation of white club experiences (thanks Dickey Singh

In this episode, Preethy Padmanaban raises some great points with Jason Noble on the need and contours of working between Product Marketing and Customer success!

In this episode, Jyo Shukla, a popular Customer Success leader, takes on questions from Fernando Cerioni, who is known for his tough Product management skills! Enjoy this episode, where both conclude that Product & CS must work closely together for the organization to succeed!

In this debate - Nam asks some compelling questions on CS for Paul.   but in the end, customer success wins!

In this episode, we have Adrian Brady-Cesana, Founder and Chief experience officer at CX Chronicles. In CXChronicles, they are set out to find what customers are doing to enhance the overall customer experience and allow organizations to scale effortlessly. CXChronicles focusses on 4 main pillars to help organizations optimize: Team,Tools, Processes and Feedback    Key takeaways from this episode are:   Customer experience is what an organization defines it and a great customer experience is how well you deliver it. Four pillars to an organization's success: a) Keep a customer success scorecard 2) Conduct a through customer journey mapping 3) Build and share playbooks and bake into customer FAQs 4) Voice of customer reports Most organizations grow wrong in not building a company with a customer centric or customer focussed compass A prediction for the CS industry is that more of revenue and performance based functions such as sales will now move into customer success. His favorite cartoon character as a CSM? Superman. His tips for CS success: a) Someone should be a great conversationalist b) Listen to customer's issues c) Ask excellent questions.  His own skill/brand reputation is for having intense curiosity. And he encourages everyone else to follow the same!

Today's episode of CSM secrets is with Anita Toth, Chief Churn Crusher at Anita Toth! It is a venture that makes data & insights more contextual and actionable. Key insights from this episode are: 1) Anyone can collect data. It is as simple as asking a few questions. But where organizations need professional help is in asking the right questions to ensure collecting high quality data, cutting out everything else that could be noise. 2) The Customer 360 Insight System was built ground up to enable organizations to collect and analyze data that is able to contextualize the problems or situation at hand. 3) Two scenarios that could greatly leverage from such a methodical approach is during post onboarding and during exit. These are two critical moments in a customer journey and meaningful data collected during this phase and the insights that are derived could be an eye opener to the entire organization. 4) During difficult conversations & when handling customers, one trick or tip to set the tone and navigate the situation is with a compelling, well thought out opening statement (Prepare, Prepare, Rehearse). 5) And a prediction? Well, the plethora of AI tools that are booming in the CS space will soon attain maturity and will help CSMs take better decisions and become more successful in what they do. And during rapid fire round, well which favorite cartoon character is a good CSM? She surprised me by saying which one is not - Yosemite Sam! Well checkout why that is the case.  

In this episode, we have Will Stevenson, COO and Founder of Onboard.io, a platform focussed exclusively on Customer onboarding. Onboard.io is a culmination of several years of research on where companies go wrong with onboarding and how to make onboarding more efficient than what it is today. Hence, instead of going with a template based approach, onboard.io operates with variables. Connecting different variables for scaling, automating and driving seamless automation that can be seen by various stakeholders and measured continuously. Key insights from this episode are: 1) On boarding is a critical step in setting the right expectations for customers and also in ensuring common understanding among all stakeholders to build trust and to get customers to invest for the long term. 2) A critical step towards success in CS onboarding is to NOT share bits and pieces of information but to share in complete transparency what outcomes the customer can expect from working with you, the BIG picture if you will. 3) Non Subscription based companies, are quickly catching up to this CS trend of "Success is in Onboarding well" and unconventional industries are the quickest to adopt. And the early feedback has been extremely encouraging. 4) A big trend that he sees is one of more and more investment into customer success and the function being an integral component of every other - Sales, Product, Marketing et al. Customer success is the new trend. 5) A recommendation therefore is to put customer at the center and move away from traditional B2B practies to what is working in B2C now. Such as, product led growth, contact free sales, more power in the hands of customers. Apart from all of these, some of what we spoke during Rapid fire were leadership lessons in themselves: 1) Winnie the Pooh is his favorite cartoon character as a CEO, as he is non-egoistic and making friends and always helpful for others. 2) Self-awareness, situational awareness and determination are the keys to success and to deliver extra-ordinary results. 3) He follows this one TAB rule to retain focus. Whats that? Check it out in this really insightful episode! And also dont miss checking out on his other venture, Do Good Mission which is his way of giving back to the society!!

