S4 Episode 17: Christina Kosmowski from LogicMonitor on the future of customer success

Episode Transcript
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Voiceover (00:01):
Welcome to The Actionable Futurist® Podcast a
show all about the near termfuture with practical and
actionable advice from a rangeof global experts to help you
stay ahead of the curve. Everyepisode answers the question
what's the future of ...? withvoices and opinions that need to

(00:23):
be heard. Your host isinternational keynote speaker
and The Actionable Futurist®Andrew Grill.

Andrew Grill (00:29):
Today's guest is Christina Kosmowski. Her Twitter
bio describes her as a customerobsessed CEO, changing the very
role of it with customers at thecentre. She's a wife, mother,
engineer, STEM advocate andsoccer lover. As CEO of Logic
Monitor, Christina isresponsible for accelerating the
company's hyper growth anddelivering on his brand promise

(00:50):
of helping C-level Executivesand their teams thrive through
transformation. Prior toassuming the role of CEO,
Christina served as LogicMonitor's President leading go
to market strategy, R&R,customer success and operations.
Christina came to logicmonitorfrom slack, where she spent four
years building and leadingcustomer success and enterprise

(01:13):
go to market teams, and alsospent 15 years at Salesforce,
where she oversaw functionsincluding renewals, consulting,
support, and customer success.
Outside of logic monitor,Christina serves on the board of
rapid seven. She's also afounding partner of operator
collective, an organisation thatbrings together people from
diverse backgrounds to invest inand accelerate the next

(01:33):
generation of b2b Tech.
Christina holds a Bachelor ofScience in industrial
engineering from NorthwesternUniversity, where she was
captain of the varsity soccerteam, and currently sits on the
McCormick School of Engineeringadvisory board. Welcome,
Christina.

Christina Kosmowski (01:50):
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.

Look, it's great to have a fellow engineer on the
podcast. And we'll get to thatin a bit. But for those that
haven't yet heard of logicmonitor, what do you do and what
makes you rise above yourcompetition?

We're a purpose built fast item
platform. So what does thatmean? It means we provide
visibility and predictability ofthe performance of organisations
technology, so they canultimately innovate and deliver
customer experiences. And so weare really excited because this

(02:25):
becomes critical as companiesare in the process of digital
transformation. And moving tothe cloud, and our product
architecture, the love we getfrom our customers, and the team
and culture we've built reallyput us ahead of of our
competitors.

So we're going to talk a lot about customer
success. And that's a fairly newterm for some of our listeners.
So how would you describe thedifference between customer
success and customer service,

I mean, I could talk about customer
success all day long, I loveputting the customer at the
centre of everything and wasreally fortunate at Salesforce
to kind of be on the cusp ofreally creating this customer
success notion. And so customersupport is critical. When a
customer has an issue, and theyneed help, right then in there,

(03:14):
you've got to be able to providethat. But what's more important
is also understanding what doesvalue mean from them, and really
setting them up for success. Sothinking through what's the
business value? What's the plan?
You need to get them there?
What's How do you proactively dothat? And how do you create that
relationship between yourcompany and your customers. And

(03:39):
so that's really kind of whatcustomer success was intended to
do, especially in the rise ofSAS, where your customers
constantly have to renew and youhave to earn their are in their
business every day.

It's a very different model, isn't it, where
every month they could leave,whereas in the past and legacy
businesses, you know thatthey're 1824 months away from a
renewal. So you can, you can beawful, but having that month to
month really keeps you on yourtoes.

Yeah, exactly. And you constantly have
to be looking at value. What isvalue to that, not just what is
your technology?

So what was your biggest learning when you built
Customer Success teams at SLAC.
And at Salesforce,

number one, putting the customer at the
centre of everything you do iscritical. So what decisions are
you making? How are you buildingyour product, and ensuring that
you're really understanding yourcustomer and that they're at the
core of that. And in order to dothat I've always said process is
not the antithesis ofinnovation. So sometimes you

(04:36):
have to create those processesto really enable you to put the
customer at the centre of whatyou're doing. And so I often
talk about read account process,which doesn't always sound
great, but that's reallyimportant is when there's issues
that you're seeing or risk ofseeing it your customers,
creating a process by which youcan put the entire company up

(05:00):
accountable for that customer,not just a team like customer
success. And then finally, tellyour customer stories. It's
great to have data andunderstand how your customers
are using your product. But it'sreally important that you bring
that to life, especiallythroughout your company, for
engineers, or even accountantswho don't get the opportunity to

(05:20):
understand how their worktranslates to customers.

