October 18, 2023 • 41 mins
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Chris Regester, Chief Customer Office at Planhat about how to deliver customer outcomes through a value framework.
Achieving customer success is a long-term endeavor that demands ongoing dedication and collaboration with our clients. A solid foundation is provided by a company value framework, guiding businesses on this journey. So, how can we consistently deliver lasting customer value through a value framework embraced by the entire organization? And what are the initial steps to building such a framework?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello
everyone. I'm your host, Anika
Bert , and welcome back to thenext episode of the Customer
Success Channel podcast,brought to you by Plan Hat ,
the Modern Customer platform.
This podcast is created foranyone working in or interested
in the customer success field.
(00:20):
On this podcast, we will speakto leaders in the industry
about their experiences andtheir definitions of customer
success and get their adviceand best practices on how to
run a c s organization. Today Ihave the pleasure of speaking
with Chris Register , who isthis chief Customer Officer at
(00:41):
Plan Hat , where he ensurescustomers are central to
everything they do. He hasworked in SaaS for almost 20
years, focusing on buildingteams, strategies and processes
in diverse markets around theworld. On the rare occasion, he
is not talking about customercentricity. He can be found
chasing his dogs and daughterson the farm where he lives
outside of London. Today we aregoing to pick Chris's brain on
(01:03):
delivering long-term customervalue based on a value
framework that the entirecompany at Plan hat follows. As
we know customer successdoesn't happen overnight, but
rather it is something that wework on with our customers for
years to come. I'm excited todive in deeper with Chris on
how we deliver customeroutcomes through their value
framework. Welcome everyone tothe podcast. I'm so excited to
(01:26):
welcome Chris onto the podcasttoday. For those of you guys
that don't know Chris , he'sthe chief Customer Officer at
Plan Hat . But a little funfact. Chris and I have known
each other for a number ofyears already and he's the one
that introduced me to Plan Hatas when I was a customer. He
was the one that was reallysupporting me with it, but also
(01:47):
Chris kind of started my wholepodcast career, if we wanna
call it that. He is the onethat said that I should be on
here talking with all thecustomer success leaders that I
have. So it is an honor toactually welcome Chris 'cause
he's the one that's told me tostart doing this podcast and
here he is. So welcome Chris ,to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Thank you very much for having me. Clearly I have
an I for podcast talent , so ,uh, yeah, thank you for having
me. Very excited to be on. It'sa great honor to be on the, the
the Customer Success Channelpodcast. .
Speaker 1 (02:18):
That is too funny 'cause as someone who
encouraged me to start it, Ihave, it's taken years, but we
have gotten you on here and I'msuper excited about it. I know
you well, but I think some ofour audience might not know you
that well. So for theirbenefit, could you give us a
little bit of intro into whoyou are? What is it you're
doing at Plan Hat ? Give us thelittle lowdown.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, sure. So , uh, my name is Chris Register. I
live on a farm , uh, outsideLondon. I have two daughters
and a lot of time with themand, and with my dog. And when
I'm not with them, I'mtypically doing , um, you know,
customer success things atPlant Hat where I am Chief
Customer Officer. And thenthat's a fairly broad role at
Plant Hats. I , I get involvedin , in many, many aspects of
(03:00):
the business, but basicallyspend a huge amount of my time
talking to, you know, CSleaders all around the world
about the challenges they'rehaving and, and things they're
trying to solve and, and findit a very interesting space to
work in.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I love it. That's a very humble intro, but I love
that, that that's you I guessin a nutshell too. But you have
been working in customersuccess for no small amount of
time and in the SaaS industryfor quite a bit too. And
customer success hasn't alwaysbeen called customer success as
we know it, but I feel likeyour previous roles all have
led up to this moment of beingChief Customer Officer, which
(03:32):
is a great title. I think a lotof us inspire to have it as
well. But what inspired you toactually start working in
customer success and lead tothe trajectory that you are
kind of on right now?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, you're sort of giving clues to my grand old
age , uh, in the , in the , inthe setup there that I've been
working in , in and around SASfor , you know, the best part
of 20 years. I , I joined a , acompany when it was quite
small. It was a Norwegiancompany and a marketing
technology company calledMeltwater Way, way, way back
in, in 2005. And , and back in2005, you know, really there
(04:06):
weren't that many SaaSbusinesses. It was still a very
new concept. It was still asort of idea, you know, maybe
you can build a business withrecurring revenue. But from day
one, that was what Meltwaterdid. So very, very, very early
on, relative to, you know, alot of businesses, we started
to understand the challengesof, you know, re maintaining
your revenue and how quickly ,um, your, you know, your
(04:26):
renewal base became bigger thanyour new business pipeline. So
in early 2006, I went andopened , uh, Meltwater in Asia
and very quickly I owned thatwhole business. I ran, you
know, all Asia and AsiaPacific, and we had offices
from Sydney to Tokyo to Delhiand had everything in between.
And it was just, justabsolutely clear how important
(04:47):
understanding customers and,you know, maintaining,
retaining and growing, youknow, customer revenue was to
the success of the business.
It's been in my d n a eversince I've been working has
been just the understanding ofhow critical this all is .
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Awesome. I also just learned something new about
you. I had no idea that youspent time in Asia. I obviously
know Chris London-based Chris ,but that's so cool. Another
reason that it's exciting tohave you on today, we did talk
a little bit about your titleand chief customer officer at a
customer success platform. Mustbe a lot of things. And it's a
(05:21):
title, I think a lot of peopleon this podcast that listen to
it aspire to have some day . Sowhat is exciting about the
role? Tell us a little bit moreabout what it is chief customer
Officer at Plan Hat is doingand maybe some of your biggest
learnings for anyone that'saspiring to be that.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So, so I , I I would say, you know, title aside,
first of all, just working inCS is I think incredibly
exciting. I think that, youknow, customer success in its
current form, it's got thissort of fashionable thing about
it. But, but I think that, youknow, and people talk about it
being new and, and in , and insome respects its current
iteration is new, but it , itreally is, you know, it is as
(05:59):
old as time. Definitely
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I couldn't, businesses should care about
their customers. That's whereit comes from.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Exactly right. If you're , uh, you know, you're
walked into a hairdresser, anancient Rome , you know, that
hairdresser cared about, youknow, the type of hair that
they would give you andno hairdressing is the ultimate
recurring revenue business.
'cause the hair always growsback . So this is ,
this is just as old as time,this whole concept. And, and I
think that the, right now it'sgot this sort of reputation as
(06:28):
being this function, thiscustomer success thing, and as
all of these buzzwords aroundit. But in my mind,
fundamentally, customer successis your business. It's how you
run your business. It'severything about your business.
If you don't do this well, yourbusiness will all fail. And
whilst these days we have afunction with this name,
fundamentally it is the core ofyour business. So I think that,
(06:48):
you know, for me as a , youknow, c c O, it's trying to
make sure that you know, thatthat is very much the
philosophy at Plan Hat . What Itypically see, and I, I talk to
a lot of people as well, justbecause of the role and the
nature of Plan hat , I , Itypically see that CCOs do
really, really differentthings. It depends on the size
of the company, the function,you know, the, the vertical
they're in and so on. For me, Iwould say I'm a connective
(07:11):
layer in the organization. Sointernally I'm trying to
connect how we work with ourcustomers to how we work with
prospects to what product isbuilding and what, and what
marketing is, is talking about.
So I'm involved across all ofthose different functions. And
then when it comes to ourcustomers, you know, ultimately
I've gotta make sure that Irepresent the customer
internally and that goeseverywhere else , uh, in the
(07:32):
business. So they're kind ofthe key things I'm thinking
about.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Awesome. And as I already alluded to, I've known
Plant Hat for a number ofyears, back when it was just a
few people in a room, and youguys have had extreme success,
very well deserved levels ofsuccess, and it has changed a
lot. The company has changed,but the team as well, there's
actually a customer successteam now, and not just a few
(07:56):
CSMs doing all the heavylifting behind the scenes,
which is every startup to scaleup journey. So curious, what
does the customer success teamlook like today at Plant Hat ?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
So, so the function of customer success, we, we
sort of have it in separatedivisions. So we have obviously
CSMs, we have technical accountmanagers, and we have support
globally. It's about 60 peopleall in. It's broadly split 50
50 between the Americas and,and emea . A couple of people
in apac. The idea we've had isthat we want to hire very
(08:26):
senior CSMs. So because we are,as you alluded to earlier,
because we're CSS people doingCSS with CSS technology, you
know, it's like the movieInception. It's the dream
within the dream within thedream. That's, that's where we
live. So we felt that it , itmakes a lot of sense that our
CSMs have walked the walkbefore. So on the C S M side,
(08:47):
we tend to have people who'vepreviously been directors of
CSS at other companies and thenthey join Plan Hat to really
become a true expert in this,in this profession and, and
really master it by workingwith other CS leaders and, you
know, as their C S M at PlanHat . Then we have technical
account managers who are moreon the data side ensuring the
flow of data. You know, Ialways say that customer
success, it, you know, itstarts and it ends with data.
