October 25, 2022 • 40 mins
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Claire O'Regan, Director of Customer Success at Juro about how to drive time to value (TTV) for customers in only 14 days.
Getting a quick return on investment (ROI) from new software is essential. But how long should it take for a new customer to start seeing value? And is it actually possible to get customers up and running in just two weeks?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everyone.
I'm your host, Anika Zer, andwelcome back to the next episode
of the Customer Success Channelpodcast, brought to you by Plan
Hat, the Modern Customerplatform.
This podcast is created foranyone working in or interested
in the customer success field.
On this podcast, we will speakto leaders in the industry about
their experiences and theirdefinitions of customer success
(00:27):
and get their advice and bestpractices on how to run ACS
organization.
Today we're speaking with ClaireOgan.
Claire is passionate aboutfounding and building customer
success teams at high growthtech companies.
She has scaled CS teams at largetech firms and is now growing
(00:48):
startup businesses.
Her previous experience includesj O Zero and Swerve.
She is also the most recentwinner and recipient of Customer
Success Leader of the Year.
From the customer successexcellent awards at J, she has
grown customer success fromscratch as their first senior
hire in post sales deliveringhigh net dollar retention,
creating repeatable revenueengine and an employee NPS of
(01:12):
94.
Today we will, speaking to herall about how she not only built
this high growth CS department,but how her team is delivering
implementation.
In just 14 days, Claire and herteam have been able to drive
time to value to their customersin just two weeks.
Let's chat to her to find outhow she's doing it.
Welcome, Claire to the podcast.
I'm really excited to have youhere with us today.
(01:34):
Before we get into today'stopic, can you please tell our
listeners a little bit moreabout yourself and what it is
you're doing at J?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Uh, yes, definitely.
Thank you and happy to be here.
A little bit about me is that Ihave built my career almost,
almost entirely in customersuccess.
So I've been in this areaprobably for close to, uh, 15
years, beginning in big tech.
So beginning in Google at a timewhen the concept of customer
(02:02):
success I think was quite newand, and was really like, um, a
new concept, particularly inemia, maybe had had taken, um, a
little bit of a hold in statesand was, uh, something that was
being developed.
I have specialized in buildingcustomer success teams from
scratch, particularly at earlystage startups, usually about
series A or B, and being the,uh, first hire on the ground for
(02:27):
a customer success organization,either regionally in EMIA or as
a, like a first global hire,which is, which is what's
happened in in J.
So j I've built out a approachto post sales relationship
management for our customers,uh, focusing very heavily on
implementation and enablement,but also on full life cycle
(02:51):
enablement of customers and theability to, uh, renew and upsell
them so that we're, we'regrowing together.
Um, definitely a a passionatecustomer success head.
I'm very happy about, about thework that j has been doing in
this area in particular.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I love hearing it.
Also amazing to hear yourbackground and what it is you've
been doing, and so focused oncustomer success, which is
really awesome cause that's whatwe're here to talk about today.
But before we kind of jump in alittle bit more into the topic,
maybe you can tell us a littlebit more about J what is it that
J does and, and a little bitmore about kind of the team
you're building there.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So Jro is a startup in the legal tech space.
Um, what we are is an all in onecontract automation platform.
We are built for, uh, legalteams in rapidly scaling
businesses.
And so we enable, um, eitherthose legal teams or the teams
that they are, uh, enabling inturn to manage all of their,
(03:50):
their contracting needs.
So everything from creating andnegotiating contracts to
executing them and signing them,and then the management of those
contracts after they are agreedso that the, the information in
them is universally accessibleand usable by those teams across
the
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Business.
And I know you've had a longcareer in customer success, as
you've already told us, butyou've recently actually
received the honor of Cs Leaderof the Year from the Customer
Success Excellence Awards, whichis really amazing.
Congratulations on that.
But maybe you can share with ourlisteners what are some of your
key things you have done atGerald this past year or so
(04:28):
that's led to the nomination andultimately the win.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yes.
Yeah.
Really, really, really proud of,of that nomination, uh, alone
or, or even to be shortlisted.
Um, really great list of ofnominees and a fantastic, uh,
event and a fantastic eveningmeeting.
Some of the, the names that I'vebeen hearing for years and, and
some old faces as well.
Yes, the, the award wasfantastic.
I, when I think about thejourney that I've had at jro, I
(04:53):
think, uh, a lot of the reasonsfor the nomination were to do
with the journey that the teamand that the company has been on
over the past three years.
So I mentioned that I sort ofcame in and, and grew a team
from not exactly nothing.
I think there was, there was onehead already, uh, in the
business, but growing theconcept of customer success
basically from, from scratchright through at the business
(05:16):
looking at the past year thatpart of the organization is now
in a state where it is arepeatable revenue engine.
So we've had about three x netARR growth year on year and
reaching about 130% of, uh, netdollar retention if we look at a
, a 12 month, uh, rolling basis.
(05:37):
So really happy with therepeatable and reliable numbers
that are coming out of this sideof the business.
I think being able to standbeside those numbers, um, bring
CS accountability into a go tomarket team, which has a lot of
accountability on new businessand on advocacy and building a a
(05:57):
really strong community, it'snice to be one of the four or
five key contributors there tothe, to the leadership team,
Speaker 1 (06:06):
130% net dollar attention.
That's amazing to hear.
I think that's something veryaspirational for our listeners
as well.
And just a lot of little nuggetsthere that I wanna dive in a
little bit deeper into when wedo get into our topic.
But before we, we talkspecifically about
implementation and how quicklythe J team is able to get
customers to their time tovalue.
(06:28):
Um, curious in this podcastwhere we're speaking about
customer success, you've had,like you said, 15 years in the
industry of customer success.
Can you please help ourlisteners understand a little
bit about how your focus oncustomer success has ultimately
led you into the growth ofdirector of customer success at
j obviously the leader of theyear, What are some of the
(06:49):
things that you focused on toultimately lead to this moment
in, in your career?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, it's a good question.
It's probably a quite a, maybe aquite a simple answer, but I
think when you're approaching,uh, a somewhat of a, a blank
canvas, it's important to gatheras much information as possible
and to learn the state of thecustomer portfolio that already
exists, and then to build anapproach that's going to be
(07:14):
appropriate for, for them.
So looking at that journey andhow we moved to a state where
customer success wascontributing as a significant
influencer on growth, we lookedat things like, um, what the
customer life cycle should bebased on the existing customer
base.
So something that we saw wasthat, um, a tool like jro, it's
(07:36):
being implemented by legal teamsor operational teams.
Um, the implementations thatteams like that tend to run when
they do embrace, embracetechnology tend to be maybe a
little bit longer.
They, they wouldn't be the, thefastest moving and sometimes
there can be friction there.
So we realized that onboardingand implementation was going to
(07:56):
be the key value delivery forus.
And so when we were dividing thecustomer life cycle into various
stages, we did focus quiteheavily on those early stages of
delivering value, which I knowwe're gonna talk about in a
little more detail.
But as we built that as a solidfoundation, we found it easier
then to bring the samenarrative, the same value
(08:19):
stories through all of our otherinteractions with customers as
they move into adoption phase oras they come towards their
renewal, again, when they'regoing to be, um, deciding
whether to stick with oursubscription, which is on a a 12
month basis.
So I would say learning fromexactly what the needs of the
customer base are and then verythoroughly dividing it into
(08:41):
stages and investingappropriately in each one was,
was a, a key factor in success.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I love hearing it.
I also love hearing the focus onthe customer journey.
I think that's something that alot of organizations will only
look at when they're firstbuilding customer success, but I
think you look at it repeatedlyfrom what you've just said, and
you are segmenting it out andyou are looking at parts and
pieces that make sense andyou're optimizing and you're
continuing to improve upon thosesegments.
(09:07):
One being implementation oronboarding as some companies
call it.
And that is a topic of today'sconversation.
You guys have a great metricthat I know we talked about,
which is 14 days from time oflet's say signing up contract to
go live or time to value, yourfirst time to value milestone.
And I'm wondering, is this partof the reason you won CS Leader
(09:30):
of the Year award?
Can you please explain whatexactly does it mean 14 days
time to value?
It's a great, it's a greatmetric.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yes.
Yeah, it is.
It's fantastic.
And it's, it's one of the areasthat we're proudest of at j.