So coming to a CEO role with such a pedigree in
customer success, do you thinkthat makes you a better more
customer obsessed CEO?

Absolutely.
And we're able to really take alot of those processes that
we're created, and put them atthe forefront. And so we're
looking at, you know, using datato understand how our customers
are using our product, we'reputting the customer at all of
our decision points and creatingkind of our tools and processes
around that. And then we'requalitatively telling the

(05:53):
customer stories. And so we doall sorts of things on that like
bringing customers in for ourall hands, or we've got customer
stories, channels in Slack,where everybody in the business
can hear how our customers areusing our products.

And you share that amongst other clients. So one
customer, obviously, you don'tshare confident information. But
if they've worked out a way tobetter use your product, or
they've got a better way ofdoing business, is it really a
smart move to share that amongstyour clients, because they feel
more engaged with you becauseyou're literally helping them be
successful in their business,even though you're a supplier,

I think that's one of the most important
things you can do is connectyour customers and customers
that are in similar stages intheir journey with your product
customers that are solvingsimilar business challenges,
they want to hear from eachother, and where you as a
company can kind of facilitatethat. That's really powerful.

(06:49):
And it also shows that you're,you're confident and you're
learning and iterating together,you're not just feeling like,
you know everything, you'rereally kind of making this a two
way dialogue.

So I read a really interesting quote you posted on
LinkedIn recently, beingauthentic as a company is just
as important as being yourauthentic self, your brand is a
reflection of you. Can youexpand on that?

The pandemic, one of the great
things that came out of it isthat we had windows into
people's authentic selves,right, you're starting to see
that blend between kind ofpersonal and professional and in
bringing your whole self towork. And when you think about
that, as a company, you've kindof got to do that same thing,

(07:35):
which is really bringing yourcustomers on the journey with
you. And we talk about that alot here at Logic monitor is I
don't want to go back and justdeliver product and an end
product to our customers andsay, What do you think I want to
bring it to them and say, Hey,we're building this new feature,
or we're building this newproduct? Will you do that with

(07:57):
us and kind of bring them inearly stages, so that you are
iterating getting that feedback?
And going on the journeytogether?

So how does your own personal brand show up
authentically? For me,

I think it is. It's all around that this
kind of iteration. And feedbackloops are really important for
me as a leader as well. And soreally kind of bringing
frameworks together. But thenengaging the teams to help solve
problems. We've talked aboutfailing fast, that concept of,

(08:31):
hey, we're going to be bold, andwe're going to take risks, we're
going to understand what successlooks like so that we can
quickly identify if something'sworking or not, and then either
move on or expand that we'realways willing to kind of take,
be bold and take those risks anditerate.

So you touched on the pandemic. What have you
learned during the pandemic, aswe move to more distributed and
remote teams,

I started logicmonitor during the
pandemic. And so that was a realchallenge. I think I
underestimated how hard that isto do, especially when you're
coming in. And you're in a hypergrowth company. And we're
building new products and you'redriving change and
transformation. And people don'tknow you and they don't trust
you. And so how do you buildthat in this remote way. And so

(09:20):
it was really critical that Ilooked for ways to engage in so
different ways. And we talkedabout zoom and bringing kind of
your full self on Zoom andintroducing, hey, my house is a
mess behind me or my kids arecoming in the room and really
getting them to know who you areas a person. Also, really

(09:42):
utilising Slack has beenimportant for me as well. So not
only connecting in a synchronouslive way in various kind of
online zoom aspects, but also,I've got a channel in Slack
that's called Where isChristina? And it's an
opportunity where people can'tsee me every single day like you
would back before the pandemicin the office, but it's

(10:05):
important for them to kind ofsee what I'm doing on a day to
day basis. And so we make it alittle tongue in cheek
sometimes, but we take differentphotos of where I am on Zoom or
what I'm doing in my house, sothat they can really start to
know me and see me on a morefrequent basis, we learn to be
agile, and, and adapt. And thisconcept of iteration that we've,

(10:26):
we've talked about so much, herejust becomes more and more
critical,

we'll have to send you a photograph of us on the
podcast. So you can say withChristina, she was on the actual
futures podcast, which you haveto subscribe to, we definitely
have to do that. I will do thatwhen the end, you met. Other
interesting comment, literally,you said we had a window on
people's lives, I got reallygood at squinting at people's
bookcase to see what they werereading. It actually was the
first time when we were withpermission allowed into

(10:51):
someone's home and whatever wasbehind them was what they wanted
us to see. I know

it's great at what they want to see or what
they you don't want them to seesometimes to it, it was great.
It's great for people to reallyconnect and get to know people
on a different level.

