"Your First" Digital Customer Success Motions with Stijn "Stino" Smet of Whale | Episode 053 - The Digital CX Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex Turkovic (00:03):
If you're having a retention problem, if you have
a churn problem, that's whereyou need to start, buddy, and
once again, welcome to theDigital Customer Success Podcast
with me.
Alex Cherkovich, so glad youcould join us here today and
every week as I seek out andinterview leaders and
practitioners who are innovatingand building great scaled CS

(00:25):
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
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started andonce again, welcome to the

(00:47):
Digital Customer ExperiencePodcast.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
It's so great to have you back.
As always, we've got a littlebit of a different episode
format for you today.
Before we do that, though, alittle bit of a reminder.
Last week I talked brieflyabout it.
I'll be speaking at MADx ScaledNCS Summit.
That's a virtual summit comingup at the beginning of June.

(01:09):
There's a link down in the shownotes or the description where,
if you're one of the first fivepeople to sign up for it, you
will get a $20 Uber Eats giftcard, because who doesn't like
snacks when you're attending aconference?
Right?
But anyway, check out the guestroster on this thing because
basically, the who's who ofcustomer success is going to be

(01:31):
taking part in the event.
So it's definitely one not tomiss.
So go sign up for that.
As promised, today is going tobe a unique show.
I've never really done anin-person interview.
It's all been virtual andrecorded and all of that stuff
which you know comes with itsown set of challenges.
But I wanted to jump on thechance of having Steno, who you

(01:55):
probably well know in CS circles.
He is a massive presence onLinkedIn and one of the true,
like real, voices in CS lives.
It, breathes it and is crazypassionate about it.
Anyway, he was in town, he wasin Austin, and I was like, hey,

(02:16):
we should meet up, we should,you know, grab some food or
whatever.
And I was like, well, we shouldrecord an episode of the
podcast and we're actually goingto dual release this episode on
each other's shows, since hehas a wonderful podcast as well.
And so, you know, the topicsare, yes, digital related, and

(02:38):
we get into some of the theme ofhis show, which is my first, so
you know your first time doingsomething, and in this case,
first.
So you know, your first timedoing something, and in this
case it's, you know, your firstdigital motion.
But we also talk a little bitabout some of the things that
he's doing at Whale digitally,including these very intricate
playbooks that have a lot ofdefinitions for what should be

(03:02):
done in certain scenarios, forwhat should be done in certain
scenarios, which I findabsolutely fascinating.
So, yeah, join me for thisepisode with Stino.
He's, you know, we're sittingon the couch right behind me and
you know, just chatting, I hopeyou enjoy it, because I sure
did Well, ooh.

(03:26):
How are we going to intro this?

Stijn "Stino" Smet (03:28):
It's a special edition.

Right, I guess it is a special edition.
Yes, dino, we're doing a jointshow.

We are Apparently we're doing a special
edition.
It's your first dot, dot dot,the Digital CS podcast mixed up.
That's right.
So we're doing your firstDigital CS experience.

Something like that Podcast.
Yeah, exactly, I'm very excitedabout that.
So you have some stuff that youask on your show and I have
some stuff that I ask on my show, and so by the end of this,
we're just going to be askingeach other each other's
questions.

And I think eventually we will go down a
rabbit hole, like I'm doing alot digital.
You're first and I will ask you, like how?
Because you're the master youare, you are the only one that I
think that gets digital done inyour way, and I think you're
paving a path for literallyeveryone, and I think it's a
very new profession or a verynew category of of doing cs.
I've been doing that for thelast six months to a year almost

(04:34):
so, thanks to your brilliantstuff that you put out there.
So I want to talk about, likemy first, but also then, how you
get to the point where you arenow, which is basically
undefeated.
You are, you are basically likethe prince of digital CS, or

(04:55):
the king.

I should put that on my LinkedIn While Steno said
I'm king.
Steno said.

You are.

If there were Greek gods, you wouldn't be God
of digital Well but you saidsomething interesting, which was
that you know, digital is likein CS, is like this new thing
and whatever, and yeah it is,but I also feel like it's like
CS kind of maturing and doingwhat marketing did 20 years ago
and doing a product did 20 yearsago, 100% finally doing it.

But I think also, economically speaking, a
lot has changed becausecompanies have grew, grown,
grown, grown over the years alot.
So I think they had a feelingthat they also could hire a lot
of people.
But I think with like last year, with, like, the business
landscape not being that goodanymore, a lot of revenue

(05:47):
getting lost and it's gettingharder and harder for companies
to retain revenue or becost-efficient.
So a lot of layoffs arehappening and I do think that
people or business owners nowhave the feeling that a lot of
the jobs that they hired for arebasically a one-man job spread
over three, and especially withdigital.

(06:09):
Yeah, it is more efficientworking that way, I would say I
have the feeling that you couldcater to a lot more customers
when you're going into thedigital way road down the road.
But then again you need to havesomeone like maintaining it,
because I do have the feelingright now that a lot of business

(06:29):
owners or like ceos or founders, have the feeling that they
only need one person for thedigital approach, because
they're like, hey, it'ssufficient, because we automate
everything.
But that's the thing.
Though you're, you're, you needsomeone that takes it out, that
builds it, you also needsomeone to maintain it or a team
that maintains it and builds ittogether.

(06:50):
So in that sense we're againtipping over the scale.
We're just hiring one person todo them doing a two-person job.
So it's from one extreme intothe other.
It is.

I mean a few years ago I think the common
thought was let's just put somejunior CSMs into this digital
role and they're just going tohandle everything.
And it's matured a lot over thelast five years to where sure
you might have a scaled teamthat does the outreach and does

(07:22):
mean a pooled model or whateverit is.
But I think the core of truedigital team is like your
program managers that are like,yeah, figuring out what digital
motions you need to put, put inplace and the data analysis
behind it, um, but then also youknow, like your admins and your
ops functions.
There's a lot of ops over yeah100 and that's um, that's still

(07:44):
a mystery to a lot of folks.
I feel feel like to reallysolve for that.

