Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E61 - John Huber - Blueprint for Strategic Alignment

Send us a text

Summary

This episode kicks off a compelling three-part series featuring John Huber, founder of Customer Success Architects, who brings two decades of experience building CS functions across five different SaaS companies. The conversation centers on the fundamental question every growing business faces: how do you launch a customer success function that actually drives results? John shares his battle-tested approach, emphasizing the critical importance of aligning CS initiatives with company-wide strategic objectives rather than jumping straight into tactical execution. Through a fascinating case study involving a massive platform transformation for enterprise pharmaceutical and high-tech manufacturing clients, he demonstrates how proper alignment enabled a successful four-and-a-half-year migration from on-premise to cloud infrastructure without losing a single customer. This customer success playbook episode provides essential groundwork for any organization looking to build or rebuild their CS foundation.

Detailed Analysis

The discussion reveals several strategic insights that challenge conventional CS wisdom. Rather than immediately focusing on hiring CSMs or implementing technology platforms, John advocates for a "strategy-first" approach that ensures every CS initiative ladders up to broader business objectives. This methodology becomes particularly powerful when managing complex transformational projects, as evidenced by his experience migrating enterprise clients from legacy on-premise systems to modern cloud platforms.

The episode highlights three critical success factors for new CS functions: strategic alignment with three-year company vision, cross-functional collaboration (especially with legal and finance teams), and allowing significantly more time than initially estimated for complex transitions. John's approach to contractual restructuring during platform migrations offers valuable lessons for companies navigating similar transformations, particularly the importance of providing financial incentives and flexible contract structures during transition periods.

The conversation also underscores how customer success professionals must evolve beyond traditional support roles to become strategic business partners. John's team successfully positioned platform limitations as innovation opportunities, demonstrating the communication skills necessary to maintain customer relationships during potentially disruptive changes.

For CS leaders and executives, this episode provides a practical framework for launching CS initiatives that deliver measurable business impact while maintaining strong customer relationships throughout complex organizational changes.

Now you can interact with us directly by leaving a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CustomerSuccessPlaybook

Please Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe.

You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcast
Twitter - @CS_Playbook

You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.

You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.

Episode Transcript

John Huber (00:05):
Customer success.

Kevin Metzger (00:11):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Customer
Success Playbook podcast, wherewe bring you the actionable
insights and fresh strategiesfor driving customer success.
I'm your host, Kevin Metzger.
Roman was unable to join ustoday, but we've got a fantastic
guest lined up for you, so let'sdive in.
Today we're thrilled to welcomeJohn er, founder and managing
partner of Customer SuccessArchitects, a seasoned leader

(00:34):
who's helped dozens of SaaScompanies design and scale high
impact CS teams.
John, thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Kevin.
Pleasure to be here.
Fill us in on anything elseabout you and what you do.
Yeah.

John Huber (00:48):
20 years building and leading customer success
functions at five different SaaScompanies, public, private
startup companies.
So I feel like I've seen a lot.
After my last company wasacquired and taken private by a,
a PE company, I took that as anopportunity to start customer
success architects.

(01:09):
You know, I found I've reallyenjoyed kind of the building and
the optimizing process ofdifferent cs, uh, functions, and
I saw it as an opportunity to beable to help more companies.
So I was excited to launch thebusiness earlier this year.

Kevin Metzger (01:24):
Awesome.
Helping companies and.
So we're gonna start with thenumber one tip.
If you've got a business that'srebooting or starting up a
customer success function fromscratch, what's your number one
tip for how they should kind ofstart?

John Huber (01:39):
I.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Uh, there's so many places tostart.
Um, I've, a couple of the rolesthat I've, uh, been in, I've
walked into the opportunity tobuild a CS team from scratch,
and the thing that I've learnedis you always start by aligning
to the company's objectives.
You know, one thing that I'venoticed is most companies will

(02:02):
have a three year strategy.
And so by aligning to that, onceyou do that and you align with.
Kind of the, the vision that theexecutive team has set forth.
Everything else is easy.
Everything else falls intoplace, such as mapping the
customer journey, segmentingcustomers, hiring your CSM team,

(02:22):
and then developing yourengagement model and really
going forward.
So I.
You know, one tip.
I think that's just somethingthat I would, uh, I would
recommend to folks.