So j we see the benefit ofhaving such a streamlined and
value driven onboarding processin the way that customers speak
about us externally.
So JS consistently, um, flaggedon review websites like G2 and
(10:02):
Cera specifically for ease ofsetups and the quality of, of
support that that is given.
So that's sort of the externalvalidation of, of some of the
work that we've done internally.
I think I mentioned thatcontract management deployments
or, um, deployments of tech froma legal standpoint can, can
(10:24):
often take up to a year.
And when Jro looked at thecustomers that were most
successful in the platform, wesaw that those that onboarded
quickly, or like to be morespecific, those that reached
value quickly were the ones thatwere, um, most successful long
term.
And also the ones that scoredhighest in net promoter score
(10:47):
and the ones that gave thesethese excellent reviews.
So by looking at the, theexisting data, we were able to
see that onboarding customers tothe point where they were seeing
value on their investment asquickly as possible was a very
sensible approach, and thereforewe looked up ways that we could
do that more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
That makes complete sense.
And I think even as someone whopurchases software, as we all
do, we all have our ownsoftware, is that we are using
it as an organization.
You obviously, everybody wantsto get an ROI as quickly as
possible.
So it makes complete sense thatyou guys are focused on that,
but also makes complete sensethat you're evaluating that and
looking at the data and themetrics that show evidence that
(11:27):
your most successful, happiest,most engaged customers are the
ones that are seeing value inthat two week turnaround.
But to some businesses that justsounds still super crazy fast,
and I think that every businessin SAS is different and how you
implement is different.
Um, what type of customers areyou guys implementing at J
(11:48):
that's able to get up andrunning in 14 days?
Like do you talked aboutsegments earlier?
Does this apply across all yoursegments of customers?
Who is it that's gettingonboarded and seeing time to
value in 14 days?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So we would, we would look at different segments of
customers and deploy treatmentsin different ways to them.
And, and I think it's importantto, to recognize that j as a
business targets the mid-marketmore or less.
So our, our ideal customerprofile will be, uh, a legal
team in a rapidly scaling techbusiness.
(12:24):
Um, that is specifically,there's a generating a high
volume of contracts that haverelatively low complexity.
So we're really clear on thetype of customer that we know we
can make incredibly successful.
And those are, those are thebusinesses that, uh,
predominantly come on board withus internally.
We do tier our approach tocustomers and we will
(12:47):
differentiate betweenenterprise, mid-market and long
tail, which is a, like a, I feela very sensible approach when
we're talking about this 14 dayaverage time to value.
We're talking about both thelong tail and the mid-market,
which is the vast majority ofour
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Customers.
Makes sense.
Okay.
I'm guessing you guys have anenterprise segment as well, that
you're probably doing somethinga little bit different with then
?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
We do.
We do.
So if we find that engaging withenterprise customers has
different expectations and hasdifferent, uh, indicators that
will lead to longer termsuccess.
So enterprise customers, whetherthat means they're above a
certain spend or they arerolling out in, you know, more
than 10 countries at once, or ifit's a larger project, we will
(13:34):
class that as enterprise andwe'll run that with, um, like
different project managementapproaches because that's more
appropriate to the type ofcustomer that you're speaking
to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That makes complete sense and also makes complete
sense that the 14 days worksmore for your ideal customer
profile, which is the mid-marketand even your long tail as well,
because like you said,enterprise is probably a little
bit different of a beast andit's pretty overwhelming to get
someone up and running anenterprise in 14 days, but still
something to aspire to.
But we did talk about you guysreviewing kind of implementation
(14:07):
onboarding and how you guys sawthat there were certain metrics
that were important that acustomer reached in order to see
time to value.
What made you guys start tothink or define 14 days as the
ultimate milestone for time tovalue?
Can you talk us through how thatwas kind of defined?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, and, and I would say this is a, this is a
target and this is a measurementthat is tweaked over time.
Usually on a quarterly basis, wewill look at the learnings of,
of the previous couple ofmonths, things that we find are
now really resonating withcustomers.
We will look at success storiesand we'll also look at areas
where we had friction and lookat ways that we can improve the,
(14:47):
um, the implementation processto, to get the value quicker.
14 days or somewhere between,let's say 14 and 30 days is the
window that we have seen wherecustomers are most likely to
continue their engagement withthe, with the onboarding team.
So in the first 14 days of, ofan engagement, customers will be
(15:10):
very keen to dedicate resourcesto this new project.
They are generally at their mostenthusiastic about the new tool
that's going to, that's going tohelp them.
Um, and they will engage on bothadmin training and configuration
and on end user training wherethey're engaging end users
across their business who aregoing to be touching this
(15:31):
platform.
And we will capitalize on thatby bringing in like expert
product, um, engineers on ourside or bringing in, uh,
integration specialists to tieour tool to theirs, um, in that,
in that sweet spot where they'remost engaged with us.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Again, 14 days was one milestone that you guys
looked at.
Was there any other metrics oranything else you noticed?
I noticed you mentioned thatmomentum a big key factor.
Anyone who's purchasing newsoftware, they're excited, they
wanna get up and running, it'sin the best interest of everyone
to execute on trying to geteveryone up and running.
But what marks kind of thecompletion of onboarding or
(16:13):
what's kind of 14 days is atimestamp, but at j if I was j
customer today, how would I seesuccess in that 14 days?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, so I would say, I would say the 14 days is the
result.
You know, 14 days is what we areseeing.
The, the timestamp or the, orthe event that calls the end of
the onboarding phase, um, again,has varied over time.
I would say when we were muchsmaller and much scrappier, um,
you know, we, we have about 300paying customers in our
(16:43):
portfolio now, but when we weresub 100, we would often allow
the customer to sign off on whenonboarding was done.
You know, we would have a, avery flexible relationship with
them and their sign off andagreement that they felt as
though they were onboarded was,um, was the only factor.
And although we do stillincorporate that, we've become,
(17:04):
uh, a little bit more metricsfocused.
So we will look at engagementwith the platform and
specifically we'll look at thenumber of contracts that have
been created in the, in thecustomer's dashboard once about
about 10 real contracts arecreated.
So not testing, but actualdocuments that have been sent
out for signature.
We feel, okay, J is now businessas usual for this customer, and
(17:27):
we would move them on
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Awesome, awesome.
10 contract milestones.
So that's what where we'reworking towards.
How did you, or let me be more,be more specific, which data did
you actually come across thatindicated that you guys needed
to hit 10?
Like, where was that milestonecreated from?
Was it average across allcustomers?
Was it from, you know, industrystandards of number of contracts
(17:52):
, uh, a customer would be doing?
How did you, how did you come tothat number?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Largely it came from our analysis of our own customer
interaction with the platform.
So it came from looking at thecustomers that we saw most being
most successful on the platform.
Bearing in mind we do have quitea lot of data to, um, to use
here, probably about quarter ofa million contracts were created
in j in the past 12 months.
(18:17):
So we can see how how those are,are working out down the line.
I think the number 10 was chosenbecause we really focus on
identifying a champion andensuring that the project has
sponsorship so that the new toolis adopted across the business.
And sub 10 contracts could stilljust be one or two pla people
(18:42):
maybe playing around with the,with the tool, maybe
investigating, but not adoptingit as they're, as their business
as usual.
So we wanted to make sure thatthe tool had exceeded the
threshold of what we see asbeing an engaged customer.
And this 10 contracts is a, is anumber that's also used in our
sales cycle, um, to qualifyleads from customers.
(19:06):
So if a customer is creating 10or more contracts in a month,
that's one of the qualificationcriteria for big moving a lead
to an opportunity stage and, andsort of that, that tooling
element of our thinkinginternally.
So it's a consistent metricthroughout the life cycle.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Oh, that's great.
I love hearing that.
I love that something thatstarts in presales and something
that's a salesperson's, youknow, job to also discover
within the existing lead islike, Hey, how many contracts
are you looking to successfullyset up with J?
And then it's still somethingthat flows into implementation,
which I think makes completesense because you're setting
(19:42):
entire tone of the relationshipand you're also setting up goals
before the contracts even closedand before you're even starting
to implement that customer.
Makes complete sense.
So with your team, um, thatyou're growing and building
right now, are there teammembers that have a specific
skill set so that they're ableto ensure this 14 day time to
(20:03):
value is met?