Yeah.

To your point how do you maintain a digital
program?

Also just finding the right tool and the
people, and the people Likejuniors can't, like you said,
juniors don't necessarily knowwhich tools are on the market,
so as well it's also, if youpicked the wrong tool, like, how
do you go about that?
And like juniors, are not thebest way, I think now, because

(08:12):
everyone is going on thatdigital route, because bringing
in a lot of customers is veryhard to Like, do that white
glove.
CS kind of kind of stuff Total.
So they are putting in lessmoney into CS teams because they
have a feeling like, hey, youcan have like 500 customers and

(08:34):
do just one strategy, which istotally not the way to do.
That.
It really works.

It totally works.
Do that.

If you're a founder and you want to, you
have 500 customers and just haveone cs person team.
Go for that.

No, no so, um, if you're watching this on youtube
which some of you do, I knowsome of you do, not everyone
does you'll see that.
Um, we're in my normalrecording place, definitely not
Steno's, because you're doinglike this world tour of you're

(09:09):
doing an American tour right now.

I'm feeling a little bit like Beyonce.
I'm doing I don't know how manystates, but I do know I'm doing
21, 14 cities, 21 customers Inthree weeks yeah, three weeks in
a zillion different time zones.
I have the feeling he'sexhausted, like if you're
watching this and you're stilllike triple chin, it's because

(09:32):
of all the chick-fil-a I've beenaiming.

There are bags under my eyes because I have no
sleep, but you were kind enoughto visit us here in austin and
you have a couple customervisits, but we had we shared
dinner last night.
Super cool to have you in town,thank you so much.

The hospitality you always say, like
tax and hospitality isn'tmatched, and I do have the
feeling that I've experiencedthat in the best way possible,
thanks to you as well.
So no, thank you for having me.
I'm having applause so far.

So for the listeners of the Digital CS
podcast, who may not be familiarwith you, and then we'll do the
vice versa.
Who are you?

Who is Stino ?
Who is Alex?
I would say Stino is the headof customer success at Whale,
like the fish.
I work for a process managementand training tool.
I live in Belgium, that's whythere is a thick accent as well.
I'm in basically a walkingencyclopedia everything Real
Housewives related.

(10:29):
I've been in the CS game foreight years already now, and
last year as a head of customersuccess.
So I've been leading a teamwhich is shit scary as well.
But now I'm very grateful to behere, very grateful to be a
customer success manager as well.
It's uh taking me quite to a lotof places.
I'm meeting wonderful peoplelike yourself, like my idols, I

(10:52):
would say for people that reallyhelped me in my career putting
content out.
So thank you for like it'smeeting an idol.
Like yesterday didn't tell youthat, but like you were, I'm
picking you up and I was likestressed the fuck out because I
was like I'm meeting one of myidols so normally.
Like I quit smoking a couple ofmonths ago, but I smoked like
three cigarettes yesterdaybefore you picked me up because

(11:14):
I was like so nervous, like itwas kind of a first date kind of
thing.
I was super, super nervousbecause I was like what if he
doesn't like me?
Stuff like that.
Like it's like meeting youridols for the first time.
And again I have a short listof really meeting people in real
life.
And your energy is even moreamazing in real life.
You're already illuminatingonline, on LinkedIn, in your

(11:37):
podcast and all the stuff thatyou put out there, but seeing
your energy is literally staringat the sun.
So thank you so much, jeez.

Okay, well, that's your quota for, like,
compliments for the show I'm.

Yeah, I can't help it, but there is a
little american like livinginside of me nice little
american living inside that's.

That's the quote we're gonna pull out for the
yeah they're into a littleamerican living.
Well, cool, I mean, I feel muchthe same way, honestly, because
if you're not following Steno onLinkedIn or wherever, the one
thing I really appreciate aboutwhat you put out there is just
yourself.
It's unapologetically yourself,and we talked about this a

(12:23):
little bit yesterday.
Like you know, you, you saidbasically you don't care, but
also I feel I was thinking aboutthis and actually I feel like
it means that you really care.
Yeah, you know what I mean inthe end.
Yeah, because, um, you're justyou yourself.
Your content is on point, you'renot afraid to speak your mind
and, and I think there's so muchto learn from you and what you

(12:48):
put out there, because you'rejust.
You know a lot of people havethis kind of facade and I think
this is relevant for, like,personal branding and LinkedIn
stuff too, but I think the wayyou go about working with your
customers is probably a lot thesame way.

(13:08):
Like you're just yourself, youknow what you see is what you
get and and I think there'sthere's a genuine nature to that
, to where a customer feels likeinstantly comfortable in that.
And I'm just speculating, but Ihave a feeling that's kind of.
Thank you is.

That's your quota for compliments today.
So who is alex?
Um, I think the majority ofpeople already know you and
follow this podcast, but for theones that maybe follow me and
don't know you like who.
Who is alex?

well for um.
Your first dot dot dot audience, dot audience.
Alex Turkovich hosted theDigital CS Podcast.
But I like to call myself aprofessional mutt.
I started in music ages ago.
That didn't go so well andfound my way into corporate

(14:01):
learning and development.
That morphed into customertraining, customer facing
training, leadership roles inL&D and customer training and
then that got slowly got intoprofessional services and led
some onboarding teams and some,you know, ps, pnls and stuff
like that.
And then over the last few yearsI've been just really focused

(14:26):
on CS and digital CSspecifically, because I guess my
passion is around just CX ingeneral that customer experience
, because I've dabbled invarious kind of sections of CX
and so I think digital is anawesome way to put all that

(14:47):
together, because you got tohave the content, you got to
have this.
You know the services knowledgeand the deep technical
knowledge, but at the same time,you got to know where your
customer journey is and you gotto know what to program behind
it and whatnot.
And so the reason I started thepodcast about a year ago was
just to share what I waslearning and share my own

(15:08):
experiences, and it's been coolso far Awesome.

