Dan Ennis, Scale Team Manager at Monday.com - The art of scaling Customer Success

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Daniel Ennis, Scale Team Manager at Monday.com about scaled customer success and explores its significance in today's ever-evolving business landscape.

Customer success at scale has been a longstanding practice, but it has gained even greater significance in the current economy. So, what are the initial steps to consider when establishing a scaled CS team? How can we strike the perfect balance between automated interactions and maintaining a genuine human connection with customers? And what are the key metrics and KPIs that your team should track?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):


Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello everyone, I'm your host, Anika Bert , and
welcome back to the nextepisode of the Customer Success
Channel podcast, brought to youby Plan Hat , the Modern
Customer platform. This podcastis created for anyone working
in or interested in thecustomer success field. On this
podcast, we will speak toleaders in the industry about
their experiences and theirdefinitions of customer success

(00:27):
and get their advice and bestpractices on how to run a c s
organization. Today we arechatting with Dan Ennis , who
is the manager of the ScaledCustomer Success
[e-mail]. Dan is nostranger to CS and he has been
a CS professional for over 10years and has worked at places
like Think HR and SterlingAdministration, and has been

(00:50):
awarded the top 100 CSSstrategist Award from Success
Hacker. He has worked as anindividual contributor, as well
as in leadership and iscurrently running the scale
[e-mail], which is a newteam building out scaled
customer success function fromthe ground up. He works closely
with a subset of customers andhelp them achieve their goals
with product at scale whileincreasing adoption expansion

(01:13):
and mitigation loss in revenue.
Dan has tons of advice foranyone starting off their
scaled CSS team or anyone whowants to take their digital CSS
team to the next level. Solet's chat with Dan today.
Welcome Dan to the podcast. Iam so excited to have you here
with us today. I think this isa long time coming, but before
we get into today's topic, canyou please tell our listeners a

(01:34):
little bit more about yourself,what it is you're up to, how
you kind of started in yourrole, how you ended up in
customer success, give us yourstory. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Happy to hear that.
So I've been in customer facingroles my, my whole career
starting with just typical kindof call center customer service
based roles for an insuranceadministration company and a
very traditional industry. Soalways been customer facing .
Uh , took a a keen curiosityinto the account management

(02:04):
side of the business and soquickly moved from call center
representative to accountmanager, just loving to help
customers take advantage of thefull plans that they had with
us. And for context, it was, Iwas in that role during the
time that a c a was rolling outin the US so a time when
insurance and benefits were ascomplex as they've ever been in

(02:25):
the us . So a time to somepeople fled from the industry.
For me, it was something I, Ithoroughly enjoyed getting to
help people make sense of thisthing that felt so foreign to
them that they didn'tunderstand with changes going
on, and help them takeadvantage of things that were
really important to them . Andyou can even hear a little bit
now I describe that how you canprobably hear some of the seeds
of what would eventually leadto, you know , wanting to

(02:46):
connect to customer success.
Did that for a number of yearsand the company began to roll
out their own in-house softwareplatform for customers to use
to file claims on the company.
Didn't view themselves as aSaaS company because they were
a services company that justmade their customers use this
software to save money frompaying an external vendor for
another software. But I noticedas an account manager that if

(03:09):
our customers did not enjoyusing our software, they
weren't renewing theircontracts for the services
side. So I began to employ alot of what I didn't know at
the time was consideredcustomer success, best
practices to try to help themtake advantage of using this
software. I did that for anumber of years and then I
began to hear about this thingcalled customer success. And I

(03:30):
had this light bulb moment of,oh wait, what I've been doing
has a name. This is a formaldiscipline , I love
that. And so I immediately, Igot caught with that bug,
wanted to make that transition,and so jumped into a pure play
SaaS company that it was in theHR tech space to leverage some
of my industry knowledge andwhat I'd been doing because I
realized that's what I caredabout doing. I didn't know this

(03:51):
had a name, I didn't know thishad a thing. And so jumped into
the customer success industryand haven't looked back. So
I've been doing that for about10 years now with customers of
all sizes. First as anindividual contributor with SS
m b , mid-market enterprise,all the way on up the chain. Uh
, and then as a people leaderas well, managing teams, both
as a player coach as well as asa a pure people leader.

(04:14):
Building processes is somethingI'm very passionate about. And
in every org I've been a partof have really been a part of
that inflection point ofbuilding out specialization
within customer success. So ,um, that's the quick two minute
version of, of who I am and thejourney that got me into
customer success and then theride it's been since then.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
I love that. I also love that you are a pioneer of
customer success. You did itbefore it was coined or named
anything and you were justtrying to figure it all out
yourself, which I think any ofus who've been around in
customer success for over 10years, it sounds like a similar
story. I also took on anaccount management role because
that opened up at a company Iwas at. Little did I know that
that would then be calledcustomer success and I would

(04:53):
have to explain to my familyand friends what I was doing at
the time, but it sounds likeyou're in the similar boat of
like, Hey, let me pick up whatI love doing. And then it was
called something that we allknow it today as customer
success. So I do really lovehearing everyone's story and
yours is particularly uniquebecause I think you've really
transitioned and scaled in yourcareer in the last 10 years and

(05:15):
you've ended up as a manager ofthe scale [e-mail],
which is awesome.
Congratulations on that. Butcould you tell us a little bit
more about what it is your teamis about, what you guys are
doing, what does scale teammean to anyone that's
listening?

