July 13, 2023 • 38 mins
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Shannon Nishi, Director of Customer Success at Customer.io about sustainable growth in Customer Success.
Times are tough and the “big hiring days” when scaling a SaaS business are long gone. In today’s economy, you have to think about sustainable growth rather than growth at all costs. So, how do you do that in Customer Success? How do you ensure your CSMs are strategic and not just support? And how do you measure sustainable growth?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (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 I amspeaking with Shannon Nishi ,
who is the director of customerSuccess at Customer io,
bringing seven years ofexperience in SaaS and customer
success, includingimplementation services and
technical project management.
(00:48):
Her experience working acrosse-commerce data collection
software and marketingautomation software has seeded
a love for complex problems andan appreciation for simple
solutions on distributedcustomer facing teams. As a
leader, she's passionate aboutenabling personal development
and collaboration amongst teammembers. She likes using
iterative processes and opencommunication to achieve
(01:09):
customer defined businessoutcomes. Today we will talk to
Shannon about sustainablecustomer growth in customer
success. Times are tough andlong. Gone are the days where
you're able to throw bodies ata problem. When scaling a SaaS
business in today's economy,you have to think about
sustainable growth rather thangrowth at all costs . So how do
you do that in customersuccess? Let's chat to Shannon
(01:31):
to learn about her experience.
So welcome Shannon to thepodcast. I'm really excited to
have you here with us. Beforewe get into today's topic, can
you please tell our listeners alittle bit more about yourself,
what it is you're doing atcustomer io , your role? Just
give us a little bit ofbackground on who you are.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm , I'm really
excited to have thisconversation today. I'm Shannon
Nishi , I'm the director ofCustomer Success at customer
io. I joined the company threeyears ago and I started as a
CSM on the team and at the timewe had seven people in the CS
department and uh, I now leadthe customer success team,
which is , uh, currently around25 team members and growing.
(02:09):
We're a globally distributedand remote first company, so
getting to work with CSMs allaround the world and uh, yeah,
just leading us through all thechanges in the product and as
we continue to grow as anorganization.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Awesome. And I'm sure we'll jump into more of
everything at customer io, butso curious, you started as a C
S M, what inspired you to startworking in customer success?
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (02:30):
When I, when I first got into customer success, I
was really interested in techand wanting to get into the
tech space and when I learnedabout customer success, it was
in 2016 so it wasn't as commonto hear about customer success
managers there. And as Ilearned about it, I thought it
was such an interesting littlewindow into the tech space
where you're able to get yourhands into so many different
(02:51):
pots, so to say, where a CSMgets to work with so many teams
internally at an organizationand learn so much about the
business in that way. But alsogetting to interface with so
many other different companiesand learning about their goals
and the way their businessworks. Uh, it just seemed like
a really interesting way to getinvolved in the tech space and
learn a lot in a short amountof time, especially for
somebody that didn't come froma tech background myself. So
(03:13):
that's continued to play out. Istill think it's such a
fascinating place to sit in anySaaS organization and uh,
continues to just inspire me ona daily basis.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, I love that. I always love asking all my
guests how they came to be incustomer success cuz we all
have such a unique background,but I really love what you just
said is that it gives you thatspace to grow or explore within
the organizations because youinteract with so many different
people, different departmentsand you don't have to like just
be focused on something cuz youkind of have to do it all in,
(03:44):
in CS especially as at , at astartup. So I love that
journey. Thanks for sharing.
What is it that youparticularly did because you
started as a CSM three yearsago, you're now director of
customer success, that'samazing. Congratulations, but
I'm sure some of our listenerswanna know that career
directory and how it happenedand what you did to contribute
to the success of your careerat customer iu. Can you share a
(04:07):
little bit more about that?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Definitely. And, and I started as a CSM at customer
io, but I'd been doing CS forabout four years prior to that.
So when I first got intocustomer success , uh, I was in
Chicago at the time and Istarted working for an
e-commerce , uh, company as astrategic account manager,
right? But very similarfunction to customer success.
And then moved onto anotherorganization where I was able
(04:30):
to work in scaling themid-market offering for their
customer success program,working with a pooled customer
success model and reallydeveloping the processes for
that , uh, as well as gettinginto the activation side of
things and implementation. So Ihad an opportunity there to get
a little bit more experiencewith technical project
management and uh, kind of theproject management aspect of
(04:50):
implementation and working withcomplex , uh, enterprise
businesses to understand whattheir long-term goals were to
set that up in the first threeto six months of the customer
implementation. But before allof that I actually , uh, like
you said, you know, cs,everybody comes from such
diverse backgrounds becauseit's still such a relatively
new field. But my, my firstcareer was in acting and
(05:12):
performing. Oh,
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Interesting. What a transition.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, definitely. So I did that most of my life and
I went to university formusical theater. I was living
in Chicago and I was , uh,auditioning and doing shows and
as many actors do, I wassupporting that by working in
the service industry and alittle bit of retail and mostly
working in restaurants andbars. And so I really enjoyed
(05:36):
that customer element and I , Ispeak with a lot of actors that
are like, I hate waiting tablesas the worst. I actually loved
it and, and I really enjoyedjust making that experience as
consistent and reliable aspossible and just being kind of
that seamless in thebackground. Like not, not the
star of the show, but justcreating a a an experience for
(05:57):
people that come in to share ameal with their loved ones or
with their friends. Uh, to justtake all of the stress of the
cooking and the cleaning andall of that away by optimizing
the communication with the, thebartenders and the kitchen and,
and problem solving along theway and prioritizing task
management. All of these thingslike I, I really enjoyed. And
(06:18):
so when I decided that I, I wasgonna transition careers, I
started thinking about, okay,well what makes sense for me?
And tech was obviously growingand seemed like it wasn't going
anywhere. I learned about SaaSmodel companies and that just
seemed to make so much sense tome. And as I learned more about
that then I was, I wasintroduced to customer success
(06:39):
and I was like, wait, thismight be my way in because you
know, I already have this loveof working with the customers,
maybe I can leverage some ofthese skills. I had all of this
professional training as anactor where I had really
learned about storytelling andempathizing with people that
are different than yourself.
And so all of these things justseemed like, hey, this might
really click. I met somebodyworking at the bar that I was
(07:00):
working at that worked at aSaaS organization and I started
asking her questions about itand she was like, how do you
know what this is? Like
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Why ,
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Why are you asking all these questions? And I kind
of shared that I was interestedin getting my foot in the door
and she came back severaltimes, we had different
conversations and then, youknow, she took a huge chance on
me. She had an opening on ateam of these, this small team
of strategic account managersand she came in one day and was
like, Hey, are you interestedin flying ? And I said, yes.
And then that really becamejust a crash course in
(07:30):
everything tech and businessand SaaS and customer success.
Like all of that was so new tome, but I learned so much in ,
in a short amount of timethere. And um, you know,
looking back, I'm supergrateful that she was able to
take that chance on me and, andtrusted me with that
opportunity. But I had a lot ofautonomy there that just gave
me the ability to learn thesenew tools and skills and, and
(07:52):
it all just clicked. I foundthat I really enjoyed the
customer part of it, but also Iwas really interested by the
problem solving when it came tothe technical capacities and
solutioning and all these otherthings. So , uh, it's continued
to make me happy and and therest is history.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Amazing. I always love asking every single of my
guest where their passion forcustomer success comes from,
but also how do they break intoit? Cuz like you said there ,
it wasn't really coinedcustomer success until, you
know, the 2010s or late 2010s Iwould say . And so it was just
because of that that I lovehearing everyone's story and I
loved hearing the passion inyour voice when you were just
(08:30):
sharing how you got into it andhow you related waiting tables
to customer success. Cuz I'vehad some people come from
musician backgrounds and theywere talking about orchestras
and how that relates to being,you know, a team player and
working with multiple peopleand you were just talking about
like, you know, the front ofhouse versus back of house and
coordinating all that. So Ireally do love everyone's
stories and I just think it'samazing how customer success
(08:53):
leaders, professions, anyonewho works in this industry has
such a wide variety ofbackgrounds because it really
shapes the future of our, ourorganizations and, and the way
that we build customer successat SaaS businesses. So thank
you for sharing that. But Ialso do wanna hear a little bit
more about the current team.
You said it's um, 25 peopledistributed globally, which is
(09:15):
awesome to hear the growth thatcustomer IO has gone through,
but you also mentioned pooledmodel, you mentioned some
different things that I wannadive in deeper too . Can you
tell us a little bit about whatdoes that distributed team look
like at customer io? What sortof customers do you guys serve?