(09:08):
You know , it is the mostcritical part of anything you
do as your data. So we have ateam dedicated to making sure
data flows in your data's,where you need it, how you need
it, doing what you need it todo. Uh, and then we have just
this absolutely amazingsupports team and you know, we
have some incredible teams atPlanet Hat , but our , our
support team is just this groupof incredibly charming,
(09:31):
interesting, diverse peoplefrom all over the world who do
just a tremendous job and getamazing feedback.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I know no one can see my face 'cause we're
recording audio, but I'msmiling as Chris is telling me
about all these teams. 'causeas a previous customer plan had
I have dealt with some of thesepeople and could only nod my
head and smile to how amazingsome of these people are. When
it comes to what you just saidabout the data, I still
remember all thoseconversations about getting our
data right before we even gotour CSS tool in place. But also
(09:59):
the number of times I wouldmessage support and, you know,
bless them, the most patientpeople thinking, oh, I have
another carrot and supportthat's asking the, the, the
very typical question. But letme help Anik out. So ,
I'm, I'm smiling ear to ear asyou're sharing all of this, but
I also kind of wanna ask you alittle bit around the future of
customer success. I know withrunning a CS team at a CSS
(10:22):
platform, you must be thinkinga lot around what the future of
customer success has in storefor obviously you as a
business. But I'm curious whatyou think the future of a
customer success manager rolemeans, or director or let's
just say anyone in the careertrajectory and customer
success.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I think that's a , that's a great question and
it's so interesting and I, Isort of trying to pledge in
this podcast not to talk aboutAI when anyone mentions the
word future because I'm sotired of everyone talking about
AI at the moment.,
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I'm too, we've had quite a few episodes around it
. , I ,
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm gonna , I'm gonna focus so much on , on the
people as I talk about this. SoI believe that people who are
building their career in, in CSnow are , are making such a
good decision. If you look overthe last 20, 30 years and , and
probably longer, if you look atwho's been running businesses,
like who are CEOs, andtypically it's people who are
coming out of sales or financedepending on the size of the
(11:18):
organization. And, and youknow, obviously you get some
technical CEOs as well and theycome out of engineering, but
they've really been the threekey areas and it just seems so,
you know, so clear to me thatwe're gonna see a generation of
people who were CSMs and builttheir career in customer
success becoming CEOs over thecourse of the next 10, 20
(11:38):
years. And I , and I thinkthat's just fantastic because
if you think about, you know,what is a C S M, you know, what
is a really good C S M, it's attheir core. They need to be a
business generalist, right? Youhave to understand your
business very deeply. You haveto understand how your
organization makes money, butyou have to, to also understand
all of your customersorganizations and how they all
make money. And then you haveto understand products as well.
(11:58):
And you also need to have anelement of relationship skills
as well. And you need someproject management in there.
You have to understand data andanalysis and so on. So it is
just this incredible trainingschool for what you need when
you want to be a C E O of anorganization. So I feel that
one of the key things that'sgonna happen as , as we look
ahead is we'll see a hugenumber of CEOs of exciting
(12:22):
companies coming outta customersuccess, or at least having had
significant experience in, incustomer success. And that in
itself is just this veryexciting fueling cycle for the
future of customer success,right? Because typically
speaking, if your csuitedoesn't believe in customer
success, your company will do aterrible job of customer
success. But I see this futurewhere there's more and more
(12:44):
people who've worked in CSS,who are in the C-suite can
empathize with the challengeand that's gonna fuel this
function , uh, in theorganization for for many
years. So I think it's a verybright future. I'm, I'm very
optimistic.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Oh , I love that.
Same here. But I also just, Ihave to reinforce what you've
just said around the futureCEOs are CSMs today. Because
even when I think early in mycareer, there wasn't even a
chief customer officer titleyet here we are, I'm chatting
with one right now. And at thesame time, it's like the
possibilities seem endlesswithin customer success. It's a
(13:17):
tough job. Like you just said,there was like 20 traits that
you just listed that A C S M isdoing every day. It's not an
easy job, but the possibilitiesare endless. And I think the
future is truly bright. And Iwas thinking about this as well
while you said it, and I justthought A C S M is a business
strategist. I feel like that'sjust what we do every day ,
like you said, coming togetherwith all those pieces. But I
(13:39):
think it's also reallyimportant what you said around
how customer success is, howyou should be running your
entire organization or runningyour entire business. It's not
a department, it's not just,you know, you helping
customers, it's how we dobusiness. Coming back to your
hairdresser example, I thinkit's a big philosophy at Plan
Hat . How do you guys live upto that philosophy with your
(14:00):
customers? Yeah .
Speaker 2 (14:01):
So, so if I can just make one comment on the
business strategist piece. Yousaid CSM is a business. I I
think you're absolutely spoton, but, and I , I think that
there's also sort of a ,there's a, there's a warning in
there for customer success. Sowe, we have a customer where
their team, they actually saidthey don't wanna be called
CSMs.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Interesting. I've heard this before within
different organizations too.
And,
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And these guys, they said , look, you know, c ss m
it's a bit of a fluffy titlethese days,, it doesn't
really have that value. It'slike we , and what they
actually said they wanted to becalled was business
strategists. Yeah. Um , and,and so I think you're totally
right, but the , the dangerthat customer success has, and
you know, this is somethingthat our plan hat we talk a lot
about because obviously we're,you know, we're, we're, we're
an important company in thisspace, or we want to be an
(14:44):
important company in thisspace. But it is, if customer
success is too full of all thesort of rainbows and unicorns
marketing and all the sort of,you know, somewhat fluffy
thought leadership pieces thatare sometimes out there, it,
it, it's harming customersuccess as a function when it
is the most critical functionin the business. So I think
(15:06):
you're totally right that therole could easily be renamed
business strategist. And Ithink it's really important
that people in, in the customersuccess community make sure
that content that's put outthere, the things that are
said, like it has to bemeaningful. It has to be
thoughtful. It can't just bedone for, for clicks and links
and all of that stuff., I I very rarely write
anything or, or, you know, putanything out there because I
(15:28):
think it's, you've gotta makesure that things have a high
caliber if you're gonna putthem out there. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Definitely.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
How , how does Plan Hat try and incorporate this
philosophy? I think there's alot of things you have to do
internally to do it, really,right? So we've, you know, we
have a big, you know,philosophy all around
transparency , uh, internally.
So obviously, you know, ourproduct is available, everyone
in the organization, you know,plan how we license it with
unlimited users. 'cause we'vealways felt that, you know, the
(15:55):
, the greatest way to kind ofblock a customer-centric
culture is by having data silosin an organization. So everyone
in the organization has, hasfull access to try and break
down silos continuously. Youknow, we try and involve
different people at differentmoments in the sort of prospect
and customer life cycle . Socustomer success will very
often be involved in deals asthey're being worked through.
(16:17):
We want the, the prospect tomeet the people they may work
with. We also want it to happenthe other way around . So the C
S M can be like, Hey, I don'tthink we can actually deliver
here. We'd like it to be onboth sides. But then equally
when, you know, we have anexecutive sponsor program, our
executive sponsors, they're notall commercial, you know, so
our C F O , he's an executivesponsor of some of our
customers. You know, we wantedto bring in our head of HR as ,
(16:39):
uh, exec sponsor on some of ourcustomers. 'cause we want to
have that kind of true customerempathy all across the
organization rather than, youknow, just in, you know, the
people who are dealing directlywith the customers. You know,
there's a lot of things we'redoing around that then , then
there's a whole other set ofthings we try and do around
communication. So on the onehand, you wanna make sure
people have access to data, butyou also wanna make sure
(17:00):
there's a lot of transparencyaround communication. So we
have Slack channels thatautomatically tell stories,
things going on with customers,customer victories and whatnot.
They go into Slack channels,but it's very important to be
transparent and honest. So welost a large customer on an all
hands with the whole companythere. We did a full breakdown
of exactly what happened, howcould product have done things
(17:21):
differently, how could customersuccess have done things
differently? How could saleshave done things differently?
How could everyone in theorganization have worked in a
different way so that, youknow, collectively there was
much better learning about whathappened and, and, you know,
really trying to engineer thisempathy into the organization
about the customer.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, and I think that's so critical. And like
you said, you guys took thetime to put the ego aside and
learn from something as well,which I think is really
critical and important in anybusiness. But I think this year
probably a lot of people arefacing churn or loss or dealing
with , um, reevaluating howthey're working with customers
as well. But you said somethingreally great, which is sales,
(18:02):
marketing, product, you nameit. Everyone was involved from
the entire customer lifecyclejourney by the sounds of it.
But whether you win or lose,you do it as a team, which I
think you guys also do everyday with following your value
framework and how you guys workday in and day out. I kind of
understand this valueframework, but for everyone
(18:22):
listening, can you give us alittle bit more of a background
of what this value frameworkis? How do you guys use it
daily? Give us a little rundownof it.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Our value framework is, I , I'd say it's kind of
our core commercial model. Uh ,at the highest level, its
purpose internally is so thatwhat we're building in product
is the same as what marketingis talking about, which is the
same as what sales is pitching,which is the same as what
customer success is, you know,delivering or deriving value
(18:51):
from. We wanted thisconsistency, you know, through
the organization. Ultimatelyit's about how do you get your
customers to outcomes. So thepurpose of a value framework is
it's a vehicle to driveoutcomes for, for your
customers and for Plan Hat ,you know, every company has
different challenges, but someof the things that are
interesting about, about ourspace is , you know, first of
(19:12):
all, plan hat's a really broadflexible product. You know, we
have customers who are 5million a r r growing super
fast . We have customers whoare a hundred million a r and
growing super fast, and we havecustomers that are many
billions of dollars of a r rand growing fast. So we have
this enormous broad range ofcustomers. We have customers
who are SaaS, we have customerswho are non SaaS, we have
(19:34):
customers who are hybrid, wehave customers that are on-prem
and and you know, and deliveredthrough the cloud. We have
every kind of vertical you canimagine as a customer and, and
all over the world. And all ofthat is possible because we've
built this platform that'sextremely flexible. One of the
other challenges though that wesee is that, you know, customer
success itself is extremelybroad. You know, if you get a
(19:54):
hundred CSS leaders in a roomand you say, Hey , uh, hey
everyone, what is customersuccess? You know, you'll get a
hundred different answers,right? It is this enormously
broad, varied space. And whatthat means is you typically get
a hundred different ways peoplewant to achieve things. You
also get a lot of relativelyill-defined objectives. And,
(20:15):
and the third challenge we seeis that people are really busy.
