Jenelle Friday of Forecastable and the Customer Success Collective’s “CS Leader of the Year” for 2023 is someone who is easily liked. She's hyper-in tune with what makes people tick, and is even the author of her own framework on emotional intelligence in customer success.
In this wonderful chat, we talk about:
00:00 - Caring for your customers
02:27 - Being Authentic in Customer Success
04:41 - A Journey to Customer Success and Emotional Intelligence
06:53 - The Importance of Being Human in Business Relationships
09:11 - Being True to Yourself in Business
11:19 - Acknowledging Fears and Embracing Imperfection
13:29 - Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness in Customer Success
15:37 - The Importance of Work in Relationships
17:42 - The Importance of Human Interaction
20:11 - Elevator Pitch for Digital Customer Success
22:25 - The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Digital Communications
24:39 - Using Emotional Intelligence for Customer Engagement
26:47 - The Importance of Social Awareness in Decision-Making Process
29:06 - Cultural Differences in Customer Success
31:21 - Building a Customer Community
33:33 - Coordinating Communication Across Departments
35:42 - Understanding the Customer Perspective
38:01 - Living Boldly and Courageously
40:26 - Developing Soft Skills in Business
42:27 - Fostering Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
44:51 - The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Digital Customer Success
46:54 - Book Recommendations and Finding Normalcy
49:04 - Soft Skill Development and Giving Back to the Community
Enjoy! I know I sure did...
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This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media, a media production company founded by my good friend and fellow CS veteran Dillon Young. Lifetime Value aims to serve the audio/video content production and editing needs of CS and Post-Sales professionals. Lifetime Value is offering select services at a deeply discounted rate for a limited time. Navigate to lifetimevaluemedia.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
and he broke down.
His job was on the line, he wasgonna get fired and no one had
ever pushed to that point to askhim some of those tougher
questions that I was asking andhe's like nobody's cared to the
level that you've cared before,and I just thought to myself
this is not hard caring aboutthe people that we are
responsible for and once again,welcome to the digital customer
success Podcast with me, alexCherkovich.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
So glad you could join us here today and every
week as I seek out and interviewleaders and practitioners who
are innovating and buildinggreat scaled CS programs.
My goal is to share what I'velearned and to bring you along
with me for the ride so that youget the insights that you need
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
(00:47):
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome to theDigital CX Podcast.
It's great to have you back.
As always, today I am joined byJanelle Friday who, among other
things, is Customer SuccessCollective Leader of the Year
(01:09):
2023.
She is VP of CS at Forecastableis.
She has been crazy focused onEQ, emotional intelligence in
(01:29):
customer success and just ingeneral in professional setting
For the last few years.
She's building out her ownframework all around EQ and we
talk about kind of that lovelyintersection between humans and
digital emotions in CS andactually making sure that
whatever you're doing digitallyhas an element of awareness and
(01:53):
emotional intelligence.
She was recently the emcee atthe Customer Success Festival in
Austin, which is where we metand hung out for a while and had
great conversations, and so Iwanted to invite her on to the
show, uh, to continue thoseconversations, uh, with you
along for the ride.
So I hope you enjoy thisconversation with Janelle Friday
(02:13):
, because I sure did.
Oh crap, janelle Friday, it'snice to have you on the show.
I'm so pleased that you're hereand that we made it happen and
you and I met a couple of timesvirtually, but then face-to-face
, at the CS Austin festival,where you did a phenomenal job
(02:35):
of emceeing.
It's good stuff, and thecustomer success collective has
been good to you because you gotCS Leader of the.
Year award, like six months agoor something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It's good stuff, but I'm excited that you're here
because I think you're one ofthe realest people in CS and
that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thank you.
That's a really greatcompliment, Alex.
I appreciate that I thinkthat's why you and I connected
the way we do, because you arevery real as well.
So I feel like if you're in thetribe, you find your tribe
members and you just sticktogether, knowing that you're
part of the tribe and, yeah, Iappreciate that.
It's being authentic.
My husband made this commentjust the other day about how
(03:22):
you're just unapologeticallyyourself all the time.
I don't change from my husbandto my family, to my neighbors,
to my work.
It's just, it's hard, it's toohard.
I heard someone say they sendtheir representative Every
single aspect of their lives.
They have a different versionof themselves that they present
and I'm like that's exhausting,I can't, no.
(03:44):
And obviously you edit and youfilter the best you can for
certain circumstances.
But yeah, it's been an importantpart of my personal brand for a
couple of years now.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, it's wonderful because you do.
When you start interacting withpeople that are real, it's easy
then to spot the people thataren't being real.
Yeah, unfortunately, that'strue.
Look, I people that aren'tbeing real.
Yeah, unfortunately, that'strue.
Look, I'd love to give everyonewho may not know you, give us a
little bit about your historyand CS origin story, because
you've been in CS for a longtime.
You were frontline CSM for along time and I think that makes
(04:19):
for great leadership.
But I'm putting words in yourmouth, so I'll let you talk
about yourself.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Sure, I went to college to sing opera, and that
was not a good fit, because Iliked the drama on stage and I
don't like it off stage, and soI stumbled my way into executive
support and that I then justfell into customer success
haphazardly.
Honestly, I didn't know that'swhat I was doing until I moved
from Washington state toColorado.
It'll be nine years this summer, which I can't even believe
(04:46):
it's been that long.
To be a full-time aunt mynephews are 13, 10, and 5, and
got my first CSM role officialtitled CSM role, then a couple
years at Adobe.
I have just found myself inpositions where I'm coming into
something fresh and they'relooking for creative ideas on
how to connect with customers ata very authentic, genuine way,
(05:11):
and that's been me in my life.
I have always been called thefamily member that keeps ties
with everybody and I'm theperson people come to for things
, and so I feel like CS is suchan extension of who I am and
sitting in an admin role,thinking, is this the best it's
going to get?
Not that it's a bad thing ifyou're an admin and there are
some people who were called tothat and I love that but I just
(05:35):
felt like I was stuck and CSopened a door that I didn't even
think was possible.
So I've really just decided toembrace all of the opportunities
that have come across my pathwith customer success, and most
recently I suffered a prettysevere trauma several years ago
that forced me to look at myselfvery critically.
(05:55):
I took three months off of work,I was in therapy, I just did
the thing, and it helped merealize that I was lacking some
pretty important emotionalintelligence skills, one of them
being self-awareness inspecific areas, and so I have
poured myself into research andreading and everything I can get
my hands on around emotionalintelligence for myself, because
(06:17):
I want to be the best versionof me and put so much good back
into our community, because itsaved my life, it gave me a
career, and so if that meansthat I'm spending my extra time
giving back, then that's what Iwant to do.
So, really, the path withincustomer success also helped me
find emotional intelligence, andthat's where I'm really heavily
embedded myself these days istalking about emotional
(06:40):
intelligence, raising awarenessabout emotional intelligence and
helping individuals who arelooking for professional and
personal development from anemotional perspective or a soft
skill perspective find their way.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
So cool.
Yeah, I think in the course ofyour own research and things
like that, you've you've defacto become I would classify it
as expertise.
Because you spend a lot ofhours on something, you become
an expert in it.
Your approach to it iswonderful, and you spoke about
it at the CS Festival as well,about the application, the
(07:14):
implication of emotionalintelligence, which is cool and
also just.
I guess what I find refreshingabout your approach to things is
you normalize being human inscenarios, and I think so many
of us want to put on thisperfect facade and kind of just
present in the best, mostprofessional, polished way
(07:35):
possible, et cetera, et cetera.
But at the end of the day,we're all human and my personal
opinion on this whole thing isthat the more human you can
present, the easier it is tobuild rapport and to connect
with somebody on a human levelso that you can have the
conversations that wouldotherwise be hard to get to.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You're exactly right, and I think really the
interaction that I had with aspecific customer at a former
employer really was what sort ofcemented my approach for me.
And so it was.
He was a C-suite, he hadselected the product.
We were in year three of theirthree-year contract and I
received them in year three.
No one had been able to getthem successful in the first two
(08:17):
years and he was angry, he wasdemonstrative, he was pushy, he
was demanding all of the above,and yet I'd get glimpses of him
during meetings where he wasthis really nice guy.
And so trying to reconcile these, my observation I'm really
trying to find ways to help andto really help us figure it out.
(08:49):
And so can you help meunderstand where you're coming
from?
And he broke down.
His job was on the line, he wasgoing to get fired and no one
had ever pushed to that point toask him some of those tougher
questions that I was asking, andhe's like nobody's cared to the
level that you've cared before.
And I just thought to myselfthis is not hard Caring about
the people that we areresponsible for, the
(09:10):
relationships that we'reresponsible for.
It's not a difficult thing whenyou're being true to yourself,
which I think is really hardsometimes if you don't really
know yourself well enough to saywell, I'm being true to me.
How do you do that?
I think there's an element ofaccepting yourself for who you
are good, bad, ugly and thenfiguring out what am I good at,
(09:32):
how do I lean into my strengthto benefit those around me?
And then, what do I really suckat?
Where am I struggling andcommit to doing the work to help
yourself get better.
That's not a common thing a lotof the time in business because
we don't want to get vulnerablewith each other, but I've
learned that throughvulnerability in the right
moments with the right people,is what cements those
(09:53):
relationships and cements orcreates an environment, fosters
an environment of truecollaboration, of trust for
someone to open up to you aboutthat kind of stuff.
So I think it was the perfectexample for me to go.
I'm going to keep going, I'mgoing to keep pushing, because
I've often been told you can'tkeep up this pace, you're making
the team look bad, nobody cankeep up with you and I just
maybe I'm giving too muchbecause I invest of myself, but
(10:16):
I don't think I don't think youcan really make genuine
connections without investingpart of yourself without
investing part of yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yep, I totally agree.
My hunch is that this contactthat you were working with had
always because I've worked withpeople that are kind of like
this but he probably alwaysintimidated everybody else that
he worked with.
That was his way of protectinghimself is through intimidation
and fear, and you were just like, hey, what else is going on
(10:44):
here?
And it's like, yeah, I get that.