So you said you've come into the role during the
pandemic? Have you noticed thatyour management styles changed
at all as a result of thepandemic and having to learn
fast and adapt to this new wayof working and managing?

Absolutely.
I mean, you've got to learn toadapt, everybody's learning this
this concept of change andagility and adaption. And I
think that that's even moreimportant when you're in a fast
growing industry, where yourproducts changing, your
customers are changing theirrelationship with your products
constantly changing. And sobuilding that into our culture
has been really important. And Ithink the pandemic has helped

(11:39):
really understand what thatmeans. Empathy has just become,
you know, everyone talks aboutthat. But that's just become
more and more critical empathyto what different folks are
going through the childcarecrisis is been a real challenge
and understanding what some ofyour employees are facing and
kind of their home environments,empathy to your customers, and

(11:59):
really get understanding whothey are as people and what
they're driving not just fromthe professional aspect. And so
it's all been, I think, somegoodness, that's come out of the
pandemic that forced us to bethese more agile, empathetic and
authentic leaders

five years ago, we would never have had an insight
as to why someone was turning upa little bit late or maybe a bit
stressed, because you sometimesjust don't want to ask those
questions. We've given eachother permission to literally
say, are you okay, because beinglocked up for so long, I know
that many people have wanted tohave that feeling of connection,
customer success, it means theremust be some customer failures,

(12:39):
I'm not going to ask you aboutany failures you've had in your
career. How does losing acustomer make you feel? And what
do you do to analyse a loss?

We haven't lost a lot of customers. But
sometimes we lose some businessfrom a customer as well. It's
horrible. And you've really gotto understand what happened
there. And I think, one, youknow, having the data is
important. So how were theyusing your product? How are they
engaging with you as a company?
Were they calling support? Werethey attending your events? Were

(13:08):
they taking meetings from you?
What was that engagement level,I'm really looking through that
data, but then to also havingthat relationship to be able to
happen transparently tell you,you know, what went wrong? What
was it in the experience theywere having was your product not

(13:29):
delivering the value theyneeded. And so being able to
kind of have those feedbackloops and have that relationship
with your customers is key andthen reminding you, we don't
know all and we've got to goback and take a look at things
with a different lens and reallyget that feedback and understand
those value propositions fromyour from your customers.

Now I mentioned we're both engineers. And I
think that's important becausemy training as an engineer your
training as an engineer, we weretaught to understand things from
first principles. And often whenmy friends say my emails not
working, my wife was notworking. I look at diagnosing
and fault finding in a verydifferent way. Going back to
first principles. Has yourengineering training helped you
throughout your career? And inwhat way?

Well, I've seen industrial engineering and
at Northwestern, it was allabout bringing kind of the
business side of engineeringtogether. And that has been a
core tenet for me in my career,which is how do we bring kind of
the human and the business sideto technology and so I made the

(14:32):
move to Salesforce for thatreason I moved into customer
success. For that reason, I madethe move to Slack logic monitor
all around those principles. Sothat's been a core tenet number
one and then number two, wetalked about these core
principles, but use the sameprocess to enable innovation has
been really important. A lot ofpeople think that it's the

(14:56):
antithesis of innovation, andwhen you move fast you can Have
any process, but actually notputting some of those frameworks
in place, make it reallydifficult to keep everyone
aligned and to understand whenyou're doing innovation and
experiments, what's working andwhat's not working, and kind of
have that data and have thoseproof points. So those two
things have been fundamental forme in my, in my career,

just staying on the career. Again, I saw another
talk where you talked about thetimes you've put up your hand
during your career, and howthat's helped you be successful,
you tell a wonderful story, I'lljust say go.

I've definitely had a philosophy of
just saying yes to anything. Ifyou ask my younger self, would I
be a CEO of a SAS Typeorganisation or being customer
success, like I didn't even knowwhat that was. So I didn't
understand necessarily what Iwanted to be when I grew up. But
what I did understand is that bysaying yes to these new

(15:52):
experiences, that I wasconstantly open to ideas, and I
was moving towards things that Ithought were really valuable and
interesting. And I could make adifference. My first job out of
school, actually pre Salesforce,they were opening an office in
London, so you'll appreciatethat. I said, Yes, I will go
there. And that was anincredible experience and

(16:14):
learning about international.
And then when I heard aboutSalesforce, it was a small
startup, just 20 million inrevenue, and nobody knew what it
was. And I said, Yes, I'm gonnatry that out. And when, because
when Salesforce said, we need tocreate this new function called
customer success, I said, Yes.
So I was constantly open to newideas, and you really have no
idea where these where thesewill take you.