Like I love what you said about it's not
like digital CS.
I do think the term is a littlebit wrong, because if you're
going digital, that means thatindeed, like, like you said,
it's the overall experience,like the cs window is more like
the content wise right, like wewant to get them on board, we
want to give drive value, buthow do we do that in a digital

(15:36):
way?
But it's also how the customersexperience it in a way, because
I think, like what was yourfirst strategy going into CS?
Because I like digital CS,because for me it was a shit ton
of emails and that backfired alot, because clients don't read

(15:57):
emails that much anymore.
So I want to hear about yourfirst like strategy?

That's a good question.
I'll answer it a couple ofdifferent ways, because the
first one is like what was myfirst go-get?
But I realized one of thethings that is crazy obvious to
me is that, like there are zeroorganizations that are built
exactly like the next right,yeah, 100%.
And so I get this question allthe time, like where do I start

(16:26):
what?
Where should my first kind ofdigital motion be?
Right, so, but for mepersonally, um, the first thing
was really around templatizingstuff.
You know, like getting templatesin place that not only we could
send out on an automatedfashion, but if an account is
csm owned, um to get the csm toactually send those out, um,

(16:48):
instead of.
So, you know, a big part ofdigital for me is is is
obviously segmentation, but notjust customer segmentation, not
persona segmentation, but also,you know, is this a csm owned
account or not?
If it is, let's not send theautomated email, let's have this
csms, modify it and send it andthose kinds of things, but in

(17:09):
that process you're helping thecsm out.
Yeah, you know, so they don'thave to write the email, they
just have to, like you know,fire it off and personalize it a
little bit.
Um, you know that that was kindof one of the really early kind
of quick win things that we putin place, and I think if someone

(17:29):
asks me where to start, myadvice is always look for the
things that people are doingover and over and over again and
look for the things that ourcustomers are calling in to
support about over and over andover again.
And look for the things thatour customers are calling in to
support about over and over andover again, because those are
the things where you know thoseare the quick win things.

(17:51):
So if you focus on those and,yeah, you may not have like all
the tools yet, you may not havelike all the data that you need
yet, but if you get scrappyabout it and you know, do
something in terms of likeemails or in-app or whatever
that may be, um, you can startto like really quickly.

(18:13):
Yeah, have some quick wins.
Maybe do some see that in actionin terms of ticket deflection
and stuff like that, um, and,and I think it think those quick
wins are important because itallows you then to do some
things while you're focusing onthe bigger strategy, because
you're going to want to build ateam around it, build some

(18:37):
processes around it, build sometools around it, but you can't
do that unless you've startedsomewhere.

Yeah 100%.
And I was going to ask Indy,where are you focusing on with
those templates?
But, like you said, just lookat your day-to-day stuff.
What is the stuff that you losea lot of time.

Yeah, and I mean that's not to say that there
aren't some commonalities.
I mean, onboarding emails is anobvious thing that almost
everyone does, right or wrong.
There's some great examples ofonboarding emails.
There's some horrible examplesof onboarding emails and I've
probably sent both of those.
That's an obvious one.
But also working with theproduct team on release notes

(19:22):
notifications or getting aprocess in place for outage
notifications, that's a hugeplace where you can add instant
value.

That's true.

I'm really looking at support metrics and
if there are a large percentageof customers that called in
about a specific issue, that'swhere you could throw a couple
of team members or even BDRsinto the mix and say, hey, can
you call these folks and justmake sure they're okay?
Like digital doesn't mean likejust one part or or.

(19:54):
It doesn't mean just like emailor just like push notifications.
It means use the digitalresources and tools you have
around you really to make yourhumans effective in reaching out
at the right time 100 and I dothink, like for a long time I
had the feeling that digital cswas an automated playbook.

Yeah, like I think.
If you're, like, if you wouldask me last year like, hey, what
is digital or digital scale csfor you, I would have said like
automate, like an entireautomated customer journey from
onboarding to adoption, to likevalue realization, stuff like
that.
But indeed, like you said, it'smuch more than that.

(20:33):
It's like building in thetriggers as well, like I think a
lot of companies and a lot ofcompanies and a lot of csms that
are maybe watching this podcast, everyone in a way is already
doing digital cs, maybe not atthe scale that you want, but
like just already building inthose alerts of like hey, the
health score has been decreasing, or this feature, or this
client isn't using this feature,that good, that is already

(20:55):
digital, maybe automated, butit's digital.
So I think the biggestmisconception around digital CS
is I think it's well.
For me it was that everythingshould be automated, and that's
not well automated, as incommunication towards the client
, and that's not the thing.
It's much, much more than that.
It's like making your lifeeasier, like with the stuff that

(21:17):
you normally would check inmanually, like pulling those
lists and then checking out whois doing not so good.
So yeah, in that sense youreally helped me, like
understanding what digital CS isall about.

So one of the questions that I ask all my
guests on the Digital CS podcastis what their definition of
digital?
And you just gave me thedefinition from about two years
ago for you.
What would you say?

it is today nowadays I would say like
Digital CS is a way of beingahead of the curve, like a
little bit I would say I wouldbe being a fortune teller.
Basically is what digital cs isfor me right now being able to
spot the red flags way beforethey happen.