You know, you put your trustand whatever in the solution and
so your career or your job ison the lines.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
One of the things I talked about in my keynote in
Austin was how any negativeemotion, whether it's anger,
whether it's frustration most ofthe emotions are driven by fear
, if they're negative emotion,and so if you can ask yourself
at a regular interval, what isthis person afraid of, and get
to the root cause, it just meansit gives you a better
(11:15):
foundation to know how to workwith that individual and how to
maybe subconsciously addresstheir fears without calling them
out and be like why are you soafraid?
You don't have to say that, butyou can get to a better place
to work with that person.
So that's where I try reallyhard, and not everybody is
everybody's cup of tea either.
I think you also have toacknowledge the fact that I want
everyone to like me, Part ofwho we are, especially customer
(11:39):
success.
You're not going to geteverybody that likes you and to
be okay with that and understandthat.
You know you do the best withwhat you can every single day
and you leave the rest to lifebecause it's too much to carry.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, that's so true.
It's so true.
Yeah, I really appreciate thatperspective and that humanizing
of things.
I'm curious.
One of the things that I knowthat you've been working on and
we've talked about a little bitis a certain framework around
emotional intelligence.
By the way, I feel stupidbecause I've known about an
emotional intelligence for along time but I never really put
(12:16):
two and two together.
Why it was EQ and not like IQEQ.
Okay, finally I get it, but Ifeel so stupid because it took
forever.
What is this EQ thing you'retalking about?
Also, I'm an audio engineer andEQ is equalization.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
But anyway, acronyms in our world are crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
So stupid, yeah, but I know you're working on this
and obviously this is theDigital CS podcast, and so, as a
follow-up to this, I do want toask you the implications on
digital.
But, fundamentally speaking,what's this emotional
intelligence framework thatyou're working on and how has
your own kind of research formedyour definition or your thought
(12:57):
around EQ?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
So technically, there are multiple definitions of
emotional intelligence.
The one that is the mostconsistent across all of the
organizations who have done allof the scientific research and
kind of put the foundations inplace is there are four pillars
within emotional intelligenceTwo that focus on yourself, and
those are self-awareness andself-management, and there are
(13:22):
two that focus on others, sothat is social awareness and
relationship management, and theconcept is very simple it's
that you have to love yourselfand accept yourself and know
yourself to then love and helpother individuals right and so I
think that when emotionalintelligence comes into play,
specifically for customersuccess, relationship management
is one of the four key pillars,and we are relationship
(13:43):
managers.
So to me it was why aren't wedigging into eq within customer
success, specifically becauseit's such a core part of how we
should be approaching businessrelationships, and not just
customer relationships, but ourown internal cross-functional
relationships as well.
And so, through all of thereading, I was struggling with
(14:04):
okay, I struggle withself-awareness in certain areas,
but how do I become moreself-aware?
There's so much reading andthere's so much knowledge out
there that there was nothingtangible for me to hold on to,
to say do this thing once a dayand you're going to increase
your self-awareness there wasreally nothing.
So I started doing research andI started building databases of
(14:25):
okay, this is behavior that youwould define as unprofessional,
these are behaviors you woulddefine as emotionally
intelligent, and then coming upwith a grid for each pillar,
coming up with a database ofaction items or things that
somebody could do to increasethat specific pillar of
emotional intelligence.
(14:45):
For me, I have a list of thingsto do on a regular basis to
keep my mind sharp withinself-awareness, to constantly
check myself, to constantlyevaluate am I being sensitive to
this, am I being aware of this?
And I'm working on a newframework called emotional
intelligence mapping, the wholeidea being I want to help an
individual go through an EQassessment, to then determine
(15:06):
where do their strengths lie, sothat we can help quantify that
and build some confidence and asense of conviction in their
presentation, and then obviouslyidentify the areas that they're
struggling through, like anevaluation gap or an emotion
intelligence mapping exercise,to then produce that grid of
action items that they can do tohelp themselves and just help
(15:27):
them get through that.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Cool.
That's so cool and interestingbecause so much of like
self-awareness and getting tothe core of what drives you but
then also what drives yourrelationship with others is.
There's some work involved.
There's very few people where Ithink that comes naturally
right.
There's a lot of times whereyou have to put in the work to
(15:49):
figure out how you interact withthe world and how you interact
with other people and what theirrelationship looks like.
And what I like about yourframework is that it maybe takes
some of the guesswork out of itand gives a little bit cleaner
path to really understandingwhat are the things that you
might need to work on from an EQperspective.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Right, because concepts are great for me, but
if they don't have a tangibleoutcome or result, that's where
I'm like that's nice, but I gotto move on.
And that's where the concept ofemotional intelligence is
really profound, especially inour digital era today, where
we're looking very critically atthe functions a human can
perform and asking can we shiftthat function to an AI of some
(16:33):
kind or to a digital approach?
And so I get a lot of peoplethat are scared that we are
going to be replaced, and Ibelieve that, as long as there
are human beings involved inbusiness and it's not one
computer transaction talking toanother computer transaction,
the human spirit will absolutelycontinue to be necessary.
The other thing that I think wehave to acknowledge is that we
live in an age where we look atour phones more during the day
(16:57):
than we look at anything else.
Right, and we're raising ageneration where my 13 year old
knows how to get into thesettings and code my phone.
I don't know what you're talkingabout.
They are growing up withtechnology in a way that we
never did, and the consequenceof that is that there's a lack
of knowledge in thehuman-to-human interaction and
(17:19):
some things that you inherentlyknew growing up as a kid when I
didn't have a cell phone, wedidn't have cable TV or internet
.
Growing up I was an 80s kid.
Right there are thatperson-to-person relationship
relating, understanding, reading, body language, all those
things is more difficult now forthe kids growing up with this
technology than not, and so wealso have to realize that in our
(17:42):
business world we are gettingnow that new generation of
workers who struggle withrelating to people and the
common courtesy or common sense.
Things are not common and wehave to be, then, the
responsible parties to say theyonly know what they know.
We have to be better at helping, encourage, educate, be kind
(18:02):
and lead them into what isnormal and professional, human
to human interaction.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, so interesting.
Um, I and and I feel like it'sthis whole I'm going down a
rabbit hole here, but this wholeApple vision pro thing, I think
is a massive step towards thecontinuation of like let's avoid
people and let's just live inour own like digital world, like
(18:29):
I've seen a few users of thesethings now and it's like I get
that's the future of ourinterface of computing.
Okay, we've got a glimpse of.
At some point this minorityreport thing will be a thing.
Okay, I get it not a newconcept, but do you need the
(18:49):
thing?
All the time crossing this, Iswear to god, saw somebody
crossing the street with thething, doing the motions and
doing all that kind of stuff.
I'm just like, let's look atsome trees, breathe some oxygen,
talk to a.
I've made it a point and thisis me probably being old, but
I've made it a point to at leastacknowledge or do something
(19:11):
nice or say hi to a stranger atleast once a day.
I know that's a very Americanthing, but whatever, but it's it
for me.
That fulfills a part of me andI I feel like you're right.
There's a whole like group offolks that are younger, that
probably don't place as muchvalue in those things, and I'm
generalizing, sure, but I thinkthat's true.
(19:34):
Anyway, that's a whole.
That's a whole rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
We can totally go on that tangent for a long time.
I feel like yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
But what I do want to hit back on something you said
because you teed up the seguevery nicely and then I shot it
to hell which is when you saidearlier hey, in this digital age
we've gotten used to looking atour phones, but in this digital
age we have unprecedentedaccess to all kinds of tools and
technology and things like thatand, ideally, to help us
(20:07):
achieve some of these thingsthat you're talking about.
So I want to first start offwith a question that I ask all
of my guests, which is to saywhat would be your elevator
pitch of digital CS If you wereto meet somebody on an elevator,
somebody that didn't know aboutit.
What would you say?
It is.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, digital customer success is using data
and automation to proactivelysupport your customers, freeing
your customer success managersto focus on strategic growth,
right.
So it is the ability to automatea lot of the maybe touch points
that would be required withsome of your larger, more
enterprise strategic customersand really meet your customers
(20:46):
where they are from a digitalperspective.
So, whether that's through anautomation marketing campaign,
whether that's really buildingout your customer community and
your knowledge base and thevoice of the customer program,
which I think really has moreimportance than we place on it,
in a lot of ways it's using techto reduce the physical
administrative work that takesaway from your ability to spend
(21:09):
quality time with your customersand address the customers that
are smaller, paying a smallerdollar amount fee, or we all
have those customers that arepaying for the basics and we
don't physically have theheadcount or the resources to
have a regular ongoing call withthose customers.
And so, in order to supportthem and make sure they have
(21:29):
what they need, digital customersuccess makes sure that they're
taken care of as well as bestyou can.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, totally, I love it.
I love it.
And so, taking it back to wherewe were talking about earlier,
I think there's two key thingshere.
I think one, fundamentally, isyou're freeing your CSMs or
you're freeing your teams up toactually have those human
interactions that are meaningfuland not just filled with got to
(21:56):
get the deck ready and I got toset this email out and I got to
do all these things but you'reactually then freeing your team
up to really have value basedconversations and real
conversations where it's like a,a human to human, that the kind
of the interaction that youwere talking about earlier.
So I think that's one elementof it.
The other one that I'm curiousto get your input on is okay, if
(22:21):
we're really trying to pullelements of EQ into perhaps some
of our digital communicationsand whatnot, what does that look
like Practically tangibly beingsocially aware in a digital
medium?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I actually came prepared.
What I did was I created twodifferent emails.
These two different emails arefor an introduction for a new
customer with a new customersuccess manager.
So it could be a new customeror it could be a new CSM, but
it's that first kind of touchintro, digital touch point.
And so the two emails cover thesame things.
(22:58):
The one is a very standardemail template that I have used
in the past that I know othercompanies are using right now.
It's very standard, there'snothing wrong with it.
And then I put my emotionalintelligence hat on and said
okay, if I was creating adigital engagement model, how
would I approach thisdifferently?
(23:19):
And the result is why it'slacking emotional intelligence.
Right, there's a lack ofpersonalization.
We're not really allowing forany kind of indication that
we're connecting on a personallevel.
There's an absence of empathyin this email.
Right, we're not acknowledgingchallenges, the tone is
transactional, there's a limiton customer focus and the call
(23:41):
to action is so generic.