Css people are so busy, it'sunbelievable, but they want to
get moving quickly. Andhistorically in our plan hap
like we've been really fastwith getting people up and
running, you know, smallercustomers up and running with
six to eight weeks largecustomers a little bit longer
of course, but typically it'sbeen a , it's been , uh, you
know, fast momentum to getpeople re real value quickly.
(20:36):
So what we tried to do is lookat, you know, what are the
outcomes our customers want toachieve, which is fundamentally
they want to grow and retaintheir customer revenue. And
then we said , well, look, what, what does that mean? Like,
that's so high level . Likewhat are the real outcomes that
you need to achieve that? Andwe looked at what our customers
do. We talked to a bunch ofcustomers and we saw that
really there , there are reallyfive outcomes in customer
(20:57):
success that enable you to growand retain your customer
revenue. So we said, okay, wellnow we've got these five things
that we can anchor around, wecan tie metrics to . And we
said , well, to achieveoutcomes, you have to have
inputs. So what are the thingsthat our customers do to
achieve these outcomes? Andthat's really the value
framework is this model of whatare the things you need to do
(21:19):
in Plan hat where we've builtbest practices, templates,
guides, et cetera, et cetera ,so that people can drive plan
hat to achieve these clearoutcomes so they can ultimately
grow and retain their customerrevenue.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, I love what you said earlier, and I wanna
pick up on it too, because youmentioned how with this
framework and how you guys areworking and how you guys
figured out these five outcomesthat all your customers want in
some degree, you mentioned thatit's the vehicle to the
outcomes themselves, but I wasalso thinking these five things
can take a year, but it couldalso take many, many years to
(21:54):
probably achieve all theseoutcomes that you guys are
talking about, which I want youto share what those are too.
But I believe, and I'm sureeveryone listening also feels
customer success is not justabout one month or one year of
customer success, it is yearsand years, if not hopefully,
decades, of providing outcomesand value delivery for your
(22:14):
customers for years to come. Sohow did you guys, when building
this framework, and when youshare a little bit more about
it, how did you think aboutensuring long-term value with
those five parts that you justmentioned?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I mean, you're clearly a , an expert in the
space because you've actually,you know, summarized one of the
outcomes itself. ,we'll come to that in a moment,
but , um, what we've done isthrough this model model ,
there's maturity scoring allthe way through it. So I think
that there's two dimensions. Sofirst of all, okay, Customer
success is broad and you needto decide what your priorities
(22:47):
are and your priorities willchange at any moment in time.
So it's really important thatyou decide what you wanna
prioritize to begin and youreally drive that home. So as
we work with the framework withcustomers, we'll say, you know,
for, you know , you know, what, what , what do you wanna
achieve? And maybe thecustomer's like, look, we've
got a real problem withonboarding now. So one of the
values is onboard your customersystematically. And then we've
(23:08):
got a whole bunch of differentways that you can use Plan Hat
to do that. Best practices bothin the technology and, and in
your processes. We say , okay,well, you know, what else, what
else Jen ? They say, oh , youknow, we've actually, we've
also got this whole challengearound our renewal and
expansion processes, so that'sanother value. And so we say,
okay, well, like why don't wefocus on those things? We'll
start with onboarding and yourrenewal and expansion
processes, right? Um , youknow, you could argue that's
(23:29):
sort of the start and the endof a 12 month cycle with a
customer for, for sake ofargument. And then we'll, we'll
go really deep with them onthose things. And then we say ,
okay, look, we've achievedthese, we've got these
objectives, we're measuringthese metrics. What do you
wanna do next? Where do youwant to go now? And then of
course, over time, so thisgives us one, we get things
done, we accomplish things, wemove on to other areas, but
(23:49):
over time, the way they wannaon onboard evolves or best
practice changes. So we canalso go back to them. So we're
always reviewing the valuesthat have gone live to make
sure that it's cutting edge andthat it's still meeting the
requirements of the customer.
And then how we deliver eachvalue is also scored on a
maturity level. So let's say ina very simple example , uh, a
(24:11):
simple onboarding would be youhave one generic playbook to
onboard all of your customers.
And then a slightly moreadvanced version would be you
have different playbooks basedon the type of customer they
are . And then perhaps a moreadvanced level would be you
have segmented playbooks percustomer cohort, and then you
have adoption playbooks todrive change management at a
(24:31):
user level with automated emailsequences hitting the users at
the right moment to drivechange management and so on and
so forth. That's sort of theway we've done it, is that
you've got this framework thatcovers all of customer success
and then built into it. There'smaturity levels. One of the
things that's reallyinteresting is that then when
we start working with acustomer, we can help them
understand and benchmark themfrom a maturity point of view.
(24:53):
So based on what you're doingtoday and how you're doing it,
like this is how you are versuslet's say, other SaaS companies
in France or other MarTechcompanies that are under 50
million a a r around the world.
So we're gathering data fromour customers and other people
we talk to, and then we're ableto benchmark, which, which in
itself is such a fascinatingand eyeopening , uh,
eye-opening thing in thisspace. I
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Love that you mention the maturity piece
because I think that'ssomething that is almost, I
don't wanna say forgotten, buta last thought. When you are
mapping out value outcomes andyou're like, okay, this is
everything I wanna achieve withmy customers, and this is how
they're gonna get the mostvalue out of our product, but
most times we forget that likeyou said, you have customers
that have 5 million a r rgrowing really fast and
(25:35):
billions and growing reallyfast, and that customer at 5
million and growing fast is notgonna be looking at the same
outcomes as someone with abillion in a r r . So you
really have to scale thingsbased on the maturity of their
product, the maturity of theircustomers, the maturity of
their market. And I thinkthat's really important to
consider when you are buildingout your own framework. You
(25:56):
guys have five, maybe there'sthree at a different company,
but some people who arelistening are probably
thinking, Hey, how do I evenstart with building a framework
at my own company? And I wouldsay it's thinking about
maturity as a really big partof that, but you guys are the
ones with framework, you're theexpert here. So I'm curious, if
I was starting a framework fromscratch, what would you expect
(26:18):
or what would you tell me to bedoing or recommend for me to
get started with?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
The , the first thing to understand is that
it's, it's very easy to createa slide and say, these are the
outcomes our customers want toachieve, that we will help you.
And put that slide into a salesdeck and then say, you know,
ta-da , now we have a valueframework. Or to put them each
as, you know , uh, links onyour website and say, look how
(26:43):
we're getting you there. Firstof all, you have to understand
it's a, it's a really bigundertaking, you know, for us,
you know what we're using now.
It was a good six to ninemonths of work to really build
this out and lots of peopleand, you know, lots of thinking
evolve , lots of conversations.
The core of it is obviously,can you operationalize it,
right ? There's what can youmake that jump from, here's a
(27:04):
cool concept with clearoutcomes, and people get
excited by it when they see itto, okay, wow, we're actually
measuring the delivery of thisthing over time and can see
improvement and development atan operational level. So I
think that's what you have toget to, you know, where do you
start? I think it makes mostsense to start at the top,
right? You start with, youknow, what are the outcomes
(27:24):
that you know that ourcustomers want to achieve? And
you challenge it again andagain and again, you know, and
this is what we kept on doing.
It's like, why does thatoutcome matter? Like , does it
matter? Like why, why is thatimportant and how does it
influence the p and l if theycan do this? How do you measure
it? And, you know, if you can'tmeasure it and it doesn't
impact the p and l in some way,then it's not real. Uh , that
(27:45):
was what we, you know, reallycame to. It's got to be
measurable, it's gotta betangible. It's , it's gotta be
hard. And this is one of theexciting things that's
happening in customer successnow, right? Is that, you know,
the, the tougher economy of thelast, you know, whatever it is,
18, 24 months has meant thatpeople are being forced to have
this much deeper assessment ofhow they're driving value for
(28:05):
customers. And you've gottamake sure that whatever you're
offering, it's influencing thecustomer's p and l in some form
or another.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I love that. I think of it as r o i , making sure
your product, like you show ther o i to your customer right
away, but p and l is anothergreat way of looking at it. But
like you said, think of reallywhy, like why is this
important? Why is this gonnachange the lives of our
customer? Like not just thewhat is it and the like feature
functionality of your product,but the why is a strong, strong
(28:32):
lever. And then also, like yousaid, whatever revenue piece,
whether it's the r o i of yourproduct or how it affects their
p and l, it's really critical.
Which brings me good segue tomy next question, which is
around the whole economy rightnow, times are tougher than
they've ever been. CSS leadersand professionals are being
asked to really look tightlyand scrutinize their budgets.
(28:54):
And I've heard it more times,and I'm guessing you hear it
more than I do, but I hear thequote, my C F O doesn't value
customer success, or they don'twanna invest anymore in
customer success, which is apity, but I hear it and I'm
curious, how do you handlesituations like that? How do
you advise people who have CFOswho just don't believe in what
(29:15):
they're trying to build and do?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I mean , and it comes back to you have to
influence revenue and then acustomer success. It must be in
the organization, eitherdirectly responsible for or
indirectly measuring its impacton revenue. Um, you know, we
always say, you know, why doesplan hat exist ? Plan Hat
exists to help companies retainand grow their customer
revenue. That is why customersuccess is a function
(29:39):
ultimately needs to exist. Andyou can spin that sentence a
million different ways. You cansay, oh , you customer success
exists to surpass theircustomer's wildest dreams, or
all of these kind of fluffythings, but fundamentally you
exist to retain and growcustomer revenue. And so you've
gotta make sure that you aredoing that, you're responsible
for that, either with a directmetric or that you're tracking
it. So I think that fororganizations where they have
(30:00):
that challenge, that there'stwo things they need to do,
first thing they should do isget the C F O in a meeting with
customers. If you can do that,that's a wonderful way to build
immediate empathy andunderstanding. So if you can do
that, great. Oftentimes that'shard. But the real thing you
need is you need data showing ,uh, your impact on revenue, and
you need that data over time,right ? You have to show that
(30:22):
historic impact. And I think alot of people who haven't
worked in customer success,they, they don't understand
the, the, the , the challengesaround time in customer
success. It's so much differentto sales where you typically
have a pipeline and a quarterlyforecast, and it's, and it's
somewhat more predictable, butin, in customer success,
there's this continuous laggingeffect, which makes everything
so much harder to show, youknow, to show direct r o i . So
(30:45):
I have a great example of thatwhere, you know, a company
that, you know, I know fairlywell, fairly large company, the
c e o read , um, the greatFrank Lipman's book and , uh,
decided that , um, you know,they didn't need a customer
success function anymore, sothey closed it down, and this
was in Q one of this year, andin Q two of this year, their
(31:05):
churn and net retention waspretty good. They're pretty
happy with like, Hey , we madea great decision, but you know
, lo and behold, what happenedin Q three, they've now had,
you know, 4, 5, 6 months ofultimately a mix of sales and,
and pro service people managingthe customers, what happened?
