March 5, 2024 • 43 mins
I always love talking with people who work within companies that serve the CS community, and this one is no different. Erica was a fantastic guest to have on the show, partly because of the myriad of roles she's played at the company but also because she has done and is doing some pretty cool things in the realm of digital and customer education.
In this fascinating conversation we talk about:
In this fascinating conversation we talk about:
- Her journey into customer education at Pendo
- The approach to dealing with a new set of circumstances or ambiguity
- Interplay at Pendo between digital plays and educational offerings
- Driving prescriptive outcomes in customers’ journeys, especially when there are many potential outcomes
- Identifying users' roles in-product to make sure content is curated for the right audience
- 1:1 Office Hours - assess, unblock & get out. Customers have availability via a calendar to a resource if they are stuck
- Start with where you are, what problems you’re trying to solve and what is your inventory of existing resources
- Facilitate the happy path digitally and using your humans to intervene when they stray
- Using the resources around you and partnering with other teams to fill in the gaps that you have around subject matter expertise, content creation, etc.
- Prioritizing content creation based on product roadmap, customer impact of a product change
- Instructional designers are underusing heroes in SaaS
- Brand & design standards - when to adhere to them strictly or not
Enjoy! I know I sure did...
Erica's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esakroyd/
Shoutout: Daphne Costa Lopes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphnecostalopes/
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Erica's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esakroyd/
Shoutout: Daphne Costa Lopes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphnecostalopes/
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+++++++++++++++++
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The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I am not a fan of people setting up office hours
just for the sake of officehours.
Like we're going to have an hourmeeting every Thursday and you
show up and you know blah, blah.
No, we just decided we're notgoing to get around the fact
that we need somebody that can,like go in, assess, unblock and
get out.
So now we have a very kind oflike window of time where people
(00:28):
have access to this link.
It's basically just usingCalendly and you get certain you
know times locked off so itprotects.
You know our internal resourcescalendar.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And it also gives the end user, our customer, what
they're looking for, which isdedicated time to like.
Look at this thing on my screenand help me figure out what the
heck I did wrong.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
And, once again, welcome to the digital customer
success podcast with me, alexTrokovich.
So glad you could join us heretoday and every week as I seek
out and interview leaders andpractitioners who are innovating
and building great scaled CSprograms.
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.
(01:13):
If you'd like more info andwant to get in touch or sign up
for the latest updates, go todigital customer success dot com
.
For now, let's get started.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Hello and welcome to episode 42 of the digital
customer success podcast and, incase you couldn't tell, I got
myself a cold and I'm on therebound, but wanted to at least
do a little intro for you.
If you're watching on YouTube,there's definitely no video
involved in this intro at all.
Today's conversation is withErica Ackroyd of Pendo.
(01:47):
She has been at Pendo for quitesome time and has done a myriad
of different things at Pendo.
Most notably I think especiallyin relation to this podcast is
she's led the digital or scaledteams and now currently runs the
customer education team, bothof which are very relevant to
(02:08):
this show.
So we dig into all kinds ofwonderful topics related to
digital CS, but then alsocustomer education.
She dropped some hot takes onoffice hours and you know just
really how to facilitate thathappy path digitally with your
customers.
So I do hope that you enjoythis conversation with Erica
(02:28):
Ackroyd, because I sure did.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
So happy to have you.
It's been a little while comingand we've traded lots of
messages.
We've met several times.
In fact, the first time I metyou is when we were evaluating
Pendo and then didn't havebudget to buy anything.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So yeah, we do have free product, though, by the way
, so yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,but no excuses at all.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, get that cookie in there.
But you know I find Pendofascinating, but I find your
kind of history within Pendoequally fascinating, so I was
really happy to have you on theshow.
I know that you were recentlyon the BS and CS crew show as
well, which is super fun tolisten to and whatnot.
(03:19):
The one thing that I did learnon that show not the one thing I
learned several things on thatshow but the one thing I wanted
to ask you about just kind of inopening, is how you know you
mentioned your husband was DanHekeroid's nephew or somebody
mentioned that and it's like wasit really?
(03:42):
It was a total joke.
I was like, is that for?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
real.
I always just like yep, that'strue, because I think people
really want it to be true.
I want it to be true, but it'snot.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
It's so not true, I totally missed that.
Does that go in your two truthsand a lie like all the?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
time.
No, it's short.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Do people even play two truths and a lie anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I haven't played that in so long, thank God.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Thank God.
Yeah, I played it about a yearago and I was like, really, yeah
, I don't like it, but I should.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I should add that in.
I just feel like people wouldlove to believe that that's my
truth.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, you're just going to play two truths and a
lie just because of that, yeah,totally Well.
Currently you're leading thecustomer education function at
Pendo, which is cool.
You know I love customereducation.
It's like the unsung hero a lotof times, of like helping to
(04:43):
get folks to where they need togo in terms of their outcome.
But I think your journey intothat role is very interesting
just because you do have a superrich customer success
background and I don't thinkthat isn't very common.
I mean, people kind of followan education path and then
that's the path.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So I'd love to kind of get your sense on how your CS
kind of background or CShistory with Pendo has informed
that, yeah, I honestly thinkthat a lot of the things that
I've done at Pendo would onlyhappen because have only
happened because I work at acompany like Pendo with a
(05:27):
software like Pendo, because tome, you know, we've been doing
product led or scaled customersuccess since I started using
the tool it.
Just, you know, we're so luckythat we had this tool to make it
so easy for us to do thesetypes of things at scale and
communicate at scale and usedata to inform a lot of our
(05:48):
playbooks.
So I honestly, just like Inever thought I would be a
product manager, I never thoughtI would end up in a customer
education org, because I kind ofdisassociated, like LMS and
instructional design, and I'mlike I know nothing about that.
but you know, we saw anopportunity where the education
(06:08):
team was under product, theproduct org, and I saw an
opportunity where I could goover there and kind of really
expand what education at Pendoor even just what education as a
whole means to you know a softbusiness, and really like that's
where true self-serve, that'swhere the true foundational
(06:31):
layer of education and productadoption can really start.
And my big stance has been justall the things that my team
works on, whether it'sin-product messaging, help
center articles, video content,that's all the stuff that should
just be foundational for all ofour customers, regardless of
(06:53):
how big or small they are.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yep, yeah, for sure, I mean it is.
You know, I think you can'treally have a solid kind of I
mean self-serve environmentunless you have the content to
back that up, because otherwiseit's just going to be, you know,
more humans involved in the mix, and that's not the goal.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, and I think if we hadn't really been focused on
our free offering I don't thinkthis my world would have
collided with that group.
So yeah a lot of that.
My career just is likehappenstance, or being in the
right place at the right time orkind of finding my niche within
(07:36):
a role and then people reallyseeing and gravitating towards
what we're doing and thenpulling it in.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, for sure, which is actually one of the things
that I wanted to ask you about,which is you seem to have an
innate ability to deal withambiguous situations like very
well, Like there's something newthat gets thrown your way maybe
you do, maybe you don't knowanything about it and you just
kind of dive right in, much likeyou did with product management
(08:05):
, and I would imagine there wassome learning about SCORM files
and stuff like that witheducation services.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I still know nothing about SCORM files.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I know what they are, yeah, exactly.
Well, that's about all you needto know.
But like what is that?
How does that kind of manifestitself in you and what is your
approach and your mentality intodealing with those types of
situations and just tackling it?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, I think I just always start with like what is
the problem we're trying tosolve?
What's the data telling us?