Is there something specificallyyou guys are doing or hiring or
training for so that the teamcan, can hit this milestone?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Mm-hmm.
?
Yes, I think there is, um, at ageneral level, I, I really
believe that in order to be, tobe successful in any customer
success role, one of the, one ofthe most important skills or I
suppose attributes is empathy,is able to understand in detail
what the issue is that thecustomer is, uh, needing to
(20:33):
solve mm-hmm.
and bringing atechnology solution that, that
can solve that problem.
So that level of empathy and ofworking with customers is
incredibly valuable.
Yes, in implementation, but alsoin relationship management and
also even in support.
Um, probably that's more myphilosophy really than, than
this role is, is looking atreally specifically in, in J.
(20:56):
So we are, we are a startupoperating in the legal tech
space and we are enabling legalteams.
We've seen really excellentresults from hiring people from
that walk of life, butspecifically, um, hiring those
who maybe did a law degree and,and have the background
knowledge but choose to go intotech rather than to go into the
(21:19):
role of those that they'reenabling.
So there's several people on theEuro customer success team who
did a law degree, could havebeen lawyers, maybe even started
down the road of being a lawyer.
Our CEO actually was a lawyer ina previous life.
But see the appeal of a careerin tech and they can use their
skills to uh, you know, helphelp others to solve the
(21:40):
problems that they were facingin these
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Types of, There's two pieces that I completely agree
with that you've just said.
The empathy part I completelyagree with.
I think in customer services,support, sales, whatever you
anything customer facing, toreally understand what it is
your customer wants and whythey're buying you and what
problem they're looking tosolve, we'll help everyone.
(22:02):
If you just go in with a mindsetof I'm gonna tell you exactly
what you need kind of thing,sometimes that doesn't go over
well because the customerdoesn't need that.
Sometimes you just need tolisten and empathize and
understand what is it is exactlythat the customer is looking for
with your product, whether it'sj or any other product out
there.
The other part that I completelyagree on is hiring customer
(22:24):
success managers that have somesort of industry expertise or
background.
I think in previous roles I'vehired CSMs that are, let's say
call them career customersuccess manager.
So they definitely understandhow to bring empathetic great
customer success managers.
But I've always mixed it in withhiring, like you said, X lawyers
at j so ex industry experts andhaving that mix of a team really
(22:48):
helps execute on the largervision of the company.
So I completely agree and that'sawesome to hear that you have so
many ex lawyers within j It'sactually, I always wanted to be
a lawyer, didn't go down thatroute.
So interesting to hear that youguys hire ex lawyers that wanna
work in tech.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, it works quite well for us.
We're, we're happy.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And earlier we did talk briefly about enterprise
implementation.
We did mention that that can becompletely separate and a
different beast in its own, andwe could probably do a whole
nother podcast on that topic,but just so everyone kind of
understands what is different inenterprise implementation, we've
talked a little bit more detailabout 14 day times to value and
(23:27):
how your CSMs are doing that formid-market and tech touch.
But what are you guys doingdifferently in enterprise
implementation?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I would say that enterprise is different right
from the beginning.
I think in pre-sales enterpriseis different.
If, if I'm thinking only ofwhat's different from a customer
success point of view, the thecustomer success team is much
more likely to be involved inpresales conversations.
Um, for, for enterprisecustomers or for enterprise use
(23:55):
cases at the moment, that takesthe form of our, uh, our
implementation team lead whospends about 20% of her time in
a presales role, gettinginvolved in these enterprise
deals or in these, uh, highervalue deals that maybe have a
more complex technicalrequirement will, will begin
there, which is beneficial forthe customer because they have a
(24:18):
greater understanding of what'spossible.
And they also have, um, asmoother transition from
presales to postsales because itwill be the same person and the
same expert who understood theirpotential use case actually
being the one that's that'simplementing it.
Um, selfishly it's fantastic forus because we gain a much
(24:39):
greater understanding during thesales process of what the
customer is going to need.
We can prepare so much more whenthese requirements or these
discussions are coming up early.
So if, in the case I mentionedearlier of a business that wants
to roll us out across 10 or 15regions at once, we can allocate
things like project managementresources mm-hmm.
(25:01):
for theseenterprise deals to make sure
that they happen and we canenlist assistance from other
teams across the business,particularly maybe the product,
uh, and engineering teams whocan help to share our, uh,
vision of where we see theproduct going.
We can help connect seniorstakeholders at these enterprise
(25:24):
businesses to our senior, um,representatives in, in that side
of our business as well.
So I would say it begins inpresales and then in
implementation it will be a muchmore project management focused
generally, generally longer term, you know, maybe we'd see
between 30 and 60 days mm-hmm.
for a large likethat to roll out.
(25:45):
And also we will look to growwith a, a business like that.
So we will be looking forrenewal and expansion
opportunities potentiallyearlier in that type of a
relationship because we are soinvolved in the needs of the
business and we are able to seewhere we could, um, potentially
be, be growing with them oroffering more services to them.
(26:08):
So it's a much more involvedbeast.
I think you're definitely right.
We could speak for,
Speaker 1 (26:11):
We could have another podcast.
I'm literally writing notes downof follow up questions to
everything you've just said.
I'm like, this could be anotherpodcast, but just a few more on
that enterprise onboarding,especially what you mentioned
around presales and how involvedyour team is in that pre-sales
process.
Are they starting to providesome of those time to value
(26:32):
attributes or milestones alreadybefore the sale is even closed?
Is that what's happeningalready?
Can you maybe speak a little bitmore to that?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yes, I definitely can.
And you're correct, they are.
So in a, in a mid-market dealor, or in like a, a regular
customer deal, any involvementin presales will usually be
around sharing expectations withthe customer on what the first
30 days of working with us willlook like.
It's, it's sort of a, aninformation giving process more
(27:02):
or less while about their usecase.
With enterprise customers, wewill often set milestones with
the stakeholders in thebusiness.
So if uh, and deployment isgoing to be very large or it's
going to be a very largeinvestment for the customer or
quite complex, technically we'llwanna have a much more granular
understanding of what successlooks like for the customer and
(27:26):
who the stakeholders arepotentially across multiple
departments that will beinterested in achieving these
milestones.
And so there will be a lot moremapping of mm-hmm.
like relationshipsbetween departments and with,
between individuals as well asbenchmarking.
Like we will always look to haveas many numbers as we can at the
(27:47):
beginning of the relationship sothat we can benchmark
improvements over time.
And I would say there's muchmore of a sign off process
usually in these enterprisekickoffs than there would be in
a, in a standard engagement.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Makes sense.
And are you guys still measuringthe same milestone of 10
contracts then, is cuz obviouslywe're not hitting that 14 day
time to value as the mid-marketand long tail, you already said
it's probably double the time ifnot more for enterprise makes
complete sense with the amountof project management that is
happening at that level.
But are you still using the sameinternal metric or milestone to
(28:23):
say onboarding is complete whenan enterprise company has done
10 contracts with J?
Is that still the same?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I would say as a rule, no.
I would say as a rule, these aremuch more custom engagements
where we will look at, uh,defining the milestones that are
important to this customer.
So we will measure everythingthe same and we will certainly
have a lot of our internaltooling and our, our CRMs, which
(28:50):
will give the same graphs overtime and and allow us to see
what's happening.
But there will be much more of afocus on agreed upon milestones
as the delineators of, ofonboarding and activation rather
than relying on one metric.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Okay.
So Claire, you mentioned earlierthat you are focused on renewal
and expansions in the presaleinto implementation.
And I'm assuming that's gonna beacross the board, whether it's
enterprise, mid-market or longtail, everyone's looking to
expand and grow, hence why youhave that 130% net dollar
attention.
What are some of the things thatyour CS team is doing to
(29:28):
identify those opportunitiesearly on in that implementation
process?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yes, I would agree.
We're, we're definitely alwayslooking to, to grow and expand
with our customers.
We have really excellent lowchurn rates, which do really
help us with this, um, with thisnet dollar retention overall.
Obviously if you makingcustomers successful and you
have very little churn, thenit's, and it makes your job
slightly easier to reach those,um,
Speaker 1 (29:52):
For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
numbers,
yes, I definitely think we look
across the board at expansionopportunities and there are a
couple of ways that we do that.
The best and the happiest way todo that is when we're growing
with our customers.