Their results absolutely tankedbecause this is lagging effect
in css. And the customers werefeeling it two quarters later
(31:27):
and they were like, Hey, youknow what, this, this isn't
working for us. So now they'rehaving to rewind and , and undo
everything. So how could thathave been avoided if there
would've been clear data on theimpact of CSS on revenue in the
organization to show the C F Oand also data about the impact
of time and how things have alagging effect in customer
success? Yeah,
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I think that's another critical thing. And
coming back to long-termcustomer values, it's in the
name you, it's long-term , it'snot gonna be today, tomorrow,
next month. And using the data,but also making sure that you
are very mindful that eventhough you're budgeting may be
just for 2024 right now, CSSdoesn't happen in a year, it's
(32:08):
a longer term , it's a biggerproject. And also factoring
that into the conversationsthat you are having with
whether it's your C F O or yourwider executive team or even
the board, it's, it's a lotbigger than that. And I think
sometimes we get sobottlenecked into thinking or
tunnel vision of, hey, this isjust, I got a plan for this
(32:29):
quarter or this year, butyou're thinking about your a r
r five years from now or your nr r five years from now as
well. And that's not gonnahappen with the conversation on
just this quarter, or like youjust said, Q one versus Q two,
they had a different idea. Sothanks for sharing that. I have
one more question around theframeworks, which is a lot of
(32:49):
people are gonna be buildingout frameworks or thinking
about it as well as we go intoa , a new year. And I was
amazed when I saw your guys'framework for the first time,
but I know that probably didn'thappen overnight, and I know
that it probably took manyiterations of getting to where
you guys are at now. Butcurious, what were some of your
biggest mistakes, learnings?
What did you guys figure outwhile building out this
(33:11):
long-term customer successoutcome-based framework?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
So what we use today, this is V two value
framework 2.0, and I thinkwe've learned a huge amount
from the first version. And I,I think I've spoken a little
bit about some of those thingsalready, but the first version
was conceptually made a lot ofsense and it gave, you know,
directionally made a lot ofsense for customers. Like, yes,
I can relate to this, this iswhat I wanna achieve. It gave
(33:35):
us direction, but it didn't tieout enough at the top to real
business outcomes. So weweren't so good at saying, Hey,
we've done all of this work onthis thing. Look at what's
changing in your business. Andthe second side of it was
internally we didn't reallyoperationalize it enough. So it
became the thing of, you know,I'm helping my customers
improve their onboarding, butone CSM was doing it this way,
(33:57):
another CSM was doing it thatway, another one was doing it a
third way. So we were losingthat collective education of
how things are done. So in theversion we have now, one of the
things that , and there's somany things that are cool about
, uh, about having a valueframework, it's just this sort
of ocean of interesting dataand knowledge that you can use
in an organization so much. Butone of the things we've done is
(34:18):
we've built it out. If I takethe onboarding example again,
you know, we've looked at allof our customers and talked to
all of our team about all thedifferent ways people want to
onboard, and then how do weactually build that out and
plan out what's the best way ofdoing it? What are the best
ways of approaching thesedifferent, you know, different
types of onboarding? And nowwe've got it all documented,
right? So any new person whojoins Plan Hat as an employee,
(34:39):
they can come in and look at itand they're like, oh, look,
they , here are all of theseinteresting ways that you can
onboard companies andcustomers. And very quickly
they're getting the knowledgeabout onboarding that most CS
people would only get in a ,you know, over a lifetime
because it's collected from allthese different organizations
that we've worked with and ,and have experience with.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I love that. And I love that you just said that
operational piece because Ithink a lot of times we get
held back by theory rather thandoing, but like you said, there
was V one and you realize therewas operational issues and then
you went and corrected that.
Like, you don't have to justwait for perfection. And I
think I'm always one to believethat progress over perfection,
but more so when you arebuilding customer success
(35:17):
because you're gonna have totry, try, try again, and it's
not gonna be perfect. But asyou said, it's, it's endless
possibilities of what you canbe doing with this framework .
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, for sure.
That's so exciting. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Well, listen, we could keep chatting about this,
but we do have to wrap up withour quick fire questions where
I challenge each one of myguests to try to answer the
next few questions in asentence or less. It's almost
never the case, but I'm gonnachallenge you. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I'll do my best. I'm not, I'm, I'm not very good at
short answers as you probablynoticed. I'm, I'm brilliant.
,
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Your answer to my question right now already is
indicative of what we're gonnaget, but we'll try. The first
question kind of leads back towhat we were talking about
earlier, but what do you thinkis next for the customer
success industry?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I think there are a lot of very exciting and
inspiring younger people movinginto customer success at the
moment with interestingbackgrounds that are gonna
really help professionalize thespace. And I think that that's
very exciting for the next 10years. I've been meeting a lot
of people over the last coupleof weeks and just been so
(36:22):
inspired by the backgroundssome of these people,
recognizing the customersuccess is the core of the
business and really wanting toget their hands on it. But
coming from consulting, vc,private equity engineering, all
different roles. So I thinkthere's sort of a young , the
next generation of CSS peopleis, is a very exciting
generation. I'm, I'm veryinspired by some of the people
(36:43):
I've met, obviously not talkingabout AI
Speaker 1 (36:47):
, I love
that too though, because early
in my career I didn't even seepeople do that transition that
you're just talking about. AndI've come across teachers and
doctors and lawyers that havetransitioned into customer
success as well. And I'm justlike, it makes such an
interesting pool of people thatare all working towards the
same thing, which is theoutcomes of our customer. But
(37:09):
it's again, a very interestingmix of personalities, people
and, and traits that buildcustomer success. So that's
really cool that you see thattoo. My next question is, which
SaaS product can you not livewithout? Obviously Plan Hat
can't be one of them. We can'tbe biased, but gimme another
SaaS product that you can'tlive without.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I use Loom a lot. I think recording video , super
handy, super simple, verytactical, but just gets the job
done and it's , it's a greatproduct.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, I think Loom is like at every CSMs toolbox.
I feel like they could be videofor CSMs at this point. Next
question is, what is yourfavorite CSS learning resource?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I sort of alluded to this earlier , I think there's
some great CS content outthere, but I also think
there's, you know, some stuffthat, that isn't so great and,
and does more harm than good. Itry to have one-to-one
conversations. I, I think it'svery interesting people's
background and how they getinto css. A lot of the
questions you've asked me, Ithink I love talking to people
who've come, you know, sort ofsideways moves mid-career into
(38:08):
CSS and talking to them aboutit. One thing I think that more
people should do is they shouldread broadly, read about other
functions in the business andapply the learning back to css.
So don't go and read, don'tkind of doom scroll your, you
know, customer success blogsand whatnot. Don't read that
article on five tips to improveonboarding. Don't read the six
(38:30):
pillars of customer centricityand all of this stuff. Go out
and learn about personalizationand marketing. Go and learn
about data analytics and takethat learning and apply it to
your day-to-day because you arethe center of the business. You
gotta learn outside of , uh,outside of the world we all
live in.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I'm trying not to laugh so hard 'cause the
marketing team at Plan Hat isgonna probably give Chris the
hardest time for that answer.
But I agree, I think we do haveto take concepts that are
outside of customer success,outside of our typical blogs.
And I agree, like I read a bookon in sales about storytelling
and that I think that appliesso much to customer success and
(39:06):
we don't do it enough. Socompletely agree on that, but
I'm just smiling ear to earthinking about the poor plan
hat marketing team that's gonnagive Chris a hard time for what
he just said. My last questionthough, Chris , is who is
inspiring you or whom do youthink we should have next on
this podcast?
Speaker 2 (39:23):
So my , uh, my eldest daughter, she , uh, she
wants to come on. So she has alot of opinions. Uh, her
business, the three Bs, it'sbracelets, bookmarks, and um,
badges. Uh , their customersuccess she tells me is
outstanding and hewants to come on. But if that's
not okay, I think we should getsluman on. I think that Frank
Sluman should come on and weshould talk about what he said.
(39:44):
'cause uh , I think hisphilosophy is absolutely spot
on . I just think that the wayhe's talking about executing it
is a little bit off Hisphilosophy is the customer has
to be everybody'sresponsibility and that's
absolutely spot on . It wouldbe great to get him on.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
That's a great suggestion. But I also like
your former suggestion. Whydidn't your daughter have a
cameo in this conversation?
, I would love to learnhow she is killing the customer
success game in HER three Bbusiness.,
Speaker 2 (40:13):
She , her agenda is far too busy. We , she, we, we
didn't schedule this right.
She's busy.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Awesome. Well thank you Chris , so much for coming
on here and sharing all yourinsights. If anyone has any
other questions or anythingelse they wanna follow up and
talk to you about, what's thebest way to get ahold of you?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I am very simple.
Just chris@planhat.com and, andlove talking to people about
all the things and topics onthis podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Amazing. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Thank you for listening to the Customer
Success Channel podcast today.