What does the product do? Giveus a little bit of background
into that.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah , uh, CU customer AI is a marketing
automation tool and we'rereally used to send
personalized messages tocustomer audiences and automate
workflows using the data thatyou already have on your
customers to make sure thatthey're getting the right
message at the right time , uh,with personalized information
that helps them engage andunderstand how they need to use
whatever service or tools thatyou're offering. And so our
(09:54):
team is working with customersacross a , a broad array of
different industries and alldifferent types of businesses
that might want to leveragethese SMS push notifications in
app , any of those things. Uh,we started out by really
focusing on mid-market as acompany and we found that we
just clicked with that segmentof businesses. And so that's
(10:16):
continued to be something thatwe put a lot of effort into
cultivating thoserelationships. And really early
on that's mostly the way thatwe were getting customers. It's
just through word of mouth withmid-market customers. But now
as we've continued to scale,we've had these opportunities
that just kind of haveorganically come to us to get
into the enterprise space aswell. So , uh, we're working
with a broader and broader ,uh, assortment of customers as
(10:39):
we continue to grow thecustomer success team as well
as our, our customer base. Andso customer success at customer
AO works with any of ourcustomers that are on a
contracted plan. We haveself-service options, those
customers can work with ourtechnical support team. It's a
month to month commitment forthose customers so they don't
have to plan quite as far inadvance, but for those
customers that are ready tosign a contract and agree to a
(11:01):
longer term, that's wherecustomer success comes in. And
we're, we're working with thosecustomers in , uh, a varying
capacity based on the type ofplan that they're using.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Awesome, awesome.
And I know that we had chattedbefore, and it's a topic of
today's conversation issustainable growth because back
in the day, even just a fewyears, a year ago, I'd say it's
everyone, every SaaS businesswas growing at any cost and now
it's more grow at a sustainablemanner. And I think you guys
have had amazing growth andcontinue to have. So as you
(11:30):
guys expand into the enterprisepart of the business as well,
but you guys have made someshifts and changes while, while
growing. It's not like youthrow a C s M at every customer
that that comes on board withcustomer io. So I'd love to
hear from your perspective andyour experience of when should
a SaaS company start monitoringand measuring like how to grow
and scale cs? Cuz like we said,you just can't throw another c
(11:54):
s m every single time a newcustomer buys a product. So
what are you guys doing when itcomes to scale and sustainable
growth? It's
Speaker 2 (12:00):
A really important question and honestly I don't
think it's ever too early tostart thinking about scaling.
And I think most people thathave been a part of smaller
organizations that are early on, uh, especially in this , this
SaaS world, you're constantlytrying to think about, okay,
how are we going to manage morework? How do we do things
faster, more efficiently? Andthat's all a part of scale,
(12:21):
right? So it's just a matter offiguring out what are the
biggest impacts that we canmake to the customer journey
and what can reasonablyaccomplish with the team that
we have today. Uh, knowing thatwe can continue to grow and set
ourselves up for success, butmaking sure that we're taking
those little wins and, andgrowing it all in stride and
simultaneously growing a biggerorganization as we put the
(12:43):
structure in place. I think thereally challenging part is, you
know, knowing exactly what isyour first move and finding
that balance of supporting itwith comprehensive data, but
also paying attention to theanecdotal and sentimental
trends that you get from yourteam and from your customers,
especially when you're early onin scale, right? Like you don't
always have the perfectdashboard that's ready to go,
(13:05):
that's just gonna surface thoseinsights and those can take
months and months and months tobuild out. You know, you don't
always know exactly what you'relooking for and it generally
takes coordination across thesales department, the product
department, you need to getyour data teams involved to
make sure that the data inputsthat you're getting are are
really comprehensive. And so ,uh, uh, you know, I think
paying attention to what datayou have immediately avail
(13:27):
available, what can you evenmanually be tracking when you
first start in terms of howmany customers does every C S M
have , uh, how much time are wespending on different efforts?
Uh, and then understanding,okay, what is it gonna look
like to continue hiring in thisdirection if we continue doing
what we're doing today? That'sreally where you get into
(13:47):
understanding like, okay, whereare opportunities to get more
leverage here?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think that you justtouched on something that's
really important to highlightas well as like making sure
your CSMs are addressing thecorrect customer and also
working appropriately while youscale as well, which I think
we'll dive in deeper to that,but I'm so curious, like where
did you start when it came tothe actual customer journey?
(14:13):
What, what milestones customerswere hoping to reach? Like did
you start by segmenting, likeyou mentioned not only the
data, but hearing customerfeedback, how did you actually
start to build out whatcustomer success looks like
today at at customer io?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
So when I first came on board , you know, there were
seven people like I mentioned,and it was really easy to
communicate quickly acrossseven people and everybody was
kind of doing their own versionof everything and we started
getting customers at a fasterand faster rate and it became
immediately clear, we're gonnahave to keep hiring and we're
gonna have to hire probably adecent amount in the next year.
(14:49):
So we actually just, just evento maintain what we were doing.
So we actually focused a lot ofour efforts on our onboarding
program for our CSMs to say,okay, we know we're gonna have
to hire, how are we gonna dothis as , as efficiently as uh
, possible? How are we gonnaknow that we're interviewing
the right candidates and thatit's a strong fit , uh, so that
we can just stay on top of thework that we already have built
(15:11):
out? And so a lot of effortwent into that initially and,
and as we started hiring morepeople, then we also needed to
scale our management structure.
So we had always used a bit ofa flat structure where
everybody was reporting to thesame person, but then we
introduced this team lead rolethat offered kind of a hybrid
of , uh, doing the individualcontributor work and being
really close to the job andunderstanding what that looks
(15:34):
like to work with customers,but then also having a people
management element that allowedus to bring more people onto
the team and be supporteddirectly by a manager. Uh, so
that was a huge piece in a , inus scaling initially and
getting that momentum. Also, wetook a responsibility out of
the customer success realm andthat is the, the contracts
piece of negotiations andlogistics when it comes to
(15:55):
getting new contracts in place.
Uh, because we found CSMs, weredoing a lot of context
switching and uh, having to,you know, go from a really
heavy strategic conversation tothen going into negotiate and ,
and coming , uh, back withdifferent quotes. And we
realized that we couldoutsource that piece, that
contracts piece to a separateteam, a smaller team, and then
(16:17):
really allow our CSMs to focuson the onboarding and the
implementation and thelong-term strategic goals. So
that was also huge in giving usa little bit more room to
continue to scale. But youknow, as you've mentioned, you
can't just continue to hireCSMs forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I was about to say like it's , it would be
amazing, like, but I'm prettysure your CFO will say no at
some point. So I'm wondering ifyou guys have hit like a , a
pivotal moment cuz 25 acrossthe business, I'm sure that's
covering at least some of thethe needs, but how are you
continuing to scale without thebody count?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Absolutely, yeah. So I would say once we got to
around 12 CSMs, that gave usenough people power to be able
to really manage the existingbook of customers and to start
making progress in some ofthese substantial ways that are
gonna allow us to scale , uh,more efficiently. And so we
started focusing on thecustomer journey and for us
that started with onboardingwhere we didn't have
(17:12):
necessarily standardized andclear processes for how we
onboard customers. Everybodyhad a little bit of their own
style and flavor. We thoughtthere's a lot of room here to
just put in some structure thatwill help support the CSMs and
mitigate some of the thingsthat become very time consuming
down the road if they're notaddressed early on with the
customers. Um, so putting inthat model where we had , uh,
(17:32):
you know, specific calls,specific uh, deliverables that
we're working with customers onto ensure that consistency
early on within the 90 days,which of onboarding, which
helped us , uh, you know,really focus efforts on , um,
maintaining some of thoselong-term relationships and not
just always fighting to keep upwith the new onboarding
customers. It really kind ofgives people some peace of mind
(17:54):
to have that structure inplace. And then once we kind of
had the wheels greased thereand we have continued to hire
now, it's been okay, we aresupporting a breadth of
customers that is huge. We'veintroduced a new product now as
well, our customer datapipelines, which allows , uh,
customers to integrate theirdata, their events, their
profile data into one centralplace, and then not only route
(18:18):
it to our messaging product orjourney's product, but also to
send that out to destinationsanywhere where they may need to
leverage that data on theircustomers. And so with that,
it's, it's become a lot for asingle CSM to manage to have
multiple products, metricmanaging customers across
different segments, differentprocesses for each of those
different segments. And so it'sclear that we have this
(18:39):
opportunity to segment our teamand have CSMs just focus on one
piece of that business so thatthey can really start to make
progress in terms of , uh, thecustomer journeys that relate
to a type of customer where weunderstand their needs and
their goals in a , in a waythat isn't just a one size fits
all .