(22:05):
Like you know, I always made acomparison, also to my founder.
You know, when there is like anearthquake or like animals
always know like five minutesbefore something is going to hit
Dogs start howling, like withthe eclipse as well.
Last week you saw birds Like theeclipse wasn't happening for
another 30 minutes, but it wasalready starting.

(22:28):
You can see it like with youreyes.
The birds already flew away andyou like for 30 minutes
straight you didn't hear a peep.
So in that sense, that's for me, it's what digital cs is all
about knowing that something isgoing to happen before it
happens.
So, whether if that's a churn,whether if that's an expansion

(22:49):
or an upsell or cross orwhatever you want to name it,
whether if it's like it's reallypredictive, I would say digital
CS.

I think you're saying that digital CS are the
animals of the CS communityBasically.

But good animals, not bad animals, I
don't mean in a.
We're the dog of CS, workinglike a dog Day in, day in the
out.

I want to dig in a little bit more on what you
said around kind of your use ofdigital, specifically, I think,
as a CSM, because themisconception for a lot of
people is that, especially as aCSM, like oh oh, this digital
thing is just here to replace me, this ai thing it's here to

(23:39):
replace me.
It's dangerous, let's not do it.
I don't know.
There's a, there's fear aroundit.
And then the other bit of thatis a lot of csms who may be
working in an environment wherethere isn't a digital function
or an ops function feel like,well, we don't have digital, but
that's horseshit because anyonecan start on their own with

(24:04):
their own thing.
So are there some examples ofwhat you're doing at Whale?
That kind of fall into thatcategory of scrappy CSM-led
digital?

Well, the thing is, I think, first of all,
no one should be afraid from aior digital cs.
That's bullshit, you're notgetting replaced, it's just
another.
I think now it's a really goodopportunity to scale yourself in
it, because or scale yourselfin it the reason why is because
there aren't many around thathave a lot of great experience

(24:36):
or like, yeah, experience intothat field.
So I think within this and likethe next two to three years,
organizations and companies willactively hire that people that
have done it already before.
So I think if you, if you havea really good interest in to
that entire digital piece, likereally skill, scale yourself,
like, try it out, fall flat onyour face, pick yourself up

(24:59):
again, because in in the nextthree years, it will be, I think
, the next role people will belooking for.
But again, it's not about, likereplacing csm, because I'm
always the first one to say thatwhite glove cs and digital can
go hand in hand.
There are people that say thatWhite Glove CS is dead Bullshit,
because otherwise I wouldn't besitting here and touring the

(25:23):
entire state around the UnitedStates.
But coming back to yourquestion, I think what we've
been doing digital-wise is that,again, I'm a very good fortune
teller when it comes to mycustomers.
Very good fortune teller whenit comes to my customers.
We, for people that are familiarwith health scores, I think we
have a global health score thatlike really builds up out out of
all these different like subhealth scores.

(25:44):
I have like don't say it's theright way, because I do have the
feeling it's too much, but Ithink I have over like 14
different health scores thatbuild up that global health
score.
So I'm very good in predicting,if one, because a lot of like I
will.
We work in three big chapterswhen it comes to features.
So I have a chapter fordocumenting, a chapter for

(26:05):
training features and then achapter for measuring features
as well.
I know when some of the subhealth scores goes up, they're
moving into a different phase.
If something goes down, Ialways uh know, uh, if something
is going like shit is going tohit the fan.
So I would say that is thefirst that we've done um, and

(26:25):
it's actively building upon andautomated playbooks.
I would say we have a beast ofa playbook.

You were telling me about this last night.
I was like holy cow of aplaybook.

what we've done basically is we cater to a
lot of industries.
We have people in medtech andconstruction manufacturing,
basically everywhere you knowyou name it, we have a client
that is active in that industry.
The thing is we are just a teamof three meaning and we have
over 500 customers and I alwayssaid like I don't want my book
of business to be larger than100, but that's the case now.

(27:00):
So what we've done is reallybuilding out a playbook for
people that didn't purchaseSuccess Services, so that's
something that they go.
With Whale, you're able topurchase Success Services, which
means you have dedicated CSM,and when I first started out in
Whale, we only had 100 customersand I was like, yeah, whether

(27:20):
if you would like purchase it ornot, like I will be your CSM.
It was my first experience inlike hey, you don't get a CSM
and you get a CSM, because at myprevious companies everyone had
a CSM.
So it was very hard to wrap myhead around that people did this
self-onboarding kind of thing.
It really blew my mind that itexists.
Well, I knew it existed but Inever experienced it from a CSM

(27:43):
point of view.
But now I couldn't do otherwise, doing that digital route as
well.
So we've built a beast of aplaybook where we not only
segment our customers in persona, we also segment them in
industry and we also segmentthem by size.

(28:04):
So if you're in healthcare andyou're like 20 people, you get a
completely different set ofcommunications if you were in
construction with over 100,because we really took our data,
also the digital piece, ofcourse.
We really took our data andreally searched for industry
best practices, benchmarks,stuff like that and then threw
that all together into one bigautomated slash health score

(28:28):
playbook with over 450 scenariosand the turn decreased and we
upped our net retention MRR withwas it 15%?
So we went from 95 to 110 in aquarter Crazy.
With that playbook yeah, withthat playbook.
And we even brought in moreexpansion revenue than sales.

(28:51):
So until this day because Ichecked this morning we brought
in more revenue than sales.
Until this day, because Ichecked this morning, we brought
in more revenue than sales.
And I know I'm the first to saythat I hate people that are
like oh my God, we went fromthis to this percent by doing X,
Y and Z, so it works for me.
I'm not saying it will work foryour company, but if you're
interested in how I did it, morethan happy to jump on a call

(29:12):
Because I'm not saying thatthat's the way to get to that
point.
It worked for me.
On a call, because I'm notsaying that that's the way to
get to that point.
It worked for me, it worked forWill because we were that kind
of a business.
But it's fun.
It's fucking amazing to saythat we brought in more of you
yeah, yeah.
Fuck you, zylf.
I'm sure they're not looking.
No, they're not listening tothis at all.