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Love that question.
And despite some of our, ourbest attempts as an industry to
nail down really precisedefinitions on everything here,
I would say that that issomething that we do not have
an overly precise definitionof. So when I say scale, it is
for monday.com at least it'sworking with the higher volume

(05:51):
of maybe lower a r r customersfor each individual customer,
but a high volume to help witha larger scale of customers to
increase the scale of impactfrom our team , um, without
necessarily increasing the, theheadcount one-to-one with the
same way we would with our hightouch motions. So that's the
like really bare bones elevatorpitch. How do we increase the

(06:13):
scale of customers our team isworking with without moving
that same lever of the exactsame scale of CSMs that we
might traditionally have. Um,and it's really helping meet
this nexus of how do we providethe right service level for the
way that matches what we canjustify from a like a unity
economics perspective as abusiness, but also
transparently keeping thecustomer at the center. What

(06:35):
does the customer actuallyneed? Because a lot of these
customers are inherently lesscomplex, so they don't need the
same level of engagement. Andso it's not just a
business-centric decision, it'salso something that is very
much for the customer, not justfor our unit economics of it
all.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, it makes sense for the customer too , not just
like you said, business or uniteconomics, which we'll jump
into in more detail as well.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Exactly. We'll , we'll dive more into the team
really owns , uh, a mix ofcustomers that we kinda have
this quadrant of growthpotential current a r r , all
these things that go into it ,um, that factor into that. And
so they own customers that areeither low a r r , low growth
potential or even like a, ahigher a r r , but still low

(07:23):
growth potential up to a pointlike they are on, they've been
mature with Monday. They'veused our product for a number
of years, and so they don'tneed nearly as much strong
level of engagement , uh, asothers. So that would be at a,
at a high level, what my teamdoes, they work with this wide
array of customers across awide array of company sizes,

(07:44):
types, industries, and that'sone of the , the fun parts. But
working for a company that's soindustry agnostic with where we
sell our tool to , um, you justget such a wide net of
customers that we work with.
And then from there , um, ofcourse they are , you know ,
working to help these customerssecure value and then secure
renewals on, on our end, and

Speaker 2 (08:04):
We're gonna dive so much more into this, but I
really also even wanna know howyou guys work with so many
different industries. Like youguys just said, you're industry
agnostic, whereas some CSMs,even in a scale team like
you're building, they're in HRtech or they're in property
tech or they're in insurancetech, they're in a specific
sector and it's a little bitdifferent when you're building
for specific sector. So we'llgo into the details of that,

(08:25):
but one more quick question onwho Dan is before we jump into
today's topic. You already kindof gave us a hint into what put
you into customer success, butalso what keeps you there, what
makes you super passionateabout everything it is that
you've been doing over the last10 years? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (08:41):
I would say for me, what keeps me in customer
success truly is it's a , atwofold component. And one of
them , it really sounds overlyidealistic, but I , I can't get
away from it . It's one of thethings that at the beginning ,
and I truly believe that whileyes, customer success is the
mission of the whole company,blah, blah, blah , all the

(09:01):
things that are yes, yes andamen to all of that, right? Not
to downplay that

Speaker 2 (09:06):
, I love that. Yes and amen to all of
it. , yes.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
However, at the same time in practice, the actual
customer success team truly isthe one who is on the frontline
of seeing the way a company'spromise and value and pitch
meets the road where theyreally see the company's
promise become a reality wherethey are able to see that for a

(09:30):
customer and help them achievethat. And so that's one is I
love getting to be on the frontlines as a team, as an
organization of where the valueproposition that we say we
believe in as a company takesroot and becomes reality for
our customers. Seeing thatfirsthand. And at the same
time, on the flip side of that,internally it's the same thing

(09:52):
as an organization because ofthe nature of us being so on
the front lines , advocatingfor customers, with customers,
working with them. And becauseit's the mission of the whole
company to help make customerssuccessful, we touch and work
with so many differentdepartments and teams. And so
the dynamism that that comeswith that of working with so

(10:12):
many parts of the organizationto really help see how they all
work together, is just anexciting prospect. And I think
that that's something thatregardless of all of the maybe
net specifics that come up fromone company to another, whether
it's who owns what part ofrevenue, who owns the renewal
transaction, or all thedifferent components that can

(10:33):
play out from one org toanother, those two core
principles are prettyconsistent across the board for
almost every CS team I've heardof, at least in in theory, when
they're not, you know, totallyunderwater, right? That's a ,
that that can happen. But ingeneral, those two ideas have
just kept me stuck in customersuccess in the best way
possible.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
I love that I can hear so much passion behind
your voice as you just explainall of that and I hope everyone
else listening heard that aswell. But that is such an ex
amazing explanation of why itis we do what we do and also
then make sure that we'redelivering value for customers
and why we keep beingpassionate about everything
we're doing. So I wanna jumpinto what our topic is today,

(11:17):
which is a lot aroundmonday.com scale team or
digital CSS as some peoplemight call it as well. Can you
explain the concept of scaledor digital customer success and
why it's so crucial in thebusiness landscape that we find
ourselves today? 'cause peoplelistening might not even know
why it's so important in, inthe world that we live in today

(11:39):
in SaaS.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Absolutely. So I would say it's taken on a
particular importance this timeof the current economy that
we're in and everything that'sgoing on with that, taking a
step back, even just from thecurrent economic climate that
we're in, what makes scale soimportant is, or digital
customer success, which isthey're really related and I

(12:00):
think they go hand in handwhile not being the same. So
just a quick clarifier herejust to kind of give that kind
of table stakes definition. Wetalked about scale CSS being
the motion of increasing thescale of customers that a team
is working with or that yourorganization is supporting
without increasing the samescale of one-to-one on
headcount. Digital customersuccess tends to be talking
more about the mechanism, thetools, the asynchronous

(12:21):
journey, all the levers thatyou can pull to help your
customers achieve their valueand interact with your product
and achieve their desiredoutcomes that don't involve a
human intervention. As you canimagine, these two topics work
hand in hand so closelytogether, which is why you
often hear them talked aboutsimultaneously, especially
because digital customersuccess motions most often are

(12:46):
built out initially to go handin hand with a scaled motion
that's trying to support alarger pool of customers.
Despite the fact that digitalcustomer success motions are
beneficial across your entirecustomer base. Think about your
largest enterprise customers.
The majority of their users arequote unquote no touch from a C
S M perspective because you'renot interacting with them as
you should not be . So thesetopics are closely interacted