Have you felt this pinch as a CSM? You want to customize your website for delivering personalization but you are blocked because you do not have the tools to do that. Well, Candu is a tool to enhance an existing web app to deliver incremental changes to a webpage, like, adding sweeteners to enhance the experience and deliver good customer experience. I sat down to discuss about this quite interesting tool that sits at the intersection of customer success and marketing, with the Co-founder and CEO Jonathan. Some key insights from this episode are:  Candu is designed for digital CSM where repetitive conversations can be easily customized and delivered via web pages rather than emails. Candu provides more power to content creator/marketer to deliver value to the user base Account based marketing customizing for specific customers provides a way to complete scale the digital CS approach Such customizations actually doubled the engagement of customers and paved a way for them to stay on Most ideas for customers come from the CS world. Best people to give ideas are the account teams. Why not empower them with tools? A good digital CSM can drive huge growth. It is both an analytics and marketing role. A Good CS is about how we apply the same excitement on NOT what we build last  but what the customer used first. That first excitement. This and a lot more in this insightful episode!

Liliana comes from one of the toughest industries where it is quite a nightmare to keep customers happy, even if a small element goes wrong. Aviation and that too for a very popular brand, Jetblue!! Coming from a background where she was directly responsible for delivering an extra ordinary user experience to customers of JetBlue,  the knowledge she gained helped her start her own venture in customer experience design - "The Petrova experience". Key takeaways from this episode are: 1) The power of information/data. Empowering and arming the customer with near accurate data and equipping them with the power of choice, building apps to deliver data quickly and then the power of co-creation, where customers participate in the process, are 3 key pillars to customer experience. 2) Customer experience is driven by two drivers: The brand value needs to come through else the customer experience is not well done. Customer experience is the successful delivery of a brand value. 3) Customer experience is a non linear outcome. It requires close examination of user behavior, employee behavior and also organizational culture to bring about optimal customer experience. For instance, Even if the technology is great, if the employee experience is not great, the end customer experience is impacted.  4) Thinking from an outside perspective of what the customer is looking for rather than an internal approach is critical - Design thinking is a crucial aspect of customer experience. 5) A major trend is an overall elevation and authority of Customer Success Executives and the evolution of intelligent algos(AI) that are all set to disrupt this space even more. And a great answer that I absolutely loved was that if she were to work from the moon, one function she will take is "Copy writer". I loved it. This and much more in this very insightful episode!  

In this episode of CSM secrets, we have Dana Alvarenga, VP of customer success at Slap Five. Dana has been voted 2021 Top 100 Customer Success Strategist and also TOP25 CMA Influencer. Dana is very passionate about customer marketing and customer advocacy. With an extensive background spanning across Sales, Business development and Customer success, this episode has some great takeaways for aspiring CS professionals: 1) A field facing role, any role handling customers - even if that involves managing a restaurant, really helps in shining in a customer success career. It is critical to have that exposure. External sales experience helps. 2) Customer experience is the broad spectrum of support, implementation, on boarding and even involvement in the sales process - an End-End flawless delivery across all touch points. And measured by the overall success of all of this, not just churn, net retention and number of happy customers. 3) Customer advocacy is to be looked upon as offering opportunities to showcase customer's success and not to be approached with the old school mentality of customer's doing you favors. 4) Customer marketing is on a huge growth trajectory.  And organizations are going to the extent of creating roles with KPIs that define success based outcome in these areas. Leaders are beginning to focus heavily on customer marketing as a growth area. 5) Customer marketing should sit in various places - CS, Product and marketing to be very effective.  And providing what customer want - networking opportunity, connecting to peers etc could be some outcomes of Customer marketing. Listen to this episode for more insights!  

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.    

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!        

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!  

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!  

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/    

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.

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!

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.

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.  

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!  

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!

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!  

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!    

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.

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!

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.

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. 

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/  

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!