(29:33):
Sorry Will, I love you Gary.

But I do want to dig in on that just a tad,
because A what does thatplaybook look like?
Where does it?
I'm a CSM.
I have a customer in thisindustry.
This size health score of this,whatever.
What are my outputs?
Is it a tool?
Is it a spreadsheet?
Is it a thing?
Yeah, the thing is also I don'tthink, or whatever Like what
are my outputs?

Is it a tool ?
Is it a spreadsheet?
Is this a thing?
Yeah, it is a tool, like thething is.
Also, I don't think you canreally do digital, but correct
me if I'm wrong.
I think it's very hard to dodigital if you're not having the
right tools in place.
Yeah, I think digital startswith first, a lot of customer
data, so, whether you have panel, segment or any other tool that

(30:19):
tracks that.
Then again, we have a cs toolin place which is called justify
.
I adore that for the life of mebecause, again, it isn't maybe
the shiniest tool out of thebunch, because you have a lot of
great cs tools and I've workedwith a lot, but they do
literally everything that I need.
You have a lot of people thathate their cs tool for some
reason, but I fucking adore it.
It's my Bible, it's first thingthat I open, it's the last

(30:40):
thing that I close and they'reable to do literally anything
that I need for my customers.
Did you hear?

that Custify.
You need to sponsor Steno'spodcast.

No, but it is like again, it's not.
It's not the most prettiesttool at all.
It's very black and white andthey can use some like upgrades.
Yeah, and that front for me I'mfor my customer or for the real
customer base is literallyeverything that I need when it
comes to digital, like the datais coming in very nicely.

(31:13):
Playbooks are very easy tobuild.
Yeah, the data is coming invery nicely.
Playbooks are very easy tobuild.
Yeah, it's really easy to buildin digital test strategy for us
that way, Cool.

So playbooks are great.
They offer a really goodframework for what should and
shouldn't happen, what shouldand shouldn't be sent, or
whatever.
What percentage do you followthe playbook?
1,000% be sent, or whatever?
What percentage do you like?
Follow the playbook onethousand percent?
Or or do you, you know, giveyour team a little bit of leeway
to say you know, use your bestjudgment depends, which is the

(31:46):
most common phrase in customers.

I love it, christy likes that phrase like
for really the clients thatdon't have any, any, any, any
success services, it's likereally restricted, it's like you
don't have any wiggle room atall because I don't want my team
to lose any time on that one.
I also have, like you know, thisis something that my founder

(32:09):
doesn't know so I have, likethis twilight area, which I call
light success services, whereI'm like, hey, for some reason,
we hopped on a call, the energywas great and we worked with
them on on a certain supportissue, for instance.
Or we hopped on a call becausethey had a pricing question.
If we had like a reallypersonal call, um, and you're

(32:30):
like, hey, you're doing good,let me, okay, let me do
something in return for youbecause I like the energy is
great, like I like I don't workin what you, your numbers are
good, your metrics are good, sothen we we put them in something
that we love to call lightaccess services, and then that
wiggle room starts.
It's not that you can do a fullblown success services, that

(32:51):
not, but yeah, I'm still asucker for intervention.

You know, like if a customer doesn't qualify for
a full-blown CSM, they gotthemselves into trouble.
They need a little bit ofhand-holding to maybe get them
out of trouble, or they'rehaving a hard time getting to
that next increment in value,value.
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of havingresources available that like

(33:16):
can take an account for like Idon't know two months, yeah, and
just jump in and help help.

you know, keep champions accountable,
stuff it's huge yeah, it is, itis, but again, I think it freed
up a lot of our time.
I would say it really freed up,freed up a lot of our time, so
I would say it really freed up alot of our time.
So now all of us have a book ofbusiness I think about 200
customers and only 20% arehigh-touch.

(33:45):
So that white-glove approach,so, yeah, I would say it's the
best win for me and my team.
When it comes to that.
Talking a little bit more about, like that metric tracking,
because I think it's like thecornerstone of digital cs.
Like what would you say are thecornerstones?

(34:07):
Like, hey, your first time, noteven the first time csm, or
you're just interested in likemaking a first digital strategy.
Like what would be thecornerstone that you really need
to have in place to even thinkabout a strategy like that?

I think about it in three ways.
The first is like your classicCS metrics, right, so NRR, grr,
gross retention, all that kindof stuff.
Like of course you're going towant to measure your digital
segment, if you have a digitalsegment on that and it's an
indicator, I think you canbucket health score into that as

(34:40):
well.
The other thing I like to lookat so this is kind of category
two is marketing metrics,because you're sending emails,
you're doing campaigns, you'redoing stuff like that.
Like let's take a book out ofmarketing you know the marketing
book to say, okay, what's myclick rate, what's my open rate?
You know, like, what doesengagement look?
Like?
Let's do some ab testing onsome emails, like let's get

(35:02):
marketing with it.
And then the last thing is kindof that bespoke um area where
you know you've identified youwant to go do something
digitally.
Hopefully you've done that witha goal in mind, you know let's
say you want to reduce theamount of training related calls

(35:22):
to your support team, forinstance.
What was your first goal?

Huh, what was your first goal?

It had something to do with ticket deflection,
for sure.
If that is your goal, then ifyou can come up with a metric,
this is where you get to getcreative with the metrics.
If you can come up with ametric that says, okay, I
implemented this motion or thiscampaign and I have campaign
metrics around that.
This is the ultimate kind ofmetric for something that I want

(35:52):
to increase or decrease orwhatever.
You can turn that into a ratio.