Really, that first digitaltouchpoint should be much more
warm, much more personalized,showing that there's an extra
sense of effort going into ourwanting to connect, even though
it is through a digital touch,where the second email is using
an emotional, intelligentapproach to be a little bit more
(24:01):
specific and much moreemotionally intelligent, driven
in the complete approach andbreakdown of how that email is
written.
Now, granted, you're going tohave a lot more content if I'm
putting this into a companyversion because you're going to
call out things within thecompany.
And maybe there's a lot more toadd for the resource part of
this Because, again, a gooddigital customer success
(24:22):
engagement model has a robustself-learning community
empowerment model, and so thatprobably is going to be a part
of this.
But I just wanted to give areally clear breakdown of the
difference between the two.
So, even though you've got adigital program, you absolutely
can use emotional intelligenceto make sure that every single
(24:43):
engagement and touch point withyour customers is very carefully
thought out.
It's driven through emotionalintelligence to indicate to your
customers at a very basic levelthat the truth is that you care
.
You're here to help youunderstand they're going to go
through things.
You're going to provide themwith the resources that they
need, because it's not theirfault that they've been put into
a digital program.
It's your organization's choiceand so you need to be
(25:05):
responsible with that choice andmake sure that those digital
customers have as many tools asyou can possibly offer them,
since they're not getting thatone-on-one regular touch point.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, I especially love the empathy bit where
you're calling out that, heylook, I get that you might not
be totally down with this, oryour leadership has bought a
product and you just learnedabout the fact that you're going
to have to implement it all byyourself, right.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
A lot of times.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, it's that acknowledgement of hey look,
this is going to be a littlepainful, but I'm here for you
and I'm in there with you.
I really liked those examplesand, funny enough, one of the
things that jumped out at mefirst and foremost is that kind
of impersonal email.
It's welcome to the blank,blank family.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I'm like oh, You've grown up because you've seen
that, haven't you?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I'm not part of your family.
I don't want to be here.
I don't want this email Go away.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yep, yeah, way, yep, yeah.
But I've gone through thisexperience now with so many
different people and companiesthat I always try to assume
positive intent, right, which isalways how you want to approach
something.
And so, yeah, when you see thisemail template to me, my first
thing is, at least I have one.
Right, there's an attempt hereto connect and offer a really
(26:28):
positive first point of contact.
But to me now, knowing what Iknow, it also says we can do
better than just offering a verystandard, basic, generic
welcome email.
Let's get a little bit morepersonal, let's be more robust
in the way that we acknowledgethe person on the other end.
To your point, that probablywasn't part of the
decision-making process.
(26:48):
They were told hey, we have anew tool, figure it out, here's
your contact person, and so weneed to keep that person in mind
.
And part of emotionalintelligence, right, is social
awareness, which is you have tobe aware of how your actions,
your behavior, affect otherpeople, and that's on a
one-on-one basis, but it's alsoon a company to customer basis.
So if you are an organizationthat you're not thinking about
(27:12):
how you're impacting yourcustomers at a very basic level
through a simple emailcommunication, then you're
missing a step that's reallycrucial, especially in the world
that we live in today, wherebuilding solid critical
relationships within yourorganization is part of your
growth model, because a customercentric organization gains more
ARR through already customeraccounts than through net new
(27:32):
logos.
And so we have to be morecustomer focused and understand
our impact to our customercommunity.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I have an interesting example of kind of social
awareness and digital, which isto say, we were designing an
onboarding email and we wereapproaching it from a very
casual kind of perspective andit was very friendly and very
just, almost b2c kind oflanguage instead of language,
(28:02):
and it went over really well inthe americas, went over really
well in APAC, bombed in EMEA,absolutely bombed in EMEA,
especially the Dach region,germany, and very literal people
who were like nope, just I justwant the information and it was
(28:23):
yeah, it was just veryinteresting.
So we ended up for EMEA, we dida completely separate
onboarding email that is justvery to the point and not super
friendly, and it worked well.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's a great example, right?
Because, again, if you're beingsocially aware, this is a
perfect example of one of thegentlemen that you and I both
met at that event was a formerproduct manager.
No-transcript tell you, thelast time there was any kind of
(29:18):
cultural conversation withinleadership around our various
approaches to customer successand I think that's such a great
call out because approaches tocustomer success.
And I think that's such a greatcall out because, yeah, we have
to think about things like thatand how we are presenting
ourselves, understanding thatcultural differences are
important to keep in mind.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Totally, absolutely, and I think culture also expands
beyond region right.
For instance, right now where Iwork, it's very much focused on
the IT space and youcommunicate differently with an
IT crowd than, let's say, aprevious gig where we were
communicating primarily withhospitality and restaurant
managers.
Yeah, different worlds andcultures and environments and
(30:03):
all that kind of stuff and youhave a little bit more leeway
with one than the other.
I won't say which one.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I won't ask.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
When you think of just digital and digital motions
and digital plays.
Are there any that kind ofstick out to you, at either your
own or others, that you've seenin the wild, that you
particularly like and thatyou've been like?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
oh yeah, this one's cool the wild that you
particularly like and thatyou've been like.
Oh yeah, this one's cool For mewhen I think about what is a
really great digital experiencebecause we are working on that
at Forecastable.
For me, it's the question of Ineed to sit in the shoes of the
customer.
I need to be able to be acustomer and understand, if I'm
not going to get a live personto talk to, then what do I need
to be successful?
And so, when you think of itfrom that perspective, for me, I
(30:50):
partnered with Pendo.
I chose Pendo because Pendo wasreally amazing at tracking user
data and user adoption metrics,things like that.
And so I spent time building outin product guides so that if
they had a question about aspecific area of the product,
there were white papers attached, there were product papers
attached, there were productnotes attached.
(31:10):
There are in-product guides toget them through with question
help bubbles just building out areally robust digital program
so that if something is reallygoing wrong, if there's a fire,
if the product isn't working atall, if there's an outage, do
they have the ability to submita raise hand and say, hey, we
need help, something's reallywrong.
But outside of those reallydramatic things.
(31:32):
Can we provide them with theresources and the tools that
they need to be successful?
And so it's to me.
It's that voice of the customerbuild out your customer
community that is so critical,and during my time at adobe,
that was one thing I came.
I was actually actually hiredinto Marketo before Adobe
acquired Marketo.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Oh, interesting and so.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Marketing Nation, through Marketo, was a pretty
profound community of users.
When Adobe did their AdobeSummit in 2019, and that was the
first time Marketing Nation wasinvited to an event they
shocked Adobe leadership withtheir participation and their
eagerness to come together, andthat's when I realized it's
because Marketo had done such abrilliant job at creating the
(32:13):
community of resources, offorums, of in-person events, of
customer-led sessions.
They just empowered thecommunity to help themselves and
really promoted internalknowledge.
That could be found, yes,through our website and through
all of our free resources, but,truthfully, the best knowledge
(32:33):
was the other customers that hadbeen using the platform or
using the product and gonethrough all of the work.
And how could we get all ofthat knowledge to the surface to
help everybody else?
And I think that's the rightapproach, especially these days
with all of the digital productsthat are out there and the
multitudes of products that havecome that are now direct
competition with some of theseorganizations that have not had
(32:54):
a lot of competition.
So, even now, it's morecritical that you have a really
robust customer communityoutreach program, because the
best of the best already havethose, and that's why they're
the best, because they know thesecret sauce to make their
community thrive.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, totally Absolutely.
And one of the things that, um,I was thinking about is, as you
were talking about this, wasit's staggering how many times
we fail, as cs or cx leaders, Ishould say, to do our own
research in terms of secretshopping, our own experience.
That's true, because you canget out of control quickly.
(33:33):
You've got marketing doing somecomms, you've got sales doing
comms, you've got product doingcomms, you've got CS doing comms
.
They're all doing it fromdifferent platforms.
You buy a new tool, you don'treally think about how it's
going to interact with theothers.
You can get out of controlquickly, and I'm guilty of this
as well.
There's been times where Ihaven't secret shopped my own
(33:56):
stuff, only to come to find outfrom a customer that, hey, this
is a little confusing.
I'm like, yeah, you're totallyright, and so I would challenge
anyone that's thinking aboutthis to, every six months or so,
just put yourself in the flow.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, totally.
I agree with that 100%, andespecially from a customer
success perspective, right, Ithink we stand at a very
interesting time within the SaaSindustry.
You're seeing companies likeGoogle and Amazon, microsoft,
coming up with partnermarketplaces that are having
companies come together tocreate joint listings of their
(34:31):
partnership together and whythey're better.
Together stories are the reasonthat you should choose their
option together with all of thecompetitors in the spaces.
If you go to Google marketingautomation, you're going to get
so many more results today thanyou would have in 2019, because
that's the market right.
So we also have to acknowledgethat the marketplace is pushing
(34:53):
us away from direct selling andinto a partner ecosystem of
sorts, where we are connectingand relying on our internal
vendors, our internal partners,to help us understand the best
kind of relationships to form,and so, even more so, customer
success is very uniquelypositioned at the front lines to
(35:15):
be understanding what does yourcompany look like from a
customer perspective, what's theimpact that you're making to
then make sure that you'restaying competitive, that you're
aware of what's happening inthe market, that you're thinking
through if your competitor hasa better together story with
another vendor and a jointlisting.
Are you keeping that in mind aswell, I think you have a great
(35:37):
point and I've actually neverdone this, and now I'm probably
going to rethink this Creatingan account from a customer
perspective and disconnectingfrom myself, from the tool, and
coming in as a customer toreally go through the entire
experience from start to finish.
And it's a checks and balancesfor me as the leader to think
what am I not thinking of?
(35:58):
What am I missing?
It's not even on my radarbecause I've not sat in the
customer's shoes to thatperspective.
And so you bring up a reallygood point that I will probably
deploy myself, because that's areally good point that I will
probably deploy myself, causethat's a really great
perspective.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Maybe we could start a business called SaaS shopper,
where all we do is secret shopcompanies.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
I love it, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Gonna do it with all my free time.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I have so much free time.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, let's go, let's go.
I've been thinking about thisthe whole time, ever since you
mentioned the opera thing.
I need to find something realquick.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Oh boy I love that you have records.
Yeah, I think that was one ofthe first things I said to you
too when we first met was likeoh my gosh, you love records.
I have my grandmother's recordplayer and I play records all
the time.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah for sure.
So my sister studied opera incollege.