And then I really just love achallenge, I love just I listen,
I love what is the problemwe're trying to solve?
Try something new, like treatit as an experiment.
(08:56):
I definitely learned this inproduct management, where
there's no failures inexperiments.
So calling things an experimentkind of lowers the bar a little
bit, of trying something new,so see if it works, if it does,
keep going, if it doesn't, youiterate.
But no failures in experiments,there's only learnings.
(09:17):
And so that's kind of thementality that I've brought to
each of these kind of situationswhere they need a new leader or
something's not working, andjust kind of go in and try to
learn as much as I can.
Like I never want anyone tothink that I come into a
situation where I'm like, oh,I'm the expert because I was put
here, it's like I knew nothingabout product management but I
(09:39):
spent a lot of time researchingyou know and taking courses.
I knew nothing about customereducation, but I spent a lot of
time like learning more aboutyou know what does education
mean at Pendo and what iseducation as a whole.
And I think, as long as you dothat, you kind of start to learn
how your skill set fits in withwhat they're looking for and
(10:03):
then what to do from there.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
That's true.
I mean you know this all speaksto, I think, your abilities as
a leader and your approach toleadership, I think, is a really
healthy one, and it's obviousthat you know the company feels
good about putting you in thosesituations because they know
(10:26):
you're just going to, you know,kill it and grill it and take it
home and fix stuff, which isreally cool.
But yeah, I mean, to your point, like you know, as a leader,
it's really more around, likeyou said, analyzing what is the
problem we're trying to solve,what resources do we have to
solve them, what expertise canyou surround yourself with, to
(10:49):
you know, to solve thoseproblems?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
This is knowing everything yourself.
That's not ideal.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Not ideal, for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, well, obviously this is the digital CS podcast.
I ask all my guests this, thesame fundamental question, which
is you know I'd love your kindof 10, 30 second elevator pitch
of digital CS, scaled CS, andwhat it means to you based on
your background and history andexpertise.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, I kind of mentioned this a little bit
earlier, where I just think adigital approach or a scaled
approach to customer successreally should be the foundation
of any customer success programacross any customer segment.
So it's not in place of humans.
I think a lot of times peopleassociate digital with replacing
humans, but allowing CS A lotof times, a lot of times.
(11:43):
Yeah, To me it's.
It's driving more impact withthe people that you have, so
allowing humans to do what theydo best and be more effective in
their roles.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Mm, hmm, yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And that last bit, too, issomething that a lot of people
miss is allowing people to bemore effective in their roles.
They think it's just, you know,well, we're going to send some
emails, we're going to do somein in app, we're going to do
some surveys, and there's our,you know, digital program versus
like, how do we make our humansas a effective as possible?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Mm, hmm.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Mm.
Hmm, yep, can you?
So you spent a fair amount oftime, you know, scaling CS
programs at Pendo and you'vesince moved into this education
role.
Can you talk a little bit about, maybe a little bit deeper into
, what that interplay is betweenyou know the, the education
(12:39):
offerings and the some of theyou know motions that are in
place?
I mean, we kind of touched on alittle bit, but I want to get a
little bit more tactical as toyou know what that really looks
like and and and how it's usedpractically.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah.
So we on the education team nowour mantra is to solve for the
80%, and what that means to usis we're never going to figure
out the solution for everysingle user, because there's way
too many personas that use ourproduct.
There's way too many use casesor outcomes that people are
trying to draw drive.
(13:13):
So we have to just do the bestthat we can, because perfect is
the enemy of good, and you knowwe are really there to help
people understand how to use thesoftware and how that's going
to drive their outcomes.
We are not going to cover allthe nuances and all the
complexities.
There's just no way.
(13:33):
So in everything that we do, wetry to solve for the 80%,
knowing that you know there'sgoing to be those layers of
humans on top of that, whetherit be one to many doing webinars
you know things like that usergroups or one to one
intervention, where it's, youknow you've got risk.
(13:53):
You've got large enterprisecustomers, you know people with
dedicated reps, things like that.
So we are not trying to solveall the world's problems with
what we're doing, and so ithelps to always keep that frame
of mind.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, for sure.
And I want to dig into onepoint that you made just a bit
ago, which was around the usecases and kind of the desired
outcomes, because I think at thecore of a digital program is
knowing, like you know, whatyour customers intended outcomes
(14:31):
are.
And I think in some cases it'svery easy, like some you know,
some vendors or some platforms.
It's maybe like two, threeoutcomes that customers are
pushing for on a repeated basis,some I'm in that situation
included.
I mean, there's a list, you knowthere's yeah yeah, yeah, it's
(14:53):
like there's a list and it'sit's.
It's not short, it's like, youknow, it's it's in the teens or
maybe 20s or so, and and that'swhere I think it gets
particularly dicey andparticularly challenging in
solving for that, and I don'tknow where I'm going with this,
(15:15):
other than to ask you like how,like what, because you know,
again, you can't curate thisthing as cleanly as you could if
there were one or two, you knowconsistent outcomes.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, I think this is again.
I hate to say this and I'mreally, really not trying to
plug Pendo constantly on thispodcast, I promise you.
But if I didn't have Pendo, Iwould be completely dependent on
our product team to do thesethings, for us to make product
(15:51):
changes.
So I'll give you an example Ourproduct when you register for a
new account, we ask you whatyour role is and what your use
case is.
So that's great for all thefirst registrants, but we don't
know anything about people ifthey're added later, except we
implemented these in-app guidesfor all new users added to an
(16:14):
account.
That asks what do you want todo?
So if we didn't have a toollike Pendo, we would not be able
to make it a true, relevant,curated experience for these
users.
And so I guess, if you don'thave a tool like Pendo, that
would be my recommendation isyou've got to get in front of
(16:37):
the product team and you've gotto talk about how important it
is to know what your customers'desired outcomes, job to be done
, whatever you want to call it,something to know why did they
come here, and that way you havethat data, because without that
data, you're flying blind.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Totally.
Yeah, you can put stuff outthere all you want, but you know
, connecting the dots becomesthe hard part.
So are there curated likecontent streams?
I mean, I'm guessing there are,but like based on, let's say,
I'm Joe and I select thisoutcome or this outcome.
What does that look likeafterwards?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah.
So you get an in-product kindof experience that, based off of
your selection, we provide youwith like a use case video from
our customers.
So it's kind of we call it howI Pendo story.
So it's not just like whateverwe're feeding you, it's like our
customers are saying thesethings and this is what they've
done.
So we have an in-app experience.
(17:36):
But we also realize, like, noteverybody likes to go through a
walkthrough in product.
So then we, you know, link youout to a knowledge base and then
we follow up with an email,based off of your selection, to
say here's some resources thatyou might, you know, enjoy.
So everything is kind of tiedback to that.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
First, like login experience, yeah, yeah that's
really cool, are there I mean, Ican count on probably multiple
hands of things that I've triedthat haven't quite landed and
then but eventually kind of ledto success.
You know, and I think I'mguessing you've kind of
(18:17):
experienced some of that, bothin your current role maybe a
previous role as well whereyou've tried stuff.
It didn't quite stick but youlearned like a super valuable
lesson.
Do you have any examples ofthings like that as kind of like
a cautionary tale?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Oh yeah, so many.
I mean I think it's importantto like.
The one that stands out istrying to recreate success that
we had had with a previous likeone to many programs.
So when, when?
We first kind of got startedwith these user overview
webinars.