We hope you learn something newto take back to your team and
your company. If you foundvalue in our podcast, please
make sure to give us a positivereview and make sure you
subscribe to our channel as werelease new podcasts every
month. Also, if you have anytopics that you would like me
to discuss in the future or youwould like to be a guest on the
(41:01):
podcast, please feel free toreach out. All my contact
details are in the show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
Bert , and welcome back to thenext episode of the Customer
Success Channel podcast,brought to you by Plan Hat ,
the Modern Customer platform.
This podcast is created foranyone working in or interested
in the customer success field.
(00:20):
On this podcast, we will speakto leaders in the industry
about their experiences andtheir definitions of customer
success and get their adviceand best practices on how to
run a c s organization. Today Ihave the pleasure of speaking
with Chris Register , who isthis chief Customer Officer at
(00:41):
Plan Hat , where he ensurescustomers are central to
everything they do. He hasworked in SaaS for almost 20
years, focusing on buildingteams, strategies and processes
in diverse markets around theworld. On the rare occasion, he
is not talking about customercentricity. He can be found
chasing his dogs and daughterson the farm where he lives
outside of London. Today we aregoing to pick Chris's brain on
(01:03):
delivering long-term customervalue based on a value
framework that the entirecompany at Plan hat follows. As
we know customer successdoesn't happen overnight, but
rather it is something that wework on with our customers for
years to come. I'm excited todive in deeper with Chris on
how we deliver customeroutcomes through their value
framework. Welcome everyone tothe podcast. I'm so excited to
(01:26):
welcome Chris onto the podcasttoday. For those of you guys
that don't know Chris , he'sthe chief Customer Officer at
Plan Hat . But a little funfact. Chris and I have known
each other for a number ofyears already and he's the one
that introduced me to Plan Hatas when I was a customer. He
was the one that was reallysupporting me with it, but also
(01:47):
Chris kind of started my wholepodcast career, if we wanna
call it that. He is the onethat said that I should be on
here talking with all thecustomer success leaders that I
have. So it is an honor toactually welcome Chris 'cause
he's the one that's told me tostart doing this podcast and
here he is. So welcome Chris ,to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Thank you very much for having me. Clearly I have
an I for podcast talent , so ,uh, yeah, thank you for having
me. Very excited to be on. It'sa great honor to be on the, the
the Customer Success Channelpodcast.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
That is too funny 'cause as someone who
encouraged me to start it, Ihave, it's taken years, but we
have gotten you on here and I'msuper excited about it. I know
you well, but I think some ofour audience might not know you
that well. So for theirbenefit, could you give us a
little bit of intro into whoyou are? What is it you're
doing at Plan Hat ? Give us thelittle lowdown.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, sure. So , uh, my name is Chris Register. I
live on a farm , uh, outsideLondon. I have two daughters
and a lot of time with themand, and with my dog. And when
I'm not with them, I'mtypically doing , um, you know,
customer success things atPlant Hat where I am Chief
Customer Officer. And thenthat's a fairly broad role at
Plant Hats. I , I get involvedin , in many, many aspects of
(03:00):
the business, but basicallyspend a huge amount of my time
talking to, you know, CSleaders all around the world
about the challenges they'rehaving and, and things they're
trying to solve and, and findit a very interesting space to
work in.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I love it. That's a very humble intro, but I love
that, that that's you I guessin a nutshell too. But you have
been working in customersuccess for no small amount of
time and in the SaaS industryfor quite a bit too. And
customer success hasn't alwaysbeen called customer success as
we know it, but I feel likeyour previous roles all have
led up to this moment of beingChief Customer Officer, which
(03:32):
is a great title. I think a lotof us inspire to have it as
well. But what inspired you toactually start working in
customer success and lead tothe trajectory that you are
kind of on right now?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, you're sort of giving clues to my grand old
age , uh, in the , in the , inthe setup there that I've been
working in , in and around SASfor , you know, the best part
of 20 years. I , I joined a , acompany when it was quite
small. It was a Norwegiancompany and a marketing
technology company calledMeltwater Way, way, way back
in, in 2005. And , and back in2005, you know, really there
(04:06):
weren't that many SaaSbusinesses. It was still a very
new concept. It was still asort of idea, you know, maybe
you can build a business withrecurring revenue. But from day
one, that was what Meltwaterdid. So very, very, very early
on, relative to, you know, alot of businesses, we started
to understand the challengesof, you know, re maintaining
your revenue and how quickly ,um, your, you know, your
(04:26):
renewal base became bigger thanyour new business pipeline. So
in early 2006, I went andopened , uh, Meltwater in Asia
and very quickly I owned thatwhole business. I ran, you
know, all Asia and AsiaPacific, and we had offices
from Sydney to Tokyo to Delhiand had everything in between.
And it was just, justabsolutely clear how important
(04:47):
understanding customers and,you know, maintaining,
retaining and growing, youknow, customer revenue was to
the success of the business.
It's been in my d n a eversince I've been working has
been just the understanding ofhow critical this all is .
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Awesome. I also just learned something new about
you. I had no idea that youspent time in Asia. I obviously
know Chris London-based Chris ,but that's so cool. Another
reason that it's exciting tohave you on today, we did talk
a little bit about your titleand chief customer officer at a
customer success platform. Mustbe a lot of things. And it's a
(05:21):
title, I think a lot of peopleon this podcast that listen to
it aspire to have some day . Sowhat is exciting about the
role? Tell us a little bit moreabout what it is chief customer
Officer at Plan Hat is doingand maybe some of your biggest
learnings for anyone that'saspiring to be that.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So, so I , I I would say, you know, title aside,
first of all, just working inCS is I think incredibly
exciting. I think that, youknow, customer success in its
current form, it's got thissort of fashionable thing about
it. But, but I think that, youknow, and people talk about it
being new and, and in , and insome respects its current
iteration is new, but it , itreally is, you know, it is as
(05:59):
old as time. Definitely
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I couldn't, businesses should care about
their customers. That's whereit comes from.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Exactly right. If you're , uh, you know, you're
walked into a hairdresser, anancient Rome , you know, that
hairdresser cared about, youknow, the type of hair that
they would give you
recurring revenue business.
'cause the hair always growsback
this is just as old as time,this whole concept. And, and I
think that the, right now it'sgot this sort of reputation as
(06:28):
being this function, thiscustomer success thing, and as
all of these buzzwords aroundit. But in my mind,
fundamentally, customer successis your business. It's how you
run your business. It'severything about your business.
If you don't do this well, yourbusiness will all fail. And
whilst these days we have afunction with this name,
fundamentally it is the core ofyour business. So I think that,
(06:48):
you know, for me as a , youknow, c c O, it's trying to
make sure that you know, thatthat is very much the
philosophy at Plan Hat . What Itypically see, and I, I talk to
a lot of people as well, justbecause of the role and the
nature of Plan hat , I , Itypically see that CCOs do
really, really differentthings. It depends on the size
of the company, the function,you know, the, the vertical
they're in and so on. For me, Iwould say I'm a connective
(07:11):
layer in the organization. Sointernally I'm trying to
connect how we work with ourcustomers to how we work with
prospects to what product isbuilding and what, and what
marketing is, is talking about.
So I'm involved across all ofthose different functions. And
then when it comes to ourcustomers, you know, ultimately
I've gotta make sure that Irepresent the customer
internally and that goeseverywhere else , uh, in the
(07:32):
business. So they're kind ofthe key things I'm thinking
about.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Awesome. And as I already alluded to, I've known
Plant Hat for a number ofyears, back when it was just a
few people in a room, and youguys have had extreme success,
very well deserved levels ofsuccess, and it has changed a
lot. The company has changed,but the team as well, there's
actually a customer successteam now, and not just a few
(07:56):
CSMs doing all the heavylifting behind the scenes,
which is every startup to scaleup journey. So curious, what
does the customer success teamlook like today at Plant Hat ?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
So, so the function of customer success, we, we
sort of have it in separatedivisions. So we have obviously
CSMs, we have technical accountmanagers, and we have support
globally. It's about 60 peopleall in. It's broadly split 50
50 between the Americas and,and emea . A couple of people
in apac. The idea we've had isthat we want to hire very
(08:26):
senior CSMs. So because we are,as you alluded to earlier,
because we're CSS people doingCSS with CSS technology, you
know, it's like the movieInception. It's the dream
within the dream within thedream. That's, that's where we
live. So we felt that it , itmakes a lot of sense that our
CSMs have walked the walkbefore. So on the C S M side,
(08:47):
we tend to have people who'vepreviously been directors of
CSS at other companies and thenthey join Plan Hat to really
become a true expert in this,in this profession and, and
really master it by workingwith other CS leaders and, you
know, as their C S M at PlanHat . Then we have technical
account managers who are moreon the data side ensuring the
flow of data. You know, Ialways say that customer
success, it, you know, itstarts and it ends with data.