(13:08):
and they come close together.
So taking that step back nowthat we've got those
definitions on on the table,it's important as your company
grows and as your customer basegrows to be able to meet your
customers where they want to bemet with the level of support
that they actually need toaccomplish their goals. That's
not the same for everycustomer. That's not the same

(13:30):
for every type of customer forevery segment, fill in the
blank. It's important to beable to do that as you continue
growing because as everyorganization grows, you hit a
point where if you want tocontinue accelerating growth,
you can't just throw the same Css m headcount at the same
customers, both from a uniteconomics perspective, but

(13:51):
again keeping the customer atthe center also because the
customers don't need that. Theydon't want that necessarily.
Um, and that's one of the ideasthat's at the, the core heart
of this. And so why it's beenso hot this year, well many
companies have been able tobecause of rich VC funds being
thrown around a lot more andcash being a lot more of plenty
prior to our current economicclimate. You've been able to

(14:14):
just throw bodies at problems.
You've been able to seeaccounts come in and just add C
S M headcount because you'vegot another round of funding
coming your way . As companiesare realizing they can't count
on that anymore, they'resuddenly forced to do something
that should have been there inthe first place, which is it's
forcing the question of, okay,how do we get more efficient in

(14:36):
how we support our customersbecause we can't just count on
another headcount. So that'skind of where, when in your
point about where it's becomingcrucial in today's landscape is
this is the direction that Ithink if you, you talk to a lot
of forward-looking companies,CSS has been moving in for a
number of years, but 2023 andthe end of 2022 really forced

(14:58):
this upon a lot of other orgsthat weren't already heading in
that direction. Um, 'cause theyjust need to be able to find
ways to help their customers besuccessful when you can't rely
on the same levers you've beenable to pull one, you were
always able to count on anotherround of funding or another
round of hires.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Definitely. You have said so many things that have
gotten me so excited and Iwanna just ask you a million
more questions, but I alsowanna be mindful of like we
need to think of the listenershere. I'm getting way too
excited. But you said someamazing things that I think are
critical to highlight, which isscaling process, not people. So
like you said, not throwingbodies at the problem. You are

(15:34):
thinking more let's saycritically or creatively in the
current business landscape thatyou, everyone finds themselves
in and you're no longer like,let's just hire more bodies to
fix the problem. How do webuild a process around that
super key and I think isimportant to scale, but I think
what you just said betweendigital and scale is so key to
highlight as well. Everyonejust thinks digital CS is the

(15:55):
way to do one to many , butlike you said, digital CSS
applies across so manydifferent types of customers.
Your enterprise customers thatare getting email marketing,
that's a level of digital CSSthat's happening there as well.
So I do love that youhighlighted all of that, but
all of this being said, it canbe really overwhelming to take
your first steps in buildingout a scaled digital customer

(16:18):
success team. So where did youbegin with [e-mail], where
does someone begin? Where do westart when we're trying to
build it out?

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Fantastic question.
So I can share a little bitabout how we started and then
from there kind of suss outsome of the principles that I
think apply across the boardbecause while I think what we
did was great and worked for us, uh, two things to say on that
front, just as kind ofqualifiers number one, I don't

(16:46):
think that there's only one wayto approach the topic. It

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Depends which is the number one thing in customer
success.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Absolutely. A shout out to my friend , uh, Sherry
Renick for that one. Of coursethat , yeah, it depends. So
I'll share what we did and someof the principles that are
drawn out from there. 'causewhile it worked for us, I don't
think it is the only way forall orgs, but also because
transparently we beganapproaching this before the
current economic climate, wewere able to be a bit more
proactive. So we were able to,I think maybe take a certain

(17:13):
cadence to our approach thatothers starting now might have
certain external factors thatare, you know, forcing maybe a
different approach to it. Sojust keep that in mind as we
talk about this. So we began byidentifying customers based on,
we had feedback fromimplementation teams as well as
sales teams on certaincustomers as our product was

(17:34):
growing and becoming morecomplex , uh, that despite it
being a very product-led growthcompany and having a very high
kind of natural growth rateamong customers, that there was
a certain segment of customersthat were below what would
qualify for getting a fulltraditional C S M support, both

(17:54):
from a complexity standpointbecause again, they didn't need
that level of support. Butalso, again, from a unity
economics perspective, if webegan supporting that, it would
just, it would not make sensefrom a business sense. You hear
me saying that a few times inthis conversation because I
think it can get really easy toget idealistic with how we talk
about it and ignore the realitythat leader's facing where we
have to make things add up froma business perspective. Um , so

(18:16):
that was the reality we werefacing and we received feedback
that this certain cohort ofcustomers that was below that
threshold needed more than justthe asynchronous support that
they were getting at that time.
They needed something. So webegan to build out a model of
customer success where what wewanted to focus on was quick

(18:39):
interventions with thesecustomers where A C S M would
not be as involved with them asmuch as with a more traditional
high-touch account. And it wasin essence it was a, a sort of
pooled, non pooled model wherewe approached it where from our
perspective, CSMs had theirportfolio of accounts that were

(19:00):
assigned to them in our C R Mthey were working with.
However, the customer didn'thave a named C S M, which is by
design. So it was pooled from acustomer perspective. We had
ownership internally. And sowhat we did with that was we
identified the customers thatmade sense to fit in this
cohort and we looked at a lotof what worked in our high

(19:21):
high-touch traditional customersuccess motion. And I wanted to
make sure I call that outbecause a lot of times we think
when we're approaching scale orsomething like that, we need to
reinvent the wheel. You don'tneed to look at what works for
your traditional segments. Andthen we had two questions that
we wanted to answer about whatwas working in our high-touch
segments to apply to thissegment that we were trying.