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Makes sense. And I think that you've just touched
upon quite a few things I wannadive deeper into. You already
said that the CSM have beengiven responsibility, but
they've all were , they alsogot things taken away from them
by the sounds of it, thecommercial side isn't as
heavily placed on the csm, butthe onboarding and
implementation is, but also theCSMs have a a pooled model if
(19:18):
I'm not , uh, mistaken on thatbecause you guys segment a lot
of customers or you service alot of customers and I think
you guys started with theproduct-led growth or PLG model
, um, in the early days ofcustomer io and then you've now
moved from that mid-market toenterprise. What made you guys
kind of interact in a pooledmodel ? How did you like set up
(19:38):
that segmentation? How did youdecide with those, let's say
seven to to 12 CSMs in thoseearly days, how did you decide
how you were gonna interactwith a customer, what the
responsibilities were gonna be,and also why not just support?
Because when I think of thatlevel of customers that you
guys are servicing, I'm , I'malways just thinking of
support. So how did you guyseven come up with the journey
(20:00):
and the interaction of A C S M?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, so our pool model is still relatively new
for us. We've implemented thatin the last, I would say six to
eight months. And it reallystemmed from the work that we
did to optimize our onboardingprocess because as we did that
we realized there's a big pieceof our mid-market business
where they're really heavilyleveraging the CSM during the
initial onboarding period andyou know, they need some best
(20:23):
practices and they want advicein setting up and they really
need that product expertiseearly on so that they can get
everything going. But thenbeyond that, as we looked six
months down the line, eightmonths down the line, they
might be getting in touch withus and entertaining
conversations with us here andthere to talk about a new
feature. But overall they'renot needing the same strategic
support ongoing from a CSM thatknows the ins and outs of their
(20:46):
businesses and all of theirobjectives and goals. And so
for that specific segment ofcustomers, we decided to move
to a pooled customer successmodel because as we've said, it
was becoming more expensive andmore taxing to continue hiring
CSMs. It didn't feel fair topass that cost off onto the
customer by saying like, Hey,we need to raise our service
prices to, to continueproviding the service if
(21:07):
they're not using it. Uh, sonow we actually have that as an
option. All of our customersget the 90 day onboarding, but
for customers that are in ourmid-market segment that want
the additional support, thatreally value that maybe they're
growing really fast or theyhave some ongoing initiatives
that they're working on, theymay value pulling a , a CSM
into their plan and and havingthat for the duration of the
(21:28):
term. But for a big number ofour customers, they're happy
with that 90 days. And then wehave a pooled customer success
model where we can continue towork with them on questions
that come up around specificuse cases and adoption and
getting all of that productsinformation in their hands, but
also addressing things in aone-to-many sense. And so how
are we doing webinars and howare we getting thought
(21:50):
leadership into their hands andhow are we recreating the
customer journey that we knowworks for our other customers
at scale? And so now we havethis group of CSMs that are
really focused on thoseopportunities and and seeing
what we can do to impact thesecustomers on a broader scale.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, I love that. I also love that you guys are
almost mixing and matchingsegmentation and the way
customer journey should looklike or would look like. I
don't think there's a perfectway. I think every business is
different and you have totailor your CS journey and
model to your customer base andhow they're using your product,
like you said. But I love thatyou guys start with the, let's
(22:26):
say high touch one-to-oneinteraction where everyone gets
the 90 day onboarding,everyone's getting that almost
high touch model where they areinteracting and they're getting
that support to get up andrunning, I'm guessing until
they're live with your productand regularly using it. But I
love that you guys scaled andgrow in a different way in the
sense that you've built thispooled model because a lot of
people will stay customers inone lane where they're
(22:48):
one-to-one and enterprise andhigh touch white glove service
or they'll go directly for thepooled tech touch model, which
I think that you guys havemixed the two, which I think is
a great way to sustainably growbecause like you said, not all
customers are gonna reach backout to have very, very inate
questions where they're gonnaneed a CSM on hand for a call
(23:09):
or a QBR or whatever it is.
They're happy to just, youknow, be, get their questions
answered, which makes completesense. And I think that's
really awesome that you guysare kind of mixed support and
success in a way. Um, and Ithink you guys also mix in
product or you at least workquite closely with product ,
um, from what I know. And Iwould love to know kind of how
you guys have gotten yourproduct team in involved in
(23:31):
this customer journey thatyou've uniquely built around
that mid-market customer.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, I love that question. I , I know you had
asked about how a product ledgrowth model kind of lends
itself to customer success overjust support and I think, you
know, customer success worksthe best in a product-led
growth model and why, whilesupport is super important to
maintain a good day-to-daycustomer experience for the
customer and make sure thatwe're removing blockers quickly
(23:57):
and that they're able to makeprogress on their goals right
then and there , the customersuccess team is really able to
take those interactions onestep further and say, okay, how
is this problem or thisinitiative, how is that
impacting things six monthsdown the line, 12 months down
the line, what does that looklike? What overall objectives
is this helping to support sothat we're able to keep that
feedback loop with our productteam and and bring those
(24:20):
insights back to them and say,okay, so things are changing.
We're seeing new use cases thatwe haven't seen before. We're
seeing that customers arereally excited about this new
messaging channel or whateverit is so that we are able to
make those decisions in theproduct that are both giving
the experience to the customerof the things that they just
want delivered here and now thefeatures that they're
interested in. But also beingon the leading edge of what
(24:42):
marketing is doing in generaland pushing customers beyond
just what they're thinkingabout today and really pushing
them towards a strategy a yearout and how they're going gonna
continue to grow their businessand innovate. And so having
these conversations on thecustomer success team with our
customers is imperative to beable to do that. Uh, and I
would say, you know, for our,our product team is customer
(25:04):
success, right? They areconstantly using , uh, customer
metrics and customer insightsto empower the decisions that
they're making and understandhow to prioritize things so
that we're delivering a productthat people want to use and
that is bringing them valuebeyond just a a self-service
tool.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, I love that and I love how involved the
product team is. So much sothat you've just said product
is customer success. I feellike that needs to be quoted
and shared to every business.
Cuz sometimes we work in silosand we forget that. And I love
how integrated your productteam is. I think they even work
quite closely with yourcustomer feedback loop that you
guys are really passionateabout as well because like you
(25:44):
said, customers are givingfeedback and your product team
are building the product withthem in mind. But how do you
guys go about a, collectingthat feedback and b ensuring
that the product team hears itout correctly and is actually
building for the customer inmind? How do you guys like make
that all work? Because intheory it sounds easy, but I
know there's a lot of workbehind a customer feedback
(26:06):
loop, so how are you guys doingthat?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, definitely. I feel really lucky to work with
our product team thatunderstands and wants to , uh,
empower our customers, right?
Like I know that's not alwaysthe case for everybody at every
CS organization. So it'samazing that we get to take
advantage of these feedbackloops that you've mentioned.
And we work with the productteams in a , a couple different
ways. First of all, our productmanagers are incredibly
(26:29):
generous with their time anduh, especially when that comes
to customers. So when we havenew features or when we're
doing research and developmentfor something that we wanna
build out, our PMs areregularly joining customer
calls and asking us forinsights of what has come up in
our conversations and digginginto tickets and getting as
much information as they canfirsthand about what's going on
(26:51):
with our customers in relationto what they're working on.
That invitation being open ishuge and, and, and just knowing
that we can pull productmanagers in to some of these
sticky situations or reallyinteresting use cases. We also
have an automation set up.
We're we're actually plan hahat customers ourselves. And so
we're constantly recordingcustomer notes, customer
(27:12):
insights based on meetings thatwe have or interactions. And so
our CSMs can go into plan hatand tag a note with , uh, CS
insights is what we call it. Weuse that category and that
hooks up to an automation thattakes the content of their note
and spits it into a publicchannel in Slack where
everybody has access. So ourengineers or designers, our
(27:33):
product teams, they can see theinsights that are coming
directly from these customermeetings about what customers
are doing, what pain pointsthey're running into, what
tools they might be using asidecustomer io, what we haven't
seen before that we're nowseeing with our customers. And
they can set up keywords onthat channel or uh, just
regularly go through an audit.