So if a customer is moresuccessful, they're creating
many, many more contracts orthey're bringing many, many more
people into the platform, thenthe, the value recogni
(30:15):
recognition of that is a, is agood conversation to have with
customers and we'll often buildpricing into, into our order
forms, which is scalable.
So the ideal situation for us isthat, um, a customer would have
access to the platform and thenthey would pay more for the
platform as they double ortriple the number of contracts
that we are helping them agree.
(30:36):
So they're closing more salesdeals, they're hiring more
people, they're, they'rebuilding on success.
There will also be times whencustomers will have additional
use cases that they want tobring us.
Mm.
And I find that that, uh, that'sa really valuable place for
customer success to drive theconversation because we, we talk
a lot about value in existinguse cases and at things like
(30:59):
quarterly business reviews, it'sa very good time to bring up
other potential use cases acrossthe business.
Mm-hmm.
, other businessesthat resemble the current
customer where we have deliveredvalue by also enabling their HR
team who are probably hiring alot because they're in this
rapidly scr scaling, um, phaseof their growth or, you know,
(31:22):
we'll work with their operationsteam because they process a
similarly large number of lowcomplexity contracts.
So probably that's the firstexample is upselling by more
volume.
Second example then iscross-selling by finding new use
cases where we can, uh, we canwork with other teams.
It would be our places where wesee the most success.
(31:42):
And then there are some land andexpand programs that we will run
in conjunction with sales whereperhaps we sell to one company
within a group of companies andwe'll look to expand or reach
across there.
And for that type of engagement,we'd usually partner with an
account manager or an accountexecs so that we're bringing a,
you know, more salesy,sophisticated approach to the,
(32:06):
to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Love it.
I also love that you take such aconsultative approach to the
cross sale or the crossfunctional way of expanding into
your customer base.
So like you just said, you'veobviously sold to the legal
team, but there are plenty ofother teams within the business
that can actually use yoursoftware.
It's not like your software isonly tailored to legal, it's
contracts and other teams withinthat legal team can, can use it
(32:29):
like the hr and, and it's greatthat your CSMs are having those
consultative conversations inorder to expand and grow the
accounts, which I think all ofus, us are trying to do as well.
But we can keep talking andtalking.
Claire, I'm sure aboutimplementation and, and the
success you guys have seen aturo.
But for our listeners, what aresome of your biggest learnings
from building this newimplementation program that
(32:51):
let's say if you were to do itagain, something you might have
done differently or maybe you,something you've done really,
really well that you would'vedone again, What are some of
your learnings?
Speaker 2 (32:59):
I think I've taken a three phased approach to, to a
lot of this, this buildingprocess.
Um, I would probably apply itacross the board and, and it's a
, a process that I, that I havelearned at J which I find works
very well.
It basically, I would have aphilosophy of, of approaching
any, any sort of buildingproject in, in three stages.
(33:19):
The first one is process.
So design your process reallywell.
Know exactly what good lookslike, you know, and, and exactly
how you would likeimplementation to be delivered.
What all the key markers arethat need to be checked off, you
know, so have this processdocumented, probably written
down.
I love notion, so everything,everything I write down just,
(33:41):
just doesn't notion immediately.
Second is people mm-hmm.
.
So once you know exactly whatgreat looks like, then either
train your people or hire yourpeople.
So if you've got great people onthe team, make sure that they
aren't enabled to deliver anyprocess like quarterly business
reviews, renewals,implementation that make sure
that they are trained on how toperform that exactly really
(34:04):
well.
Or if you're hiring, only hirepeople after you know what you
want them to do.
Really care before you startbringing in humans.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Completely agree.
Couldn't agree more on thatpoint.
I feel like sometimes people getexcited of scaling and growing
and adding headcount, butsometimes you definitely need to
have that process, like yousaid, and what the heck they're
gonna be doing before you hirethem
Speaker 2 (34:24):
.
So then you have, you have yourpeople either brought in or, or
trained.
Um, and then number three wouldbe, uh, tooling.
So once we know exactly howapproaches should look and we
have people doing it and doingit well, then tooling can be
really helpful to tweak and makethings better.
Mm-hmm.
buying a tool onday one won't solve your
problem.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Completely agree.
Music to my ears is Claire.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
So, and you need to have people who can deliver on a
process really well, in myopinion, before purchasing
something to, to make it better.
So I I probably, this is a, apretty disciplined approach that
I've seen work at jro and I nowhave it as my mantra for like
how to, how to approach abuilding project like this.
That'd be my,
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah, it sounds great.
I completely agree with thesteps and I think that tooling
last is super important cuz likeyou said, you don't know what
you need or what problem you'retrying to solve until you build
a process and you have the teamthat's executing on that process
and then figure out where is itthe pain points, what are the
tools that you need to actuallyhelp accelerate your scaling as
well?
So I completely agree.
(35:26):
Amazing.
Again, Claire could keepchatting it.
I wanna keep asking youquestions, but I wanna move into
our quick fire questions, whichis gonna wrap up our
conversation and the challengesis that you have to, to try to
answer the next few questions inone sentence or less.
I know it's gonna be difficultevery guest I have, it really is
tricky, but I'm gonna challengeyou to do that.
Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I am.
I might struggle with the onesentence, but let's see how we
go.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Okay.
Awesome.
My first question is, what doyou think is next for the CS
industry?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So my answer is probably accountability.
There has been, and there isstill a lot of discussion in
customer success about whetherwe deserve a seat at the table
or, um, like being caretakersrather than contributors in at
the, at like an organizationallevel.
And I think in order to be takenseriously now that we have a
seat at the table, we need to beable to show the metrics, the
(36:18):
dashboards, the numbers, andtake responsibility for that in
the way that, for example, asales team does.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I completely agree.
Another topic we could probablydo another podcast on, but the
next question is, what is yourfavorite app either on your
phone or your laptop that youcannot live without?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Um, probably for this one I would say notion I live
and die by by notion and I'm,I'm not the only one at j All of
our playbooks live in acentralized resource and it's
fantastic for enabling newpeople, especially as we're
hiring at such a rapid rightnow, quite painful to start,
(36:56):
quite painful to documenteverything when you're not used
to it, but worth it.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I agree.
I've done enablement throughnotion as well.
Love it as well.
Next question is, what sort ofcompensations should c SM get?
Should it be just a base salaryor should it be a base salary
plus some sort of commissionbonus structure?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
My vote would definitely be basem commission.
I think there, it addsmotivation.
I think it incentivizesbehavior, but that it needs to
be on the right, on the rightthing.
So a commission based probablyon a North star metric that that
person owns.
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
,
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Probably something we could talk about for hours is
whether that metric and thatcompensation should be
individual or team and I go backand forth on that bit all the
time.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
, I think it's
a tricky one for sure, and I
agree it's hard to figure outthe balance of compensation and
if you should have team orindividual or a mix of both.
Amazing.
Last question is, what is yourfavorite part of customer
success or being a csm?
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Maybe repeating myself a a little bit, but the
empathy part of the role or the,the ability to connect with
people and solve their problemsis the reason I got into a role
like this a long time ago and Istill get a kick out of, um,
getting, getting frontline andprobab probably not really
dealing with customers myselfthese days, but like solving a
(38:19):
customer problem and reaching amutually beneficial result for
both the customer and my csm.
I think that the fact that the,the whole point of the job is
for everyone to be happy and togrow together is the motivator
and that's the, that's thereason I'm in this, this career.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
I love it.
I think that a lot of successprofessionals feel the same,
that their customer successleads to their happiness and
success.
So I feel the same.
Claire, thank you so much forsharing all of your insights,
learnings, takeaways for ourlisteners today.
If our listeners do have anyother questions or wanna get in
touch, what's the best way toget in touch with you?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
For me, uh, definitely my LinkedIn probably,
so I'm, I'm sure that will, thatwill be shared.
I do operate a little bit onTwitter under the handle, um, at
CSM Hero, which is just sort ofwhere I, where I share thoughts
on customer success, but it'snot as active.
So I really would say LinkedInis the, is the best place to
find me.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Awesome.
Thanks and we'll link everythingin this show notes, but thank
you so much Claire.
Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Thank you.
Nice to chat to you.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Thank you for listening to the Customer
Success Channel podcast today.
We hope you learned somethingnew to take back to your team
and your company.