(09:08):
You know , it is the mostcritical part of anything you
do as your data. So we have ateam dedicated to making sure
data flows in your data's,where you need it, how you need
it, doing what you need it todo. Uh, and then we have just
this absolutely amazingsupports team and you know, we
have some incredible teams atPlanet Hat , but our , our
support team is just this groupof incredibly charming,
(09:31):
interesting, diverse peoplefrom all over the world who do
just a tremendous job and getamazing feedback.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I know no one can see my face 'cause we're
recording audio, but I'msmiling as Chris is telling me
about all these teams. 'causeas a previous customer plan had
I have dealt with some of thesepeople and could only nod my
head and smile to how amazingsome of these people are. When
it comes to what you just saidabout the data, I still
remember all thoseconversations about getting our
data right before we even gotour CSS tool in place. But also
(09:59):
the number of times I wouldmessage support and, you know,
bless them, the most patientpeople thinking, oh, I have
another carrot and supportthat's asking the, the, the
very typical question. But letme help Anik out. So
I'm, I'm smiling ear to ear asyou're sharing all of this, but
I also kind of wanna ask you alittle bit around the future of
customer success. I know withrunning a CS team at a CSS
(10:22):
platform, you must be thinkinga lot around what the future of
customer success has in storefor obviously you as a
business. But I'm curious whatyou think the future of a
customer success manager rolemeans, or director or let's
just say anyone in the careertrajectory and customer
success.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I think that's a , that's a great question and
it's so interesting and I, Isort of trying to pledge in
this podcast not to talk aboutAI when anyone mentions the
word future because I'm sotired of everyone talking about
AI at the moment.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I'm too, we've had quite a few episodes around it
.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm gonna , I'm gonna focus so much on , on the
people as I talk about this. SoI believe that people who are
building their career in, in CSnow are , are making such a
good decision. If you look overthe last 20, 30 years and , and
probably longer, if you look atwho's been running businesses,
like who are CEOs, andtypically it's people who are
coming out of sales or financedepending on the size of the
(11:18):
organization. And, and youknow, obviously you get some
technical CEOs as well and theycome out of engineering, but
they've really been the threekey areas and it just seems so,
you know, so clear to me thatwe're gonna see a generation of
people who were CSMs and builttheir career in customer
success becoming CEOs over thecourse of the next 10, 20
(11:38):
years. And I , and I thinkthat's just fantastic because
if you think about, you know,what is a C S M, you know, what
is a really good C S M, it's attheir core. They need to be a
business generalist, right? Youhave to understand your
business very deeply. You haveto understand how your
organization makes money, butyou have to, to also understand
all of your customersorganizations and how they all
make money. And then you haveto understand products as well.
(11:58):
And you also need to have anelement of relationship skills
as well. And you need someproject management in there.
You have to understand data andanalysis and so on. So it is
just this incredible trainingschool for what you need when
you want to be a C E O of anorganization. So I feel that
one of the key things that'sgonna happen as , as we look
ahead is we'll see a hugenumber of CEOs of exciting
(12:22):
companies coming outta customersuccess, or at least having had
significant experience in, incustomer success. And that in
itself is just this veryexciting fueling cycle for the
future of customer success,right? Because typically
speaking, if your csuitedoesn't believe in customer
success, your company will do aterrible job of customer
success. But I see this futurewhere there's more and more
(12:44):
people who've worked in CSS,who are in the C-suite can
empathize with the challengeand that's gonna fuel this
function , uh, in theorganization for for many
years. So I think it's a verybright future. I'm, I'm very
optimistic.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Oh , I love that.
Same here. But I also just, Ihave to reinforce what you've
just said around the futureCEOs are CSMs today. Because
even when I think early in mycareer, there wasn't even a
chief customer officer titleyet here we are, I'm chatting
with one right now. And at thesame time, it's like the
possibilities seem endlesswithin customer success. It's a
(13:17):
tough job. Like you just said,there was like 20 traits that
you just listed that A C S M isdoing every day. It's not an
easy job, but the possibilitiesare endless. And I think the
future is truly bright. And Iwas thinking about this as well
while you said it, and I justthought A C S M is a business
strategist. I feel like that'sjust what we do every day ,
like you said, coming togetherwith all those pieces. But I
(13:39):
think it's also reallyimportant what you said around
how customer success is, howyou should be running your
entire organization or runningyour entire business. It's not
a department, it's not just,you know, you helping
customers, it's how we dobusiness. Coming back to your
hairdresser example, I thinkit's a big philosophy at Plan
Hat . How do you guys live upto that philosophy with your
(14:00):
customers? Yeah .
Speaker 2 (14:01):
So, so if I can just make one comment on the
business strategist piece. Yousaid CSM is a business. I I
think you're absolutely spoton, but, and I , I think that
there's also sort of a ,there's a, there's a warning in
there for customer success. Sowe, we have a customer where
their team, they actually saidthey don't wanna be called
CSMs.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Interesting. I've heard this before within
different organizations too.
And,
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And these guys, they said , look, you know, c ss m
it's a bit of a fluffy titlethese days,
really have that value. It'slike we , and what they
actually said they wanted to becalled was business
strategists. Yeah. Um , and,and so I think you're totally
right, but the , the dangerthat customer success has, and
you know, this is somethingthat our plan hat we talk a lot
about because obviously we're,you know, we're, we're, we're
an important company in thisspace, or we want to be an
(14:44):
important company in thisspace. But it is, if customer
success is too full of all thesort of rainbows and unicorns
marketing and all the sort of,you know, somewhat fluffy
thought leadership pieces thatare sometimes out there, it,
it, it's harming customersuccess as a function when it
is the most critical functionin the business. So I think
(15:06):
you're totally right that therole could easily be renamed
business strategist. And Ithink it's really important
that people in, in the customersuccess community make sure
that content that's put outthere, the things that are
said, like it has to bemeaningful. It has to be
thoughtful. It can't just bedone for, for clicks and links
and all of that stuff.
anything or, or, you know, putanything out there because I
(15:28):
think it's, you've gotta makesure that things have a high
caliber if you're gonna putthem out there. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Definitely.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
How , how does Plan Hat try and incorporate this
philosophy? I think there's alot of things you have to do
internally to do it, really,right? So we've, you know, we
have a big, you know,philosophy all around
transparency , uh, internally.
So obviously, you know, ourproduct is available, everyone
in the organization, you know,plan how we license it with
unlimited users. 'cause we'vealways felt that, you know, the
(15:55):
, the greatest way to kind ofblock a customer-centric
culture is by having data silosin an organization. So everyone
in the organization has, hasfull access to try and break
down silos continuously. Youknow, we try and involve
different people at differentmoments in the sort of prospect
and customer life cycle . Socustomer success will very
often be involved in deals asthey're being worked through.
(16:17):
We want the, the prospect tomeet the people they may work
with. We also want it to happenthe other way around . So the C
S M can be like, Hey, I don'tthink we can actually deliver
here. We'd like it to be onboth sides. But then equally
when, you know, we have anexecutive sponsor program, our
executive sponsors, they're notall commercial, you know, so
our C F O , he's an executivesponsor of some of our
customers. You know, we wantedto bring in our head of HR as ,
(16:39):
uh, exec sponsor on some of ourcustomers. 'cause we want to
have that kind of true customerempathy all across the
organization rather than, youknow, just in, you know, the
people who are dealing directlywith the customers. You know,
there's a lot of things we'redoing around that then , then
there's a whole other set ofthings we try and do around
communication. So on the onehand, you wanna make sure
people have access to data, butyou also wanna make sure
(17:00):
there's a lot of transparencyaround communication. So we
have Slack channels thatautomatically tell stories,
things going on with customers,customer victories and whatnot.
They go into Slack channels,but it's very important to be
transparent and honest. So welost a large customer on an all
hands with the whole companythere. We did a full breakdown
of exactly what happened, howcould product have done things
(17:21):
differently, how could customersuccess have done things
differently? How could saleshave done things differently?
How could everyone in theorganization have worked in a
different way so that, youknow, collectively there was
much better learning about whathappened and, and, you know,
really trying to engineer thisempathy into the organization
about the customer.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, and I think that's so critical. And like
you said, you guys took thetime to put the ego aside and
learn from something as well,which I think is really
critical and important in anybusiness. But I think this year
probably a lot of people arefacing churn or loss or dealing
with , um, reevaluating howthey're working with customers
as well. But you said somethingreally great, which is sales,
(18:02):
marketing, product, you nameit. Everyone was involved from
the entire customer lifecyclejourney by the sounds of it.
But whether you win or lose,you do it as a team, which I
think you guys also do everyday with following your value
framework and how you guys workday in and day out. I kind of
understand this valueframework, but for everyone
(18:22):
listening, can you give us alittle bit more of a background
of what this value frameworkis? How do you guys use it
daily? Give us a little rundownof it.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Our value framework is, I , I'd say it's kind of
our core commercial model. Uh ,at the highest level, its
purpose internally is so thatwhat we're building in product
is the same as what marketingis talking about, which is the
same as what sales is pitching,which is the same as what
customer success is, you know,delivering or deriving value
(18:51):
from. We wanted thisconsistency, you know, through
the organization. Ultimatelyit's about how do you get your
customers to outcomes. So thepurpose of a value framework is
it's a vehicle to driveoutcomes for, for your
customers and for Plan Hat ,you know, every company has
different challenges, but someof the things that are
interesting about, about ourspace is , you know, first of
(19:12):
all, plan hat's a really broadflexible product. You know, we
have customers who are 5million a r r growing super
fast . We have customers whoare a hundred million a r and
growing super fast, and we havecustomers that are many
billions of dollars of a r rand growing fast. So we have
this enormous broad range ofcustomers. We have customers
who are SaaS, we have customerswho are non SaaS, we have
(19:34):
customers who are hybrid, wehave customers that are on-prem
and and you know, and deliveredthrough the cloud. We have
every kind of vertical you canimagine as a customer and, and
all over the world. And all ofthat is possible because we've
built this platform that'sextremely flexible. One of the
other challenges though that wesee is that, you know, customer
success itself is extremelybroad. You know, if you get a
(19:54):
hundred CSS leaders in a roomand you say, Hey , uh, hey
everyone, what is customersuccess? You know, you'll get a
hundred different answers,right? It is this enormously
broad, varied space. And whatthat means is you typically get
a hundred different ways peoplewant to achieve things. You
also get a lot of relativelyill-defined objectives. And,
(20:15):
and the third challenge we seeis that people are really busy.
Css people are so busy, it'sunbelievable, but they want to
get moving quickly. Andhistorically in our plan hap
like we've been really fastwith getting people up and
running, you know, smallercustomers up and running with
six to eight weeks largecustomers a little bit longer
of course, but typically it'sbeen a , it's been , uh, you
know, fast momentum to getpeople re real value quickly.