We can tag in people that weknow are interested in certain
(27:55):
topics to get those internalconversations going and make
sure that the relevantinformation is getting to them
as quickly as possible. Andthen the third major way, which
has become such a huge piece ofhow we work with the product
team is , uh, a monthly meetingthat we have with our PMs. So
once a month prior to themeeting, the product team makes
(28:15):
sure that their currentpriority list is up to date
that we can see, you know,these are the top five or top
six items that our squads areworking on. And then we as a CS
team come up with an agenda aswell where CSMs will highlight
and kind of go into deep divesof customer pain points or
feature requests, things thatuh, are coming up for them on a
regular basis that they'd liketo go more in detail with, with
(28:37):
the product team. And then wehave a conversation about,
okay, what are these items onthe list? What is products take
on this? Is this something thatwe wanna explore? Is this
something we're alreadyplanning on the roadmap? How
does this compare against ourcurrent priority list? Is are
any of these things moreimportant than what we're
currently doing? And gettingthat really honest conversation
where we're both challengingeach other is so beneficial for
(29:00):
us to be able to go back to thecustomer and have a transparent
conversation about this is away that our product team is
prioritizing things. These arethe things that we see as the
most important to our customersand this is what we're working
on delivering on. Uh, and italso just gives you that good
gauge with your customers tosay, how are these things
important to you? Are , arethese the most important things
to you or is there somethingthat's more important? And
(29:22):
that's beneficial for multiplereasons, both so we know if
we're off target, but also sothe customer may know like,
hey, maybe I need a differenttool to do this thing that I'm
doing. This isn't actually partof the customer IO journey and
the last thing we wanna do isjust string our customers
along. Right,
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Definitely. No, for sure. And I think having
product involved in those typesof conversations is critical. I
think a customer trusts the C SM understands, works with them
collaboratively, but havingalmost the product team
reiterate what has already beensaid and make sure that, you
know, we're building somethingthat fits our use case and
model as a product, but alsofits what you're looking for
(29:58):
and we're not just doinganything and everything. And
that again comes back to thatfeedback loop that you guys
have closely built with thatproduct team so that you
continue to hear the customerbut build things that make
sense for your business and thecustomer as well. But saying
that as well, the CSM is nowonboarding, thinking about the
customer pooled model, workingwith the product team, not
(30:19):
commercially, but still there'sa lot of , um, hats a CSM is
wearing at customer io and I'veheard it more times than not,
especially in the economy thatwe are in, is that a CSM has to
be doing more and more andalmost with less or trying to
scale quicker like you guyshave, but either with less
resource, less people, whateverthe case is, there's a fear of
(30:40):
C S M burnout. And how is itthat you guys are ensuring that
you guys are scaling andgrowing sustainably but not
burning out your team whiledoing so? Uh ,
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Such an important question. I think, you know, as
somebody that's worked in cs Imyself have gone through
periods of burnout. I've seenit happen to so many of my
teammates over the years. LikeI, I think that the CSM is in a
really critical spot where thisis, they're prone to burnout,
right? I I think it's reallyeasy to get into a position as
a C S M where you feel likethings are happening to you and
(31:12):
you lose that autonomy and youdon't have the same power to go
into your customerconversations feeling like you
can really impact things. Andso I think that powers so much
of the way that I lead my teamand the way I think about the
decisions that we're making. Soin order to combat that, I
think, you know, leading byexample is huge and I really
have to be mindful aboutchecking myself where, how am I
(31:36):
building boundaries and how amI setting expectations with my
team as well that my, my directreports will call me out when
they're like, you're notmodeling good behavior that's
sustainable in this case. Youknow, like, I see, I see you're
online a little bit later thanyou should be or things like
that. And so building thatculture where we know what the
expectation is and then givingpeople the ability to let you
(31:57):
know when you're not upholdingwhat you've committed to do in
terms of your own boundariesand and protecting your own
sustainability , uh, that'ssuper important. But beyond
that, as you're going throughall of these changes and it's
constant, there's change allthe time, I think it's so
important to be transparentabout the things that are going
to be really hard or, and thethings that you're not sure how
(32:20):
they're gonna play out about.
Uh, I think if you try andpaint things in a way as if
nothing's wrong and don'tacknowledge the the pain that
the individual contributor isgonna feel, then you're never
gonna have the trust of theteam and you're not gonna be
able to work through thosechallenging moments. So, you
know, building trust, gettingregular feedback and actually
taking action on that feedbackor explaining why certain
(32:41):
feedback isn't going to beacted on is really important.
Uh, I also think that it's justreally important that as you're
describing the why that you'regiving CSMs an opportunity to
be a part of the solution. ThatCSMs are not just customer
machines. They don't ingest aprocess and just go have a call
with the customer and check achecklist and that's it. The
(33:02):
CSMs have so much insight onwhat the customers need, what
in the process is working, whatin the process is not working.
And so giving them the abilityto actually contribute to
making these solutions come tolife and bringing that feedback
to the surface to say what'snot working is, is huge in
combating burnout because ifthey feel like nothing is gonna
(33:23):
change and that they can'timpact anything, then of course
when things get hard, it'sgonna put you in a really
challenging spot to continue.
But when you feel like you cansee the change and you're
actually a part of the change,there's always gonna be
something that we have toimprove always. And so it's how
do we set people up in thosepositions to be successful?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think that the otherthing that you just said is so
important as any businesscontinues to grow, especially
in this economy , thinkingabout sustainable growth, is
that transparency. I thinkyou're so, so spot on . The
only way to see success withyour team, with the ability to
grow with your customers isbeing transparent about what's
(34:03):
gonna get solved, what's gonnaactually have to drop. Because
you know what, we only have twohands and there's only so many
hours in the day that we canactually get to customer needs.
And that goes for all teamsinvolved in the customer
journey. You guys have so manyteams that are involved in the
entire customer journey and Ithink that having that many
hands helping is great, but italso limits on like what it is
(34:24):
you can do. And the only waythat you'll know that limit is
by being transparent with yourteam . So thank you so much for
sharing that. We could keeptalking Shannon about this
probably for hours cause Icould keep going into more
detail about how you guys arerunning things, how you guys
are growing, but we do have towrap up and I wanna challenge
you with our quick firequestions and the challenges
that you're gonna have to tryto answer these next few
(34:45):
questions in a sentence orless. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
I think I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Awesome. My first question for you is, what do
you think is next for the CSindustry?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
I think CS is learning how to work alongside
AI and make sure that computersare doing the work for
computers so that CSMs are ableto focus on the strategic work
that CSMs do.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Oh , I love that.
And I completely agree. I'm soexcited about how AI is gonna
sh not take away jobs, butshift the work of a csm. My
second question is, which SASproduct can you not live
without? As a CS professional,
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I work at a globally distributed and remote company
and I absolutely could not getthrough a day without Slack
Speaker 1 (35:26):
. It's so
important, but also so annoying
in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Feel like super obvious to say that, but it's
like I literally don't knowwhere I would start without
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Slack . Yeah
. Yeah, that's very true. I, I
totally agree, but I alwaysknow that sometimes when I get
that little red notificationand bing, it's also the biggest
like Beit of my life..
Um, next question is, what isyour favorite customer success
learning resource? Or where doyou learn the most from in the,
in the CS space?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah. Uh, I, I think there's three that come to
mind. So I love using gain ,grow , retain for anything CS
specific. If I just wanna see,I know somebody's had this
question before. Let me seewhat people have been saying in
the community as a leader.
Harvard Business Review is hugefor me. I read it almost daily
and get just such good littlereminders that I can bring into
(36:15):
my daily practice with my team.
And then also , uh, I lovelistening to podcasts like
Hidden Brain, which really getinto psychology and I think
that's super important as aleader that you're keeping
psychology top of mind andunderstanding what motivates
people, how people tick, andsome of the challenges that we
just face as humans.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I love that. Three very different resources, but
I'm sure that shapes you intothe well-rounded leader you are
today. And my final questionfor you today, Shannon, is who
is inspiring you or whom do youthink we should next have on
this podcast?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, so somebody that I follow on LinkedIn that
I've kind of crossed paths within a couple of webinars that
I've attended, and I just thinkhe has such a reasonable
approach to customer success isPeter Armley , who's the VP of
C S E S G , that is customersuccess as a service. And just
every time I hear him talk, I,I just think that something
that he says resonates with meand it's like, yes, this is so
(37:07):
logical. It doesn't feel like,you know, those trendy things
that it's like, let's say thisjust to be controversial. It's
like, yeah, these are thethings that we all know but
just maybe can't alwaysverbalize.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, Peter's amazing. He has a wealth of
knowledge and I always lovethat he's willing to share it
as well. So totally agree.
Shannon, amazing conversation.
Thank you so much for sharingall your insights. If our
listeners have any otherquestions or wanna get ahold of
you or wanna follow up , what'sthe best way to get ahold of
you? You
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Can find me on LinkedIn. We're just going
through a , a hiring round now.