(19:43):
Number one, what'sautomateable? What can we
automate from this? What workshere that we can have a version
of that's automated that we canthen roll out more en mass to,
to this large cohort ofcustomers? Second question,
what's repeatable? What is notjust an ad hoc, you've built a
really strong account plan withan individual account that's

(20:07):
less repeatable, but you foundthat walking a customer through
X, Y , Z use case reallyquickly got them up to speed in
two meetings. Great. So weidentified what was repeatable
and then what was automatable,I don't even know if that's a
word. What could we automate?
There we go. That's the secondquestion. What could we
automate? So we answered thosetwo questions and then we

(20:29):
looked at this cohort ofcustomers and then of course
the, you know , million dollarquestion, where do we start?
Who do we start with? So webegan by looking at our
customers that had churned inthe past. And so we began as we
were, we were building theplane while we were flying it a
little bit. So our CSMs weredirected to look at customers

(20:50):
that were lower on our existinghealth score metrics to reach
out to them to offer quickintervention as a C S M to
intervene with some of theserepeatable plays. Well we began
building out some of theautomations for the, the more
broad based one to manycomponents. So the CSMs were
beginning to target some ofthese accounts that were lower

(21:12):
health according to our metricsto reach out to say, hey,
reaching out from our customersuccess team wanna help you be
successful. Let's connect dosome of those repeatable plays.
Then from there, at the sametime we were also looking at
our data to more stronglyidentify who are our truly at
risk customers, looking at allof our customers that churned

(21:33):
in the past, what were themarkers of a customer that was
likely to churn so that wecould then make sure we were
following up with themaccordingly so that we could
target the right customers. Andwe had begun building out
different mechanisms to reachthe masses of those customers.
So we began building out from areally tactical perspective,

(21:55):
office hours that we beganhosting right away with these
cohort of customers that wecould then just invite as many
of them too as wanted to attendon specific topics where they'd
get a short demo on aparticular topic or use case or
function. And then from there,just use the rest of the time
to ask questions, learn fromeach other. It was always
hosted by a C SS m immediatelythat multiplied a CSMs efforts
where with the same amount oftime investment, rather than

(22:18):
benefiting one customer,they're then benefiting a
hundred customers with thisliteral same time investment on
their end. Uh , we beganbuilding out what are the
features that we know were the,the stickiest when we look at
our most successful customers.
Great, how do we build outcampaigns that we can send out
to all of these users at thesecustomers that encourage
adoption of those features? Andwe began working on those at

(22:40):
the same time. And so we reallywere tackling a lot of those
fronts at once, measuringeverything because that was key
is we said, look, we need toexperiment quickly because we
want to make sure we're findingout what works and casting a
wide net to begin focusing our,our efforts on and not just do
something really narrow overlyspecific, but at the same time

(23:04):
we wanted to measureeverything. So we wanted to
know what was actuallysuccessful, what was actually
moving the needle for ourcustomers. So that's a lot of
how we started. Uh , as far asa principle goes for where to
where to begin what you'retrying to start, I would say,
and it might sound reallyobvious when you hear it, but
how often in practice I don'tthink this is done, what do you

(23:27):
want to accomplish as yourfirst goal with this motion? Is
it a leaky bucket of customersthat you really need to just
get someone working with? Is ityou want to accelerate growth
with customers that you're justnot seeing traction with
despite everything seeming likethey should? Is it you've got

(23:49):
certain features that you justknow are sticky that customers
aren't adopting? Whatever thatis, start with identifying what
that goal is and who you wantthe audience to be. You can use
data to identify that. You canuse human validation to
identify that initially, butmake sure you're starting with
those two components becausethat's what will help you

(24:09):
identify what are the mostimportant first steps to take.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Awesome. I love that you said so many things, but I
love that you really said youshould really know your why and
what you're trying to chase andwhat is it the problem you're
trying to solve. 'cause thenyou can then build on that as
well. And you mentioned anumber of different tactics,
which I've already taken noteson, but you said campaigns,
office hours, measuringeverything. That's a lot to do

(24:33):
at once, which I know can beoverwhelming. But let's say you
did do all those bits alreadyand you are starting to build
out your scale team and you'regetting things up and running,
you're automating things,you're creating repeatable
processes like you said, allcritical to building out the
the scale team. But what ifyou've kind of got the team
already up and running, whichsome people might have at this

(24:54):
point and they might be let'splateau or a bit stuck. Like
how do you take your scaled CSSteam to the next level once
you've gotten some of theseprocesses up and running and,
and how do you know, you saidmeasure everything, but how do
you actually know you'vemeasured up to everything that
you're supposed to be measuringup to love

Speaker 3 (25:11):
That. So that's a fantastic way, that's a great
segue into the next componenthere, which really is, that's
how you start, right? Then howdo you improve and grow? Uh ,
there's a few differentcomponents to this. Uh , number
one, I would say as you'rebeginning to roll out this
motion, one of the thingsyou'll need to adopt in
addition to a traditional CSSmindset is a little bit of a

(25:32):
marketer's mindset in terms ofhow you measure attribution and
how you measure what'ssuccessful or not. And so you
need to be able to really drillin. So let's say you've got
your, your campaigns up andrunning, whether that's a
proactive digital journey,whether that's something that's
coming in reactively based ontriggers. Amazing, you've got
office hours up and running,fantastic. You've got

(25:54):
designated customers that yourCSM , okay, you've
got all these things going.
Alright . So when it comes tohow to go about improving that,
you start with making sureyou've identified what is the
north star that this team issupposed to be moving the
needle on. Again, presumablythat's some form of retention
for most orgs, whether that'sgross or net depending on how

(26:16):
your company is set up for yourCSS org. Maybe it's adoption of
some sort. I'd imagine if it's,if it's just adoption, it
should probably roll up toretention at some level.
Identify that north star, thenyou take that next step back.
Okay, so what are the, theleading indicators that point
to this metric? Again,typically that's product

(26:37):
adoption. Typically that isverified outcomes from
customers that they'reaccomplishing certain outcomes
that they've set out to achievewith your product. Fill in the
blank. Okay? Then if those arethe measures, you then do that
next step. Okay? What are theleading behaviors that
customers take that indicatethat they're achieving these

(26:57):
things? So you're continuallygun and going upstream there,
right? They're using X featuretypically indicates that
they're achieving y outcome,right? That's just, that's just
an example. So you're measuringall of that. Okay, you've got
the , these are the behaviorsyou're trying to get customers
to take 'cause that's whatyou're trying to get to from
there. You are now going tolook at your inputs, whether