We were doing them bi-weekly andthis was really just an effort
(18:53):
to get our inbound email volumedown it was like insane, how
much how many emails we weregetting and questions we were
getting, and most of it wascentered just around basics of
how to use the product.
So we were getting likehundreds of registrants every
two weeks consistently.
So we were like we're on fire.
We thought, oh, okay, we'll tryanother topic.
(19:15):
We were getting a lot of likeasks to do something a little
bit more technical and thepersona was more nuanced.
So we were like, all right,we're going to try this.
You know, install webinar and wehave four attendees.
We had more Pendo people on theon the webinar than we did
(19:38):
customers and it was just a hugefail.
So we learned that the topicwas not the most conducive to a
one to many format.
So we switched to offering oneto one office hours, which has
been way more successful andcost effective for us, and it's
just the outcome that we areactually looking for.
So one to many is not alwaysthe answer for everything.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So you want one to one office hour.
One to one office hour.
How does it work?
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I cringe when I hear the word office hours, but my
tune has changed because I amnot a fan of people setting up
office hours just for the sakeof office hours.
We're going to have an hourmeeting every Thursday and you
show up and blah, blah, blah.
No, that to me is also a wasteof your time.
(20:29):
Everyone else's time.
That's not technicallyone-to-one, that's still.
You're having to sit around andlisten to other people.
You basically needed someone tohelp people with more technical
questions, because Pendo doesrequire an install and there are
some nuances to it.
(20:52):
We just decided we're not goingto get around the fact that we
need somebody that can go in,assess, unblock and get out.
Now we have a very window oftime where people have access to
this link.
It's basically just usingCalendly and you get certain
times locked off.
It protects our internalresources calendar and it also
(21:16):
gives the end user or customerwhat they're looking for, which
is dedicated time to look atthis thing on my screen and help
me figure out what the heck Idid wrong.
It's not office hours in theway you think of office hours.
It's literally just looking atone-to-one calls at designated
times, but if they have abooking, they go to the meeting.
(21:39):
If they don't have a booking,they don't.
They do something else withtheir time, their precious time.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Is this a pooled team or are there assigned resources
?
Are you meeting with the sameperson regularly?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
For this particular program.
It's one person who we havegotten approval to use their
time and effort.
We're very grateful for that.
We're very grateful for ourprofessional services.
Org Got you.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
We are very grateful to be able to use them.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
These are for our I should mention, this program is
for our free customers our freecustomer base.
Everybody's like we're nottouching this, it's free, we're
not getting any revenue from it.
We were able to show how easilyand how quickly the right
person was able to get in,diagnose the issue and then get
people on a path to success andupgrading and all the things
(22:34):
that are like oh crap, this isgreat.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, it's also like ticket deflection it keeps your
support teams on break fix andinstead of configuration, so
that's super cool.
It leads to one of my otherquestions.
You pointed to the fact thathey look, we're using a resource
that's available.
I think probably the number onequestion that I get from
(23:01):
listeners is where do I start?
Where do I start this journeydown?
Scaled or digital customersuccess?
My answer, invariably, is youstart with what you have.
You look at the problems you'retrying to solve.
You look at what you have.
You marry the two.
I think your example was whenyou stepped into that scaled
(23:27):
role.
You started with a webinarprogram, but, in general, what
advice would you give folks thatare trying to get into this
world in terms of where theyshould start their programs?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head where you
have to start with where you are.
You have to take inventory ofyour resources.
So a lot of the things that wedid when I started with the
scaled CS team at Pendo was outof necessity because I had one
CSM.
I had a program manager who wasrecently moved from CSM into
(24:03):
this program manager role, sothis person was not customer
facing anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
And a community manager.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
So we really had to lean hard into those digital
approaches and product-ledapproaches and I had to protect
my one CSM for the 800 customersthat we had and the $40 million
in revenue that we had underthat motion at the time to the
most critical engagements andlike just could not just have
(24:31):
him on calls constantly.
So if I had five or more CSMs,then that strategy would have
looked a lot different.
So my advice would beregardless of how many CSMs you
have for this like scaled motion, use their time wisely.
You know you've got to havethat foundation of digital and
data-driven motions.
If you have an education teamor if you have content, you have
(24:55):
something built out already.
Great Like.
Use that, build upon it.
If you don't, then you'reprobably going to want to use
those resources to startbuilding up that content and
then facilitate the happy pathusing the digital motions and
use the humans to catch peopleas they start to veer off and
(25:15):
get them back on a path towardstheir desired outcomes.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
The shepherds yes, you have to support people.
No, go this way.
Go this way yes.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
That's super good advice and, you know, because I
think that the temptation is todesign something really stellar
and cutting edge and intricateon a PowerPoint slide and then
you get to implementation islike well, what can we actually
do?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Because I was super lucky that I had that program
manager who could just likechurn out some digital stuff,
because we down so many peopleto be customer facing and I also
had recently hired a communitymanager.
So at the same time we werereally beefing up our like
peer-led kind of engagements andusing our community to our
(26:10):
advantage.
And you know, if you so, if youhave, if you have none of those
things, then that's reallyscary.
But I can guarantee you have atleast a CSM who's really good
at customer facing work.
And so it's like if you don'thave the digital piece, that's
fine.
But what you really really needis like the people who can use
(26:33):
data to kind of drive where theygo.
And sometimes we use more likereactive things, like sales,
like sales would have to fillout a form to say, hey, this
customer is at risk.
I need you to get and you know,get on a call with them.
This is their ARR, here's theirthe opportunity.
And I would have them put theCSM, the scale CSM on the
(26:56):
opportunity so that we couldassociate the revenue.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, that close one.
Like we get credit for that aslike we influence that revenue.
So there was a lot of, like youknow, process change that I
think a lot of folks had to getused to.
But since then they've reallybuilt that team out.
I think originally they thought, oh, a scaled CS motion, they
only need one CSM or they onlyneed two, and really, like I
(27:24):
think it depends.
I don't know what the magicnumber is, but that team grew
and then I just think you kindof have to figure out right now
what do we do with these people?
Yeah, they don't all need to bedoing one to many.
Because You've got people, youshould be using them.
You know it's your advantage.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Yeah, I mean, you know, if you've got those
resources in place, you don'twant to keep like having them.
You know, like hold the firehose.
Like you know, you have acouple people hold the fire hose
but the rest of them are, likeyou know, just figuring out like
.
Eliminate fires before theystart.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Right yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Weird analogy.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
That team to develop more content though, so like I
think you made a comment about,you know, like using your
resources or partnering withother teams, and so I think
that's just another Great thingthat I've experienced at Pendo
is like, regardless of wherepeople sit in the orgs, we try
(28:27):
to help each other out and dowhat we can to Get it off the
ground.
And, like I said, if you pitchit as an experiment, people are
way more likely to like Give youthe resources that you need or
give you the time that you needfrom a particular person, and
that way you can say like we'rejust trying it out and then
we'll see what happens.
And if you have data to saythat it works, then they're way
(28:48):
more likely to want to getinvolved because you have data
that now proves their impact.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's super smart.
It.
Do you Really like that?
Do you do you?
When it comes to the educationside of the world, how are you
prioritizing what content tofocus on?
I mean, are you, are you?
I Assume you're using the dataaround you and the inputs from
various teams, like ticketvolumes and all that kind of
(29:15):
stuff, but can you give us aview into that world?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, our thing, our primary, focuses on our like new
products that are coming out.
So we have to.
You know, we always say nothinggets shipped without
documentation.