She went to uc, didn't doanything with it, became an
airline pilot okay, which isphenomenally left turn.
Regardless, we've had singersin a very musical family or
whatever, and for some reasonthis record has stuck with me
(37:06):
throughout.
It's something we always hadand it's one of these.
It's an interesting story.
If I have it correctly, this isa record of Florence Foster
Jenkins.
Do you know who this is?
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Of course I do yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I figured you did.
It's this very from what Iunderstand-do woman from I don't
know what the the 50s, 60s,something like that who I don't
know if she was convinced shewas an opera singer or whether
(37:41):
she was doing it as a farce I'mpretty sure she was bored and
just throwing money at stuff.
But she made these records ofher singing these arias and
things like that arephenomenally horrible.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
You know, they made a movie about her.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Did they really?
I need to see this the movie is.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
I think the movie is called Florence Foster Jenkins
and Meryl Streep.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Oh my God, I haven't seen this.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
To your point.
She was horrible.
She was totally tone deaf, buttotally on it, and I just think
you know such a bold place tocome from and I'm one of those
people.
So we actually went and saw amusical last night called Come
From Away.
It's a Tony Award winningmusical.
It's based on the true story of9-11.
(38:29):
There were like 38 planes thatwere rerouted from landing in
new york.
They landed in a tiny littletown in newfoundland, canada,
and that tiny little town has totake care of 7 000 passengers
for like four days.
Wow, and it was absolutelyincredible.
And because I have classictraining and I'm a soprano, so
(38:50):
I'm high up there, when I hearother sopranos sing and they're
not on key, I'm like, oh ithurts, oh it hurts their soprano
.
She just made my heart soar thewhole night.
But yeah, it's living a lifethat is living boldly and living
courageously, a term that I'musing for a company that I'm
working on called LionheartCustomer Success.
(39:13):
Lionheart means bold andcourageous.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
And.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
I think, when you can accept yourself and all your
flaws and all your ugly as Ilike to say, because we all have
it when you're able to acceptfeedback from people that you
know care about you.
So for me, my husband was theone that finally broke through
the wall that I had verycarefully built to protect me
(39:37):
from various things, to reallyhear him say you know, babe, did
you hear yourself on that call?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, I'd be like.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
No, I'm fine and he's like.
I really need you to listen tome.
I think it's tough for us toaccept that we have blind spots,
but the truth is that you cansee the blind spots when someone
that you love and that youtrust can point them out to you
and you don't immediately jumpon the defense.
To live boldly, with courage,means I'm not perfect.
I do have blind spots and I'mgoing to trust that the people I
(40:06):
love, that I know love me andthey know me can come to me and
say hey, you know, and they maynot come to you lovingly, right,
but they're the voice that youshould listen to.
It really has changed my wholeperspective, and it's hard to
hear when you don't fit a moldor you've made a mistake or you
need correction, especiallywithin business.
(40:28):
We're not training mid-levelmanagers to proactively help
when something goes wrong.
I think all of us have been ona pit at one point.
All of us have probably gottentoo emotional on a conversation
or we've written an email thatwe shouldn't have written and,
instead of helping us understandwow, where were you coming from
?
Help me understand your thoughtprocess.
(40:48):
Here's where I would suggest wemake changes in the future.
You know that level of coachingisn't happening because those
managers are not trained to helpdevelop skill sets.
We have to then own itourselves.
We have to own our owndevelopment, we have to own our
own process and be willing andacknowledge the fact that we are
constantly growing, constantlyhaving to change, and feelings
(41:13):
matter, but in businessspecifically, facts matter more.
And to use facts to drive andtell stories to help your
customers see what's possibleand really make sure you're
building a real connection isimportant.
That we need to stress at ahigher level and the customer
voice.
If the customer voice does nothave a seat at the table, you're
(41:35):
missing something.
And that seems to be open fordebate, because even at the
conference that you and I wereat and we asked the room what is
customer success, you're goingto get 10 different answers,
cause even with our own industry, we still can't figure out one
solid definition.
So it's a moving target, so tospeak, that we have to just
acknowledge it's a moving target.
We're not going to nail downany one thing that works for
(41:57):
everybody.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
But the ones that are the people that do the work the
people that are the boots onthe ground that are building
those relationships.
Even if the program might lookdifferent, they all need
professional soft skilldevelopment, every single one of
them.
And so that's where, fromcompany to company, industry to
industry, emotional intelligenceis the baseline that everybody
can work from, and if we addressthe individuals, the boots on
(42:23):
the ground doing the work, andempower them, then we all win
the individuals, the boots onthe ground doing the work and
empower them, then we all win.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, I love that and I think, um, leadership has a
huge part in that.
Obviously, it's not up to theindividual to self-steady on
this stuff until they're unlessthey're really like into it or
whatever.
I think making it okay to behuman in the workplace is
something that I hope gets moreand more traction, because, um,
I don't know, I remember there.
There's a moment in my careerthat sticks with me where, um,
(42:55):
it was very early on, I didn'ttake a piece of feedback
particularly well, I got crazyemotional about it and that
affected how others viewed me.
But it also affected my actionsafterwards in terms of being a
little more reserved, being alittle bit less myself in the
(43:17):
workplace, and it took me yearsto really realize the fact that,
hey, it's okay to get emotionalabout stuff, as long as you do
it in a way, that's that thatyou're still displaying the fact
that, hey, you're still in thegame.
Like you're, you're still inthe game.
This one just hits you a littlebit hard, and I think I really
(43:40):
want to foster an environmentwith my teams and with and I
hope to be part of organizationswhere you know those kinds of
things and being emotional andbeing reactive to certain things
.
As long as it's not damaging orharassing to somebody else is
okay, because we're all humanright.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yes, and emotional intelligence does not mean you
don't feel.
I was just on a podcast thisweek about how, if you think
that emotional intelligence isthe ability to ignore your
emotions or bury your emotionsor overcome your emotions,
that's not what it is.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
No.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
It's the ability to identify, accept and harness
your emotions to be the bestversion of you, and so I got
overly emotional on a work calllast week because something was
said that really hurt myfeelings and I'm not afraid to
cry Like you hurt my feelings.
I'm emotional, but, to yourpoint, it's what you do with
those emotions that speaks toyour level of intelligence.
(44:39):
And circling this all back todigital customer success, I
think when you first talkedabout, I really want to talk
about emotional intelligence anddigital customer success.
I'm like that's a stretch,because emotional intelligence
is human to human and digitalcustomer success is not always
that.
However, we have brilliantpeople in marketing who are
(44:59):
crazy good at presentingbeautiful displays of things
that entice a reader to want toread.
You have beautiful thoughtleaders that are great,
communicating certain conceptsin a more robust connection
driven way, so that all of youremail campaigns, all of your
self-help guides, are easy tonavigate.
(45:21):
They're very simple tounderstand.
They're enticing the reader,exciting the reader, showing the
reader that your organizationtruly does care.
And I think there's one morestep I wanted to mention too
before we wrap, which issegmentation.
So when I say segmentation, Ithink a lot of people
immediately think segmentationis about grouping your customers
(45:41):
by how much they spend per yearor by the industry that they
come from.
And I think that there's afurther level of segmentation
that is important, which iswhere is the customer in their
journey?
Are they a novice, meaningthey're a brand new customer?
Are they intermediate They'vebeen through a first or second
year renewal, getting their feetin the race or they're an
advanced, expert user, and yourapproach to those different
(46:04):
segments should be verydifferent.
So, even from a digital customerperspective, you can't send the
same intro email to everycustomer.
You have to get more granularand really take a look at
meeting your customer, wherethey are within the different
journey that they're in or thedifferent needs that they have,
and cater and tailor yourdigital approach to that as well
.
So it's not just write an introemail.
(46:24):
Make sure it's written throughemotional intelligence and
you're good to go.
You got to take all of thelessons from emotional
intelligence as the leader ofthat digital program to ask how
can we be more emotionallyintelligent in our touch points
with our customers, even ifthat's written communication,
through a standard deliverymarketing email campaign.
Man I couldn't have said itbetter myself.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
I couldn't have said it better myself.
That's really good and I knowit's the top of the hour and I
know you probably have a hardstop and you probably need to
get off the call.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
But real quick.
What content are you?
Speaker 2 (47:04):
paying attention to.
Who do you want to give a shoutout to, and where can people
find you?
Speaker 1 (47:08):
So really it's LinkedIn.
I ditched Facebook, instagram,social media a while ago.
Linkedin is the best place whenit comes to digital customer
success.
You, my friend, are who I wouldcall our industry expert, so I
listen to your podcast.
I do a lot of one-to-onecoaching, and so when I'm not
working and I'm not coaching,I'm with my nephews and with my
(47:30):
family.
I don't listen to podcasts.
I don't get it.
I don't have that.
But I'm reading a book rightnow and it's so interesting.
It's called the myth of normaloh, okay and it is such an
amazing breakdown of how, whenwe say normal, what do we want
(47:51):
to be normal?
What do we think is normal?
It's a construct that there isno such thing as normal.
The way that my husband talksabout growing up in Colorado,
what was normal to him as far astechnology and the way we
relate to each other and how welook at business and look at
society in general, that wasnormal.
What's normal today is verydifferent and we can't continue
(48:12):
to dig our heels in against it.
We have to be aware of what ourkids know to be normal.
What are our college gradscoming into our workplace?
What do they know to be normal?
Because it's incumbent upon usto meet people where they're at.
And so if we're not educatingourselves on the current version
of what society calls normal,and how do we who don't feel
(48:32):
like we belong, how do we findour place and find our voice and
offer value at the same time?
And for me, I do one book at atime right now because I breeze
through them very quickly and Iwant to stay very targeted, but
this book is this thick.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, that's a big book.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
I picked it up in the airport on the way home from
Austin, actually.
But yeah, one book at a time,but I've finished all of the
customer success books.
I'm obsessed with anything thattalks about emotional
intelligence, but right now I'mreally trying to wrap my brain
around how to better connectwith individuals that are coming
into this community fromdifferent experiences or wanting
(49:09):
really better soft skilldevelopment with a one-on-one
kind of sense.
Those are my resources rightnow.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
I love it.
I love it.
Thank you for sharing and thankyou for your time and thanks
for being you.
We appreciate you.