(27:21):
that's what your CSMs are doingin human intervention, whether
that's the digital journeyyou're doing, fill in the blank
and you're, you're going towant to take that step of
complexity and maturity ofmapping. What is it that I'm
expecting these inputs to mapto ? And that is a , a

(27:41):
difficult thing to do sometimes'cause it's easy to just say,
let's just start doingsomething. But that's what I
mean when I say measure. Whatis it that I'm hoping is going
to be accomplished on thecustomer side that then leads
to these leading indicatorsthat all roll up into my big
North star metric when I sendout this email, when I host
this office hours when my C S Mmeets with this customer. And

(28:03):
then you can start to, and thisis where the marketer mindset
comes in, great. We'reexpecting that emails we're
sending, for example, aresupposed to help encourage
usage of feature y so that theycan be accomplishing outcome X.
Great. We're not seeing anyincrease in that feature
adoption despite us sendingthis email out. If you're not
applying a marketer's mindset,you would immediately just say,

(28:25):
okay, great. Email's notworking, we need to do
something different. But ifyou're measuring things, the
marketer mindset would thensay, okay, great. Are people
opening the email? 'cause ifthey're not, it's not the
content of the email that's theproblem. 'cause you could be
sending exactly what you needto be sending to customers. Is
it the channel that you'resending it via? Is it that
you're sending a subject linethat's not getting a customer?

(28:47):
Are you sending it at the wrongtime? But that's what I mean by
a marketer mindset is you applysome of those marketing
attribution methodologies tothinking through, are we
accomplishing, are we sendingthe right message via the right
channel to the right audience?
And that incorporates all ofthe different things you're
doing. And then you can beginto pinpoint where it's broken

(29:09):
or where it's not working likeyou want it to. Okay, great.
Maybe we need to change thesubject line because the emails
aren't being opened. Okay,maybe you discover that the
emails are being opened andthen it's not accomplishing
what you want it to. Okay,great. So we're having emails
that are working in the sensethat they're being opened and
engaging enough to get acustomer's attention, but

(29:29):
they're not taking the behaviorchange that we want. Okay. Then
you can identify from there. Sothose are some of the ways that
you can use some marketingmindsets. And same thing with c
s m behaviors. It , it appliesacross all. Email is the
easiest, the easiest one to usean example of, but it across
applies across all of yourchannels. Uh, and then the last
way I would say , uh, fromthere is combining quantitative

(29:49):
and qualitative feedback fromcustomers. Uh , because it's
all about the customers at theend of the day. Do not hesitate
to get that feedback, get thatquantitative feedback, of
course via things like CSAT viathings like surveys that are
sent out. But leverage thatquantitative feedback to then
also target customers to getqualitative feedback. You get
such good insights when youtalk directly to customers.

(30:10):
Hopefully I'm not needing to ,to pitch anybody in the
audience of this podcast on thebenefit of talking to your
customers directly .
But as a leader, and I say thisas a CS leader, talking to my
team's customers gives me suchinsights onto the way our
service is being done. Becausetypically if there's a gap,
it's not in a CSMs individualcomponent, it's in what we're

(30:32):
providing to the customer as a,as a structure. Um, so get that
feedback as well. And I'm, I'mtalking all this like
data-driven methodology firstbecause I know that's what
people kind of want to eat up,but at the same time, don't
overlook the the verystraightforward, simple, just
talk to your customers as well.
'cause they, they will be thebest indicators. .

Speaker 2 (30:51):
I love that. And I also love that you've just
indicated the human part of allof this. At the end of the day,
even though you're a scaledcustomer success team, there's
still customer in there. So itdoes not hurt to have those
meaningful conversations whenthey are necessary. It doesn't
always just mean automationprocesses, emails, digital,

(31:12):
that is all critical and superimportant. But like you say,
the human and the actualelement of talking to your
customers is critical. Thatbeing said, scaling customer
success efforts end up being alot of automation, a lot of
maintaining the right balancebetween human interaction
versus automated interactions.

(31:32):
So what are some of the waysthat you guys are making sure
that you don't compromise thequality of customer
interactions because they'venow become digital or automated
rather than that human piece.
How are you guys finding thatbalance and making sure that
your customers really feel likethey're getting the full
service of of a C SS M withoutthem actually having that

(31:54):
one-to-one relationship?

Speaker 3 (31:56):
Love that. So there's a few different
components to that. The firstis the automations are all
meant to be done in service ofthe customer. So again, it
sounds cliche, but it is soimportant to to say that
because if you're starting withjust what can I automate to get
off of my team's plate, you'llend up with a service level

(32:18):
that a customer feels veryautomated. But if you're
thinking what can I automatethat makes sense for a customer
to, to receive or how can Ihelp a customer not need to
reach out to A C S M? That'swhere your starting point
should be on the automationside. And then it doesn't feel
compromised . Putting yourselfin your customer's shoes sounds

(32:40):
cliche, but it is, it is soneeded when you're doing this
because think about it fromyour customer's perspective.
Have you ever been excited tohave to pick up the phone and
call A C S M at any vendoryou've worked with, no matter
how great your C ss m is? No ,

Speaker 2 (32:54):
No.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Like that's not what you want to do. You want to be
able to figure things out onyour own. You want to be able
to go in, try to do somethingin the product you're trying to
do, can't quite figure it out,click on a button or two, get
some additional info, getsomething asynchronously, maybe
look at a a community post orsomething. Great. Now you've
spent maybe 15 minutes and youfigured this out as opposed to

(33:14):
needing to pick up the phone,call someone, explain what
you're trying to do. Likenobody wants to do that
process. So if I'm puttingmyself in their shoes of how do
I enable them to do that,that's where it starts. Because
then if I'm keeping them at thecenter with how we're building
that component, suddenly I'mnot trying to take something

(33:34):
from them by removing humaninteraction. I'm trying to set
them up for the most successpossible. Yep . So that's where
it starts. From there. I wouldsay it also goes very strongly
into leaning into the data toidentify when it makes sense
for a human intervention tocome into play when it is

(33:54):
needed. Because the idea withscale is not to remove the
human component, but better tofocus it at the time that it's
most needed for the customer interms of what they, they're
actually needed.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Ooh , I love that.
That's another great line fromtoday's podcast. Like not to
remove but right when you needit is that human interaction
piece. ,

Speaker 3 (34:15):
We've joked that internally that we, we refer to
as our, it's a just in timecustomer success model in a lot
of ways from the customer'sperspective.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Definitely a hundred percent . I would agree with
that. Yeah .