(20:36):
So what we tried to do is lookat, you know, what are the
outcomes our customers want toachieve, which is fundamentally
they want to grow and retaintheir customer revenue. And
then we said , well, look, what, what does that mean? Like,
that's so high level . Likewhat are the real outcomes that
you need to achieve that? Andwe looked at what our customers
do. We talked to a bunch ofcustomers and we saw that
really there , there are reallyfive outcomes in customer
(20:57):
success that enable you to growand retain your customer
revenue. So we said, okay, wellnow we've got these five things
that we can anchor around, wecan tie metrics to . And we
said , well, to achieveoutcomes, you have to have
inputs. So what are the thingsthat our customers do to
achieve these outcomes? Andthat's really the value
framework is this model of whatare the things you need to do
(21:19):
in Plan hat where we've builtbest practices, templates,
guides, et cetera, et cetera ,so that people can drive plan
hat to achieve these clearoutcomes so they can ultimately
grow and retain their customerrevenue.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, I love what you said earlier, and I wanna
pick up on it too, because youmentioned how with this
framework and how you guys areworking and how you guys
figured out these five outcomesthat all your customers want in
some degree, you mentioned thatit's the vehicle to the
outcomes themselves, but I wasalso thinking these five things
can take a year, but it couldalso take many, many years to
(21:54):
probably achieve all theseoutcomes that you guys are
talking about, which I want youto share what those are too.
But I believe, and I'm sureeveryone listening also feels
customer success is not justabout one month or one year of
customer success, it is yearsand years, if not hopefully,
decades, of providing outcomesand value delivery for your
(22:14):
customers for years to come. Sohow did you guys, when building
this framework, and when youshare a little bit more about
it, how did you think aboutensuring long-term value with
those five parts that you justmentioned?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I mean, you're clearly a , an expert in the
space because you've actually,you know, summarized one of the
outcomes itself.
but , um, what we've done isthrough this model model ,
there's maturity scoring allthe way through it. So I think
that there's two dimensions. Sofirst of all, okay, Customer
success is broad and you needto decide what your priorities
(22:47):
are and your priorities willchange at any moment in time.
So it's really important thatyou decide what you wanna
prioritize to begin and youreally drive that home. So as
we work with the framework withcustomers, we'll say, you know,
for, you know , you know, what, what , what do you wanna
achieve? And maybe thecustomer's like, look, we've
got a real problem withonboarding now. So one of the
values is onboard your customersystematically. And then we've
(23:08):
got a whole bunch of differentways that you can use Plan Hat
to do that. Best practices bothin the technology and, and in
your processes. We say , okay,well, you know, what else, what
else Jen ? They say, oh , youknow, we've actually, we've
also got this whole challengearound our renewal and
expansion processes, so that'sanother value. And so we say,
okay, well, like why don't wefocus on those things? We'll
start with onboarding and yourrenewal and expansion
processes, right? Um , youknow, you could argue that's
(23:29):
sort of the start and the endof a 12 month cycle with a
customer for, for sake ofargument. And then we'll, we'll
go really deep with them onthose things. And then we say ,
okay, look, we've achievedthese, we've got these
objectives, we're measuringthese metrics. What do you
wanna do next? Where do youwant to go now? And then of
course, over time, so thisgives us one, we get things
done, we accomplish things, wemove on to other areas, but
(23:49):
over time, the way they wannaon onboard evolves or best
practice changes. So we canalso go back to them. So we're
always reviewing the valuesthat have gone live to make
sure that it's cutting edge andthat it's still meeting the
requirements of the customer.
And then how we deliver eachvalue is also scored on a
maturity level. So let's say ina very simple example , uh, a
(24:11):
simple onboarding would be youhave one generic playbook to
onboard all of your customers.
And then a slightly moreadvanced version would be you
have different playbooks basedon the type of customer they
are . And then perhaps a moreadvanced level would be you
have segmented playbooks percustomer cohort, and then you
have adoption playbooks todrive change management at a
(24:31):
user level with automated emailsequences hitting the users at
the right moment to drivechange management and so on and
so forth. That's sort of theway we've done it, is that
you've got this framework thatcovers all of customer success
and then built into it. There'smaturity levels. One of the
things that's reallyinteresting is that then when
we start working with acustomer, we can help them
understand and benchmark themfrom a maturity point of view.
(24:53):
So based on what you're doingtoday and how you're doing it,
like this is how you are versuslet's say, other SaaS companies
in France or other MarTechcompanies that are under 50
million a a r around the world.
So we're gathering data fromour customers and other people
we talk to, and then we're ableto benchmark, which, which in
itself is such a fascinatingand eyeopening , uh,
eye-opening thing in thisspace. I
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Love that you mention the maturity piece
because I think that'ssomething that is almost, I
don't wanna say forgotten, buta last thought. When you are
mapping out value outcomes andyou're like, okay, this is
everything I wanna achieve withmy customers, and this is how
they're gonna get the mostvalue out of our product, but
most times we forget that likeyou said, you have customers
that have 5 million a r rgrowing really fast and
(25:35):
billions and growing reallyfast, and that customer at 5
million and growing fast is notgonna be looking at the same
outcomes as someone with abillion in a r r . So you
really have to scale thingsbased on the maturity of their
product, the maturity of theircustomers, the maturity of
their market. And I thinkthat's really important to
consider when you are buildingout your own framework. You
(25:56):
guys have five, maybe there'sthree at a different company,
but some people who arelistening are probably
thinking, Hey, how do I evenstart with building a framework
at my own company? And I wouldsay it's thinking about
maturity as a really big partof that, but you guys are the
ones with framework, you're theexpert here. So I'm curious, if
I was starting a framework fromscratch, what would you expect
(26:18):
or what would you tell me to bedoing or recommend for me to
get started with?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
The , the first thing to understand is that
it's, it's very easy to createa slide and say, these are the
outcomes our customers want toachieve, that we will help you.
And put that slide into a salesdeck and then say, you know,
ta-da , now we have a valueframework. Or to put them each
as, you know , uh, links onyour website and say, look how
(26:43):
we're getting you there. Firstof all, you have to understand
it's a, it's a really bigundertaking, you know, for us,
you know what we're using now.
It was a good six to ninemonths of work to really build
this out and lots of peopleand, you know, lots of thinking
evolve , lots of conversations.
The core of it is obviously,can you operationalize it,
right ? There's what can youmake that jump from, here's a
(27:04):
cool concept with clearoutcomes, and people get
excited by it when they see itto, okay, wow, we're actually
measuring the delivery of thisthing over time and can see
improvement and development atan operational level. So I
think that's what you have toget to, you know, where do you
start? I think it makes mostsense to start at the top,
right? You start with, youknow, what are the outcomes
(27:24):
that you know that ourcustomers want to achieve? And
you challenge it again andagain and again, you know, and
this is what we kept on doing.
It's like, why does thatoutcome matter? Like , does it
matter? Like why, why is thatimportant and how does it
influence the p and l if theycan do this? How do you measure
it? And, you know, if you can'tmeasure it and it doesn't
impact the p and l in some way,then it's not real. Uh , that
(27:45):
was what we, you know, reallycame to. It's got to be
measurable, it's gotta betangible. It's , it's gotta be
hard. And this is one of theexciting things that's
happening in customer successnow, right? Is that, you know,
the, the tougher economy of thelast, you know, whatever it is,
18, 24 months has meant thatpeople are being forced to have
this much deeper assessment ofhow they're driving value for
(28:05):
customers. And you've gottamake sure that whatever you're
offering, it's influencing thecustomer's p and l in some form
or another.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I love that. I think of it as r o i , making sure
your product, like you show ther o i to your customer right
away, but p and l is anothergreat way of looking at it. But
like you said, think of reallywhy, like why is this
important? Why is this gonnachange the lives of our
customer? Like not just thewhat is it and the like feature
functionality of your product,but the why is a strong, strong
(28:32):
lever. And then also, like yousaid, whatever revenue piece,
whether it's the r o i of yourproduct or how it affects their
p and l, it's really critical.
Which brings me good segue tomy next question, which is
around the whole economy rightnow, times are tougher than
they've ever been. CSS leadersand professionals are being
asked to really look tightlyand scrutinize their budgets.
(28:54):
And I've heard it more times,and I'm guessing you hear it
more than I do, but I hear thequote, my C F O doesn't value
customer success, or they don'twanna invest anymore in
customer success, which is apity, but I hear it and I'm
curious, how do you handlesituations like that? How do
you advise people who have CFOswho just don't believe in what
(29:15):
they're trying to build and do?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I mean , and it comes back to you have to
influence revenue and then acustomer success. It must be in
the organization, eitherdirectly responsible for or
indirectly measuring its impacton revenue. Um, you know, we
always say, you know, why doesplan hat exist ? Plan Hat
exists to help companies retainand grow their customer
revenue. That is why customersuccess is a function
(29:39):
ultimately needs to exist. Andyou can spin that sentence a
million different ways. You cansay, oh , you customer success
exists to surpass theircustomer's wildest dreams, or
all of these kind of fluffythings, but fundamentally you
exist to retain and growcustomer revenue. And so you've
gotta make sure that you aredoing that, you're responsible
for that, either with a directmetric or that you're tracking
it. So I think that fororganizations where they have
(30:00):
that challenge, that there'stwo things they need to do,
first thing they should do isget the C F O in a meeting with
customers. If you can do that,that's a wonderful way to build
immediate empathy andunderstanding. So if you can do
that, great. Oftentimes that'shard. But the real thing you
need is you need data showing ,uh, your impact on revenue, and
you need that data over time,right ? You have to show that
(30:22):
historic impact. And I think alot of people who haven't
worked in customer success,they, they don't understand
the, the, the , the challengesaround time in customer
success. It's so much differentto sales where you typically
have a pipeline and a quarterlyforecast, and it's, and it's
somewhat more predictable, butin, in customer success,
there's this continuous laggingeffect, which makes everything
so much harder to show, youknow, to show direct r o i . So
(30:45):
I have a great example of thatwhere, you know, a company
that, you know, I know fairlywell, fairly large company, the
c e o read , um, the greatFrank Lipman's book and , uh,
decided that , um, you know,they didn't need a customer
success function anymore, sothey closed it down, and this
was in Q one of this year, andin Q two of this year, their
(31:05):
churn and net retention waspretty good. They're pretty
happy with like, Hey , we madea great decision, but you know
, lo and behold, what happenedin Q three, they've now had,
you know, 4, 5, 6 months ofultimately a mix of sales and,
and pro service people managingthe customers, what happened?