Uh , but we're constantlyposting new roles , so keep an
eye on our careers page ifyou're interested or you know,
somebody that may be ininterest interested in a
position on our customersuccess team. And feel free to
send me a message on LinkedInas well.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Amazing. Thank you so much Shannon. Really
appreciate your time. Thank
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You so much. It was great chatting with you.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
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
(38:18):
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.
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 I amspeaking with Shannon Nishi ,
who is the director of customerSuccess at Customer io,
bringing seven years ofexperience in SaaS and customer
success, includingimplementation services and
technical project management.
(00:48):
Her experience working acrosse-commerce data collection
software and marketingautomation software has seeded
a love for complex problems andan appreciation for simple
solutions on distributedcustomer facing teams. As a
leader, she's passionate aboutenabling personal development
and collaboration amongst teammembers. She likes using
iterative processes and opencommunication to achieve
(01:09):
customer defined businessoutcomes. Today we will talk to
Shannon about sustainablecustomer growth in customer
success. Times are tough andlong. Gone are the days where
you're able to throw bodies ata problem. When scaling a SaaS
business in today's economy,you have to think about
sustainable growth rather thangrowth at all costs . So how do
you do that in customersuccess? Let's chat to Shannon
(01:31):
to learn about her experience.
So welcome Shannon to thepodcast. I'm really excited to
have you here with us. Beforewe get into today's topic, can
you please tell our listeners alittle bit more about yourself,
what it is you're doing atcustomer io , your role? Just
give us a little bit ofbackground on who you are.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm , I'm really
excited to have thisconversation today. I'm Shannon
Nishi , I'm the director ofCustomer Success at customer
io. I joined the company threeyears ago and I started as a
CSM on the team and at the timewe had seven people in the CS
department and uh, I now leadthe customer success team,
which is , uh, currently around25 team members and growing.
(02:09):
We're a globally distributedand remote first company, so
getting to work with CSMs allaround the world and uh, yeah,
just leading us through all thechanges in the product and as
we continue to grow as anorganization.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Awesome. And I'm sure we'll jump into more of
everything at customer io, butso curious, you started as a C
S M, what inspired you to startworking in customer success?
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (02:30):
When I, when I first got into customer success, I
was really interested in techand wanting to get into the
tech space and when I learnedabout customer success, it was
in 2016 so it wasn't as commonto hear about customer success
managers there. And as Ilearned about it, I thought it
was such an interesting littlewindow into the tech space
where you're able to get yourhands into so many different
(02:51):
pots, so to say, where a CSMgets to work with so many teams
internally at an organizationand learn so much about the
business in that way. But alsogetting to interface with so
many other different companiesand learning about their goals
and the way their businessworks. Uh, it just seemed like
a really interesting way to getinvolved in the tech space and
learn a lot in a short amountof time, especially for
somebody that didn't come froma tech background myself. So
(03:13):
that's continued to play out. Istill think it's such a
fascinating place to sit in anySaaS organization and uh,
continues to just inspire me ona daily basis.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, I love that. I always love asking all my
guests how they came to be incustomer success cuz we all
have such a unique background,but I really love what you just
said is that it gives you thatspace to grow or explore within
the organizations because youinteract with so many different
people, different departmentsand you don't have to like just
be focused on something cuz youkind of have to do it all in,
(03:44):
in CS especially as at , at astartup. So I love that
journey. Thanks for sharing.
What is it that youparticularly did because you
started as a CSM three yearsago, you're now director of
customer success, that'samazing. Congratulations, but
I'm sure some of our listenerswanna know that career
directory and how it happenedand what you did to contribute
to the success of your careerat customer iu. Can you share a
(04:07):
little bit more about that?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Definitely. And, and I started as a CSM at customer
io, but I'd been doing CS forabout four years prior to that.
So when I first got intocustomer success , uh, I was in
Chicago at the time and Istarted working for an
e-commerce , uh, company as astrategic account manager,
right? But very similarfunction to customer success.
And then moved onto anotherorganization where I was able
(04:30):
to work in scaling themid-market offering for their
customer success program,working with a pooled customer
success model and reallydeveloping the processes for
that , uh, as well as gettinginto the activation side of
things and implementation. So Ihad an opportunity there to get
a little bit more experiencewith technical project
management and uh, kind of theproject management aspect of
(04:50):
implementation and working withcomplex , uh, enterprise
businesses to understand whattheir long-term goals were to
set that up in the first threeto six months of the customer
implementation. But before allof that I actually , uh, like
you said, you know, cs,everybody comes from such
diverse backgrounds becauseit's still such a relatively
new field. But my, my firstcareer was in acting and
(05:12):
performing. Oh,
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Interesting. What a transition
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, definitely. So I did that most of my life and
I went to university formusical theater. I was living
in Chicago and I was , uh,auditioning and doing shows and
as many actors do, I wassupporting that by working in
the service industry and alittle bit of retail and mostly
working in restaurants andbars. And so I really enjoyed
(05:36):
that customer element and I , Ispeak with a lot of actors that
are like, I hate waiting tablesas the worst. I actually loved
it and, and I really enjoyedjust making that experience as
consistent and reliable aspossible and just being kind of
that seamless in thebackground. Like not, not the
star of the show, but justcreating a a an experience for
(05:57):
people that come in to share ameal with their loved ones or
with their friends. Uh, to justtake all of the stress of the
cooking and the cleaning andall of that away by optimizing
the communication with the, thebartenders and the kitchen and,
and problem solving along theway and prioritizing task
management. All of these thingslike I, I really enjoyed. And
(06:18):
so when I decided that I, I wasgonna transition careers, I
started thinking about, okay,well what makes sense for me?
And tech was obviously growingand seemed like it wasn't going
anywhere. I learned about SaaSmodel companies and that just
seemed to make so much sense tome. And as I learned more about
that then I was, I wasintroduced to customer success
(06:39):
and I was like, wait, thismight be my way in because you
know, I already have this loveof working with the customers,
maybe I can leverage some ofthese skills. I had all of this
professional training as anactor where I had really
learned about storytelling andempathizing with people that
are different than yourself.
And so all of these things justseemed like, hey, this might
really click. I met somebodyworking at the bar that I was
(07:00):
working at that worked at aSaaS organization and I started
asking her questions about itand she was like, how do you
know what this is? Like
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Why ,
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Why are you asking all these questions? And I kind
of shared that I was interestedin getting my foot in the door
and she came back severaltimes, we had different
conversations and then, youknow, she took a huge chance on
me. She had an opening on ateam of these, this small team
of strategic account managersand she came in one day and was
like, Hey, are you interestedin flying ? And I said, yes.
And then that really becamejust a crash course in
(07:30):
everything tech and businessand SaaS and customer success.
Like all of that was so new tome, but I learned so much in ,
in a short amount of timethere. And um, you know,
looking back, I'm supergrateful that she was able to
take that chance on me and, andtrusted me with that
opportunity. But I had a lot ofautonomy there that just gave
me the ability to learn thesenew tools and skills and, and
(07:52):
it all just clicked. I foundthat I really enjoyed the
customer part of it, but also Iwas really interested by the
problem solving when it came tothe technical capacities and
solutioning and all these otherthings. So , uh, it's continued
to make me happy and and therest is history.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Amazing. I always love asking every single of my
guest where their passion forcustomer success comes from,
but also how do they break intoit? Cuz like you said there ,
it wasn't really coinedcustomer success until, you
know, the 2010s or late 2010s Iwould say . And so it was just
because of that that I lovehearing everyone's story and I
loved hearing the passion inyour voice when you were just
(08:30):
sharing how you got into it andhow you related waiting tables
to customer success. Cuz I'vehad some people come from
musician backgrounds and theywere talking about orchestras
and how that relates to being,you know, a team player and
working with multiple peopleand you were just talking about
like, you know, the front ofhouse versus back of house and
coordinating all that. So Ireally do love everyone's
stories and I just think it'samazing how customer success
(08:53):
leaders, professions, anyonewho works in this industry has
such a wide variety ofbackgrounds because it really
shapes the future of our, ourorganizations and, and the way
that we build customer successat SaaS businesses. So thank
you for sharing that. But Ialso do wanna hear a little bit
more about the current team.
You said it's um, 25 peopledistributed globally, which is
(09:15):
awesome to hear the growth thatcustomer IO has gone through,
but you also mentioned pooledmodel, you mentioned some
different things that I wannadive in deeper too . Can you
tell us a little bit about whatdoes that distributed team look
like at customer io? What sortof customers do you guys serve?