So for us a product releaseisn't finished until there's
documentation and that is likethe bare minimum and it's not
nothing because it is awesomedocumentation.
(29:40):
Then you know we have theseeducation managers that are
assigned to each product pillars.
So you know, if a huge Change iscoming out to functionality or
a brand new functionality, wekind of assess, all right, like
what's the customer impact ofthis?
It might not be the bright,shiny new feature that we're
(30:01):
promoting on pandemonium stage,but it's gonna impact, you know,
every single one of ourcustomers.
Yeah, so we make sure we have aplan for you know education.
You know whether it be videosin app help center, articles in
app and help center articles arelike the fastest, I would say.
And then our, you know, theLearning and development team
(30:24):
kind of comes in and like makesure that our courses are up to
date and Totally to me, like Ihave such a huge respect for
people who are doing our likeinstructional design.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
It is so challenging to keep up with and yeah, I
think, I think I thinkinstructional designers and
Anyone who's running kind ofe-learning development within a
SAS environment deserves All theaccolades that they could ever
(30:55):
get in there.
I mean, it's just like when youthink about okay, yeah, you've
got to do.
You know X Y, z.
It takes some time to developthese courses.
You know, shoot the screen caps, do the voiceover or whatever
it looks like, but then guesswhat?
Yes, total translation,regionalization.
But then guess what?
They move the button to theother side, right.
(31:17):
So it's like it becomes achallenge of like okay, how do I
develop this in an agnostic wayto where maybe we can just rip
and replace the images insteadof the voiceover?
It's just like planning thatgoes into a really well-run
e-learning machine is insane.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, and we just did a whole rebrand of our
Navigation and everyone was likeit's not that big of a change,
it's just a color, and we'relike do you know how many videos
there are With that oldnavigation?
So it's he like you know, myteam is just incredible.
You know.
I'm like you know it's, it'sgonna be okay if we don't get
(31:55):
them on.
They're like no, we have tomake sure that this looks right.
You know, it's like there's newpeople coming in and it's like
everybody's just like, sofocused on our customer
experience and.
So that's awesome.
I think that it also helps that,like our company, views
Education as a part of theproduct experience as well, and
(32:15):
we know that not all customersLearn in the same way, so you
can't say one is better than theother is better than the other,
because To that one user, theymight enjoy this type of
learning style versus this type.
So again, it's that's all forthe 80.
You need to have all types oflearning available and let them
(32:36):
choose what they want and makesure that it's Accessible.
I think that was one of thebiggest issues that we had
previously was people didn'teven know about our resources
yeah, for sure.
I would go on calls withcustomers and scale and they'd
be mad.
They don't have a CSM.
And I'm like I pull up ourcommunity that has all of our
self-serve resources and they'relike, oh, this would have been
great.
I'm like it's there, glad Icould help.
(33:00):
So we made sure that all of ouryou know Resources are pointing
to each other.
Yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
One thing that I I Feel like a lot of people
struggle with is this notion ofletting Kind of the outcome, or
the the end result, overshadowsome of the creativity that goes
into building some of thisstuff, and and yeah, I'm talking
(33:32):
about education content and anddocumentation Okay, maybe
there's a little bit less roomfor creativity, but when it
comes to like digital motions,and, and how to approach, like
solving For getting a certainmessage out and doing it in a
way that feels human, and allthat kind of stuff, I feel like
the, the mission to do thatsometimes conflicts with the
(33:52):
creativity that's needed to doit well, and and and I wanted to
just get your thoughts on that,because what we just talked
about kind of reminded me ofthis- yeah, I feel like that is
so true where I think sometimespeople just get stuck in the
same old, same old and they gooh well, this is how we do it in
(34:14):
an enterprise motion, so thisis how we got to do it in this
way, in this way, or they gothis is how we do it in
enterprise, so there's no wayit's the same down, right, you
know, and it's like there's noroom for that, like flexibility
of thinking of you know, tryingnew things, or I Feel like a lot
of times it gets overcomplicated, like what are we
really trying to solve?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
for one of the best examples, as I started working
really closely with our product,like growth team, are the
product team and they werereally struggling with install
Rates, which is why theyinitially tapped my team to do
these like one to many installwebinars for their free audience
, and I think it just kind camedown to like they were treating
(34:57):
every single user and everysingle registrant kind of like
the same and.
You know, like, is the goalreally to get everyone to learn
how to install, or is the goalreally to get our, the people
who know how to do it and saythat it's like think it's easy
to do it?
Because I'd get on calls withengineers and they'd be like
(35:18):
it's nothing hard, guys,installing isn't that hard, it's
four lines of code.
And I'd be like you don'tunderstand our customers.
And then I was like, like, like, it is really easy, we're just
asking the wrong people to do it.
And so that completely changedlike the whole strategy around
pushing people to install.
(35:38):
The messaging that they got itwas like wild.
And so then install ratesstarted going crazy, because we
weren't trying to force everysingle installer or person who's
logging in to install.
We were just trying to get themto like, invite somebody.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
In an engineer in here.
You know it's just like.
So I don't think that they werethinking in that way of like.
I don't want to say theyweren't thinking creatively, I
just think they weren't.
They didn't have enough like ofthe customer knowledge or that
background to be like.
Get the right message the rightperson.
Yeah, maybe they don't wanteveryone to do it yeah, exactly
Exactly.
Wait a minute, like, instead ofmaking install easier, which
(36:17):
it's the same way it's been forthe beginning of time, just get
it in the hands of the rightperson.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Right person, right time.
That's right.
What a novel idea.
What a novel idea.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, and I think it's hard for people to say what
will?
These people aren't asimportant, and I don't think
that's what we're saying either.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Again, you have to solve for the 80,.
You know you have to cannotsolve for everything.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
You can't at all At all.
Do you?
Is there a?
Is there a kind of a brandvoice that you operate under, if
that makes sense, or do you tryto create voice in the things
that you're doing?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So for anything in product, we just recently
created kind of some like inproduct standards, because I
don't think that our product, Idon't think you should know who
built a guide, versus like ifsomebody from my team built a
guide or somebody from thoseteam built a title do, do, do,
do.
Pendo is the messenger, so it'sPendo's brand.
(37:18):
So we do have brand standards.
That marketing has done youknow voice and tone, all of that
, so now we make sure that allof our guides have that.
When it comes to like videos, Ilet my team infuse a little bit
of personality into it, as longas the content is accurate.
I mean, I literally listened tosome of my team's videos and I
start laughing because they'reso funny, they're so engaging
(37:41):
and I'm like this is yeah, it'snice, because you're not just
like select the button on theright.
You know it's like.
You know we're trying to makeit fun, we're trying to make it
engaging and yeah.
So I think we have a little bitmore flexibility in emails,
depending on who is the senderand what the intent is.
And then our all of our videocontent.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah, well, there's a .
There's a time to humanize andthere's a time not to humanize,
and I think you know, if youtalk about technical
documentation, probably not thetime to to sneak in a dad joke,
right A?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
colloquial is that which I've learned a lot about
since I joined the educationteam with.
Just like, how much languagewe're using that is not
international or, you know, canbe offensive to others.
I'm like, oh my gosh, like Idon't even think about that,
it's a whole thing.
Yeah, it's a whole thing.
It's a whole thing.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yeah, we've.
We've even had to, you know,modify some of our email
messaging depending on, you know, like regionalization and and
we.
We tend to keep things a littlebit more straightforward for
media media audiences than wemight for America's audiences,
and those kinds of things.
It's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
I think, yeah, that's totally important for sure.