What advice do you have to secondary school
students or students of any sortlistening to the podcast right
now?

It's exciting, the world's changing
and just really understandingwhat drives you? And having some
kind of fundamental coreprinciples and then saying, yes,
based on those core principles,and what gives you energy,
you're gonna have a fantasticcareer.

Now you were active in soccer in university,
just translating that for aBritish audience football, how
has it helped you with teamworkin companies you've worked in,
and now lead,

I love soccer or football and still
very much a part of my life. Myfreshman year in soccer at
Northwestern University, it wasour first year as a varsity
programme. And so we lost like,almost every game, we only won
three games, and I'm anextremely competitive person. So
that angered me. And so I wentout, and I just worked my butt

(17:36):
off. I like ran in the snow.
Every day I trained, it was justconstantly training. So I come
back sophomore year, and I'mjust in the best shape of my
life. I'm technically sound, I'mready to go ready to crush it to
get there. And my teammates kindof look at me. And they're like,
ah, you know, she's She's afreak of nature. Oh, you know,
here's Christina. And I gotreally mad in that moment.

(17:57):
Because I said, Well, I'veworked really hard to get here.
What were you guys doing thissummer used to be in my same
shape if you'd actually followthese plans. And it was just
this kind of light bulb thatwent off in my head. It's not
about me, about me just gettingin the best shape. It's about
how do I help the rest of theteam understand why it's

(18:19):
important to do these things andhelp them be better. And so we
went on and had a had a decentsophomore year, but by my junior
year, we actually made it to theSweet 16 in the in the NCAA
tournament. And so we had thisturnaround. And I think that
that light bulb of kind ofbringing people on that journey
and empowering and help peopleunderstand what it is we're all

(18:41):
trying to do is important. Andso that lesson has stuck with me
throughout my entire career.

I'm afraid that if I work for you, you asked me to
drop and give me 20.

Yes, we do often have some some competitive
games that are at our sites,that's for sure.

So you say that human relationships should be an
industry priority. How can yourindustry evolve to make this a
reality?

It is about understanding not only what your
customers are trying to do froma business, but what the
individual customer is doing andhelping them make careers from
using your products. And whenyou do that, and you're
empathising with them, andyou're helping them drive this

(19:28):
tremendous value in yourorganisation. That's when you're
truly developing these, thesepartnerships and providing
customer success. And so I thinkit's really important that you
understand the people at yourcustomers and really understand
the challenges and what they'retrying to drive.

So mentors are an important part in helping to
guide your career. Understandthat one of your teenage
daughters is on your personalboard of advisors. What advice
does she give you?

She's amazing because she's been yet
to I'll be tainted by all thethings that we often get clouded
with. And she's able to bringthings back to kind of a very
simplistic term. And she alsoknows me the core of what I am.
And so she can pull me out in away that people at work wouldn't
and which kind of puts me and myplace. And I think that that's

(20:20):
really important when you talkabout bringing your whole
authentic self, it can't just befrom one lens, it has to be
people that see you frommultiple angles, whether it's at
home, whether it's someone thatworks for you, versus someone
that you report to, or someonethat just sees you off in a

(20:40):
distance at work, it's criticalthat you have people that can
bring that different lens andhold you accountable in
different ways.

Now, I'm sure you've got mentors other than
your teenage daughter, how doyou select mentors? And where do
they play an active role inmaking you a better leader and a
manager.

And I think it's important that, again,
you're looking across allaspects that can mentors are not
just people who you've directlyworked for, who are, you know,
higher in organisations areachieved more than you have? I
think it's important that youlook at mentors from different
angles. So I have a lot ofmentors who have worked for me

(21:19):
in the past, or mentors fromother industries. And they can
bring these differentperspectives. Some of it happens
naturally. I mean, I think youcan't always force a mentorship,
it's what naturally you'reconnecting with folks. But you
can be purposeful and ensuringthat the voices you're hearing
are coming from these thesedifferent environments and

(21:41):
different aspects.

So what's the best piece of business advice you've
ever been given?