If you found value in ourpodcast, please make sure to
give us a positive review andmake sure you subscribe to our
channel as we release newpodcasts every month.
Also, if you have any topicsthat you would like me to
discuss in the future or youwould like to be a guest on the
(39:47):
podcast, please feel free toreach out.
All my contact details are inthe show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
Hello everyone.
I'm your host, Anika Zer, andwelcome back to the next episode
of the Customer Success Channelpodcast, brought to you by Plan
Hat, the Modern Customerplatform.
This podcast is created foranyone working in or interested
in the customer success field.
On this podcast, we will speakto leaders in the industry about
their experiences and theirdefinitions of customer success
(00:27):
and get their advice and bestpractices on how to run ACS
organization.
Today we're speaking with ClaireOgan.
Claire is passionate aboutfounding and building customer
success teams at high growthtech companies.
She has scaled CS teams at largetech firms and is now growing
(00:48):
startup businesses.
Her previous experience includesj O Zero and Swerve.
She is also the most recentwinner and recipient of Customer
Success Leader of the Year.
From the customer successexcellent awards at J, she has
grown customer success fromscratch as their first senior
hire in post sales deliveringhigh net dollar retention,
creating repeatable revenueengine and an employee NPS of
(01:12):
94.
Today we will, speaking to herall about how she not only built
this high growth CS department,but how her team is delivering
implementation.
In just 14 days, Claire and herteam have been able to drive
time to value to their customersin just two weeks.
Let's chat to her to find outhow she's doing it.
Welcome, Claire to the podcast.
I'm really excited to have youhere with us today.
(01:34):
Before we get into today'stopic, can you please tell our
listeners a little bit moreabout yourself and what it is
you're doing at J?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Uh, yes, definitely.
Thank you and happy to be here.
A little bit about me is that Ihave built my career almost,
almost entirely in customersuccess.
So I've been in this areaprobably for close to, uh, 15
years, beginning in big tech.
So beginning in Google at a timewhen the concept of customer
(02:02):
success I think was quite newand, and was really like, um, a
new concept, particularly inemia, maybe had had taken, um, a
little bit of a hold in statesand was, uh, something that was
being developed.
I have specialized in buildingcustomer success teams from
scratch, particularly at earlystage startups, usually about
series A or B, and being the,uh, first hire on the ground for
(02:27):
a customer success organization,either regionally in EMIA or as
a, like a first global hire,which is, which is what's
happened in in J.
So j I've built out a approachto post sales relationship
management for our customers,uh, focusing very heavily on
implementation and enablement,but also on full life cycle
(02:51):
enablement of customers and theability to, uh, renew and upsell
them so that we're, we'regrowing together.
Um, definitely a a passionatecustomer success head.
I'm very happy about, about thework that j has been doing in
this area in particular.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I love hearing it.
Also amazing to hear yourbackground and what it is you've
been doing, and so focused oncustomer success, which is
really awesome cause that's whatwe're here to talk about today.
But before we kind of jump in alittle bit more into the topic,
maybe you can tell us a littlebit more about J what is it that
J does and, and a little bitmore about kind of the team
you're building there.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So Jro is a startup in the legal tech space.
Um, what we are is an all in onecontract automation platform.
We are built for, uh, legalteams in rapidly scaling
businesses.
And so we enable, um, eitherthose legal teams or the teams
that they are, uh, enabling inturn to manage all of their,
(03:50):
their contracting needs.
So everything from creating andnegotiating contracts to
executing them and signing them,and then the management of those
contracts after they are agreedso that the, the information in
them is universally accessibleand usable by those teams across
the
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Business.
And I know you've had a longcareer in customer success, as
you've already told us, butyou've recently actually
received the honor of Cs Leaderof the Year from the Customer
Success Excellence Awards, whichis really amazing.
Congratulations on that.
But maybe you can share with ourlisteners what are some of your
key things you have done atGerald this past year or so
(04:28):
that's led to the nomination andultimately the win.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yes.
Yeah.
Really, really, really proud of,of that nomination, uh, alone
or, or even to be shortlisted.
Um, really great list of ofnominees and a fantastic, uh,
event and a fantastic eveningmeeting.
Some of the, the names that I'vebeen hearing for years and, and
some old faces as well.
Yes, the, the award wasfantastic.
I, when I think about thejourney that I've had at jro, I
(04:53):
think, uh, a lot of the reasonsfor the nomination were to do
with the journey that the teamand that the company has been on
over the past three years.
So I mentioned that I sort ofcame in and, and grew a team
from not exactly nothing.
I think there was, there was onehead already, uh, in the
business, but growing theconcept of customer success
basically from, from scratchright through at the business
(05:16):
looking at the past year thatpart of the organization is now
in a state where it is arepeatable revenue engine.
So we've had about three x netARR growth year on year and
reaching about 130% of, uh, netdollar retention if we look at a
, a 12 month, uh, rolling basis.
(05:37):
So really happy with therepeatable and reliable numbers
that are coming out of this sideof the business.
I think being able to standbeside those numbers, um, bring
CS accountability into a go tomarket team, which has a lot of
accountability on new businessand on advocacy and building a a
(05:57):
really strong community, it'snice to be one of the four or
five key contributors there tothe, to the leadership team,
Speaker 1 (06:06):
130% net dollar attention.
That's amazing to hear.
I think that's something veryaspirational for our listeners
as well.
And just a lot of little nuggetsthere that I wanna dive in a
little bit deeper into when wedo get into our topic.
But before we, we talkspecifically about
implementation and how quicklythe J team is able to get
customers to their time tovalue.
(06:28):
Um, curious in this podcastwhere we're speaking about
customer success, you've had,like you said, 15 years in the
industry of customer success.
Can you please help ourlisteners understand a little
bit about how your focus oncustomer success has ultimately
led you into the growth ofdirector of customer success at
j obviously the leader of theyear, What are some of the
(06:49):
things that you focused on toultimately lead to this moment
in, in your career?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, it's a good question.
It's probably a quite a, maybe aquite a simple answer, but I
think when you're approaching,uh, a somewhat of a, a blank
canvas, it's important to gatheras much information as possible
and to learn the state of thecustomer portfolio that already
exists, and then to build anapproach that's going to be
(07:14):
appropriate for, for them.
So looking at that journey andhow we moved to a state where
customer success wascontributing as a significant
influencer on growth, we lookedat things like, um, what the
customer life cycle should bebased on the existing customer
base.
So something that we saw wasthat, um, a tool like jro, it's
(07:36):
being implemented by legal teamsor operational teams.
Um, the implementations thatteams like that tend to run when
they do embrace, embracetechnology tend to be maybe a
little bit longer.
They, they wouldn't be the, thefastest moving and sometimes
there can be friction there.
So we realized that onboardingand implementation was going to
(07:56):
be the key value delivery forus.
And so when we were dividing thecustomer life cycle into various
stages, we did focus quiteheavily on those early stages of
delivering value, which I knowwe're gonna talk about in a
little more detail.
But as we built that as a solidfoundation, we found it easier
then to bring the samenarrative, the same value
(08:19):
stories through all of our otherinteractions with customers as
they move into adoption phase oras they come towards their
renewal, again, when they'regoing to be, um, deciding
whether to stick with oursubscription, which is on a a 12
month basis.
So I would say learning fromexactly what the needs of the
customer base are and then verythoroughly dividing it into
(08:41):
stages and investingappropriately in each one was,
was a, a key factor in success.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I love hearing it.
I also love hearing the focus onthe customer journey.
I think that's something that alot of organizations will only
look at when they're firstbuilding customer success, but I
think you look at it repeatedlyfrom what you've just said, and
you are segmenting it out andyou are looking at parts and
pieces that make sense andyou're optimizing and you're
continuing to improve upon thosesegments.
(09:07):
One being implementation oronboarding as some companies
call it.
And that is a topic of today'sconversation.
You guys have a great metricthat I know we talked about,
which is 14 days from time oflet's say signing up contract to
go live or time to value, yourfirst time to value milestone.
And I'm wondering, is this partof the reason you won CS Leader
(09:30):
of the Year award?
Can you please explain whatexactly does it mean 14 days
time to value?
It's a great, it's a greatmetric.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yes.
Yeah, it is.
It's fantastic.
And it's, it's one of the areasthat we're proudest of at j.