Yeah, then like, how manyversions of things do you have?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Just like right, exactly, there's more stuff to
track.
So, look as we.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation, but as we kind of
start to wind things down, onething that I always like to do
is to give my guests anopportunity to share you know
what's in their content, dietand what, what they're paying
attention to, because it's it'salways fascinating to to to see
(39:26):
you know what folks arelistening to and even if it's
not, you know CS related, it'ssuper cool.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
I gotta be honest, I I do get on LinkedIn and I like
to read, you know, like, what isthrown at me.
I think I just like really havea lot of like peers and in the
industry and the biz that I liketo talk to and bounce ideas off
of.
I don't listen to.
Sorry, I don't really listen toa lot of podcasts Like I
(39:55):
probably should get into it alittle bit more.
But yeah, I really like readinga lot about the product, like
growth function.
Cause I think that's veryinteresting to me.
It's so funny in like acustomer facing, like having a
customer facing background, andnow being at the opposite end
where you're like do anythingyou possibly can to not
(40:16):
interface with the humans.
So it's like an interestingchallenge and yeah, I think it's
, I think it's cool.
So I read a lot of that, likethe Lenny, you know.
Lenny podcast, little blurbs.
From time to time I'm more of areader than a listener.
So, I'll like read the recaps.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, that's awesome, I love it.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, I should probably do more.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
I mean should, don't should yourself, you know, it's
all good, it's whatever it isfor you.
Um, I love that saying.
By the way, don't shouldyourself.
We use it a lot in our house,don't should yourself.
Just be you.
Is there anyone that you mightwant to give a shout out to?
Maybe somebody on LinkedIn thatyou paid a lot of attention to,
(40:57):
that that's doing cool stuff indigital.
Or maybe you know some of your,some of the Pendo customers
that are doing cool stuff indigital.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Oh my gosh, there's so many I feel like there's so
many Pendo customers that Ilearned a lot from.
There was a recent um post fromthe head of customer success at
a HubSpot I don't know if youfollow her Daphne Costa.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Lopez, I think it's great.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
So, um, she just, it was like my two worlds combining
around, like customer successand product growth where, like I
don't know, a lot of timespeople think they're at odds
with each other.
Like I said, they think productled or digital is like trying
to replace humans.
But it was a really interestingum post just about, like I
(41:46):
don't know how to invest in likean integrated go to market
strategy.
Yeah, it's everywhere, and Ifeel like Pendo is at a point
now where we're starting to kindof converge and realizing that
like we were doing a lot ofthings in these silos.
Um, anyway, I thought it was areally good I can send you the
link to the um to the past.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, I love her stuff.
Um, I'm constantly in awe.
At how you know, usually whenyou, when you publish a lot of
quantity, your quality tends togo down, but she's always on it
and like the stuff that shepublishes yeah that is true.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
I do always kind of perk up when I see her stuff pop
up.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah for sure.
Well, cool.
Um, aside from, I guess,linkedin, which is the the
normal place of engagement thesedays, and in the professional
environment, where can peoplekind of find you engage with you
, connect with you?
All that fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
That's pretty much where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I don't have a podcast to promote.
I don't have a book to promote.
I'm just on LinkedIn.
If you want to connect, I'mhappy to, and I love, love, love
talking about all thingsdigital scale, customer
education, whatever you want tocall it.
I love talking to folks,whether you're a Pendo customer
or not, I'm happy to connect.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Well, I, you know, I love kindof your whole aura about things
and, um, you know what we'vetalked about today, obviously,
but I really appreciate yourtime and, uh, you know, sharing
your insights with us supervaluable stuff and and, yeah,
thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of the
digital customer success podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
It really helps us to grow andto provide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the digitalcustomer success definition word
map and get more details aboutthe show at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
(43:51):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
I am not a fan of people setting up office hours
just for the sake of officehours.
Like we're going to have an hourmeeting every Thursday and you
show up and you know blah, blah.
No, we just decided we're notgoing to get around the fact
that we need somebody that can,like go in, assess, unblock and
get out.
So now we have a very kind oflike window of time where people
(00:28):
have access to this link.
It's basically just usingCalendly and you get certain you
know times locked off so itprotects.
You know our internal resourcescalendar.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And it also gives the end user, our customer, what
they're looking for, which isdedicated time to like.
Look at this thing on my screenand help me figure out what the
heck I did wrong.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
And, once again, welcome to the digital customer
success podcast with me, alexTrokovich.
So glad you could join us heretoday and every week as I seek
out and interview leaders andpractitioners who are innovating
and building great scaled CSprograms.
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.
(01:13):
If you'd like more info andwant to get in touch or sign up
for the latest updates, go todigital customer success dot com
.
For now, let's get started.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Hello and welcome to episode 42 of the digital
customer success podcast and, incase you couldn't tell, I got
myself a cold and I'm on therebound, but wanted to at least
do a little intro for you.
If you're watching on YouTube,there's definitely no video
involved in this intro at all.
Today's conversation is withErica Ackroyd of Pendo.
(01:47):
She has been at Pendo for quitesome time and has done a myriad
of different things at Pendo.
Most notably I think especiallyin relation to this podcast is
she's led the digital or scaledteams and now currently runs the
customer education team, bothof which are very relevant to
(02:08):
this show.
So we dig into all kinds ofwonderful topics related to
digital CS, but then alsocustomer education.
She dropped some hot takes onoffice hours and you know just
really how to facilitate thathappy path digitally with your
customers.
So I do hope that you enjoythis conversation with Erica
(02:28):
Ackroyd, because I sure did.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
So happy to have you.
It's been a little while comingand we've traded lots of
messages.
We've met several times.
In fact, the first time I metyou is when we were evaluating
Pendo and then didn't havebudget to buy anything.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So yeah, we do have free product, though, by the way
, so yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,but no excuses at all.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, get that cookie in there.
But you know I find Pendofascinating, but I find your
kind of history within Pendoequally fascinating, so I was
really happy to have you on theshow.
I know that you were recentlyon the BS and CS crew show as
well, which is super fun tolisten to and whatnot.
(03:19):
The one thing that I did learnon that show not the one thing I
learned several things on thatshow but the one thing I wanted
to ask you about just kind of inopening, is how you know you
mentioned your husband was DanHekeroid's nephew or somebody
mentioned that and it's like wasit really?
(03:42):
It was a total joke.
I was like, is that for?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
real.
I always just like yep, that'strue, because I think people
really want it to be true.
I want it to be true, but it'snot.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
It's so not true, I totally missed that.
Does that go in your two truthsand a lie like all the?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
time.
No, it's short.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Do people even play two truths and a lie anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I haven't played that in so long, thank God.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Thank God.
Yeah, I played it about a yearago and I was like, really, yeah
, I don't like it, but I should.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I should add that in.
I just feel like people wouldlove to believe that that's my
truth.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, you're just going to play two truths and a
lie just because of that, yeah,totally Well.
Currently you're leading thecustomer education function at
Pendo, which is cool.
You know I love customereducation.
It's like the unsung hero a lotof times, of like helping to
(04:43):
get folks to where they need togo in terms of their outcome.
But I think your journey intothat role is very interesting
just because you do have a superrich customer success
background and I don't thinkthat isn't very common.
I mean, people kind of followan education path and then
that's the path.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So I'd love to kind of get your sense on how your CS
kind of background or CShistory with Pendo has informed
that, yeah, I honestly thinkthat a lot of the things that
I've done at Pendo would onlyhappen because have only
happened because I work at acompany like Pendo with a
(05:27):
software like Pendo, because tome, you know, we've been doing
product led or scaled customersuccess since I started using
the tool it.