I think you're one of the oneof the bright and lovely voices
in CS and I really appreciateyour friendship as well.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Ditto man, I was so delighted to meet you at the
conference and just find anothermember of my tribe.
And, besides, what you're doingwith the podcast, I just feel
like, as we continue to buildout this network of people that
are dedicated for giving back toour community, and all of our
unique ways coming together tosupport each other has been an
honor.
So thanks for having me andhearing me out, but I want to
(49:50):
say thank you to what you'redoing for our community as well
because digital customer successis running headlong very fast
and we have to not just keep up,we have to stay ahead, and so
all of the awareness and thedriving that you're doing in
that space, I'm very gratefulfor.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
So thank you.
Thank you I appreciate the kindwords and happy Friday, janelle
Friday.
Happy Friday.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
(50:28):
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition
Wordmap and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, dylan
Young.
Lifetime Value aims to servethe content, video, audio
(50:50):
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Terkovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
and he broke down.
His job was on the line, he wasgonna get fired and no one had
ever pushed to that point to askhim some of those tougher
questions that I was asking andhe's like nobody's cared to the
level that you've cared before,and I just thought to myself
this is not hard caring aboutthe people that we are
responsible for and once again,welcome to the digital customer
success Podcast with me, alexCherkovich.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
So glad you could join us here today and every
week as I seek out and interviewleaders and practitioners who
are innovating and buildinggreat scaled CS programs.
My goal is to share what I'velearned and to bring you along
with me for the ride so that youget the insights that you need
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
(00:47):
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome to theDigital CX Podcast.
It's great to have you back.
As always, today I am joined byJanelle Friday who, among other
things, is Customer SuccessCollective Leader of the Year
(01:09):
2023.
She is VP of CS at Forecastableis.
She has been crazy focused onEQ, emotional intelligence in
(01:29):
customer success and just ingeneral in professional setting
For the last few years.
She's building out her ownframework all around EQ and we
talk about kind of that lovelyintersection between humans and
digital emotions in CS andactually making sure that
whatever you're doing digitallyhas an element of awareness and
(01:53):
emotional intelligence.
She was recently the emcee atthe Customer Success Festival in
Austin, which is where we metand hung out for a while and had
great conversations, and so Iwanted to invite her on to the
show, uh, to continue thoseconversations, uh, with you
along for the ride.
So I hope you enjoy thisconversation with Janelle Friday
(02:13):
, because I sure did.
Oh crap, janelle Friday, it'snice to have you on the show.
I'm so pleased that you're hereand that we made it happen and
you and I met a couple of timesvirtually, but then face-to-face
, at the CS Austin festival,where you did a phenomenal job
(02:35):
of emceeing.
It's good stuff, and thecustomer success collective has
been good to you because you gotCS Leader of the.
Year award, like six months agoor something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It's good stuff, but I'm excited that you're here
because I think you're one ofthe realest people in CS and
that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thank you.
That's a really greatcompliment, Alex.
I appreciate that I thinkthat's why you and I connected
the way we do, because you arevery real as well.
So I feel like if you're in thetribe, you find your tribe
members and you just sticktogether, knowing that you're
part of the tribe and, yeah, Iappreciate that.
It's being authentic.
My husband made this commentjust the other day about how
(03:22):
you're just unapologeticallyyourself all the time.
I don't change from my husbandto my family, to my neighbors,
to my work.
It's just, it's hard, it's toohard.
I heard someone say they sendtheir representative Every
single aspect of their lives.
They have a different versionof themselves that they present
and I'm like that's exhausting,I can't, no.
(03:44):
And obviously you edit and youfilter the best you can for
certain circumstances.
But yeah, it's been an importantpart of my personal brand for a
couple of years now.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, it's wonderful because you do.
When you start interacting withpeople that are real, it's easy
then to spot the people thataren't being real.
Yeah, unfortunately, that'strue.
Look, I people that aren'tbeing real.
Yeah, unfortunately, that'strue.
Look, I'd love to give everyonewho may not know you, give us a
little bit about your historyand CS origin story, because
you've been in CS for a longtime.
You were frontline CSM for along time and I think that makes
(04:19):
for great leadership.
But I'm putting words in yourmouth, so I'll let you talk
about yourself.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Sure, I went to college to sing opera, and that
was not a good fit, because Iliked the drama on stage and I
don't like it off stage, and soI stumbled my way into executive
support and that I then justfell into customer success
haphazardly.
Honestly, I didn't know that'swhat I was doing until I moved
from Washington state toColorado.
It'll be nine years this summer, which I can't even believe
(04:46):
it's been that long.
To be a full-time aunt mynephews are 13, 10, and 5, and
got my first CSM role officialtitled CSM role, then a couple
years at Adobe.
I have just found myself inpositions where I'm coming into
something fresh and they'relooking for creative ideas on
how to connect with customers ata very authentic, genuine way,
(05:11):
and that's been me in my life.
I have always been called thefamily member that keeps ties
with everybody and I'm theperson people come to for things
, and so I feel like CS is suchan extension of who I am and
sitting in an admin role,thinking, is this the best it's
going to get?
Not that it's a bad thing ifyou're an admin and there are
some people who were called tothat and I love that but I just
(05:35):
felt like I was stuck and CSopened a door that I didn't even
think was possible.
So I've really just decided toembrace all of the opportunities
that have come across my pathwith customer success, and most
recently I suffered a prettysevere trauma several years ago
that forced me to look at myselfvery critically.
(05:55):
I took three months off of work,I was in therapy, I just did
the thing, and it helped merealize that I was lacking some
pretty important emotionalintelligence skills, one of them
being self-awareness inspecific areas, and so I have
poured myself into research andreading and everything I can get
my hands on around emotionalintelligence for myself, because
(06:17):
I want to be the best versionof me and put so much good back
into our community, because itsaved my life, it gave me a
career, and so if that meansthat I'm spending my extra time
giving back, then that's what Iwant to do.
So, really, the path withincustomer success also helped me
find emotional intelligence, andthat's where I'm really heavily
embedded myself these days istalking about emotional
(06:40):
intelligence, raising awarenessabout emotional intelligence and
helping individuals who arelooking for professional and
personal development from anemotional perspective or a soft
skill perspective find their way.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
So cool.
Yeah, I think in the course ofyour own research and things
like that, you've you've defacto become I would classify it
as expertise.
Because you spend a lot ofhours on something, you become
an expert in it.
Your approach to it iswonderful, and you spoke about
it at the CS Festival as well,about the application, the
(07:14):
implication of emotionalintelligence, which is cool and
also just.
I guess what I find refreshingabout your approach to things is
you normalize being human inscenarios, and I think so many
of us want to put on thisperfect facade and kind of just
present in the best, mostprofessional, polished way
(07:35):
possible, et cetera, et cetera.
But at the end of the day,we're all human and my personal
opinion on this whole thing isthat the more human you can
present, the easier it is tobuild rapport and to connect
with somebody on a human levelso that you can have the
conversations that wouldotherwise be hard to get to.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You're exactly right, and I think really the
interaction that I had with aspecific customer at a former
employer really was what sort ofcemented my approach for me.
And so it was.
He was a C-suite, he hadselected the product.
We were in year three of theirthree-year contract and I
received them in year three.
No one had been able to getthem successful in the first two
(08:17):
years and he was angry, he wasdemonstrative, he was pushy, he
was demanding all of the above,and yet I'd get glimpses of him
during meetings where he wasthis really nice guy.
And so trying to reconcile these, my observation I'm really
trying to find ways to help andto really help us figure it out.
(08:49):
And so can you help meunderstand where you're coming
from?
And he broke down.
His job was on the line, he wasgoing to get fired and no one
had ever pushed to that point toask him some of those tougher
questions that I was asking, andhe's like nobody's cared to the
level that you've cared before.
And I just thought to myselfthis is not hard Caring about
the people that we areresponsible for, the
(09:10):
relationships that we'reresponsible for.
It's not a difficult thing whenyou're being true to yourself,
which I think is really hardsometimes if you don't really
know yourself well enough to saywell, I'm being true to me.
How do you do that?
I think there's an element ofaccepting yourself for who you
are good, bad, ugly and thenfiguring out what am I good at,
(09:32):
how do I lean into my strengthto benefit those around me?
And then, what do I really suckat?
Where am I struggling andcommit to doing the work to help
yourself get better.
That's not a common thing a lotof the time in business because
we don't want to get vulnerablewith each other, but I've
learned that throughvulnerability in the right
moments with the right people,is what cements those
(09:53):
relationships and cements orcreates an environment, fosters
an environment of truecollaboration, of trust for
someone to open up to you aboutthat kind of stuff.
So I think it was the perfectexample for me to go.
I'm going to keep going, I'mgoing to keep pushing, because
I've often been told you can'tkeep up this pace, you're making
the team look bad, nobody cankeep up with you and I just
maybe I'm giving too muchbecause I invest of myself, but
(10:16):
I don't think I don't think youcan really make genuine
connections without investingpart of yourself without
investing part of yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yep, I totally agree.
My hunch is that this contactthat you were working with had
always because I've worked withpeople that are kind of like
this but he probably alwaysintimidated everybody else that
he worked with.
That was his way of protectinghimself is through intimidation
and fear, and you were just like, hey, what else is going on
(10:44):
here?
And it's like, yeah, I get that.
You know, you put your trustand whatever in the solution and
so your career or your job ison the lines.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
One of the things I talked about in my keynote in
Austin was how any negativeemotion, whether it's anger,
whether it's frustration most ofthe emotions are driven by fear
, if they're negative emotion,and so if you can ask yourself
at a regular interval, what isthis person afraid of, and get
to the root cause, it just meansit gives you a better
(11:15):
foundation to know how to workwith that individual and how to
maybe subconsciously addresstheir fears without calling them
out and be like why are you soafraid?
You don't have to say that, butyou can get to a better place
to work with that person.
So that's where I try reallyhard, and not everybody is
everybody's cup of tea either.
I think you also have toacknowledge the fact that I want
everyone to like me, Part ofwho we are, especially customer
(11:39):
success.
You're not going to geteverybody that likes you and to
be okay with that and understandthat.
You know you do the best withwhat you can every single day
and you leave the rest to lifebecause it's too much to carry.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, that's so true.
It's so true.
Yeah, I really appreciate thatperspective and that humanizing
of things.
I'm curious.