What does the product do? Giveus a little bit of background
into that.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah , uh, CU customer AI is a marketing
automation tool and we'rereally used to send
personalized messages tocustomer audiences and automate
workflows using the data thatyou already have on your
customers to make sure thatthey're getting the right
message at the right time , uh,with personalized information
that helps them engage andunderstand how they need to use
whatever service or tools thatyou're offering. And so our
(09:54):
team is working with customersacross a , a broad array of
different industries and alldifferent types of businesses
that might want to leveragethese SMS push notifications in
app , any of those things. Uh,we started out by really
focusing on mid-market as acompany and we found that we
just clicked with that segmentof businesses. And so that's
(10:16):
continued to be something thatwe put a lot of effort into
cultivating thoserelationships. And really early
on that's mostly the way thatwe were getting customers. It's
just through word of mouth withmid-market customers. But now
as we've continued to scale,we've had these opportunities
that just kind of haveorganically come to us to get
into the enterprise space aswell. So , uh, we're working
with a broader and broader ,uh, assortment of customers as
(10:39):
we continue to grow thecustomer success team as well
as our, our customer base. Andso customer success at customer
AO works with any of ourcustomers that are on a
contracted plan. We haveself-service options, those
customers can work with ourtechnical support team. It's a
month to month commitment forthose customers so they don't
have to plan quite as far inadvance, but for those
customers that are ready tosign a contract and agree to a
(11:01):
longer term, that's wherecustomer success comes in. And
we're, we're working with thosecustomers in , uh, a varying
capacity based on the type ofplan that they're using.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Awesome, awesome.
And I know that we had chattedbefore, and it's a topic of
today's conversation issustainable growth because back
in the day, even just a fewyears, a year ago, I'd say it's
everyone, every SaaS businesswas growing at any cost and now
it's more grow at a sustainablemanner. And I think you guys
have had amazing growth andcontinue to have. So as you
(11:30):
guys expand into the enterprisepart of the business as well,
but you guys have made someshifts and changes while, while
growing. It's not like youthrow a C s M at every customer
that that comes on board withcustomer io. So I'd love to
hear from your perspective andyour experience of when should
a SaaS company start monitoringand measuring like how to grow
and scale cs? Cuz like we said,you just can't throw another c
(11:54):
s m every single time a newcustomer buys a product. So
what are you guys doing when itcomes to scale and sustainable
growth? It's
Speaker 2 (12:00):
A really important question and honestly I don't
think it's ever too early tostart thinking about scaling.
And I think most people thathave been a part of smaller
organizations that are early on, uh, especially in this , this
SaaS world, you're constantlytrying to think about, okay,
how are we going to manage morework? How do we do things
faster, more efficiently? Andthat's all a part of scale,
(12:21):
right? So it's just a matter offiguring out what are the
biggest impacts that we canmake to the customer journey
and what can reasonablyaccomplish with the team that
we have today. Uh, knowing thatwe can continue to grow and set
ourselves up for success, butmaking sure that we're taking
those little wins and, andgrowing it all in stride and
simultaneously growing a biggerorganization as we put the
(12:43):
structure in place. I think thereally challenging part is, you
know, knowing exactly what isyour first move and finding
that balance of supporting itwith comprehensive data, but
also paying attention to theanecdotal and sentimental
trends that you get from yourteam and from your customers,
especially when you're early onin scale, right? Like you don't
always have the perfectdashboard that's ready to go,
(13:05):
that's just gonna surface thoseinsights and those can take
months and months and months tobuild out. You know, you don't
always know exactly what you'relooking for and it generally
takes coordination across thesales department, the product
department, you need to getyour data teams involved to
make sure that the data inputsthat you're getting are are
really comprehensive. And so ,uh, uh, you know, I think
paying attention to what datayou have immediately avail
(13:27):
available, what can you evenmanually be tracking when you
first start in terms of howmany customers does every C S M
have , uh, how much time are wespending on different efforts?
Uh, and then understanding,okay, what is it gonna look
like to continue hiring in thisdirection if we continue doing
what we're doing today? That'sreally where you get into
(13:47):
understanding like, okay, whereare opportunities to get more
leverage here?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think that you justtouched on something that's
really important to highlightas well as like making sure
your CSMs are addressing thecorrect customer and also
working appropriately while youscale as well, which I think
we'll dive in deeper to that,but I'm so curious, like where
did you start when it came tothe actual customer journey?
(14:13):
What, what milestones customerswere hoping to reach? Like did
you start by segmenting, likeyou mentioned not only the
data, but hearing customerfeedback, how did you actually
start to build out whatcustomer success looks like
today at at customer io?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
So when I first came on board , you know, there were
seven people like I mentioned,and it was really easy to
communicate quickly acrossseven people and everybody was
kind of doing their own versionof everything and we started
getting customers at a fasterand faster rate and it became
immediately clear, we're gonnahave to keep hiring and we're
gonna have to hire probably adecent amount in the next year.
(14:49):
So we actually just, just evento maintain what we were doing.
So we actually focused a lot ofour efforts on our onboarding
program for our CSMs to say,okay, we know we're gonna have
to hire, how are we gonna dothis as , as efficiently as uh
, possible? How are we gonnaknow that we're interviewing
the right candidates and thatit's a strong fit , uh, so that
we can just stay on top of thework that we already have built
(15:11):
out? And so a lot of effortwent into that initially and,
and as we started hiring morepeople, then we also needed to
scale our management structure.
So we had always used a bit ofa flat structure where
everybody was reporting to thesame person, but then we
introduced this team lead rolethat offered kind of a hybrid
of , uh, doing the individualcontributor work and being
really close to the job andunderstanding what that looks
(15:34):
like to work with customers,but then also having a people
management element that allowedus to bring more people onto
the team and be supporteddirectly by a manager. Uh, so
that was a huge piece in a , inus scaling initially and
getting that momentum. Also, wetook a responsibility out of
the customer success realm andthat is the, the contracts
piece of negotiations andlogistics when it comes to
(15:55):
getting new contracts in place.
Uh, because we found CSMs, weredoing a lot of context
switching and uh, having to,you know, go from a really
heavy strategic conversation tothen going into negotiate and ,
and coming , uh, back withdifferent quotes. And we
realized that we couldoutsource that piece, that
contracts piece to a separateteam, a smaller team, and then
(16:17):
really allow our CSMs to focuson the onboarding and the
implementation and thelong-term strategic goals. So
that was also huge in giving usa little bit more room to
continue to scale. But youknow, as you've mentioned, you
can't just continue to hireCSMs forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I was about to say like it's , it would be
amazing, like, but I'm prettysure your CFO will say no at
some point. So I'm wondering ifyou guys have hit like a , a
pivotal moment cuz 25 acrossthe business, I'm sure that's
covering at least some of thethe needs, but how are you
continuing to scale without thebody count
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Absolutely, yeah. So I would say once we got to
around 12 CSMs, that gave usenough people power to be able
to really manage the existingbook of customers and to start
making progress in some ofthese substantial ways that are
gonna allow us to scale , uh,more efficiently. And so we
started focusing on thecustomer journey and for us
that started with onboardingwhere we didn't have
(17:12):
necessarily standardized andclear processes for how we
onboard customers. Everybodyhad a little bit of their own
style and flavor. We thoughtthere's a lot of room here to
just put in some structure thatwill help support the CSMs and
mitigate some of the thingsthat become very time consuming
down the road if they're notaddressed early on with the
customers. Um, so putting inthat model where we had , uh,
(17:32):
you know, specific calls,specific uh, deliverables that
we're working with customers onto ensure that consistency
early on within the 90 days,which of onboarding, which
helped us , uh, you know,really focus efforts on , um,
maintaining some of thoselong-term relationships and not
just always fighting to keep upwith the new onboarding
customers. It really kind ofgives people some peace of mind
(17:54):
to have that structure inplace. And then once we kind of
had the wheels greased thereand we have continued to hire
now, it's been okay, we aresupporting a breadth of
customers that is huge. We'veintroduced a new product now as
well, our customer datapipelines, which allows , uh,
customers to integrate theirdata, their events, their
profile data into one centralplace, and then not only route
(18:18):
it to our messaging product orjourney's product, but also to
send that out to destinationsanywhere where they may need to
leverage that data on theircustomers. And so with that,
it's, it's become a lot for asingle CSM to manage to have
multiple products, metricmanaging customers across
different segments, differentprocesses for each of those
different segments. And so it'sclear that we have this
(18:39):
opportunity to segment our teamand have CSMs just focus on one
piece of that business so thatthey can really start to make
progress in terms of , uh, thecustomer journeys that relate
to a type of customer where weunderstand their needs and
their goals in a , in a waythat isn't just a one size fits
all .