Just, you know, we're so luckythat we had this tool to make it
so easy for us to do thesetypes of things at scale and
communicate at scale and usedata to inform a lot of our
(05:48):
playbooks.
So I honestly, just like Inever thought I would be a
product manager, I never thoughtI would end up in a customer
education org, because I kind ofdisassociated, like LMS and
instructional design, and I'mlike I know nothing about that.
but you know, we saw anopportunity where the education
(06:08):
team was under product, theproduct org, and I saw an
opportunity where I could goover there and kind of really
expand what education at Pendoor even just what education as a
whole means to you know a softbusiness, and really like that's
where true self-serve, that'swhere the true foundational
(06:31):
layer of education and productadoption can really start.
And my big stance has been justall the things that my team
works on, whether it'sin-product messaging, help
center articles, video content,that's all the stuff that should
just be foundational for all ofour customers, regardless of
(06:53):
how big or small they are.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yep, yeah, for sure, I mean it is.
You know, I think you can'treally have a solid kind of I
mean self-serve environmentunless you have the content to
back that up, because otherwiseit's just going to be, you know,
more humans involved in the mix, and that's not the goal.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, and I think if we hadn't really been focused on
our free offering I don't thinkthis my world would have
collided with that group.
So yeah a lot of that.
My career just is likehappenstance, or being in the
right place at the right time orkind of finding my niche within
(07:36):
a role and then people reallyseeing and gravitating towards
what we're doing and thenpulling it in.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, for sure, which is actually one of the things
that I wanted to ask you about,which is you seem to have an
innate ability to deal withambiguous situations like very
well, Like there's something newthat gets thrown your way maybe
you do, maybe you don't knowanything about it and you just
kind of dive right in, much likeyou did with product management
(08:05):
, and I would imagine there wassome learning about SCORM files
and stuff like that witheducation services.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I still know nothing about SCORM files.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I know what they are, yeah, exactly.
Well, that's about all you needto know.
But like what is that?
How does that kind of manifestitself in you and what is your
approach and your mentality intodealing with those types of
situations and just tackling it?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, I think I just always start with like what is
the problem we're trying tosolve?
What's the data telling us?
And then I really just love achallenge, I love just I listen,
I love what is the problemwe're trying to solve?
Try something new, like treatit as an experiment.
(08:56):
I definitely learned this inproduct management, where
there's no failures inexperiments.
So calling things an experimentkind of lowers the bar a little
bit, of trying something new,so see if it works, if it does,
keep going, if it doesn't, youiterate.
But no failures in experiments,there's only learnings.
(09:17):
And so that's kind of thementality that I've brought to
each of these kind of situationswhere they need a new leader or
something's not working, andjust kind of go in and try to
learn as much as I can.
Like I never want anyone tothink that I come into a
situation where I'm like, oh,I'm the expert because I was put
here, it's like I knew nothingabout product management but I
(09:39):
spent a lot of time researchingyou know and taking courses.
I knew nothing about customereducation, but I spent a lot of
time like learning more aboutyou know what does education
mean at Pendo and what iseducation as a whole.
And I think, as long as you dothat, you kind of start to learn
how your skill set fits in withwhat they're looking for and
(10:03):
then what to do from there.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
That's true.
I mean you know this all speaksto, I think, your abilities as
a leader and your approach toleadership, I think, is a really
healthy one, and it's obviousthat you know the company feels
good about putting you in thosesituations because they know
(10:26):
you're just going to, you know,kill it and grill it and take it
home and fix stuff, which isreally cool.
But yeah, I mean, to your point, like you know, as a leader,
it's really more around, likeyou said, analyzing what is the
problem we're trying to solve,what resources do we have to
solve them, what expertise canyou surround yourself with, to
(10:49):
you know, to solve thoseproblems?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
This is knowing everything yourself.
That's not ideal.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Not ideal, for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, well, obviously this is the digital CS podcast.
I ask all my guests this, thesame fundamental question, which
is you know I'd love your kindof 10, 30 second elevator pitch
of digital CS, scaled CS, andwhat it means to you based on
your background and history andexpertise.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, I kind of mentioned this a little bit
earlier, where I just think adigital approach or a scaled
approach to customer successreally should be the foundation
of any customer success programacross any customer segment.
So it's not in place of humans.
I think a lot of times peopleassociate digital with replacing
humans, but allowing CS A lotof times, a lot of times.
(11:43):
Yeah, To me it's.
It's driving more impact withthe people that you have, so
allowing humans to do what theydo best and be more effective in
their roles.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Mm, hmm, yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And that last bit, too, issomething that a lot of people
miss is allowing people to bemore effective in their roles.
They think it's just, you know,well, we're going to send some
emails, we're going to do somein in app, we're going to do
some surveys, and there's our,you know, digital program versus
like, how do we make our humansas a effective as possible?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Mm, hmm.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Mm.
Hmm, yep, can you?
So you spent a fair amount oftime, you know, scaling CS
programs at Pendo and you'vesince moved into this education
role.
Can you talk a little bit about, maybe a little bit deeper into
, what that interplay is betweenyou know the, the education
(12:39):
offerings and the some of theyou know motions that are in
place?
I mean, we kind of touched on alittle bit, but I want to get a
little bit more tactical as toyou know what that really looks
like and and and how it's usedpractically.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah.
So we on the education team nowour mantra is to solve for the
80%, and what that means to usis we're never going to figure
out the solution for everysingle user, because there's way
too many personas that use ourproduct.
There's way too many use casesor outcomes that people are
trying to draw drive.
(13:13):
So we have to just do the bestthat we can, because perfect is
the enemy of good, and you knowwe are really there to help
people understand how to use thesoftware and how that's going
to drive their outcomes.
We are not going to cover allthe nuances and all the
complexities.
There's just no way.
(13:33):
So in everything that we do, wetry to solve for the 80%,
knowing that you know there'sgoing to be those layers of
humans on top of that, whetherit be one to many doing webinars
you know things like that usergroups or one to one
intervention, where it's, youknow you've got risk.
(13:53):
You've got large enterprisecustomers, you know people with
dedicated reps, things like that.
So we are not trying to solveall the world's problems with
what we're doing, and so ithelps to always keep that frame
of mind.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, for sure.
And I want to dig into onepoint that you made just a bit
ago, which was around the usecases and kind of the desired
outcomes, because I think at thecore of a digital program is
knowing, like you know, whatyour customers intended outcomes
(14:31):
are.
And I think in some cases it'svery easy, like some you know,
some vendors or some platforms.
It's maybe like two, threeoutcomes that customers are
pushing for on a repeated basis,some I'm in that situation
included.
I mean, there's a list, you knowthere's yeah yeah, yeah, it's
(14:53):
like there's a list and it'sit's.
It's not short, it's like, youknow, it's it's in the teens or
maybe 20s or so, and and that'swhere I think it gets
particularly dicey andparticularly challenging in
solving for that, and I don'tknow where I'm going with this,
(15:15):
other than to ask you like how,like what, because you know,
again, you can't curate thisthing as cleanly as you could if
there were one or two, you knowconsistent outcomes.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, I think this is again.
I hate to say this and I'mreally, really not trying to
plug Pendo constantly on thispodcast, I promise you.
But if I didn't have Pendo, Iwould be completely dependent on
our product team to do thesethings, for us to make product
(15:51):
changes.