Okay something that.

I want to increase or decrease or whatever
.
You can turn that into a ratio.
So, like of all of the openedemails, those particular
customers, we saw a decrease insupport tickets around training,
for instance.
Right, so you can get reallygranular and say, of the
customers we sent this to, thesepeople clicked on this email or
opened this in-app notificationor whatever they engaged with
it.
And those that engaged with it,we saw X percent improvement or

(36:19):
decrease over the ones thatdidn't.
So it's like you get to makeyour own metrics.

Really that's interesting, and what I
hear most of it is that youdon't need to start your
strategy at the beginning of thecustomer journey.

No, no, no, no, no.
You just yeah, no, no, no, like, um, I mean if, if it's, if
it's easy and convenient to doit.
Of course you know, but don'tdon't get into this linear
mindset where, okay, I need tostart at the sales just to post
sale handoff and then I need todo my onboarding emails and then
I need to do this, and then wegot to get ready for the renewal

(36:57):
.
If you're having a retentionproblem, if you have a churn
problem, that's where you needto start, buddy.

But let's start at the beginning.
But I think there is where Ireally fucked up, because I
thought you needed to start atthe beginning.
I think a great lesson and agreat topic that you touched
upon.
I like really fucked up, um,because I thought you needed to
start at the beginning.
I think a great lesson and agreat topic that you touched
upon, like really look at whatyou're struggling right now.
Like goal setting, I think isvery, very important to gather
with, like setting up thosemetrics, because also now,

(37:30):
that's a good tip.
Like I keep forgetting.
Like okay, you have this entireemail flow, or like entire
communication, whether if it'slike push notifications or email
, or like carrier pigeon orsmoke signals, like I don't
really care on how you do it.
What kind of pigeon?
Like I don't know, are theredifferent kinds of pigeons?
I think so.
I don't know.

(37:50):
Just a normal venetian.
Yeah, the venetians are sassy,just like me.
Um, no, like it's really good,because I often forget about the
marketing metrics kind of thing.
It's good indeed that you startfrom your customer data, that
you have your goal in mind, butindeed, like especially the

(38:12):
first time that I ran a campaignor sent like an email sequence.
I never revisited it really,like you said, what is the click
rate?
What is the open rate?
What is it that you are tryingto accomplish?
Because you have that goal inmind, like, hey, I want to
diminish churn, reduce churn.
I've built this flow, we'll seewhat happens.

(38:33):
But I think a lot of peoplefall short when it comes to
following up on that Set it andforget it.
Yeah, 100, so how would you sayyou have done your first
strategy, you have your metricsin place.
You, um, like you dideverything.
Like, how would you do afollow-up on that?
Because I think I'm I'm verynot good at that um, well, two

(38:54):
things I'll say.

The second is kind of related to what we're
talking about earlier.
But first, I mean, I think it'shealthy, on a quarterly basis,
okay, just set yourself a timeframe whether it's every month
or every quarter, every halfyear of reviewing what it is
you're doing, because, um, youknow, the more you build, and
then just move on to the nextthing.

(39:17):
Then, all of a sudden, you lookback after a year or two and
you're sitting on.
All this stuff that may or maynot be working is confusing the
customer.
I think it's healthy to go backevery once in a while and just
look at what you have in placeto make sure that, like, it's
doing what you want it to, yeah,and if it's not, don't be

(39:39):
afraid to change it.
Yeah, don't be afraid to changeit, and I mean I'm throwing it
away.
Throw it away, like, if it'snot doing what you want it to,
then then throw it away.
The other thing that I wasgoing to touch on that's related
is going into something with agoal in mind and really, for
your first motion, spend sometime with your executives and

(40:02):
really understand what they'restruggling with.
Because if you can show that youhave had a positive impact on
whatever it is they'restruggling with, you're going to
get much more leeway down theroad to get tricky and try some
cool stuff.
If you, you know, focus onsomething, that's okay great.
But you know it's not really,it's not really resonating with

(40:26):
your executive team, you'regoing to have a much harder time
adding headcount to your team,adding tools to your team and
all that kind of stuff Versus if, right out of the gate, you
pick something that's top ofmind.
You have a clear goal in mind,you know how to measure it, you
do some stuff.
Whether it works or not, you'redoing stuff and then eventually
you'll find that recipe towhere hey look, I've made some

(40:47):
great improvements on this.
We've seen, you know, turnreduction, whatever it is,
they're gonna be like great.
What else can you do?

That's the kickoff of your career, that's
right.

But I admittedly that's one of the biggest
mistakes I've made is justoperating in a vacuum trying to
figure out is this the rightthing?
I think it is.

We're just going to do it instead of like
asking your peers, asking yourleadership, that's so funny that
you're doing that, because I,whenever, like my founder is
like, how are you doing it?
And like, wherever the orderwind blows, basically, so no,
yeah, I'm like still in that.
Yeah, but no, that's reallygood, like a really good tip.

(41:32):
Like keep iterating on it andindeed, like don't be afraid, if
it doesn't work out, to justthrow it away, like I've.
I've learned that along the wayand I don't think it's only
applies to digital.
Like, if you're doing stuff andbuilding stuff and it isn't
working out, like don't Throw itaway.
That's right.
Or a throwing away profession.

(41:52):
No, what would you say would bethe main traits of a digital
CSM?
Or, just in general, if someoneis interested in digital CS,
what would they really reallyneed?
They were like hey, this is melike.

(42:13):
How would you describe?
Like yeah, it depends.