So j we see the benefit ofhaving such a streamlined and
value driven onboarding processin the way that customers speak
about us externally.
So JS consistently, um, flaggedon review websites like G2 and
(10:02):
Cera specifically for ease ofsetups and the quality of, of
support that that is given.
So that's sort of the externalvalidation of, of some of the
work that we've done internally.
I think I mentioned thatcontract management deployments
or, um, deployments of tech froma legal standpoint can, can
(10:24):
often take up to a year.
And when Jro looked at thecustomers that were most
successful in the platform, wesaw that those that onboarded
quickly, or like to be morespecific, those that reached
value quickly were the ones thatwere, um, most successful long
term.
And also the ones that scoredhighest in net promoter score
(10:47):
and the ones that gave thesethese excellent reviews.
So by looking at the, theexisting data, we were able to
see that onboarding customers tothe point where they were seeing
value on their investment asquickly as possible was a very
sensible approach, and thereforewe looked up ways that we could
do that more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
That makes complete sense.
And I think even as someone whopurchases software, as we all
do, we all have our ownsoftware, is that we are using
it as an organization.
You obviously, everybody wantsto get an ROI as quickly as
possible.
So it makes complete sense thatyou guys are focused on that,
but also makes complete sensethat you're evaluating that and
looking at the data and themetrics that show evidence that
(11:27):
your most successful, happiest,most engaged customers are the
ones that are seeing value inthat two week turnaround.
But to some businesses that justsounds still super crazy fast,
and I think that every businessin SAS is different and how you
implement is different.
Um, what type of customers areyou guys implementing at J
(11:48):
that's able to get up andrunning in 14 days?
Like do you talked aboutsegments earlier?
Does this apply across all yoursegments of customers?
Who is it that's gettingonboarded and seeing time to
value in 14 days?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So we would, we would look at different segments of
customers and deploy treatmentsin different ways to them.
And, and I think it's importantto, to recognize that j as a
business targets the mid-marketmore or less.
So our, our ideal customerprofile will be, uh, a legal
team in a rapidly scaling techbusiness.
(12:24):
Um, that is specifically,there's a generating a high
volume of contracts that haverelatively low complexity.
So we're really clear on thetype of customer that we know we
can make incredibly successful.
And those are, those are thebusinesses that, uh,
predominantly come on board withus internally.
We do tier our approach tocustomers and we will
(12:47):
differentiate betweenenterprise, mid-market and long
tail, which is a, like a, I feela very sensible approach when
we're talking about this 14 dayaverage time to value.
We're talking about both thelong tail and the mid-market,
which is the vast majority ofour
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Customers.
Makes sense.
Okay.
I'm guessing you guys have anenterprise segment as well, that
you're probably doing somethinga little bit different with then
?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
We do.
We do.
So if we find that engaging withenterprise customers has
different expectations and hasdifferent, uh, indicators that
will lead to longer termsuccess.
So enterprise customers, whetherthat means they're above a
certain spend or they arerolling out in, you know, more
than 10 countries at once, or ifit's a larger project, we will
(13:34):
class that as enterprise andwe'll run that with, um, like
different project managementapproaches because that's more
appropriate to the type ofcustomer that you're speaking
to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That makes complete sense and also makes complete
sense that the 14 days worksmore for your ideal customer
profile, which is the mid-marketand even your long tail as well,
because like you said,enterprise is probably a little
bit different of a beast andit's pretty overwhelming to get
someone up and running anenterprise in 14 days, but still
something to aspire to.
But we did talk about you guysreviewing kind of implementation
(14:07):
onboarding and how you guys sawthat there were certain metrics
that were important that acustomer reached in order to see
time to value.
What made you guys start tothink or define 14 days as the
ultimate milestone for time tovalue?
Can you talk us through how thatwas kind of defined?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, and, and I would say this is a, this is a
target and this is a measurementthat is tweaked over time.
Usually on a quarterly basis, wewill look at the learnings of,
of the previous couple ofmonths, things that we find are
now really resonating withcustomers.
We will look at success storiesand we'll also look at areas
where we had friction and lookat ways that we can improve the,
(14:47):
um, the implementation processto, to get the value quicker.
14 days or somewhere between,let's say 14 and 30 days is the
window that we have seen wherecustomers are most likely to
continue their engagement withthe, with the onboarding team.
So in the first 14 days of, ofan engagement, customers will be
(15:10):
very keen to dedicate resourcesto this new project.
They are generally at their mostenthusiastic about the new tool
that's going to, that's going tohelp them.
Um, and they will engage on bothadmin training and configuration
and on end user training wherethey're engaging end users
across their business who aregoing to be touching this
(15:31):
platform.
And we will capitalize on thatby bringing in like expert
product, um, engineers on ourside or bringing in, uh,
integration specialists to tieour tool to theirs, um, in that,
in that sweet spot where they'remost engaged with us.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Again, 14 days was one milestone that you guys
looked at.
Was there any other metrics oranything else you noticed?
I noticed you mentioned thatmomentum a big key factor.
Anyone who's purchasing newsoftware, they're excited, they
wanna get up and running, it'sin the best interest of everyone
to execute on trying to geteveryone up and running.
But what marks kind of thecompletion of onboarding or
(16:13):
what's kind of 14 days is atimestamp, but at j if I was j
customer today, how would I seesuccess in that 14 days?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, so I would say, I would say the 14 days is the
result.
You know, 14 days is what we areseeing.
The, the timestamp or the, orthe event that calls the end of
the onboarding phase, um, again,has varied over time.
I would say when we were muchsmaller and much scrappier, um,
you know, we, we have about 300paying customers in our
(16:43):
portfolio now, but when we weresub 100, we would often allow
the customer to sign off on whenonboarding was done.
You know, we would have a, avery flexible relationship with
them and their sign off andagreement that they felt as
though they were onboarded was,um, was the only factor.
And although we do stillincorporate that, we've become,
(17:04):
uh, a little bit more metricsfocused.
So we will look at engagementwith the platform and
specifically we'll look at thenumber of contracts that have
been created in the, in thecustomer's dashboard once about
about 10 real contracts arecreated.
So not testing, but actualdocuments that have been sent
out for signature.
We feel, okay, J is now businessas usual for this customer, and
(17:27):
we would move them on
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Awesome, awesome.
10 contract milestones.
So that's what where we'reworking towards.
How did you, or let me be more,be more specific, which data did
you actually come across thatindicated that you guys needed
to hit 10?
Like, where was that milestonecreated from?
Was it average across allcustomers?
Was it from, you know, industrystandards of number of contracts
(17:52):
, uh, a customer would be doing?
How did you, how did you come tothat number?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Largely it came from our analysis of our own customer
interaction with the platform.
So it came from looking at thecustomers that we saw most being
most successful on the platform.
Bearing in mind we do have quitea lot of data to, um, to use
here, probably about quarter ofa million contracts were created
in j in the past 12 months.
(18:17):
So we can see how how those are,are working out down the line.
I think the number 10 was chosenbecause we really focus on
identifying a champion andensuring that the project has
sponsorship so that the new toolis adopted across the business.
And sub 10 contracts could stilljust be one or two pla people
(18:42):
maybe playing around with the,with the tool, maybe
investigating, but not adoptingit as they're, as their business
as usual.
So we wanted to make sure thatthe tool had exceeded the
threshold of what we see asbeing an engaged customer.
And this 10 contracts is a, is anumber that's also used in our
sales cycle, um, to qualifyleads from customers.
(19:06):
So if a customer is creating 10or more contracts in a month,
that's one of the qualificationcriteria for big moving a lead
to an opportunity stage and, andsort of that, that tooling
element of our thinkinginternally.
So it's a consistent metricthroughout the life cycle.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Oh, that's great.
I love hearing that.
I love that something thatstarts in presales and something
that's a salesperson's, youknow, job to also discover
within the existing lead islike, Hey, how many contracts
are you looking to successfullyset up with J?
And then it's still somethingthat flows into implementation,
which I think makes completesense because you're setting
(19:42):
entire tone of the relationshipand you're also setting up goals
before the contracts even closedand before you're even starting
to implement that customer.
Makes complete sense.
So with your team, um, thatyou're growing and building
right now, are there teammembers that have a specific
skill set so that they're ableto ensure this 14 day time to
(20:03):
value is met?