Speaker 3 (34:25):
So that's how we approach it. And so really what
that just in time is looksdifferent from org.org product
to product. But we've done alot of work into identifying
that. And so that's a big wayof how is we make sure we're
achieving this with customersat the right point before they
are totally disengaged with theproduct, but we've seen enough

(34:46):
behavior changes and just a , alittle kind of clueing in there
for, for some of the listenershere, our approach has found
that the just in time is mostsuccessful when it's based on
changes in behavior as opposedto benchmarking against
artificial benchmarks thatwe've set up for what quote
unquote good looks like. Maybethat's in part because Monday
is such a broad product whereusage can look so different for

(35:08):
one customer to the next, maybeyour co your product does have
one very strict specific usageprofile, but if a customer's
been successful with a certainlevel of usage, you don't wanna
be suddenly flagging them as ohmy gosh, like you need to
support with something whenthey probably don't. They're
content, right? So we've foundthat our best model is based on
changes in behavior is muchmore indicative of when there's

(35:31):
a just in time , but not justfrom a risk perspective, but a
growth perspective too. If acustomer suddenly has a flurry
of of increase in one way,that's a prime opportunity that
maybe they're trying toimplement something new that we
can just in time support themwith. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Definitely. I love that for both churn as well as
upsell opportunities just intime . Making sure you have
that human component when it isnecessary, but not at every
opportunity because like yousaid, you wanna enable your
customer to be independent, tobe successful, to really
understand your product. WhichI totally am nodding my head. I
know no one can see me, but I'mtotally nodding my head to

(36:03):
everything Dan's saying to us.
But I do wanna ask thecontroversial question, not
really controversial. I thinkit's more the hot question of
2023 is like, what about AI andchatbots? Like what sort of AI
or tools are you guys using toscale and grow? Because I think
a lot of people are thinkingwhen it comes to digital or
scaled css, right? Let's have achat bot or let's use some sort

(36:26):
of AI tool and you know,optimize our processes even
more. Is there something youguys are doing or anything that
you wanna share that that wouldbenefit anyone considering AI
in their scaled teams?

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Yeah, so we haven't gone the the chatbot route. No,
I mean that's, yeah, no secretthere. We haven't, we have not
gone that route. Maybe, maybeone day. Who knows. Uh , that's
not the route we've gone as faras how we've leveraged AI
internally. We've used AI a bitmore on our internal processes
to help us. We've used uh , onetool where for example, it's

(36:59):
just easier. It's connectedwith all all of our databases,
slack channels, all thesedifferent things where someone
can just type in a questioninto it like very just kind of
conversationally like as aquestion and it'll pull, it'll
synthesize from all thesedifferent places helping just
reduce the friction of A C S Mneeding to look at all these
different places.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Ooh , I love that.
It's like an AI intranet by thesound . Exactly.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
But I mean it's so saying and the fact that it's
just , it really, the valuecomes also from the fact that
similar to what everybody'sbeen saying about Chad G B T,
the benefit that it'sconversational, where it's
really truly that layer to itmore than almost the underlying
component is that like you'reright that using Chad g P t
feels so natural 'cause peoplefeel like, oh I'm just talking
to something and I'm gettingwhat I want out of it. That's
what this tool has doneinternally. It's just oh I'm

(37:42):
looking for this synthesizesall of that brings it together.
That's one way we've used ai. Iwould say that's the biggest
way so far. Um, as well as whentrying to build things , uh, I
encourage the team that a gooduse for something like AI is in
refining. If you're trying tosend something out to a a lot
of customers, you can use AIpretty simply to refine. You're

(38:02):
not an email marketer andthat's okay. Sure

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Makes sense.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah, nothing groundbreaking, but it's the
simple things that add thatefficiency of what you then
would've spent like great, youcan in 10, 15 minutes knock out
a good kind of rough what youwant to get into an email, but
you're not an email marketer.
So you don't naturallynecessarily think on what's
gonna be the best way toposition this, how do I pare
down some of the things you canquickly use AI to get that
paired down. There's a milliontools you can use for that. Um,

(38:29):
something to help you with yourwriting. So those are also ways
that we're using it. And thezero to one I think on some
things, if you're just stuck onhow, how to begin saying
something, just use that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (38:37):
You don't have to work harder. You can work
smarter by using AI for thingslike you're just saying the
zero to one refining emails,maybe even asking it to refine
a process that you've alreadystarted or anything like that.
I think that's a great use ofAI across the board. You did
mention North Star metrics andI wanna come back to that topic
as well 'cause I think data andanalytics are so important.

(38:58):
It's in customer success ingeneral, but particularly in a
scale team where you don't havethat qualitative feedback as
much as you have thequantitative, like you met
everything you're measuring. Sohow are you guys, what are you
tracking? How are you trackingit? What are some of your key
metrics and KPIs? If I wasstarting a scale team today,
what would be my north starmetric? ?

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah, so for us, it, everything, it rolls up to
retention . No overly bigsurprise to that , uh, our
approach. 'cause we've got areally robust account
management team that handlessome of the, the sales side
for, for upsells and everythingon that end. So from that
perspective, we use grossretention for our customer
success teams as the North starfrom an ownership perspective.