It depends if you're watching.
Uh, it depends.
I think, again, the assumptionhas been in the past that you
just throw some junior peopleinto a digital team because it's
the lowest segment that youknow, whatever.
Whatever you want to throw at it, it's like they can build
templates stuff like that yeahin reality, you know, to have a

(42:40):
really well-rounded digitalprogram, what you're going to
need on the team is someone whocan live in the data, really
understand your customer dataand can fuck up a pivot table
Like no, but I mean seriously,you know, if you have somebody
who can correlate two data setsand look at usage versus

(43:04):
engagement in community and likethose kinds of things, like
that's magic.
One of the things that I'vepublished a couple times is this
I call it the digital cs sweetspot, which is like this
intersection of data withautomation and customer journey.
Okay, yeah, because any one ofthose three, if you don't really

(43:27):
have it well defined, it'sgoing to be hard right, so so
I'd say, first and foremost,like, have somebody that can be
really in the data.
You're going to be looking forsomebody who thinks
programmatically and can almostoperate in a product management.
The things that I've done inthe past as well around this is

(43:48):
like operating sprints, like howcan we build this stuff in an
agile kind of manner, and thatgets into CRM, csp,
administration and all that kindof stuff too.
So it's not just about okay,yeah, you need some
customer-facing people that aregood with customers.

No, you need that.

But you need that support on the back end.
Whether it's the same teamwhere you divide into different
teams that share the load, it'stotally irrelevant.
But you're not just going to belooking for a CSM.
You're going to be looking forsomebody who's in the data, who
can think programmatically, whocan think outside the box and
think about the customer journeyas a whole.

Yeah, 100%.
And I do think if you loveworking with customers, maybe at
the end digital is not maybeyour end stop.
Yeah, I mean absolutely Like Ilove sitting in the data, don't
get me wrong.
But if someone tells me likeyou need to stop speaking to

(44:48):
customers by the end of the day,I'm like fuck it, I'm gone.
If it's only data, end of today.
I'm like fuck it, I'm gone.
If it's only data and thatstrategy, I know.

The thing I would say about the customer-facing
element of digital is thatwhoever is engaging the customer
on the back of a digital motionhas to be a strategic-minded
person, because you're going toencounter all kinds of different
scenarios.
It's not just here's the nextQBR renewal's coming up.

(45:18):
You know that stuff is crazyimportant and takes a certain
skill set.
But what you're going toencounter is like oh, I got an
alert for a red health score,let's figure out why it's red.
Or this customer just respondedto a survey and they gave us
raving review, let's get thisover to marketing, for you know
advocacy stuff.

(45:39):
Or this customer responded andthey hate us, let's engage them
with a plan.
Like the scenarios that youencounter are just all over the
place.
So it's like that cross betweena support and account
management mentality.

True, it's very interesting, it's niche,
it's niche, it's niche or thateveryone's using a big don't
quite like put a term on it.

Niche.
This podcast is very niche.
It's a wonderful guy.
It's a wonderful guy.
By the time we publish this, itmight no longer be the Digital
Customer Success podcast.
It might be the DigitalCustomer Experience podcast.

My God, I'm on the first episode.
Maybe Well, on the firstspecial edition.

It's the special edition, for sure.

It's the perfect way to launch a new
brand.

What have we not talked?

about.
I covered mainly everything you, everything, your first, I
would say, like, I think themain things that I took away
from from my point of view, fromlike the, your first dot show,
I think if you want to grow inthat digital, is that you're
indeed like, very like, you getloose on data, that you are
like-driven, that you lovesitting in pivot tables building

(46:55):
them, all that stuff.
That's already one of thetraits that you really need to
possess, basically, and that youdon't need to start from the
beginning, basically of yourcustomer journey.
And what I really really lovedis that you said like hey, just
look at your day-to-day job andit can go as simple as what is
the most repetitive task or themost repetitive question that
you have, whether that'sbuilding a support article for

(47:18):
it, whether it's building just asmall campaign targeting those
customers that have the samedata on that aspect of a feature
, for example.
And I think the mosteye-opening well, not
eye-opening, but the most likethat we need to keep into mind
is the marketing metrics aspectof it.
Like, don't be afraid to look atthe metrics, because it can be

(47:41):
that your idea is like oh my God, this is insane.
We're going to do that.
You're building it out.
You're building up thismomentum, this enthusiasm, and
you get all of this amazingenergy seen coming into life.
But if it doesn't work, likedon't beat yourself up for that.
Like I've done that too manytimes where I was like on this
high and then seeing the metricsand then going from that high,

(48:02):
super, super low and you're likewhat am I doing wrong?
But you're only getting betterin digital if you're trying out
stuff falling on your face,picking yourself up, iterating,
so to your point, like setyourself that time frame of
picking up a playbook or ametric or some of your
strategies again and see on howthey're performing.

(48:23):
So yeah, I really loved it.

I remembered one thing I wanted to say
specifically.
Well, I think for Because againit goes back to this whole
thing of CSMs a lot of timesfeel like they can't operate
digitally without a digital teamor something like that, and I
think the sooner you can get ahold of AI tools, the better.

(48:47):
And there's some specifics thatare interesting to me at the
moment that are probably worthsharing.
One is, I mean, everybody knowsabout ChatGPT.
They have a $20 premium versionwhere, if you pay for it, you
get GPT-4, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah.
Top tip though MicrosoftCopilot is free, GPT-4 and you

(49:10):
can do images out of there too.
Crazy, useful Tip.
Number one.
Two if you're not recordingyour calls and putting them
through GPT or recall summaries,oh, we have balloons.
We have balloons everybody.
I don't think we could reallylike that tip.
I don't know.

I know why Like it's a new Mac setting, if
you're doing this, you can'tballoons.
And if you're a thumbs up, isit some?
Like normally it would do it,yeah, yeah.
And then you have this cool one.
Give me a second.
If you're doing boards, younormally would get like laser
beams and the couch that isinsane, though, and now you have

(49:55):
confetti as well.
That is this normally.
Does it want to?

no, oh, balloons, we got balloons again.
We're learning so much digitalstuff.