One of the things that I knowthat you've been working on and
we've talked about a little bitis a certain framework around
emotional intelligence.
By the way, I feel stupidbecause I've known about an
emotional intelligence for along time but I never really put
(12:16):
two and two together.
Why it was EQ and not like IQEQ.
Okay, finally I get it, but Ifeel so stupid because it took
forever.
What is this EQ thing you'retalking about?
Also, I'm an audio engineer andEQ is equalization.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
But anyway, acronyms in our world are crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
So stupid, yeah, but I know you're working on this
and obviously this is theDigital CS podcast, and so, as a
follow-up to this, I do want toask you the implications on
digital.
But, fundamentally speaking,what's this emotional
intelligence framework thatyou're working on and how has
your own kind of research formedyour definition or your thought
(12:57):
around EQ?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
So technically, there are multiple definitions of
emotional intelligence.
The one that is the mostconsistent across all of the
organizations who have done allof the scientific research and
kind of put the foundations inplace is there are four pillars
within emotional intelligenceTwo that focus on yourself, and
those are self-awareness andself-management, and there are
(13:22):
two that focus on others, sothat is social awareness and
relationship management, and theconcept is very simple it's
that you have to love yourselfand accept yourself and know
yourself to then love and helpother individuals right and so I
think that when emotionalintelligence comes into play,
specifically for customersuccess, relationship management
is one of the four key pillars,and we are relationship
(13:43):
managers.
So to me it was why aren't wedigging into eq within customer
success, specifically becauseit's such a core part of how we
should be approaching businessrelationships, and not just
customer relationships, but ourown internal cross-functional
relationships as well.
And so, through all of thereading, I was struggling with
(14:04):
okay, I struggle withself-awareness in certain areas,
but how do I become moreself-aware?
There's so much reading andthere's so much knowledge out
there that there was nothingtangible for me to hold on to,
to say do this thing once a dayand you're going to increase
your self-awareness there wasreally nothing.
So I started doing research andI started building databases of
(14:25):
okay, this is behavior that youwould define as unprofessional,
these are behaviors you woulddefine as emotionally
intelligent, and then coming upwith a grid for each pillar,
coming up with a database ofaction items or things that
somebody could do to increasethat specific pillar of
emotional intelligence.
(14:45):
For me, I have a list of thingsto do on a regular basis to
keep my mind sharp withinself-awareness, to constantly
check myself, to constantlyevaluate am I being sensitive to
this, am I being aware of this?
And I'm working on a newframework called emotional
intelligence mapping, the wholeidea being I want to help an
individual go through an EQassessment, to then determine
(15:06):
where do their strengths lie, sothat we can help quantify that
and build some confidence and asense of conviction in their
presentation, and then obviouslyidentify the areas that they're
struggling through, like anevaluation gap or an emotion
intelligence mapping exercise,to then produce that grid of
action items that they can do tohelp themselves and just help
(15:27):
them get through that.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Cool.
That's so cool and interestingbecause so much of like
self-awareness and getting tothe core of what drives you but
then also what drives yourrelationship with others is.
There's some work involved.
There's very few people where Ithink that comes naturally
right.
There's a lot of times whereyou have to put in the work to
(15:49):
figure out how you interact withthe world and how you interact
with other people and what theirrelationship looks like.
And what I like about yourframework is that it maybe takes
some of the guesswork out of itand gives a little bit cleaner
path to really understandingwhat are the things that you
might need to work on from an EQperspective.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Right, because concepts are great for me, but
if they don't have a tangibleoutcome or result, that's where
I'm like that's nice, but I gotto move on.
And that's where the concept ofemotional intelligence is
really profound, especially inour digital era today, where
we're looking very critically atthe functions a human can
perform and asking can we shiftthat function to an AI of some
(16:33):
kind or to a digital approach?
And so I get a lot of peoplethat are scared that we are
going to be replaced, and Ibelieve that, as long as there
are human beings involved inbusiness and it's not one
computer transaction talking toanother computer transaction,
the human spirit will absolutelycontinue to be necessary.
The other thing that I think wehave to acknowledge is that we
live in an age where we look atour phones more during the day
(16:57):
than we look at anything else.
Right, and we're raising ageneration where my 13 year old
knows how to get into thesettings and code my phone.
I don't know what you're talkingabout.
They are growing up withtechnology in a way that we
never did, and the consequenceof that is that there's a lack
of knowledge in thehuman-to-human interaction and
(17:19):
some things that you inherentlyknew growing up as a kid when I
didn't have a cell phone, wedidn't have cable TV or internet
.
Growing up I was an 80s kid.
Right there are thatperson-to-person relationship
relating, understanding, reading, body language, all those
things is more difficult now forthe kids growing up with this
technology than not, and so wealso have to realize that in our
(17:42):
business world we are gettingnow that new generation of
workers who struggle withrelating to people and the
common courtesy or common sense.
Things are not common and wehave to be, then, the
responsible parties to say theyonly know what they know.
We have to be better at helping, encourage, educate, be kind
(18:02):
and lead them into what isnormal and professional, human
to human interaction.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, so interesting.
Um, I and and I feel like it'sthis whole I'm going down a
rabbit hole here, but this wholeApple vision pro thing, I think
is a massive step towards thecontinuation of like let's avoid
people and let's just live inour own like digital world, like
(18:29):
I've seen a few users of thesethings now and it's like I get
that's the future of ourinterface of computing.
Okay, we've got a glimpse of.
At some point this minorityreport thing will be a thing.
Okay, I get it not a newconcept, but do you need the
(18:49):
thing?
All the time crossing this, Iswear to god, saw somebody
crossing the street with thething, doing the motions and
doing all that kind of stuff.
I'm just like, let's look atsome trees, breathe some oxygen,
talk to a.
I've made it a point and thisis me probably being old, but
I've made it a point to at leastacknowledge or do something
(19:11):
nice or say hi to a stranger atleast once a day.
I know that's a very Americanthing, but whatever, but it's it
for me.
That fulfills a part of me andI I feel like you're right.
There's a whole like group offolks that are younger, that
probably don't place as muchvalue in those things, and I'm
generalizing, sure, but I thinkthat's true.
(19:34):
Anyway, that's a whole.
That's a whole rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
We can totally go on that tangent for a long time.
I feel like yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
But what I do want to hit back on something you said
because you teed up the seguevery nicely and then I shot it
to hell which is when you saidearlier hey, in this digital age
we've gotten used to looking atour phones, but in this digital
age we have unprecedentedaccess to all kinds of tools and
technology and things like thatand, ideally, to help us
(20:07):
achieve some of these thingsthat you're talking about.
So I want to first start offwith a question that I ask all
of my guests, which is to saywhat would be your elevator
pitch of digital CS If you wereto meet somebody on an elevator,
somebody that didn't know aboutit.
What would you say?
It is.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, digital customer success is using data
and automation to proactivelysupport your customers, freeing
your customer success managersto focus on strategic growth,
right.
So it is the ability to automatea lot of the maybe touch points
that would be required withsome of your larger, more
enterprise strategic customersand really meet your customers
(20:46):
where they are from a digitalperspective.
So, whether that's through anautomation marketing campaign,
whether that's really buildingout your customer community and
your knowledge base and thevoice of the customer program,
which I think really has moreimportance than we place on it,
in a lot of ways it's using techto reduce the physical
administrative work that takesaway from your ability to spend
(21:09):
quality time with your customersand address the customers that
are smaller, paying a smallerdollar amount fee, or we all
have those customers that arepaying for the basics and we
don't physically have theheadcount or the resources to
have a regular ongoing call withthose customers.
And so, in order to supportthem and make sure they have
(21:29):
what they need, digital customersuccess makes sure that they're
taken care of as well as bestyou can.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, totally, I love it.
I love it.
And so, taking it back to wherewe were talking about earlier,
I think there's two key thingshere.
I think one, fundamentally, isyou're freeing your CSMs or
you're freeing your teams up toactually have those human
interactions that are meaningfuland not just filled with got to
(21:56):
get the deck ready and I got toset this email out and I got to
do all these things but you'reactually then freeing your team
up to really have value basedconversations and real
conversations where it's like a,a human to human, that the kind
of the interaction that youwere talking about earlier.
So I think that's one elementof it.
The other one that I'm curiousto get your input on is okay, if
(22:21):
we're really trying to pullelements of EQ into perhaps some
of our digital communicationsand whatnot, what does that look
like Practically tangibly beingsocially aware in a digital
medium?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I actually came prepared.
What I did was I created twodifferent emails.
These two different emails arefor an introduction for a new
customer with a new customersuccess manager.
So it could be a new customeror it could be a new CSM, but
it's that first kind of touchintro, digital touch point.
And so the two emails cover thesame things.
(22:58):
The one is a very standardemail template that I have used
in the past that I know othercompanies are using right now.
It's very standard, there'snothing wrong with it.
And then I put my emotionalintelligence hat on and said
okay, if I was creating adigital engagement model, how
would I approach thisdifferently?
(23:19):
And the result is why it'slacking emotional intelligence.
Right, there's a lack ofpersonalization.
We're not really allowing forany kind of indication that
we're connecting on a personallevel.
There's an absence of empathyin this email.
Right, we're not acknowledgingchallenges, the tone is
transactional, there's a limiton customer focus and the call
(23:41):
to action is so generic.
Really, that first digitaltouchpoint should be much more
warm, much more personalized,showing that there's an extra
sense of effort going into ourwanting to connect, even though
it is through a digital touch,where the second email is using
an emotional, intelligentapproach to be a little bit more
(24:01):
specific and much moreemotionally intelligent, driven
in the complete approach andbreakdown of how that email is
written.
Now, granted, you're going tohave a lot more content if I'm
putting this into a companyversion because you're going to
call out things within thecompany.
And maybe there's a lot more toadd for the resource part of
this Because, again, a gooddigital customer success
(24:22):
engagement model has a robustself-learning community
empowerment model, and so thatprobably is going to be a part
of this.
But I just wanted to give areally clear breakdown of the
difference between the two.
So, even though you've got adigital program, you absolutely
can use emotional intelligenceto make sure that every single
(24:43):
engagement and touch point withyour customers is very carefully
thought out.
It's driven through emotionalintelligence to indicate to your
customers at a very basic levelthat the truth is that you care
.