So I'll give you an example Ourproduct when you register for a
new account, we ask you whatyour role is and what your use
case is.
So that's great for all thefirst registrants, but we don't
know anything about people ifthey're added later, except we
implemented these in-app guidesfor all new users added to an
(16:14):
account.
That asks what do you want todo?
So if we didn't have a toollike Pendo, we would not be able
to make it a true, relevant,curated experience for these
users.
And so I guess, if you don'thave a tool like Pendo, that
would be my recommendation isyou've got to get in front of
(16:37):
the product team and you've gotto talk about how important it
is to know what your customers'desired outcomes, job to be done
, whatever you want to call it,something to know why did they
come here, and that way you havethat data, because without that
data, you're flying blind.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Totally.
Yeah, you can put stuff outthere all you want, but you know
, connecting the dots becomesthe hard part.
So are there curated likecontent streams?
I mean, I'm guessing there are,but like based on, let's say,
I'm Joe and I select thisoutcome or this outcome.
What does that look likeafterwards?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah.
So you get an in-product kindof experience that, based off of
your selection, we provide youwith like a use case video from
our customers.
So it's kind of we call it howI Pendo story.
So it's not just like whateverwe're feeding you, it's like our
customers are saying thesethings and this is what they've
done.
So we have an in-app experience.
(17:36):
But we also realize, like, noteverybody likes to go through a
walkthrough in product.
So then we, you know, link youout to a knowledge base and then
we follow up with an email,based off of your selection, to
say here's some resources thatyou might, you know, enjoy.
So everything is kind of tiedback to that.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
First, like login experience, yeah, yeah that's
really cool, are there I mean, Ican count on probably multiple
hands of things that I've triedthat haven't quite landed and
then but eventually kind of ledto success.
You know, and I think I'mguessing you've kind of
(18:17):
experienced some of that, bothin your current role maybe a
previous role as well whereyou've tried stuff.
It didn't quite stick but youlearned like a super valuable
lesson.
Do you have any examples ofthings like that as kind of like
a cautionary tale?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Oh yeah, so many.
I mean I think it's importantto like.
The one that stands out istrying to recreate success that
we had had with a previous likeone to many programs.
So when, when?
We first kind of got startedwith these user overview
webinars.
We were doing them bi-weekly andthis was really just an effort
(18:53):
to get our inbound email volumedown it was like insane, how
much how many emails we weregetting and questions we were
getting, and most of it wascentered just around basics of
how to use the product.
So we were getting likehundreds of registrants every
two weeks consistently.
So we were like we're on fire.
We thought, oh, okay, we'll tryanother topic.
(19:15):
We were getting a lot of likeasks to do something a little
bit more technical and thepersona was more nuanced.
So we were like, all right,we're going to try this.
You know, install webinar and wehave four attendees.
We had more Pendo people on theon the webinar than we did
(19:38):
customers and it was just a hugefail.
So we learned that the topicwas not the most conducive to a
one to many format.
So we switched to offering oneto one office hours, which has
been way more successful andcost effective for us, and it's
just the outcome that we areactually looking for.
So one to many is not alwaysthe answer for everything.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So you want one to one office hour.
One to one office hour.
How does it work?
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I cringe when I hear the word office hours, but my
tune has changed because I amnot a fan of people setting up
office hours just for the sakeof office hours.
We're going to have an hourmeeting every Thursday and you
show up and blah, blah, blah.
No, that to me is also a wasteof your time.
(20:29):
Everyone else's time.
That's not technicallyone-to-one, that's still.
You're having to sit around andlisten to other people.
You basically needed someone tohelp people with more technical
questions, because Pendo doesrequire an install and there are
some nuances to it.
(20:52):
We just decided we're not goingto get around the fact that we
need somebody that can go in,assess, unblock and get out.
Now we have a very window oftime where people have access to
this link.
It's basically just usingCalendly and you get certain
times locked off.
It protects our internalresources calendar and it also
(21:16):
gives the end user or customerwhat they're looking for, which
is dedicated time to look atthis thing on my screen and help
me figure out what the heck Idid wrong.
It's not office hours in theway you think of office hours.
It's literally just looking atone-to-one calls at designated
times, but if they have abooking, they go to the meeting.
(21:39):
If they don't have a booking,they don't.
They do something else withtheir time, their precious time.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Is this a pooled team or are there assigned resources
?
Are you meeting with the sameperson regularly?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
For this particular program.
It's one person who we havegotten approval to use their
time and effort.
We're very grateful for that.
We're very grateful for ourprofessional services.
Org Got you.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
We are very grateful to be able to use them.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
These are for our I should mention, this program is
for our free customers our freecustomer base.
Everybody's like we're nottouching this, it's free, we're
not getting any revenue from it.
We were able to show how easilyand how quickly the right
person was able to get in,diagnose the issue and then get
people on a path to success andupgrading and all the things
(22:34):
that are like oh crap, this isgreat.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, it's also like ticket deflection it keeps your
support teams on break fix andinstead of configuration, so
that's super cool.
It leads to one of my otherquestions.
You pointed to the fact thathey look, we're using a resource
that's available.
I think probably the number onequestion that I get from
(23:01):
listeners is where do I start?
Where do I start this journeydown?
Scaled or digital customersuccess?
My answer, invariably, is youstart with what you have.
You look at the problems you'retrying to solve.
You look at what you have.
You marry the two.
I think your example was whenyou stepped into that scaled
(23:27):
role.
You started with a webinarprogram, but, in general, what
advice would you give folks thatare trying to get into this
world in terms of where theyshould start their programs?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head where you
have to start with where you are.
You have to take inventory ofyour resources.
So a lot of the things that wedid when I started with the
scaled CS team at Pendo was outof necessity because I had one
CSM.
I had a program manager who wasrecently moved from CSM into
(24:03):
this program manager role, sothis person was not customer
facing anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
And a community manager.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
So we really had to lean hard into those digital
approaches and product-ledapproaches and I had to protect
my one CSM for the 800 customersthat we had and the $40 million
in revenue that we had underthat motion at the time to the
most critical engagements andlike just could not just have
(24:31):
him on calls constantly.
So if I had five or more CSMs,then that strategy would have
looked a lot different.
So my advice would beregardless of how many CSMs you
have for this like scaled motion, use their time wisely.
You know you've got to havethat foundation of digital and
data-driven motions.
If you have an education teamor if you have content, you have
(24:55):
something built out already.
Great Like.
Use that, build upon it.
If you don't, then you'reprobably going to want to use
those resources to startbuilding up that content and
then facilitate the happy pathusing the digital motions and
use the humans to catch peopleas they start to veer off and
(25:15):
get them back on a path towardstheir desired outcomes.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
The shepherds yes, you have to support people.
No, go this way.
Go this way yes.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
That's super good advice and, you know, because I
think that the temptation is todesign something really stellar
and cutting edge and intricateon a PowerPoint slide and then
you get to implementation islike well, what can we actually
do?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Because I was super lucky that I had that program
manager who could just likechurn out some digital stuff,
because we down so many peopleto be customer facing and I also
had recently hired a communitymanager.
So at the same time we werereally beefing up our like
peer-led kind of engagements andusing our community to our
(26:10):
advantage.
And you know, if you so, if youhave, if you have none of those
things, then that's reallyscary.
But I can guarantee you have atleast a CSM who's really good
at customer facing work.
And so it's like if you don'thave the digital piece, that's
fine.