The thing is I did that the first time when
I was with the customer.
I was like you have two, likesomething with two or like a
thumbs up, and the first timeballoons were popping up and I
was like what is going on?

so I should probably turn that off anyway
chat cpt as I was saying,microsoft copilot is free.
It's got all that stuff, great.
The second thing is callrecording, update, ai, fathom is
another one that's really good.
Um, I love update, yeah,because it's csm focused.
But if you're not set up in away within your I don't know

(50:48):
work ecosystem to to have gptgive you call summaries, figure
out a way to do it, feed thosetranscripts into gpt, whatever
it is you got to do because itsaves you so much time in the.
In the follow-up to that um,one we talked about last night
was a tool that I love calledGamma, which basically is GPT

(51:13):
slide creation.
So like, if you want to make aquick PowerPoint, you can get
your brand style guide and allthat kind of stuff and you can,
for instance, feed it your callsummary and it'll create a
PowerPoint deck for you.

I need to see that.

So, like there's tools out there all over the
place, you could even create asong for your customer with Suni
I don't know if you know Suni,suni, suna, suni, I think it's
Suni you give it some promptsabout what style of music and
it'll pump out a song for you.
There's all kinds of cool stuffout there.
So my point is, as a CSM don'twait for a digital team to start

(51:52):
operating digitally.
You can do it today.

I'm still stuck on the song AI.
I'm doing that for every clientthat I'm visiting.
Next you should.
I will be like, hey guys, letme make a song.

Yeah, we can have it.
Create a pop song for thewashing machine industry.
That is insane, totally do it.

I will.
Oh my God, oh my God, I need todo that.
Clients are going to love me.

So, anyway, that's what I wanted to say.
It's like your first doesn'thave to be, you know, your
company's first.
It can literally be go createsome templates, go, go, crazy Go
nuts Go crazy.

So where can people connect with you?

LinkedIn or digitalcustomersuccesscom.
You are on TikTok as well.
I am on TikTok.

What's some great tips.

It's just your name.
It's just my name.

Just your name.
I find you creative.
What about you?
You can find me only solely onLinkedIn.

basically, cs wise, you can only find me so um
, I mean there you're 10 000plus followers.
How many?
You have a lot of fans.

Yeah, it's been booming.
I have I think, I don't know,but I think 12 k.
Wow, ish.
I don't know why I do.
No, but I honestly don't knowwhy I do.
I'm a loose cannon.

That's why.

I'm a loose cannon when it comes to that.
I know LinkedIn will be great.
Do you want to give any shoutouts?
Do we have an hour?
Because I will shout outliterally everyone.
No, shout out to you basicallyagain, you hit your quota
already.
No, no, I can go over itbecause I don't give a fuck.
No, thank you just for yourhospitality.

(53:42):
I think your brain is super.
I'm jealous of how your brainworks.
Basically, really, it'silluminating talking to someone
who knows that much aboutdigital.
I also love your journey.
As you started this podcast aswell, you said like hey, I was
just starting it out, justputting content on what I was
doing, and so people could get,like give you feedback or give

(54:05):
you new ideas on moving, movingforward that way.
So, and also like I think yourenergy is one of the greatest
energies out there.
So I want to compliment that aswell.
My other idols I love like Ialways say they're the goddesses
or like the muses of ofcustomer success, like christy

(54:25):
shout out to christy girl youare all like and then erica,
anika, diana, dylan, prashantfrom from dublin a lot, a lot, a
lot of great people.
So if I didn't name you sosorry, you were in my head but
there were just too many peopleto name, like everyone that

(54:47):
literally helped my career.
I think everyone that I followon linkedin helped me to get
where I am Everyone that isputting out content really
helped me, getting me where I amtoday on this couch, which I if
you told me that last year Iwould like laugh in your face
but, like, fast forward to ayear.
A lot of people laugh in myface.

(55:07):
I'm here, I'm sitting in Austinon a couch with Alex.

It's good stuff.
It's been fun watching you dothe US tour.
For sure you've been posting atevery corner.
I'm so glad you decided to joinus here in Austin yeah, thank
you so much well, I will nowsearch for a pool and relax.
The heat is real does yourhotel have a pool?

yeah, okay, the heat is real, people, it is
real.
Run, run, run away, run away.
No, no, often it's been great,but it's.
I always forget, like, how hotit gets.
Really it's.
We're not used to thattemperature in Belgium at all.
It's warm, like it's.
Maybe once or twice a year it'skind of hot, but it's really.

(56:00):
But I'm glad it's not humid atall because, like Houston last
year, yeah, Houston's gross.

What the fuck.
I love Houston.
Houston's a great town, butyour humidity is gross.

Yeah, the humidity was crazy.
I Houston's a great town, butyour humidity is gross.
Yeah, the humidity was crazy.
I was like what's happeninghere?
Normally my hair is prettystraight unlike me, but my hair
is pretty straight but when Ijumped off the plane in Houston
it started to curl up and I waslike what's happening?
That's funny.
What is happening here?

On that note.

On that note , on that note, it's just hot.
It's just hot, just like thisepisode of this podcast.

Yeah, mutual podcasts.
Hope you enjoyed it.
See you later, see you soon.
Do we get the balloons going?
How do we get the balloonsgoing?
Nope, yay.

Balloons.

Thank you for joining me for this 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
audience.
Value to a broader audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition

(57:14):
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
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited

(57:37):
time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Trukovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.

All Episodes

"Your First" Digital Customer Success Motions with Stijn "Stino" Smet of Whale | Episode 053

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

The Nikki Glaser Podcast

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"Your First" Digital Customer Success Motions with Stijn "Stino" Smet of Whale | Episode 053