Their results absolutely tankedbecause this is lagging effect
in css. And the customers werefeeling it two quarters later
(31:27):
and they were like, Hey, youknow what, this, this isn't
working for us. So now they'rehaving to rewind and , and undo
everything. So how could thathave been avoided if there
would've been clear data on theimpact of CSS on revenue in the
organization to show the C F Oand also data about the impact
of time and how things have alagging effect in customer
success? Yeah,
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I think that's another critical thing. And
coming back to long-termcustomer values, it's in the
name you, it's long-term , it'snot gonna be today, tomorrow,
next month. And using the data,but also making sure that you
are very mindful that eventhough you're budgeting may be
just for 2024 right now, CSSdoesn't happen in a year, it's
(32:08):
a longer term , it's a biggerproject. And also factoring
that into the conversationsthat you are having with
whether it's your C F O or yourwider executive team or even
the board, it's, it's a lotbigger than that. And I think
sometimes we get sobottlenecked into thinking or
tunnel vision of, hey, this isjust, I got a plan for this
(32:29):
quarter or this year, butyou're thinking about your a r
r five years from now or your nr r five years from now as
well. And that's not gonnahappen with the conversation on
just this quarter, or like youjust said, Q one versus Q two,
they had a different idea. Sothanks for sharing that. I have
one more question around theframeworks, which is a lot of
(32:49):
people are gonna be buildingout frameworks or thinking
about it as well as we go intoa , a new year. And I was
amazed when I saw your guys'framework for the first time,
but I know that probably didn'thappen overnight, and I know
that it probably took manyiterations of getting to where
you guys are at now. Butcurious, what were some of your
biggest mistakes, learnings?
What did you guys figure outwhile building out this
(33:11):
long-term customer successoutcome-based framework?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
So what we use today, this is V two value
framework 2.0, and I thinkwe've learned a huge amount
from the first version. And I,I think I've spoken a little
bit about some of those thingsalready, but the first version
was conceptually made a lot ofsense and it gave, you know,
directionally made a lot ofsense for customers. Like, yes,
I can relate to this, this iswhat I wanna achieve. It gave
(33:35):
us direction, but it didn't tieout enough at the top to real
business outcomes. So weweren't so good at saying, Hey,
we've done all of this work onthis thing. Look at what's
changing in your business. Andthe second side of it was
internally we didn't reallyoperationalize it enough. So it
became the thing of, you know,I'm helping my customers
improve their onboarding, butone CSM was doing it this way,
(33:57):
another CSM was doing it thatway, another one was doing it a
third way. So we were losingthat collective education of
how things are done. So in theversion we have now, one of the
things that , and there's somany things that are cool about
, uh, about having a valueframework, it's just this sort
of ocean of interesting dataand knowledge that you can use
in an organization so much. Butone of the things we've done is
(34:18):
we've built it out. If I takethe onboarding example again,
you know, we've looked at allof our customers and talked to
all of our team about all thedifferent ways people want to
onboard, and then how do weactually build that out and
plan out what's the best way ofdoing it? What are the best
ways of approaching thesedifferent, you know, different
types of onboarding? And nowwe've got it all documented,
right? So any new person whojoins Plan Hat as an employee,
(34:39):
they can come in and look at itand they're like, oh, look,
they , here are all of theseinteresting ways that you can
onboard companies andcustomers. And very quickly
they're getting the knowledgeabout onboarding that most CS
people would only get in a ,you know, over a lifetime
because it's collected from allthese different organizations
that we've worked with and ,and have experience with.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I love that. And I love that you just said that
operational piece because Ithink a lot of times we get
held back by theory rather thandoing, but like you said, there
was V one and you realize therewas operational issues and then
you went and corrected that.
Like, you don't have to justwait for perfection. And I
think I'm always one to believethat progress over perfection,
but more so when you arebuilding customer success
(35:17):
because you're gonna have totry, try, try again, and it's
not gonna be perfect. But asyou said, it's, it's endless
possibilities of what you canbe doing with this framework .
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, for sure.
That's so exciting. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Well, listen, we could keep chatting about this,
but we do have to wrap up withour quick fire questions where
I challenge each one of myguests to try to answer the
next few questions in asentence or less. It's almost
never the case, but I'm gonnachallenge you. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I'll do my best. I'm not, I'm, I'm not very good at
short answers as you probablynoticed. I'm, I'm brilliant.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Your answer to my question right now already is
indicative of what we're gonnaget, but we'll try. The first
question kind of leads back towhat we were talking about
earlier, but what do you thinkis next for the customer
success industry?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I think there are a lot of very exciting and
inspiring younger people movinginto customer success at the
moment with interestingbackgrounds that are gonna
really help professionalize thespace. And I think that that's
very exciting for the next 10years. I've been meeting a lot
of people over the last coupleof weeks and just been so
(36:22):
inspired by the backgroundssome of these people,
recognizing the customersuccess is the core of the
business and really wanting toget their hands on it. But
coming from consulting, vc,private equity engineering, all
different roles. So I thinkthere's sort of a young , the
next generation of CSS peopleis, is a very exciting
generation. I'm, I'm veryinspired by some of the people
(36:43):
I've met, obviously not talkingabout AI
Speaker 1 (36:47):
in my career I didn't even seepeople do that transition that
you're just talking about. AndI've come across teachers and
doctors and lawyers that havetransitioned into customer
success as well. And I'm justlike, it makes such an
interesting pool of people thatare all working towards the
same thing, which is theoutcomes of our customer. But
(37:09):
it's again, a very interestingmix of personalities, people
and, and traits that buildcustomer success. So that's
really cool that you see thattoo. My next question is, which
SaaS product can you not livewithout? Obviously Plan Hat
can't be one of them. We can'tbe biased, but gimme another
SaaS product that you can'tlive without.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I use Loom a lot. I think recording video , super
handy, super simple, verytactical, but just gets the job
done and it's , it's a greatproduct.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, I think Loom is like at every CSMs toolbox.
I feel like they could be videofor CSMs at this point. Next
question is, what is yourfavorite CSS learning resource?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I sort of alluded to this earlier , I think there's
some great CS content outthere, but I also think
there's, you know, some stuffthat, that isn't so great and,
and does more harm than good. Itry to have one-to-one
conversations. I, I think it'svery interesting people's
background and how they getinto css. A lot of the
questions you've asked me, Ithink I love talking to people
who've come, you know, sort ofsideways moves mid-career into
(38:08):
CSS and talking to them aboutit. One thing I think that more
people should do is they shouldread broadly, read about other
functions in the business andapply the learning back to css.
So don't go and read, don'tkind of doom scroll your, you
know, customer success blogsand whatnot. Don't read that
article on five tips to improveonboarding. Don't read the six
(38:30):
pillars of customer centricityand all of this stuff. Go out
and learn about personalizationand marketing. Go and learn
about data analytics and takethat learning and apply it to
your day-to-day because you arethe center of the business. You
gotta learn outside of , uh,outside of the world we all
live in.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I'm trying not to laugh so hard 'cause the
marketing team at Plan Hat isgonna probably give Chris the
hardest time for that answer.
But I agree, I think we do haveto take concepts that are
outside of customer success,outside of our typical blogs.
And I agree, like I read a bookon in sales about storytelling
and that I think that appliesso much to customer success and
(39:06):
we don't do it enough. Socompletely agree on that, but
I'm just smiling ear to earthinking about the poor plan
hat marketing team that's gonnagive Chris a hard time for what
he just said. My last questionthough, Chris , is who is
inspiring you or whom do youthink we should have next on
this podcast?
Speaker 2 (39:23):
So my , uh, my eldest daughter, she , uh, she
wants to come on. So she has alot of opinions. Uh, her
business, the three Bs, it'sbracelets, bookmarks, and um,
badges. Uh , their customersuccess she tells me is
outstanding
not okay, I think we should getsluman on. I think that Frank
Sluman should come on and weshould talk about what he said.
(39:44):
'cause uh , I think hisphilosophy is absolutely spot
on . I just think that the wayhe's talking about executing it
is a little bit off Hisphilosophy is the customer has
to be everybody'sresponsibility and that's
absolutely spot on . It wouldbe great to get him on.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
That's a great suggestion. But I also like
your former suggestion. Whydidn't your daughter have a
cameo in this conversation?
success game in HER three Bbusiness.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
She , her agenda is far too busy. We , she, we, we
didn't schedule this right.
She's busy
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Awesome. Well thank you Chris , so much for coming
on here and sharing all yourinsights. If anyone has any
other questions or anythingelse they wanna follow up and
talk to you about, what's thebest way to get ahold of you?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I am very simple.
Just chris@planhat.com and, andlove talking to people about
all the things and topics onthis podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Amazing. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Thank you for listening to the Customer
Success Channel podcast today.
We hope you learn something newto take back to your team and
your company. If you foundvalue in our podcast, please
make sure to give us a positivereview and make sure you
subscribe to our channel as werelease new podcasts every
month. Also, if you have anytopics that you would like me
to discuss in the future or youwould like to be a guest on the
(41:01):
podcast, please feel free toreach out. All my contact
details are in the show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
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