(39:42):
'cause again, if we're talkingownership, obviously we play a
big role in upsells andpartnering with AMS and an AM
team plays a big role inhelping guard revenue because
they can't sell to an accountthat's turned , right? Like so
they , they help with all ofthat as well. They partner
together very closely. But froman ownership perspective, gross
retention is the kind of big,big north star. But from there

(40:04):
that's so lagging. You need tothen go upstream.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yep . You need to have some things to point you
towards that direction too aswell.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
100%. And so to that end, one of them that we've
used, like I I identifiedbefore, how we use a system
that's really gotten a greatjob at flagging when customers
are at risk and their risklevel. So one of those that we
we measure is reducing theoverall risk level of your
portfolio, things like that.
That's one. So that's anoutput, that's not just one

(40:32):
behavior, right? Um, so that'san output that's a bit more of
a , a leading indicator becausethat's something that updates
monthly. And so it's somethingthat can truly be done over the
course of of time. They canyeah . Make an impact on that
with their overall portfolio.
Um, where the idea is, wellsure maybe some new ones will
come in at risk that you didn'twork with all of that. The idea
is your portfolio should beoverall getting a lower level

(40:54):
of risk as you're working withit, right? And if not, then
where do we , where do we focuson what do we wanna work on
that's a , from a systemperspective or a A C SS M
perspective because those are,as a leader, it's incumbent on
me to make sure that I'm notjust saying, great, this is
what you do, you're on yourown. This is what we're
measuring.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
no, you definitely have to lead a team.
You can't just say here's themetric, good luck. It's you are
a leader to lead the team tothat success. And I do love
that you guys are measuringsomething that's not, well it
is revenue, it's towardsrevenue like you said, but it
is reduced not just the totalnumber of accounts saved, but
it's like how much risk did youreduce or how much opportunity

(41:30):
did you create? You are ,you're almost creating a metric
in between metrics, if thatmakes sense. It's , it feels
like that

Speaker 3 (41:37):
Absolutely and that's, and that's what I
love about it. That's what Ilove with what we've done is
it's something that is tangibleand especially from a scale
perspective, it feels moreconnected to your day-to-day if
you're A C S M. Yep ,definitely. 'cause nothing's
harder than like a metric thatfeels so great. I worked with
that account six months ago'cause they were flagged as at
risk . They're not since , butthey churned . So this is a

(41:58):
weird thing that, right? Likeobviously at the end of the day
North Star book , we care aboutthat but as an individual
that's, that's harder to getthat direct buy-in to that on
our scale motion that we aredoing for example . Yeah,

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Definitely.
Definitely. And it makes youfeel more bought in as well as
A C S M and more connected andthat you've made a difference
that in between number ratherthan hard churn it's gone.
That's revenue lost versus I'vegrown this account or I've
saved this account. There isthat, like you said, that bit
in the middle that's importantto quantify because as a C S M
with hundreds if not thousandsof accounts, how are you

(42:30):
quantifying the work you'redoing day in and day out?

Speaker 3 (42:32):
100%. And as far as, it's not a K P I , but one of
the things I think that also ,uh, just as far as like rituals
that we build as a team, wehave a way that where we can
track some of the anecdotalsuccess stories also with CSMs
are ENC encountering with theircustomers. Whether it's uh , a
risky account save that theywere able to do, whether it's
an improvement in metrics,whether it's something they did

(42:53):
where they can directly seewhere the, the growth
opportunity came from. So we'vegot rituals of really getting
to highlight those and sharethose and celebrate as a team.
I think that you're gonna hearme kind of mention that human
component to it because I thinkthat when we think scale, we
just go straight to to data. Wego straight to these, you know,
mass things. Don't forget thatlike with your team as people
too. So finding those kind ofrituals and ways to celebrate

(43:14):
their wins that they'rehighlighting and they're
floating up makes it just thisculture of getting to celebrate
each other's wins. And then asfar as from systematized
perspective, when it comes tothings like upsells, while
we're not responsible forupsells, we do have a A C S Q L
process. So you know , nothingtoo unique or fancy there. So
our team does do that and theyflag that and work closely with
our account management teams toidentify when they're seeing

(43:35):
those opportunities as well.
And we do also have formal riskflagging processes from when
say validated a risk to helpkind of raise the flag on
something that might needanother team's intervention.
Hey, here's a commercial riskthat I've encountered that I
can only do so much on becauseit's a pricing thing. And then
in a scale role , you're notgonna be the one getting into
the weeds of negotiatingpricing with a customer. Right.
Okay great. We'll flag that tosomebody who's more

(43:57):
commercially trained. Yep .
They'll come in and help withthat. Or this is escalating up
the chain on the product side,fill in the blank. We've got
levers we can pull for thedifferent categories.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
That makes complete sense. And I do love that you
guys have a TAG team approachwith all your KPIs as well.
'cause it seems like it's notone north star metric for just
the team, it's for the wholecompany. But I also do love
that you mentioned casestudies. I wanna highlight that
I think a lot of teams do notappreciate that you should be
giving a number of case studiesto be done by each individual C

(44:30):
SS m I think that's a greatmetric for A C S M to achieve.
'cause a yes, it makes thebusiness look way better as a
whole. You have more customersthat are raving about your
product. But like you said, itbuilt so much team morale to
know that you've, you know,saved this super at risk
account and now they're anadvocate for monday.com or
whatever the, the outcome is.

(44:50):
It's just such a good part offeeling the value that you've
been able to drive as a C S Mand I think having those in
actual written case studiessuper critical. I have one more
question for you, Dan, beforewe go into our quick fire
round. And that's, if you wereto build a scale team all over
again, let's say you'restarting from scratch, what are
some of the biggest learningsthat you would do or share with

(45:11):
our listeners or maybe dodifferently?