Kevin Metzger (02:31):
John, when you're trying to align with the three
year strategy and looking at it,kind of, how do you develop the
charter around that and reallyunderstand what the vision is,
what's, what's that look like?

John Huber (02:43):
Yeah, I'll, I'll actually share, uh, an example.
Uh, the last company I was at,we were undertaking a pretty
significant platformtransformation.
And so this was an enterpriseclass, uh, software platform
where we were actually movingour customers from on-premise.
To our cloud, and these weresome of the world's largest

(03:05):
pharmaceutical companies and,uh, high tech manufacturers.
And so in order to do this andnot disrupt their business, we
had to be, you know, veryprecise with, you know, not only
that, that technical motion, butthat.
Evolving that customerexperience and how they engage
with us as well.
You know, moving from, becausewe're taking kind of the control

(03:28):
from their environment, beingon-prem to our environment,
being in our cloud, and it, itwas a, it was a risky
undertaking.
You know, there was concern thatwe could lose customers through
this journey.
Um, you know, luckily we, wedidn't, and it took about a four
and a half year process tomigrate everybody to the cloud,

(03:48):
but, uh, we did it fairlysuccessfully.

Kevin Metzger (03:51):
Were you able to kind of anticipate some of the
challenges through that journey?
Um.

John Huber (03:58):
Yeah, we were, I'd, I'd say one of the big
challenges was the control of,you know, the, the software
itself, right?
In an on-premise instance, youcan control it, you can develop
your own code and reallycustomize and tailor it to your
need.
That goes away when you move tothe cloud, and that was, you
know, that, that.
Kind of communication, if youwill, fell to my team to share

(04:22):
that and, but also articulatethe benefits, right?
If we can get everybody to acommon code line, it allows us
to innovate much quicker anddeliver more capabilities, uh,
versus what we could do in theold model.

Kevin Metzger (04:36):
Yeah.
Um, I, I know one of the otherkind of issues, when you're
going from a traditional on-premmodel to now a cloud-based
model, a true SaaS based modelis your billing model, right?
So your billing model changesand trying to drive through
those billing model changesoftentimes causes a lot of
conflict and issues.

(04:56):
How did you approach that?

John Huber (04:58):
Yeah, I, I think it's, you know, it was having.
You know, clear and upfrontconversations with our
customers.
Obviously we needed to provide afinancial incentive to make the
move.
Those transitions itself oftentook, you know, 12 to 24 months,
so you can't kind of start thebilling right upfront.
And so we would ease into that.

(05:20):
But I think we also were fairlyflexible in terms of the
contract structure.
And what we found interestingwas sometimes you're going from.
You know, a contract that was 10to 15 years old that really
wasn't representative of how wedo business today to evolving to
that.
So, um, you know, it, itcertainly took a, you know, a

(05:41):
cross-functional effort.
Spent a lot of time with ourfriends in legal and finance,
but you know, as.
I'd say that the one learningwas give yourself plenty of time
and really more time than youthink you do to, to navigate the
contractual conversation.

Kevin Metzger (05:57):
That's fantastic.
And Roman always comments on howwe end up with more than one big
tip generally from our initialconversation.
I think, uh, we did it againtoday.
So thank you, John for thepowerful tip.
Looking at how you understandhow to kind of fundamentally
start the csfa, uh, function inmaking sure that you have
alignment with with management.

(06:18):
We're looking forward to youjoining us on Wednesday.
You gonna come back?
Absolutely.
Looking forward to it.
All right.
Yeah.
So on Wednesday we're gonnatackle one big question about
who should really own expansionsales or cs.
And until then on.