Is there something specificallyyou guys are doing or hiring or
training for so that the teamcan, can hit this milestone?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Mm-hmm.
Yes, I think there is, um, at ageneral level, I, I really
believe that in order to be, tobe successful in any customer
success role, one of the, one ofthe most important skills or I
suppose attributes is empathy,is able to understand in detail
what the issue is that thecustomer is, uh, needing to
(20:33):
solve mm-hmm.
can solve that problem.
So that level of empathy and ofworking with customers is
incredibly valuable.
Yes, in implementation, but alsoin relationship management and
also even in support.
Um, probably that's more myphilosophy really than, than
this role is, is looking atreally specifically in, in J.
(20:56):
So we are, we are a startupoperating in the legal tech
space and we are enabling legalteams.
We've seen really excellentresults from hiring people from
that walk of life, butspecifically, um, hiring those
who maybe did a law degree and,and have the background
knowledge but choose to go intotech rather than to go into the
(21:19):
role of those that they'reenabling.
So there's several people on theEuro customer success team who
did a law degree, could havebeen lawyers, maybe even started
down the road of being a lawyer.
Our CEO actually was a lawyer ina previous life.
But see the appeal of a careerin tech and they can use their
skills to uh, you know, helphelp others to solve the
(21:40):
problems that they were facingin these
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Types of, There's two pieces that I completely agree
with that you've just said.
The empathy part I completelyagree with.
I think in customer services,support, sales, whatever you
anything customer facing, toreally understand what it is
your customer wants and whythey're buying you and what
problem they're looking tosolve, we'll help everyone.
(22:02):
If you just go in with a mindsetof I'm gonna tell you exactly
what you need kind of thing,sometimes that doesn't go over
well because the customerdoesn't need that.
Sometimes you just need tolisten and empathize and
understand what is it is exactlythat the customer is looking for
with your product, whether it'sj or any other product out
there.
The other part that I completelyagree on is hiring customer
(22:24):
success managers that have somesort of industry expertise or
background.
I think in previous roles I'vehired CSMs that are, let's say
call them career customersuccess manager.
So they definitely understandhow to bring empathetic great
customer success managers.
But I've always mixed it in withhiring, like you said, X lawyers
at j so ex industry experts andhaving that mix of a team really
(22:48):
helps execute on the largervision of the company.
So I completely agree and that'sawesome to hear that you have so
many ex lawyers within j It'sactually, I always wanted to be
a lawyer, didn't go down thatroute.
So interesting to hear that youguys hire ex lawyers that wanna
work in tech
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, it works quite well for us.
We're, we're happy.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And earlier we did talk briefly about enterprise
implementation.
We did mention that that can becompletely separate and a
different beast in its own, andwe could probably do a whole
nother podcast on that topic,but just so everyone kind of
understands what is different inenterprise implementation, we've
talked a little bit more detailabout 14 day times to value and
(23:27):
how your CSMs are doing that formid-market and tech touch.
But what are you guys doingdifferently in enterprise
implementation?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I would say that enterprise is different right
from the beginning.
I think in pre-sales enterpriseis different.
If, if I'm thinking only ofwhat's different from a customer
success point of view, the thecustomer success team is much
more likely to be involved inpresales conversations.
Um, for, for enterprisecustomers or for enterprise use
(23:55):
cases at the moment, that takesthe form of our, uh, our
implementation team lead whospends about 20% of her time in
a presales role, gettinginvolved in these enterprise
deals or in these, uh, highervalue deals that maybe have a
more complex technicalrequirement will, will begin
there, which is beneficial forthe customer because they have a
(24:18):
greater understanding of what'spossible.
And they also have, um, asmoother transition from
presales to postsales because itwill be the same person and the
same expert who understood theirpotential use case actually
being the one that's that'simplementing it.
Um, selfishly it's fantastic forus because we gain a much
(24:39):
greater understanding during thesales process of what the
customer is going to need.
We can prepare so much more whenthese requirements or these
discussions are coming up early.
So if, in the case I mentionedearlier of a business that wants
to roll us out across 10 or 15regions at once, we can allocate
things like project managementresources mm-hmm.
(25:01):
that they happen and we canenlist assistance from other
teams across the business,particularly maybe the product,
uh, and engineering teams whocan help to share our, uh,
vision of where we see theproduct going.
We can help connect seniorstakeholders at these enterprise
(25:24):
businesses to our senior, um,representatives in, in that side
of our business as well.
So I would say it begins inpresales and then in
implementation it will be a muchmore project management focused
generally, generally longer term, you know, maybe we'd see
between 30 and 60 days mm-hmm.
(25:45):
And also we will look to growwith a, a business like that.
So we will be looking forrenewal and expansion
opportunities potentiallyearlier in that type of a
relationship because we are soinvolved in the needs of the
business and we are able to seewhere we could, um, potentially
be, be growing with them oroffering more services to them.
(26:08):
So it's a much more involvedbeast.
I think you're definitely right.
We could speak for,
Speaker 1 (26:11):
We could have another podcast.
I'm literally writing notes downof follow up questions to
everything you've just said.
I'm like, this could be anotherpodcast, but just a few more on
that enterprise onboarding,especially what you mentioned
around presales and how involvedyour team is in that pre-sales
process.
Are they starting to providesome of those time to value
(26:32):
attributes or milestones alreadybefore the sale is even closed?
Is that what's happeningalready?
Can you maybe speak a little bitmore to that?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yes, I definitely can.
And you're correct, they are.
So in a, in a mid-market dealor, or in like a, a regular
customer deal, any involvementin presales will usually be
around sharing expectations withthe customer on what the first
30 days of working with us willlook like.
It's, it's sort of a, aninformation giving process more
(27:02):
or less while about their usecase.
With enterprise customers, wewill often set milestones with
the stakeholders in thebusiness.
So if uh, and deployment isgoing to be very large or it's
going to be a very largeinvestment for the customer or
quite complex, technically we'llwanna have a much more granular
understanding of what successlooks like for the customer and
(27:26):
who the stakeholders arepotentially across multiple
departments that will beinterested in achieving these
milestones.
And so there will be a lot moremapping of mm-hmm.
between individuals as well asbenchmarking.
Like we will always look to haveas many numbers as we can at the
(27:47):
beginning of the relationship sothat we can benchmark
improvements over time.
And I would say there's muchmore of a sign off process
usually in these enterprisekickoffs than there would be in
a, in a standard engagement.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Makes sense.
And are you guys still measuringthe same milestone of 10
contracts then, is cuz obviouslywe're not hitting that 14 day
time to value as the mid-marketand long tail, you already said
it's probably double the time ifnot more for enterprise makes
complete sense with the amountof project management that is
happening at that level.
But are you still using the sameinternal metric or milestone to
(28:23):
say onboarding is complete whenan enterprise company has done
10 contracts with J?
Is that still the same?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I would say as a rule, no.
I would say as a rule, these aremuch more custom engagements
where we will look at, uh,defining the milestones that are
important to this customer.
So we will measure everythingthe same and we will certainly
have a lot of our internaltooling and our, our CRMs, which
(28:50):
will give the same graphs overtime and and allow us to see
what's happening.
But there will be much more of afocus on agreed upon milestones
as the delineators of, ofonboarding and activation rather
than relying on one metric.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Okay.
So Claire, you mentioned earlierthat you are focused on renewal
and expansions in the presaleinto implementation.
And I'm assuming that's gonna beacross the board, whether it's
enterprise, mid-market or longtail, everyone's looking to
expand and grow, hence why youhave that 130% net dollar
attention.
What are some of the things thatyour CS team is doing to
(29:28):
identify those opportunitiesearly on in that implementation
process?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yes, I would agree.
We're, we're definitely alwayslooking to, to grow and expand
with our customers.
We have really excellent lowchurn rates, which do really
help us with this, um, with thisnet dollar retention overall.
Obviously if you makingcustomers successful and you
have very little churn, thenit's, and it makes your job
slightly easier to reach those,um,
Speaker 1 (29:52):
For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
across the board at expansionopportunities and there are a
couple of ways that we do that.
The best and the happiest way todo that is when we're growing
with our customers.
So if a customer is moresuccessful, they're creating
many, many more contracts orthey're bringing many, many more
people into the platform, thenthe, the value recogni
(30:15):
recognition of that is a, is agood conversation to have with
customers and we'll often buildpricing into, into our order
forms, which is scalable.