You're here to help youunderstand they're going to go
through things.
You're going to provide themwith the resources that they
need, because it's not theirfault that they've been put into
a digital program.
It's your organization's choiceand so you need to be
(25:05):
responsible with that choice andmake sure that those digital
customers have as many tools asyou can possibly offer them,
since they're not getting thatone-on-one regular touch point.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, I especially love the empathy bit where
you're calling out that, heylook, I get that you might not
be totally down with this, oryour leadership has bought a
product and you just learnedabout the fact that you're going
to have to implement it all byyourself, right.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
A lot of times.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, it's that acknowledgement of hey look,
this is going to be a littlepainful, but I'm here for you
and I'm in there with you.
I really liked those examplesand, funny enough, one of the
things that jumped out at mefirst and foremost is that kind
of impersonal email.
It's welcome to the blank,blank family.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I'm like oh, You've grown up because you've seen
that, haven't you?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I'm not part of your family.
I don't want to be here.
I don't want this email Go away.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yep, yeah, way, yep, yeah.
But I've gone through thisexperience now with so many
different people and companiesthat I always try to assume
positive intent, right, which isalways how you want to approach
something.
And so, yeah, when you see thisemail template to me, my first
thing is, at least I have one.
Right, there's an attempt hereto connect and offer a really
(26:28):
positive first point of contact.
But to me now, knowing what Iknow, it also says we can do
better than just offering a verystandard, basic, generic
welcome email.
Let's get a little bit morepersonal, let's be more robust
in the way that we acknowledgethe person on the other end.
To your point, that probablywasn't part of the
decision-making process.
(26:48):
They were told hey, we have anew tool, figure it out, here's
your contact person, and so weneed to keep that person in mind
.
And part of emotionalintelligence, right, is social
awareness, which is you have tobe aware of how your actions,
your behavior, affect otherpeople, and that's on a
one-on-one basis, but it's alsoon a company to customer basis.
So if you are an organizationthat you're not thinking about
(27:12):
how you're impacting yourcustomers at a very basic level
through a simple emailcommunication, then you're
missing a step that's reallycrucial, especially in the world
that we live in today, wherebuilding solid critical
relationships within yourorganization is part of your
growth model, because a customercentric organization gains more
ARR through already customeraccounts than through net new
(27:32):
logos.
And so we have to be morecustomer focused and understand
our impact to our customercommunity.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I have an interesting example of kind of social
awareness and digital, which isto say, we were designing an
onboarding email and we wereapproaching it from a very
casual kind of perspective andit was very friendly and very
just, almost b2c kind oflanguage instead of language,
(28:02):
and it went over really well inthe americas, went over really
well in APAC, bombed in EMEA,absolutely bombed in EMEA,
especially the Dach region,germany, and very literal people
who were like nope, just I justwant the information and it was
(28:23):
yeah, it was just veryinteresting.
So we ended up for EMEA, we dida completely separate
onboarding email that is justvery to the point and not super
friendly, and it worked well.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's a great example, right?
Because, again, if you're beingsocially aware, this is a
perfect example of one of thegentlemen that you and I both
met at that event was a formerproduct manager.
No-transcript tell you, thelast time there was any kind of
(29:18):
cultural conversation withinleadership around our various
approaches to customer successand I think that's such a great
call out because approaches tocustomer success.
And I think that's such a greatcall out because, yeah, we have
to think about things like thatand how we are presenting
ourselves, understanding thatcultural differences are
important to keep in mind.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Totally, absolutely, and I think culture also expands
beyond region right.
For instance, right now where Iwork, it's very much focused on
the IT space and youcommunicate differently with an
IT crowd than, let's say, aprevious gig where we were
communicating primarily withhospitality and restaurant
managers.
Yeah, different worlds andcultures and environments and
(30:03):
all that kind of stuff and youhave a little bit more leeway
with one than the other.
I won't say which one.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I won't ask.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
When you think of just digital and digital motions
and digital plays.
Are there any that kind ofstick out to you, at either your
own or others, that you've seenin the wild, that you
particularly like and thatyou've been like?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
oh yeah, this one's cool the wild that you
particularly like and thatyou've been like.
Oh yeah, this one's cool For mewhen I think about what is a
really great digital experiencebecause we are working on that
at Forecastable.
For me, it's the question of Ineed to sit in the shoes of the
customer.
I need to be able to be acustomer and understand, if I'm
not going to get a live personto talk to, then what do I need
to be successful?
And so, when you think of itfrom that perspective, for me, I
(30:50):
partnered with Pendo.
I chose Pendo because Pendo wasreally amazing at tracking user
data and user adoption metrics,things like that.
And so I spent time building outin product guides so that if
they had a question about aspecific area of the product,
there were white papers attached, there were product papers
attached, there were productnotes attached.
(31:10):
There are in-product guides toget them through with question
help bubbles just building out areally robust digital program
so that if something is reallygoing wrong, if there's a fire,
if the product isn't working atall, if there's an outage, do
they have the ability to submita raise hand and say, hey, we
need help, something's reallywrong.
But outside of those reallydramatic things.
(31:32):
Can we provide them with theresources and the tools that
they need to be successful?
And so it's to me.
It's that voice of the customerbuild out your customer
community that is so critical,and during my time at adobe,
that was one thing I came.
I was actually actually hiredinto Marketo before Adobe
acquired Marketo.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Oh, interesting and so.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Marketing Nation, through Marketo, was a pretty
profound community of users.
When Adobe did their AdobeSummit in 2019, and that was the
first time Marketing Nation wasinvited to an event they
shocked Adobe leadership withtheir participation and their
eagerness to come together, andthat's when I realized it's
because Marketo had done such abrilliant job at creating the
(32:13):
community of resources, offorums, of in-person events, of
customer-led sessions.
They just empowered thecommunity to help themselves and
really promoted internalknowledge.
That could be found, yes,through our website and through
all of our free resources, but,truthfully, the best knowledge
(32:33):
was the other customers that hadbeen using the platform or
using the product and gonethrough all of the work.
And how could we get all ofthat knowledge to the surface to
help everybody else?
And I think that's the rightapproach, especially these days
with all of the digital productsthat are out there and the
multitudes of products that havecome that are now direct
competition with some of theseorganizations that have not had
(32:54):
a lot of competition.
So, even now, it's morecritical that you have a really
robust customer communityoutreach program, because the
best of the best already havethose, and that's why they're
the best, because they know thesecret sauce to make their
community thrive.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, totally Absolutely.
And one of the things that, um,I was thinking about is, as you
were talking about this, wasit's staggering how many times
we fail, as cs or cx leaders, Ishould say, to do our own
research in terms of secretshopping, our own experience.
That's true, because you canget out of control quickly.
(33:33):
You've got marketing doing somecomms, you've got sales doing
comms, you've got product doingcomms, you've got CS doing comms
.
They're all doing it fromdifferent platforms.
You buy a new tool, you don'treally think about how it's
going to interact with theothers.
You can get out of controlquickly, and I'm guilty of this
as well.
There's been times where Ihaven't secret shopped my own
(33:56):
stuff, only to come to find outfrom a customer that, hey, this
is a little confusing.
I'm like, yeah, you're totallyright, and so I would challenge
anyone that's thinking aboutthis to, every six months or so,
just put yourself in the flow.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, totally.
I agree with that 100%, andespecially from a customer
success perspective, right, Ithink we stand at a very
interesting time within the SaaSindustry.
You're seeing companies likeGoogle and Amazon, microsoft,
coming up with partnermarketplaces that are having
companies come together tocreate joint listings of their
(34:31):
partnership together and whythey're better.
Together stories are the reasonthat you should choose their
option together with all of thecompetitors in the spaces.
If you go to Google marketingautomation, you're going to get
so many more results today thanyou would have in 2019, because
that's the market right.
So we also have to acknowledgethat the marketplace is pushing
(34:53):
us away from direct selling andinto a partner ecosystem of
sorts, where we are connectingand relying on our internal
vendors, our internal partners,to help us understand the best
kind of relationships to form,and so, even more so, customer
success is very uniquelypositioned at the front lines to
(35:15):
be understanding what does yourcompany look like from a
customer perspective, what's theimpact that you're making to
then make sure that you'restaying competitive, that you're
aware of what's happening inthe market, that you're thinking
through if your competitor hasa better together story with
another vendor and a jointlisting.
Are you keeping that in mind aswell, I think you have a great
(35:37):
point and I've actually neverdone this, and now I'm probably
going to rethink this Creatingan account from a customer
perspective and disconnectingfrom myself, from the tool, and
coming in as a customer toreally go through the entire
experience from start to finish.
And it's a checks and balancesfor me as the leader to think
what am I not thinking of?
(35:58):
What am I missing?
It's not even on my radarbecause I've not sat in the
customer's shoes to thatperspective.
And so you bring up a reallygood point that I will probably
deploy myself, because that's areally good point that I will
probably deploy myself, causethat's a really great
perspective.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Maybe we could start a business called SaaS shopper,
where all we do is secret shopcompanies.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
I love it, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Gonna do it with all my free time.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I have so much free time.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, let's go, let's go.
I've been thinking about thisthe whole time, ever since you
mentioned the opera thing.
I need to find something realquick.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Oh boy I love that you have records.
Yeah, I think that was one ofthe first things I said to you
too when we first met was likeoh my gosh, you love records.
I have my grandmother's recordplayer and I play records all
the time.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah for sure.
So my sister studied opera incollege.
She went to uc, didn't doanything with it, became an
airline pilot okay, which isphenomenally left turn.
Regardless, we've had singersin a very musical family or
whatever, and for some reasonthis record has stuck with me
(37:06):
throughout.
It's something we always hadand it's one of these.
It's an interesting story.
If I have it correctly, this isa record of Florence Foster
Jenkins.
Do you know who this is?
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Of course I do yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I figured you did.
It's this very from what Iunderstand-do woman from I don't
know what the the 50s, 60s,something like that who I don't
know if she was convinced shewas an opera singer or whether
(37:41):
she was doing it as a farce I'mpretty sure she was bored and
just throwing money at stuff.
But she made these records ofher singing these arias and
things like that arephenomenally horrible.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
You know, they made a movie about her.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Did they really?
I need to see this the movie is.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
I think the movie is called Florence Foster Jenkins
and Meryl Streep.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Oh my God, I haven't seen this.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
To your point.