I've been given a lot of great advice. One
is using data to help informyour decisions, while also
bringing kind of the qualitativestories to bear. And that
combination is really powerful,where you've got the data to
kind of drive somebody'sdecisions, but you're also
bringing the emotion and theheart and the qualitative piece

(22:08):
of how this is coming to life inyour customers, organisations or
for actual individuals as well.

You touched on innovation, how do you innovate
at Logic monitor while you'restill running fast in a hyper
growth mode,

the million dollar question, it's important
that we're constantly evolvingwith our customers. And so that
concept of putting the customersat the centre of everything we
do, drives us to innovate. Sofor example, we are been a
longtime leader ininfrastructure monitoring at
logicmonitor. But our customershave asked us to do more. And so

(22:44):
we recently launched our logsproduct and are in the process
of launching our APM product.
And those were both the requestsof our customers. And so
understanding them understandingvalue, what they need, and then
creating that innovation aroundit.

So what are some best practices to develop a
customer success programme, andhow's that changed over time,

number one, put the customer at the centre
of what you're doing, and createprocesses and frameworks that
allow you to do that. Numbertwo, put your customers
together, create that communityand allow your customers to
learn from each other. And thennumber three, use that
combination of data and storiesto really bring the customer to

(23:30):
life.

So your training as an engineer will have
equipped you to bet on most beacutely aware about the need to
promote STEM subjects inschools. So How soon should we
be starting to promote STEM toyoung women and the secondary
school too late,

I was really fortunate to be
introduced to STEM at a youngage. I always loved math and
science and was you know, ingrade school was in the quiz
bowls and, and things like that.
But I think that that has Irealised later in life, that
that's uncommon. And so the morethat we can highlight these
careers that women can have,utilising stem and that women

(24:08):
are are good girls, girls aregood at STEM and that there are
these fantastic careers. I thinkthe better and so I really
appreciate you having me on thispodcast and and you know what I
encourage women like it's fun.
It's cool to do STEM, we'rehaving a great time.

So I've worked in sales and engineering like you
there's always this invisibleline between the two teams. So
what are you doing to connectand break down the conflict
between sales and engineeringteams that sometimes exist?

Well, that's what's so great about
being CEO right now. I can helpenable that. We've got a product
Council and the product Councilbrings feedback from our
customers and we're able tobring in what are the customers
asking us to do and then weconnect that to engineering so
it doesn't become an emotionalor something that just one

(25:03):
person is saying we're actuallyputting a formalised kind of
process by which we're hearingthe feedback of the customers,
again, both qualitative andquantitative. So we've got, you
know, clear data that showing ushow our customers using our
product, and then translate thatinto value. And we're able to
kind of build our products. Withthat in mind. We also have

(25:26):
shared metrics. And so it's keythat both sales and engineering
are driving towards the sameoutcomes.

So the $64 million question, what's the future of
customer success? Well, I

hope it's many more customer success
leaders being in the CEOpositions, because that's really
the future. It's not just ateam, or a few individuals that
are trying to drive it at acompany, it's actually coming
from the core of a company andcoming from the top down and
really putting customer successat the heart of the entire

(26:02):
companies. I look forward tomore of that.

So we've learned a lot about you the last half an
hour, but I want to run youthrough a quick fire round to
learn just a little bit moreabout you before we finish. So
I'm going to ask you some quickquestions. iPhone or android
iphone window or aisle IR onlineor in the room in the room, your
biggest hope for 2020 toreconnect with people. What's
the app that you use most onyour phone? Clack, what's one

(26:26):
thing you want to be doing,again, post pandemic?

I want to get off of 20 hour conference
calls all

day. What are you reading at the moment? Well,
we're

doing an off site. And so we're reading
the leader, you want to be fiveessential principles for
bringing out your best self.
I'll put

the link to that in the show notes. And the final
quickfire question, how do youwant to be remembered?

I want to be remembered and empowering and
making a difference in people'slives.

So as this is the actionable futures podcast, what
three actionable things shouldan audience do today? When it
comes to better delighting theircustomers,

connect them together? Number two, tell
their stories bring theirstories to light. And number
three, bring them on the journeywith you innovate, even if it's
not perfect or ready to go bringthem in early.

Great advice. How can people find out more about
you and your work that's kind of

Linked In profile and so I post frequently
there and always welcome DMS toconnecting with people directly.
We've got a great website a lotWW that logic monitor.com. I
look forward to hopefullyhearing from many

people today, Christina. Great discussion.
Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much for having me.

Voiceover (27:37):
Thank you for listening to the actionable
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(27:59):
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S4 Episode 17: Christina Kosmowski from LogicMonitor on the future of customer success

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