So the ideal situation for us isthat, um, a customer would have
access to the platform and thenthey would pay more for the
platform as they double ortriple the number of contracts
that we are helping them agree.
(30:36):
So they're closing more salesdeals, they're hiring more
people, they're, they'rebuilding on success.
There will also be times whencustomers will have additional
use cases that they want tobring us.
Mm.
And I find that that, uh, that'sa really valuable place for
customer success to drive theconversation because we, we talk
a lot about value in existinguse cases and at things like
(30:59):
quarterly business reviews, it'sa very good time to bring up
other potential use cases acrossthe business.
Mm-hmm.
customer where we have deliveredvalue by also enabling their HR
team who are probably hiring alot because they're in this
rapidly scr scaling, um, phaseof their growth or, you know,
(31:22):
we'll work with their operationsteam because they process a
similarly large number of lowcomplexity contracts.
So probably that's the firstexample is upselling by more
volume.
Second example then iscross-selling by finding new use
cases where we can, uh, we canwork with other teams.
It would be our places where wesee the most success.
(31:42):
And then there are some land andexpand programs that we will run
in conjunction with sales whereperhaps we sell to one company
within a group of companies andwe'll look to expand or reach
across there.
And for that type of engagement,we'd usually partner with an
account manager or an accountexecs so that we're bringing a,
you know, more salesy,sophisticated approach to the,
(32:06):
to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Love it.
I also love that you take such aconsultative approach to the
cross sale or the crossfunctional way of expanding into
your customer base.
So like you just said, you'veobviously sold to the legal
team, but there are plenty ofother teams within the business
that can actually use yoursoftware.
It's not like your software isonly tailored to legal, it's
contracts and other teams withinthat legal team can, can use it
(32:29):
like the hr and, and it's greatthat your CSMs are having those
consultative conversations inorder to expand and grow the
accounts, which I think all ofus, us are trying to do as well.
But we can keep talking andtalking.
Claire, I'm sure aboutimplementation and, and the
success you guys have seen aturo.
But for our listeners, what aresome of your biggest learnings
from building this newimplementation program that
(32:51):
let's say if you were to do itagain, something you might have
done differently or maybe you,something you've done really,
really well that you would'vedone again, What are some of
your learnings?
Speaker 2 (32:59):
I think I've taken a three phased approach to, to a
lot of this, this buildingprocess.
Um, I would probably apply itacross the board and, and it's a
, a process that I, that I havelearned at J which I find works
very well.
It basically, I would have aphilosophy of, of approaching
any, any sort of buildingproject in, in three stages.
(33:19):
The first one is process.
So design your process reallywell.
Know exactly what good lookslike, you know, and, and exactly
how you would likeimplementation to be delivered.
What all the key markers arethat need to be checked off, you
know, so have this processdocumented, probably written
down.
I love notion, so everything,everything I write down just,
(33:41):
just doesn't notion immediately.
Second is people mm-hmm.
So once you know exactly whatgreat looks like, then either
train your people or hire yourpeople.
So if you've got great people onthe team, make sure that they
aren't enabled to deliver anyprocess like quarterly business
reviews, renewals,implementation that make sure
that they are trained on how toperform that exactly really
(34:04):
well.
Or if you're hiring, only hirepeople after you know what you
want them to do.
Really care before you startbringing in humans.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Completely agree.
Couldn't agree more on thatpoint.
I feel like sometimes people getexcited of scaling and growing
and adding headcount, butsometimes you definitely need to
have that process, like yousaid, and what the heck they're
gonna be doing before you hirethem
Speaker 2 (34:24):
So then you have, you have yourpeople either brought in or, or
trained.
Um, and then number three wouldbe, uh, tooling.
So once we know exactly howapproaches should look and we
have people doing it and doingit well, then tooling can be
really helpful to tweak and makethings better.
Mm-hmm.
problem.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Completely agree.
Music to my ears is Claire
Speaker 2 (34:47):
So, and you need to have people who can deliver on a
process really well, in myopinion, before purchasing
something to, to make it better.
So I I probably, this is a, apretty disciplined approach that
I've seen work at jro and I nowhave it as my mantra for like
how to, how to approach abuilding project like this.
That'd be my,
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah, it sounds great.
I completely agree with thesteps and I think that tooling
last is super important cuz likeyou said, you don't know what
you need or what problem you'retrying to solve until you build
a process and you have the teamthat's executing on that process
and then figure out where is itthe pain points, what are the
tools that you need to actuallyhelp accelerate your scaling as
well?
So I completely agree.
(35:26):
Amazing.
Again, Claire could keepchatting it.
I wanna keep asking youquestions, but I wanna move into
our quick fire questions, whichis gonna wrap up our
conversation and the challengesis that you have to, to try to
answer the next few questions inone sentence or less.
I know it's gonna be difficultevery guest I have, it really is
tricky, but I'm gonna challengeyou to do that.
Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I am.
I might struggle with the onesentence, but let's see how we
go.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Okay.
Awesome.
My first question is, what doyou think is next for the CS
industry?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So my answer is probably accountability.
There has been, and there isstill a lot of discussion in
customer success about whetherwe deserve a seat at the table
or, um, like being caretakersrather than contributors in at
the, at like an organizationallevel.
And I think in order to be takenseriously now that we have a
seat at the table, we need to beable to show the metrics, the
(36:18):
dashboards, the numbers, andtake responsibility for that in
the way that, for example, asales team does.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I completely agree.
Another topic we could probablydo another podcast on, but the
next question is, what is yourfavorite app either on your
phone or your laptop that youcannot live without?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Um, probably for this one I would say notion I live
and die by by notion and I'm,I'm not the only one at j All of
our playbooks live in acentralized resource and it's
fantastic for enabling newpeople, especially as we're
hiring at such a rapid rightnow, quite painful to start,
(36:56):
quite painful to documenteverything when you're not used
to it, but worth it.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I agree.
I've done enablement throughnotion as well.
Love it as well.
Next question is, what sort ofcompensations should c SM get?
Should it be just a base salaryor should it be a base salary
plus some sort of commissionbonus structure?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
My vote would definitely be basem commission.
I think there, it addsmotivation.
I think it incentivizesbehavior, but that it needs to
be on the right, on the rightthing.
So a commission based probablyon a North star metric that that
person owns.
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Probably something we could talk about for hours is
whether that metric and thatcompensation should be
individual or team and I go backand forth on that bit all the
time.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
agree it's hard to figure outthe balance of compensation and
if you should have team orindividual or a mix of both.
Amazing.
Last question is, what is yourfavorite part of customer
success or being a csm?
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Maybe repeating myself a a little bit, but the
empathy part of the role or the,the ability to connect with
people and solve their problemsis the reason I got into a role
like this a long time ago and Istill get a kick out of, um,
getting, getting frontline andprobab probably not really
dealing with customers myselfthese days, but like solving a
(38:19):
customer problem and reaching amutually beneficial result for
both the customer and my csm.
I think that the fact that the,the whole point of the job is
for everyone to be happy and togrow together is the motivator
and that's the, that's thereason I'm in this, this career.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
I love it.
I think that a lot of successprofessionals feel the same,
that their customer successleads to their happiness and
success.
So I feel the same.
Claire, thank you so much forsharing all of your insights,
learnings, takeaways for ourlisteners today.
If our listeners do have anyother questions or wanna get in
touch, what's the best way toget in touch with you?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
For me, uh, definitely my LinkedIn probably,
so I'm, I'm sure that will, thatwill be shared.
I do operate a little bit onTwitter under the handle, um, at
CSM Hero, which is just sort ofwhere I, where I share thoughts
on customer success, but it'snot as active.
So I really would say LinkedInis the, is the best place to
find me.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Awesome.
Thanks and we'll link everythingin this show notes, but thank
you so much Claire.
Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Thank you.
Nice to chat to you.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Thank you for listening to the Customer
Success Channel podcast today.
We hope you learned somethingnew to take back to your team
and your company.
If you found value in ourpodcast, please make sure to
give us a positive review andmake sure you subscribe to our
channel as we release newpodcasts every month.
Also, if you have any topicsthat you would like me to
discuss in the future or youwould like to be a guest on the
(39:47):
podcast, please feel free toreach out.
All my contact details are inthe show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
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