She was horrible.
She was totally tone deaf, buttotally on it, and I just think
you know such a bold place tocome from and I'm one of those
people.
So we actually went and saw amusical last night called Come
From Away.
It's a Tony Award winningmusical.
It's based on the true story of9-11.
(38:29):
There were like 38 planes thatwere rerouted from landing in
new york.
They landed in a tiny littletown in newfoundland, canada,
and that tiny little town has totake care of 7 000 passengers
for like four days.
Wow, and it was absolutelyincredible.
And because I have classictraining and I'm a soprano, so
(38:50):
I'm high up there, when I hearother sopranos sing and they're
not on key, I'm like, oh ithurts, oh it hurts their soprano
.
She just made my heart soar thewhole night.
But yeah, it's living a lifethat is living boldly and living
courageously, a term that I'musing for a company that I'm
working on called LionheartCustomer Success.
(39:13):
Lionheart means bold andcourageous.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
And.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
I think, when you can accept yourself and all your
flaws and all your ugly as Ilike to say, because we all have
it when you're able to acceptfeedback from people that you
know care about you.
So for me, my husband was theone that finally broke through
the wall that I had verycarefully built to protect me
(39:37):
from various things, to reallyhear him say you know, babe, did
you hear yourself on that call?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, I'd be like.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
No, I'm fine and he's like.
I really need you to listen tome.
I think it's tough for us toaccept that we have blind spots,
but the truth is that you cansee the blind spots when someone
that you love and that youtrust can point them out to you
and you don't immediately jumpon the defense.
To live boldly, with courage,means I'm not perfect.
I do have blind spots and I'mgoing to trust that the people I
(40:06):
love, that I know love me andthey know me can come to me and
say hey, you know, and they maynot come to you lovingly, right,
but they're the voice that youshould listen to.
It really has changed my wholeperspective, and it's hard to
hear when you don't fit a moldor you've made a mistake or you
need correction, especiallywithin business.
(40:28):
We're not training mid-levelmanagers to proactively help
when something goes wrong.
I think all of us have been ona pit at one point.
All of us have probably gottentoo emotional on a conversation
or we've written an email thatwe shouldn't have written and,
instead of helping us understandwow, where were you coming from
?
Help me understand your thoughtprocess.
(40:48):
Here's where I would suggest wemake changes in the future.
You know that level of coachingisn't happening because those
managers are not trained to helpdevelop skill sets.
We have to then own itourselves.
We have to own our owndevelopment, we have to own our
own process and be willing andacknowledge the fact that we are
constantly growing, constantlyhaving to change, and feelings
(41:13):
matter, but in businessspecifically, facts matter more.
And to use facts to drive andtell stories to help your
customers see what's possibleand really make sure you're
building a real connection isimportant.
That we need to stress at ahigher level and the customer
voice.
If the customer voice does nothave a seat at the table, you're
(41:35):
missing something.
And that seems to be open fordebate, because even at the
conference that you and I wereat and we asked the room what is
customer success, you're goingto get 10 different answers,
cause even with our own industry, we still can't figure out one
solid definition.
So it's a moving target, so tospeak, that we have to just
acknowledge it's a moving target.
We're not going to nail downany one thing that works for
(41:57):
everybody.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
But the ones that are the people that do the work the
people that are the boots onthe ground that are building
those relationships.
Even if the program might lookdifferent, they all need
professional soft skilldevelopment, every single one of
them.
And so that's where, fromcompany to company, industry to
industry, emotional intelligenceis the baseline that everybody
can work from, and if we addressthe individuals, the boots on
(42:23):
the ground doing the work, andempower them, then we all win
the individuals, the boots onthe ground doing the work and
empower them, then we all win.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, I love that and I think, um, leadership has a
huge part in that.
Obviously, it's not up to theindividual to self-steady on
this stuff until they're unlessthey're really like into it or
whatever.
I think making it okay to behuman in the workplace is
something that I hope gets moreand more traction, because, um,
I don't know, I remember there.
There's a moment in my careerthat sticks with me where, um,
(42:55):
it was very early on, I didn'ttake a piece of feedback
particularly well, I got crazyemotional about it and that
affected how others viewed me.
But it also affected my actionsafterwards in terms of being a
little more reserved, being alittle bit less myself in the
(43:17):
workplace, and it took me yearsto really realize the fact that,
hey, it's okay to get emotionalabout stuff, as long as you do
it in a way, that's that thatyou're still displaying the fact
that, hey, you're still in thegame.
Like you're, you're still inthe game.
This one just hits you a littlebit hard, and I think I really
(43:40):
want to foster an environmentwith my teams and with and I
hope to be part of organizationswhere you know those kinds of
things and being emotional andbeing reactive to certain things
.
As long as it's not damaging orharassing to somebody else is
okay, because we're all humanright.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yes, and emotional intelligence does not mean you
don't feel.
I was just on a podcast thisweek about how, if you think
that emotional intelligence isthe ability to ignore your
emotions or bury your emotionsor overcome your emotions,
that's not what it is.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
No.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
It's the ability to identify, accept and harness
your emotions to be the bestversion of you, and so I got
overly emotional on a work calllast week because something was
said that really hurt myfeelings and I'm not afraid to
cry Like you hurt my feelings.
I'm emotional, but, to yourpoint, it's what you do with
those emotions that speaks toyour level of intelligence.
(44:39):
And circling this all back todigital customer success, I
think when you first talkedabout, I really want to talk
about emotional intelligence anddigital customer success.
I'm like that's a stretch,because emotional intelligence
is human to human and digitalcustomer success is not always
that.
However, we have brilliantpeople in marketing who are
(44:59):
crazy good at presentingbeautiful displays of things
that entice a reader to want toread.
You have beautiful thoughtleaders that are great,
communicating certain conceptsin a more robust connection
driven way, so that all of youremail campaigns, all of your
self-help guides, are easy tonavigate.
(45:21):
They're very simple tounderstand.
They're enticing the reader,exciting the reader, showing the
reader that your organizationtruly does care.
And I think there's one morestep I wanted to mention too
before we wrap, which issegmentation.
So when I say segmentation, Ithink a lot of people
immediately think segmentationis about grouping your customers
(45:41):
by how much they spend per yearor by the industry that they
come from.
And I think that there's afurther level of segmentation
that is important, which iswhere is the customer in their
journey?
Are they a novice, meaningthey're a brand new customer?
Are they intermediate They'vebeen through a first or second
year renewal, getting their feetin the race or they're an
advanced, expert user, and yourapproach to those different
(46:04):
segments should be verydifferent.
So, even from a digital customerperspective, you can't send the
same intro email to everycustomer.
You have to get more granularand really take a look at
meeting your customer, wherethey are within the different
journey that they're in or thedifferent needs that they have,
and cater and tailor yourdigital approach to that as well
.
So it's not just write an introemail.
(46:24):
Make sure it's written throughemotional intelligence and
you're good to go.
You got to take all of thelessons from emotional
intelligence as the leader ofthat digital program to ask how
can we be more emotionallyintelligent in our touch points
with our customers, even ifthat's written communication,
through a standard deliverymarketing email campaign.
Man I couldn't have said itbetter myself.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
I couldn't have said it better myself.
That's really good and I knowit's the top of the hour and I
know you probably have a hardstop and you probably need to
get off the call.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
But real quick.
What content are you?
Speaker 2 (47:04):
paying attention to.
Who do you want to give a shoutout to, and where can people
find you?
Speaker 1 (47:08):
So really it's LinkedIn.
I ditched Facebook, instagram,social media a while ago.
Linkedin is the best place whenit comes to digital customer
success.
You, my friend, are who I wouldcall our industry expert, so I
listen to your podcast.
I do a lot of one-to-onecoaching, and so when I'm not
working and I'm not coaching,I'm with my nephews and with my
(47:30):
family.
I don't listen to podcasts.
I don't get it.
I don't have that.
But I'm reading a book rightnow and it's so interesting.
It's called the myth of normaloh, okay and it is such an
amazing breakdown of how, whenwe say normal, what do we want
(47:51):
to be normal?
What do we think is normal?
It's a construct that there isno such thing as normal.
The way that my husband talksabout growing up in Colorado,
what was normal to him as far astechnology and the way we
relate to each other and how welook at business and look at
society in general, that wasnormal.
What's normal today is verydifferent and we can't continue
(48:12):
to dig our heels in against it.
We have to be aware of what ourkids know to be normal.
What are our college gradscoming into our workplace?
What do they know to be normal?
Because it's incumbent upon usto meet people where they're at.
And so if we're not educatingourselves on the current version
of what society calls normal,and how do we who don't feel
(48:32):
like we belong, how do we findour place and find our voice and
offer value at the same time?
And for me, I do one book at atime right now because I breeze
through them very quickly and Iwant to stay very targeted, but
this book is this thick.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, that's a big book.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
I picked it up in the airport on the way home from
Austin, actually.
But yeah, one book at a time,but I've finished all of the
customer success books.
I'm obsessed with anything thattalks about emotional
intelligence, but right now I'mreally trying to wrap my brain
around how to better connectwith individuals that are coming
into this community fromdifferent experiences or wanting
(49:09):
really better soft skilldevelopment with a one-on-one
kind of sense.
Those are my resources rightnow.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
I love it.
I love it.
Thank you for sharing and thankyou for your time and thanks
for being you.
We appreciate you.
I think you're one of the oneof the bright and lovely voices
in CS and I really appreciateyour friendship as well.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Ditto man, I was so delighted to meet you at the
conference and just find anothermember of my tribe.
And, besides, what you're doingwith the podcast, I just feel
like, as we continue to buildout this network of people that
are dedicated for giving back toour community, and all of our
unique ways coming together tosupport each other has been an
honor.
So thanks for having me andhearing me out, but I want to
(49:50):
say thank you to what you'redoing for our community as well
because digital customer successis running headlong very fast
and we have to not just keep up,we have to stay ahead, and so
all of the awareness and thedriving that you're doing in
that space, I'm very gratefulfor.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
So thank you.
Thank you I appreciate the kindwords and happy Friday, janelle
Friday.
Happy Friday.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
(50:28):
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition
Wordmap and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, dylan
Young.
Lifetime Value aims to servethe content, video, audio
(50:50):
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Terkovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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