Speaker 3 (45:14):
I would, and this is something I've come back to
before and anybody who followsme on uh, LinkedIn will
probably recognize some of whatI'm about to say. Uh, I would
try to do a much better job atactually listening to the data
and not just approaching mydata with confirmation bias.
Ooh ,

Speaker 2 (45:30):
I like that.
Actually,

Speaker 3 (45:31):
I've been really, I can say personally as a leader
who was involved in buildingit, there was at least one or
two times where I went to thedata with an assumption and
'cause I was coming at it witha confirmation bias
perspective. I thought I wasquote unquote being data driven
and following the data, but Iwas really just being
confirmation bias driven . Andan easy example is if I thought
feature X was really key tocustomer success and I go and

(45:58):
to validate my assumption, Ilook at our customer's return
and I say, aha C , they had lowusage of feature X that
confirms it for me. I'mfollowing the data we need to
work on increasing feature Xand that's gonna move the
needle

Speaker 2 (46:10):


Speaker 3 (46:11):
A lot of effort into that. See an increase in
feature X don't actually see ameaningful change in the
retention rate. What the heck,if I was listening to the data,
I might have also looked andrealized , yeah, you're
success. Customers don't have ameaningfully higher usage of
that necessarily either or theydo, but they're using it when
you follow the data inconjunction with these other

(46:31):
features that point to, oh,they're actually using it for a
use case that's tied to a corebusiness outcome for them.
Okay. Like, so that's just aneasy example of where my
confirmation bias led me tofeel like I could have this
false confidence of, oh yeah,I'm being data-driven, I'm
following the data. But no, inreality I was just validating
my assumption. .

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah , no , but that's, that's such a good
point though because honestly,like coming back to the whole,
it depends. Like even anyonelistening to this podcast don't
have any sort of confirmationbias when you're like building
out your scale team with whatDan and I have talked about
today. Because don't go inlike, like Dan just said,
assuming that because X featureisn't used, you need to build a

(47:12):
scale team around that feature.
You need to come back to thedata. And that only makes sense
that your business, what Dan'sdoing at his business or what
any other leader is doing attheir business doesn't
necessarily apply. And thanksfor being honest with us on
that. 'cause I think all of us,whether you're on a scale team
or just a customer successleader or a a business leader,
to be honest, not to takeconfirmation bias into building

(47:32):
processes is so, so important.
So thanks Dan. That's reallyhonest and open and I
appreciate that

Speaker 3 (47:38):
, you, pat , I'm happy to , if others can
learn from my mistakes ,please. I'm , I'm , I'll be an
open book .

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Awesome. Okay, let's jump into our quick fire
discussion where I'm gonnachallenge you to answer the
next few questions in onesentence or less. I know it's
gonna be tough, but are youready, ready

Speaker 3 (47:52):
As I'll ever be?

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Awesome. My first question is, what do you think
is next for the customersuccess industry?

Speaker 3 (47:57):
What's next is a solidifying of actual best
practices and not the ad hocapproach that I think many
different organizations aretaking. And I think that that
will arise more organicallyfrom customers and companies
that have been doing this for along time as opposed to just
external people looking at itand identifying a trend.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Awesome. Interesting answer. I love that. Next
question is, which SaaS productcan you not live without as a
CSS professional?

Speaker 3 (48:27):
It's gonna be as cliche as as possible, so I'll
have to give two answers. Butfirst is Monday. I've, I've
cannot imagine how Ireorganized things.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
. That makes sense

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Now I became so reliant on it, but I , I'll
have to give another answerjust so I don't seem biased
because I promise it's notbecause I , I work at Monday,
but it really is because , uh,I, I do see all the benefit to
it. Yep . But secondly, I wouldsay I've come to rely on the,
the AI tool that we use, theopen ai . Uh, and so what we,
we use there ask ai. And sothat tool has become just a, a

(48:55):
lifesaver when trying to figurethings out. Fair,

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Very fair. And it's always nice to just ask one
question and get what you needback out of it and especially
out of an internal resource. Ido love that you guys are using
that. Next question is, what isyour favorite customer success
learning resource? It's

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Gonna be probably pretty cliche, but LinkedIn.
Both because of the formalcontent that's shared there as
well as the individuals thatyou connect with through there.
And if you're only usingLinkedIn to asynchronously
learn things , uh, you'remissing out on the real value
of it because the, the valuethat comes from the actual
relationships built andconversations had out of there
are truly second to none andbetter than any book I've ever

(49:33):
read on, on any topic.
Definitely.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
I totally agree. The reason why Dan and I connected
in having this conversation is'cause we actually connect and
chat through LinkedIn. So herewe are. I completely believe
that you can do more than justlike, and comment on the
content you see out there. Youcan reach out to everyone who's
creating it or haveconversations with everyone,
which is really valuable.
Totally agree. Last question,Dan, is who is inspiring you or

(49:59):
whom do you think we shouldhave next as a podcast guest?

Speaker 3 (50:03):
I'm gonna give two names on this one 'cause
they're both very inspiring forme. First, Daphne Costa Lopes ,
uh, one of the heads of CSS atHubSpot. Uh, I've always joked,
oversimplifying the Daphne'swho I want to be when I grow
up. So that's one big examplethere. Just someone who is very
tactical and not just pie inthe sky strategy gives someone

(50:24):
who's able to back up theirtheory with ideas and examples
that show that she knowsexactly what she's talking
about. Uh, second one I wouldsay on there would be Angeline
Grace Gino . She is a VP of CSSand support over at a company
called Catalan . She's out ofVietnam. Um , but she's someone
who, again, as a, a leader, hasa , a broad perspective on the

(50:45):
way that CSS and support relatetogether, as well as the
cutting edge of trying to getahead of the curve on things
like digital CSS and how tocontinue scaling her CSS org .

Speaker 2 (50:56):
Amazing. Thank you so much, Dan, for sharing all
of your insights, all of thetakeaway tips, everything that
was shared on today's podcast.
I really appreciate your time.
If our listeners have any morequestions or wanna follow up
with anything or wanna connectwith you, what's the best way
to reach out?

Speaker 3 (51:12):
No surprise here.
Best way would be just simplyfollow me on LinkedIn, connect
with me. They're always open toa conversation and love to, to
hear from anybody who'slistening. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Thank you, Dan, for your time. Really appreciate
it. Thank

Speaker 3 (51:23):
You.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
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

(51:45):
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.