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Makes sense. And I think that you've just touched
upon quite a few things I wannadive deeper into. You already
said that the CSM have beengiven responsibility, but
they've all were , they alsogot things taken away from them
by the sounds of it, thecommercial side isn't as
heavily placed on the csm, butthe onboarding and
implementation is, but also theCSMs have a a pooled model if
(19:18):
I'm not , uh, mistaken on thatbecause you guys segment a lot
of customers or you service alot of customers and I think
you guys started with theproduct-led growth or PLG model
, um, in the early days ofcustomer io and then you've now
moved from that mid-market toenterprise. What made you guys
kind of interact in a pooledmodel ? How did you like set up
(19:38):
that segmentation? How did youdecide with those, let's say
seven to to 12 CSMs in thoseearly days, how did you decide
how you were gonna interactwith a customer, what the
responsibilities were gonna be,and also why not just support?
Because when I think of thatlevel of customers that you
guys are servicing, I'm , I'malways just thinking of
support. So how did you guyseven come up with the journey
(20:00):
and the interaction of A C S M?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, so our pool model is still relatively new
for us. We've implemented thatin the last, I would say six to
eight months. And it reallystemmed from the work that we
did to optimize our onboardingprocess because as we did that
we realized there's a big pieceof our mid-market business
where they're really heavilyleveraging the CSM during the
initial onboarding period andyou know, they need some best
(20:23):
practices and they want advicein setting up and they really
need that product expertiseearly on so that they can get
everything going. But thenbeyond that, as we looked six
months down the line, eightmonths down the line, they
might be getting in touch withus and entertaining
conversations with us here andthere to talk about a new
feature. But overall they'renot needing the same strategic
support ongoing from a CSM thatknows the ins and outs of their
(20:46):
businesses and all of theirobjectives and goals. And so
for that specific segment ofcustomers, we decided to move
to a pooled customer successmodel because as we've said, it
was becoming more expensive andmore taxing to continue hiring
CSMs. It didn't feel fair topass that cost off onto the
customer by saying like, Hey,we need to raise our service
prices to, to continueproviding the service if
(21:07):
they're not using it. Uh, sonow we actually have that as an
option. All of our customersget the 90 day onboarding, but
for customers that are in ourmid-market segment that want
the additional support, thatreally value that maybe they're
growing really fast or theyhave some ongoing initiatives
that they're working on, theymay value pulling a , a CSM
into their plan and and havingthat for the duration of the
(21:28):
term. But for a big number ofour customers, they're happy
with that 90 days. And then wehave a pooled customer success
model where we can continue towork with them on questions
that come up around specificuse cases and adoption and
getting all of that productsinformation in their hands, but
also addressing things in aone-to-many sense. And so how
are we doing webinars and howare we getting thought
(21:50):
leadership into their hands andhow are we recreating the
customer journey that we knowworks for our other customers
at scale? And so now we havethis group of CSMs that are
really focused on thoseopportunities and and seeing
what we can do to impact thesecustomers on a broader scale.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, I love that. I also love that you guys are
almost mixing and matchingsegmentation and the way
customer journey should looklike or would look like. I
don't think there's a perfectway. I think every business is
different and you have totailor your CS journey and
model to your customer base andhow they're using your product,
like you said. But I love thatyou guys start with the, let's
(22:26):
say high touch one-to-oneinteraction where everyone gets
the 90 day onboarding,everyone's getting that almost
high touch model where they areinteracting and they're getting
that support to get up andrunning, I'm guessing until
they're live with your productand regularly using it. But I
love that you guys scaled andgrow in a different way in the
sense that you've built thispooled model because a lot of
people will stay customers inone lane where they're
(22:48):
one-to-one and enterprise andhigh touch white glove service
or they'll go directly for thepooled tech touch model, which
I think that you guys havemixed the two, which I think is
a great way to sustainably growbecause like you said, not all
customers are gonna reach backout to have very, very inate
questions where they're gonnaneed a CSM on hand for a call
(23:09):
or a QBR or whatever it is.
They're happy to just, youknow, be, get their questions
answered, which makes completesense. And I think that's
really awesome that you guysare kind of mixed support and
success in a way. Um, and Ithink you guys also mix in
product or you at least workquite closely with product ,
um, from what I know. And Iwould love to know kind of how
you guys have gotten yourproduct team in involved in
(23:31):
this customer journey thatyou've uniquely built around
that mid-market customer.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, I love that question. I , I know you had
asked about how a product ledgrowth model kind of lends
itself to customer success overjust support and I think, you
know, customer success worksthe best in a product-led
growth model and why, whilesupport is super important to
maintain a good day-to-daycustomer experience for the
customer and make sure thatwe're removing blockers quickly
(23:57):
and that they're able to makeprogress on their goals right
then and there , the customersuccess team is really able to
take those interactions onestep further and say, okay, how
is this problem or thisinitiative, how is that
impacting things six monthsdown the line, 12 months down
the line, what does that looklike? What overall objectives
is this helping to support sothat we're able to keep that
feedback loop with our productteam and and bring those
(24:20):
insights back to them and say,okay, so things are changing.
We're seeing new use cases thatwe haven't seen before. We're
seeing that customers arereally excited about this new
messaging channel or whateverit is so that we are able to
make those decisions in theproduct that are both giving
the experience to the customerof the things that they just
want delivered here and now thefeatures that they're
interested in. But also beingon the leading edge of what
(24:42):
marketing is doing in generaland pushing customers beyond
just what they're thinkingabout today and really pushing
them towards a strategy a yearout and how they're going gonna
continue to grow their businessand innovate. And so having
these conversations on thecustomer success team with our
customers is imperative to beable to do that. Uh, and I
would say, you know, for our,our product team is customer
(25:04):
success, right? They areconstantly using , uh, customer
metrics and customer insightsto empower the decisions that
they're making and understandhow to prioritize things so
that we're delivering a productthat people want to use and
that is bringing them valuebeyond just a a self-service
tool.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, I love that and I love how involved the
product team is. So much sothat you've just said product
is customer success. I feellike that needs to be quoted
and shared to every business.
Cuz sometimes we work in silosand we forget that. And I love
how integrated your productteam is. I think they even work
quite closely with yourcustomer feedback loop that you
guys are really passionateabout as well because like you
(25:44):
said, customers are givingfeedback and your product team
are building the product withthem in mind. But how do you
guys go about a, collectingthat feedback and b ensuring
that the product team hears itout correctly and is actually
building for the customer inmind? How do you guys like make
that all work? Because intheory it sounds easy, but I
know there's a lot of workbehind a customer feedback
(26:06):
loop, so how are you guys doingthat?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, definitely. I feel really lucky to work with
our product team thatunderstands and wants to , uh,
empower our customers, right?
Like I know that's not alwaysthe case for everybody at every
CS organization. So it'samazing that we get to take
advantage of these feedbackloops that you've mentioned.
And we work with the productteams in a , a couple different
ways. First of all, our productmanagers are incredibly
(26:29):
generous with their time anduh, especially when that comes
to customers. So when we havenew features or when we're
doing research and developmentfor something that we wanna
build out, our PMs areregularly joining customer
calls and asking us forinsights of what has come up in
our conversations and digginginto tickets and getting as
much information as they canfirsthand about what's going on
(26:51):
with our customers in relationto what they're working on.
That invitation being open ishuge and, and, and just knowing
that we can pull productmanagers in to some of these
sticky situations or reallyinteresting use cases. We also
have an automation set up.
We're we're actually plan hahat customers ourselves. And so
we're constantly recordingcustomer notes, customer
(27:12):
insights based on meetings thatwe have or interactions. And so
our CSMs can go into plan hatand tag a note with , uh, CS
insights is what we call it. Weuse that category and that
hooks up to an automation thattakes the content of their note
and spits it into a publicchannel in Slack where
everybody has access. So ourengineers or designers, our
(27:33):
product teams, they can see theinsights that are coming
directly from these customermeetings about what customers
are doing, what pain pointsthey're running into, what
tools they might be using asidecustomer io, what we haven't
seen before that we're nowseeing with our customers. And
they can set up keywords onthat channel or uh, just
regularly go through an audit.
