Ep. 21- Sustaining Success- The Integral Role of Customer Success in Revenue Teams l Revenue Rehab w/ Georgie Papacostas & Brandi Starr

This week, Brandi and Georgie will tackle Sustaining Success: The Integral Role of Customer Success in Revenue Teams

Georgie is a third-culture kid born in the US to Greek immigrants who grew up in the Middle East. She began her career in the public sector at the Embassy of Cyprus, conducted health care research as an analyst at the Advisory Board Company in Washington, DC., and taught English in Spain and Ethiopia.

Leaping into SaaS and Customer Success in 2015, her first Customer Success role was at HubSpot’s Dublin, Ireland office, where she became a leader overseeing the Implementation Specialist team. Since then, Georgie has led more than 40 global Customer Success professionals across teams at SaaS companies of various stages, including Sprout Social, Showpad (Learncore) and Workday (ScoutRFP).

Georgie has spent her entire career at mission-driven organizations and companies, consistently putting the citizen, the patient, the customer, or the team at the center of everything she does.

Bullet Points of Key Topics + Chapter Markers:

• Topic #1 Defining Customer Success [07:01] “It's really important that customer success teams are goal oriented, and that those goals are driven by their customers,” Georgie shares.  She goes on to explain, “if you're investing in a software or a service, it means that you either don't have the time, or the capabilities, or the people or the resource on your team to solve it”.  This partnership helps drive customers towards those goals and see success.
• Topic #2 The Role of Customer Success in the Revenue Process [11:37] Georgie describes some reasoning behind variables as to when Customer Success should be inserted into the revenue process, such as company size and growth stage.  However, she goes on to explain, “[if] we're more talking about b2b SaaS companies...I do think CSMs are really well positioned” to be integral at least in the renewal stage.
• Topic #3 Optimizing Revenue through Customer Success [17:45] “We're living now through a time that shows us how quickly things can change” Georgie says, “so some of it is understanding competitive intelligence versus the cost of doing nothing intelligence.” Creating alignment with Sales, Marketing and Customer Success is critical to your Revenue Process she says; “companies that work in silos don't succeed”, so, in order to optimize revenue, there has to be integration at some level.

So, What's the One Thing You Can Do Today?

Georgie’s one thing is to “Go and find a CES (Customer Effort Score) person that you haven't connected with yet and have a 20-minute conversation with them”, she advises and ask them to share about their role.

Links:

Get in touch with Georgie Papacostas on

• LinkedIn
• Sales Assembly