We can tag in people that weknow are interested in certain
(27:55):
topics to get those internalconversations going and make
sure that the relevantinformation is getting to them
as quickly as possible. Andthen the third major way, which
has become such a huge piece ofhow we work with the product
team is , uh, a monthly meetingthat we have with our PMs. So
once a month prior to themeeting, the product team makes
(28:15):
sure that their currentpriority list is up to date
that we can see, you know,these are the top five or top
six items that our squads areworking on. And then we as a CS
team come up with an agenda aswell where CSMs will highlight
and kind of go into deep divesof customer pain points or
feature requests, things thatuh, are coming up for them on a
regular basis that they'd liketo go more in detail with, with
(28:37):
the product team. And then wehave a conversation about,
okay, what are these items onthe list? What is products take
on this? Is this something thatwe wanna explore? Is this
something we're alreadyplanning on the roadmap? How
does this compare against ourcurrent priority list? Is are
any of these things moreimportant than what we're
currently doing? And gettingthat really honest conversation
where we're both challengingeach other is so beneficial for
(29:00):
us to be able to go back to thecustomer and have a transparent
conversation about this is away that our product team is
prioritizing things. These arethe things that we see as the
most important to our customersand this is what we're working
on delivering on. Uh, and italso just gives you that good
gauge with your customers tosay, how are these things
important to you? Are , arethese the most important things
to you or is there somethingthat's more important? And
(29:22):
that's beneficial for multiplereasons, both so we know if
we're off target, but also sothe customer may know like,
hey, maybe I need a differenttool to do this thing that I'm
doing. This isn't actually partof the customer IO journey and
the last thing we wanna do isjust string our customers
along. Right,
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Definitely. No, for sure. And I think having
product involved in those typesof conversations is critical. I
think a customer trusts the C SM understands, works with them
collaboratively, but havingalmost the product team
reiterate what has already beensaid and make sure that, you
know, we're building somethingthat fits our use case and
model as a product, but alsofits what you're looking for
(29:58):
and we're not just doinganything and everything. And
that again comes back to thatfeedback loop that you guys
have closely built with thatproduct team so that you
continue to hear the customerbut build things that make
sense for your business and thecustomer as well. But saying
that as well, the CSM is nowonboarding, thinking about the
customer pooled model, workingwith the product team, not
(30:19):
commercially, but still there'sa lot of , um, hats a CSM is
wearing at customer io and I'veheard it more times than not,
especially in the economy thatwe are in, is that a CSM has to
be doing more and more andalmost with less or trying to
scale quicker like you guyshave, but either with less
resource, less people, whateverthe case is, there's a fear of
(30:40):
C S M burnout. And how is itthat you guys are ensuring that
you guys are scaling andgrowing sustainably but not
burning out your team whiledoing so? Uh ,
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Such an important question. I think, you know, as
somebody that's worked in cs Imyself have gone through
periods of burnout. I've seenit happen to so many of my
teammates over the years. LikeI, I think that the CSM is in a
really critical spot where thisis, they're prone to burnout,
right? I I think it's reallyeasy to get into a position as
a C S M where you feel likethings are happening to you and
(31:12):
you lose that autonomy and youdon't have the same power to go
into your customerconversations feeling like you
can really impact things. Andso I think that powers so much
of the way that I lead my teamand the way I think about the
decisions that we're making. Soin order to combat that, I
think, you know, leading byexample is huge and I really
have to be mindful aboutchecking myself where, how am I
(31:36):
building boundaries and how amI setting expectations with my
team as well that my, my directreports will call me out when
they're like, you're notmodeling good behavior that's
sustainable in this case. Youknow, like, I see, I see you're
online a little bit later thanyou should be or things like
that. And so building thatculture where we know what the
expectation is and then givingpeople the ability to let you
(31:57):
know when you're not upholdingwhat you've committed to do in
terms of your own boundariesand and protecting your own
sustainability , uh, that'ssuper important. But beyond
that, as you're going throughall of these changes and it's
constant, there's change allthe time, I think it's so
important to be transparentabout the things that are going
to be really hard or, and thethings that you're not sure how
(32:20):
they're gonna play out about.
Uh, I think if you try andpaint things in a way as if
nothing's wrong and don'tacknowledge the the pain that
the individual contributor isgonna feel, then you're never
gonna have the trust of theteam and you're not gonna be
able to work through thosechallenging moments. So, you
know, building trust, gettingregular feedback and actually
taking action on that feedbackor explaining why certain
(32:41):
feedback isn't going to beacted on is really important.
Uh, I also think that it's justreally important that as you're
describing the why that you'regiving CSMs an opportunity to
be a part of the solution. ThatCSMs are not just customer
machines. They don't ingest aprocess and just go have a call
with the customer and check achecklist and that's it. The
(33:02):
CSMs have so much insight onwhat the customers need, what
in the process is working, whatin the process is not working.
And so giving them the abilityto actually contribute to
making these solutions come tolife and bringing that feedback
to the surface to say what'snot working is, is huge in
combating burnout because ifthey feel like nothing is gonna
(33:23):
change and that they can'timpact anything, then of course
when things get hard, it'sgonna put you in a really
challenging spot to continue.
But when you feel like you cansee the change and you're
actually a part of the change,there's always gonna be
something that we have toimprove always. And so it's how
do we set people up in thosepositions to be successful?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think that the otherthing that you just said is so
important as any businesscontinues to grow, especially
in this economy , thinkingabout sustainable growth, is
that transparency. I thinkyou're so, so spot on . The
only way to see success withyour team, with the ability to
grow with your customers isbeing transparent about what's
(34:03):
gonna get solved, what's gonnaactually have to drop. Because
you know what, we only have twohands and there's only so many
hours in the day that we canactually get to customer needs.
And that goes for all teamsinvolved in the customer
journey. You guys have so manyteams that are involved in the
entire customer journey and Ithink that having that many
hands helping is great, but italso limits on like what it is
(34:24):
you can do. And the only waythat you'll know that limit is
by being transparent with yourteam . So thank you so much for
sharing that. We could keeptalking Shannon about this
probably for hours cause Icould keep going into more
detail about how you guys arerunning things, how you guys
are growing, but we do have towrap up and I wanna challenge
you with our quick firequestions and the challenges
that you're gonna have to tryto answer these next few
(34:45):
questions in a sentence orless. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
I think I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Awesome. My first question for you is, what do
you think is next for the CSindustry?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
I think CS is learning how to work alongside
AI and make sure that computersare doing the work for
computers so that CSMs are ableto focus on the strategic work
that CSMs do.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Oh , I love that.
And I completely agree. I'm soexcited about how AI is gonna
sh not take away jobs, butshift the work of a csm. My
second question is, which SASproduct can you not live
without? As a CS professional,
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I work at a globally distributed and remote company
and I absolutely could not getthrough a day without Slack
Speaker 1 (35:26):
in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Feel like super obvious to say that, but it's
like I literally don't knowwhere I would start without
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Slack
totally agree, but I alwaysknow that sometimes when I get
that little red notificationand bing, it's also the biggest
like Beit of my life.
Um, next question is, what isyour favorite customer success
learning resource? Or where doyou learn the most from in the,
in the CS space?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah. Uh, I, I think there's three that come to
mind. So I love using gain ,grow , retain for anything CS
specific. If I just wanna see,I know somebody's had this
question before. Let me seewhat people have been saying in
the community as a leader.
Harvard Business Review is hugefor me. I read it almost daily
and get just such good littlereminders that I can bring into
(36:15):
my daily practice with my team.
And then also , uh, I lovelistening to podcasts like
Hidden Brain, which really getinto psychology and I think
that's super important as aleader that you're keeping
psychology top of mind andunderstanding what motivates
people, how people tick, andsome of the challenges that we
just face as humans.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I love that. Three very different resources, but
I'm sure that shapes you intothe well-rounded leader you are
today. And my final questionfor you today, Shannon, is who
is inspiring you or whom do youthink we should next have on
this podcast?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, so somebody that I follow on LinkedIn that
I've kind of crossed paths within a couple of webinars that
I've attended, and I just thinkhe has such a reasonable
approach to customer success isPeter Armley , who's the VP of
C S E S G , that is customersuccess as a service. And just
every time I hear him talk, I,I just think that something
that he says resonates with meand it's like, yes, this is so
(37:07):
logical. It doesn't feel like,you know, those trendy things
that it's like, let's say thisjust to be controversial. It's
like, yeah, these are thethings that we all know but
just maybe can't alwaysverbalize.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, Peter's amazing. He has a wealth of
knowledge and I always lovethat he's willing to share it
as well. So totally agree.
Shannon, amazing conversation.
Thank you so much for sharingall your insights. If our
listeners have any otherquestions or wanna get ahold of
you or wanna follow up , what'sthe best way to get ahold of
you? You
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Can find me on LinkedIn. We're just going
through a , a hiring round now.
Uh , but we're constantlyposting new roles , so keep an
eye on our careers page ifyou're interested or you know,
somebody that may be ininterest interested in a
position on our customersuccess team. And feel free to
send me a message on LinkedInas well.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Amazing. Thank you so much Shannon. Really
appreciate your time. Thank
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You so much. It was great chatting with you.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
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
(38:18):
podcast, please feel free toreach out. All my contact
details are in the show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
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