But what you really really needis like the people who can use
(26:33):
data to kind of drive where theygo.
And sometimes we use more likereactive things, like sales,
like sales would have to fillout a form to say, hey, this
customer is at risk.
I need you to get and you know,get on a call with them.
This is their ARR, here's theirthe opportunity.
And I would have them put theCSM, the scale CSM on the
(26:56):
opportunity so that we couldassociate the revenue.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, that close one.
Like we get credit for that aslike we influence that revenue.
So there was a lot of, like youknow, process change that I
think a lot of folks had to getused to.
But since then they've reallybuilt that team out.
I think originally they thought, oh, a scaled CS motion, they
only need one CSM or they onlyneed two, and really, like I
(27:24):
think it depends.
I don't know what the magicnumber is, but that team grew
and then I just think you kindof have to figure out right now
what do we do with these people?
Yeah, they don't all need to bedoing one to many.
Because You've got people, youshould be using them.
You know it's your advantage.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Yeah, I mean, you know, if you've got those
resources in place, you don'twant to keep like having them.
You know, like hold the firehose.
Like you know, you have acouple people hold the fire hose
but the rest of them are, likeyou know, just figuring out like
.
Eliminate fires before theystart.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Right yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Weird analogy.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
That team to develop more content though, so like I
think you made a comment about,you know, like using your
resources or partnering withother teams, and so I think
that's just another Great thingthat I've experienced at Pendo
is like, regardless of wherepeople sit in the orgs, we try
(28:27):
to help each other out and dowhat we can to Get it off the
ground.
And, like I said, if you pitchit as an experiment, people are
way more likely to like Give youthe resources that you need or
give you the time that you needfrom a particular person, and
that way you can say like we'rejust trying it out and then
we'll see what happens.
And if you have data to saythat it works, then they're way
(28:48):
more likely to want to getinvolved because you have data
that now proves their impact.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's super smart.
It.
Do you Really like that?
Do you do you?
When it comes to the educationside of the world, how are you
prioritizing what content tofocus on?
I mean, are you, are you?
I Assume you're using the dataaround you and the inputs from
various teams, like ticketvolumes and all that kind of
(29:15):
stuff, but can you give us aview into that world?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, our thing, our primary, focuses on our like new
products that are coming out.
So we have to.
You know, we always say nothinggets shipped without
documentation.
So for us a product releaseisn't finished until there's
documentation and that is likethe bare minimum and it's not
nothing because it is awesomedocumentation.
(29:40):
Then you know we have theseeducation managers that are
assigned to each product pillars.
So you know, if a huge Change iscoming out to functionality or
a brand new functionality, wekind of assess, all right, like
what's the customer impact ofthis?
It might not be the bright,shiny new feature that we're
(30:01):
promoting on pandemonium stage,but it's gonna impact, you know,
every single one of ourcustomers.
Yeah, so we make sure we have aplan for you know education.
You know whether it be videosin app help center, articles in
app and help center articles arelike the fastest, I would say.
And then our, you know, theLearning and development team
(30:24):
kind of comes in and like makesure that our courses are up to
date and Totally to me, like Ihave such a huge respect for
people who are doing our likeinstructional design.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
It is so challenging to keep up with and yeah, I
think, I think I thinkinstructional designers and
Anyone who's running kind ofe-learning development within a
SAS environment deserves All theaccolades that they could ever
(30:55):
get in there.
I mean, it's just like when youthink about okay, yeah, you've
got to do.
You know X Y, z.
It takes some time to developthese courses.
You know, shoot the screen caps, do the voiceover or whatever
it looks like, but then guesswhat?
Yes, total translation,regionalization.
But then guess what?
They move the button to theother side, right.
(31:17):
So it's like it becomes achallenge of like okay, how do I
develop this in an agnostic wayto where maybe we can just rip
and replace the images insteadof the voiceover?
It's just like planning thatgoes into a really well-run
e-learning machine is insane.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, and we just did a whole rebrand of our
Navigation and everyone was likeit's not that big of a change,
it's just a color, and we'relike do you know how many videos
there are With that oldnavigation?
So it's he like you know, myteam is just incredible.
You know.
I'm like you know it's, it'sgonna be okay if we don't get
(31:55):
them on.
They're like no, we have tomake sure that this looks right.
You know, it's like there's newpeople coming in and it's like
everybody's just like, sofocused on our customer
experience and.
So that's awesome.
I think that it also helps that,like our company, views
Education as a part of theproduct experience as well, and
(32:15):
we know that not all customersLearn in the same way, so you
can't say one is better than theother is better than the other,
because To that one user, theymight enjoy this type of
learning style versus this type.
So again, it's that's all forthe 80.
You need to have all types oflearning available and let them
(32:36):
choose what they want and makesure that it's Accessible.
I think that was one of thebiggest issues that we had
previously was people didn'teven know about our resources
yeah, for sure.
I would go on calls withcustomers and scale and they'd
be mad.
They don't have a CSM.
And I'm like I pull up ourcommunity that has all of our
self-serve resources and they'relike, oh, this would have been
great.
I'm like it's there, glad Icould help.
(33:00):
So we made sure that all of ouryou know Resources are pointing
to each other.
Yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
One thing that I I Feel like a lot of people
struggle with is this notion ofletting Kind of the outcome, or
the the end result, overshadowsome of the creativity that goes
into building some of thisstuff, and and yeah, I'm talking
(33:32):
about education content and anddocumentation Okay, maybe
there's a little bit less roomfor creativity, but when it
comes to like digital motions,and, and how to approach, like
solving For getting a certainmessage out and doing it in a
way that feels human, and allthat kind of stuff, I feel like
the, the mission to do thatsometimes conflicts with the
(33:52):
creativity that's needed to doit well, and and and I wanted to
just get your thoughts on that,because what we just talked
about kind of reminded me ofthis- yeah, I feel like that is
so true where I think sometimespeople just get stuck in the
same old, same old and they gooh well, this is how we do it in
(34:14):
an enterprise motion, so thisis how we got to do it in this
way, in this way, or they gothis is how we do it in
enterprise, so there's no wayit's the same down, right, you
know, and it's like there's noroom for that, like flexibility
of thinking of you know, tryingnew things, or I Feel like a lot
of times it gets overcomplicated, like what are we
really trying to solve?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
for one of the best examples, as I started working
really closely with our product,like growth team, are the
product team and they werereally struggling with install
Rates, which is why theyinitially tapped my team to do
these like one to many installwebinars for their free audience
, and I think it just kind camedown to like they were treating
(34:57):
every single user and everysingle registrant kind of like
the same and.
You know, like, is the goalreally to get everyone to learn
how to install, or is the goalreally to get our, the people
who know how to do it and saythat it's like think it's easy
to do it?
Because I'd get on calls withengineers and they'd be like
(35:18):
it's nothing hard, guys,installing isn't that hard, it's
four lines of code.
And I'd be like you don'tunderstand our customers.
And then I was like, like, like, it is really easy, we're just
asking the wrong people to do it.
And so that completely changedlike the whole strategy around
pushing people to install.
(35:38):
The messaging that they got itwas like wild.
And so then install ratesstarted going crazy, because we
weren't trying to force everysingle installer or person who's
logging in to install.
We were just trying to get themto like, invite somebody.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
In an engineer in here.
You know it's just like.
So I don't think that they werethinking in that way of like.
I don't want to say theyweren't thinking creatively, I
just think they weren't.
They didn't have enough like ofthe customer knowledge or that
background to be like.
Get the right message the rightperson.
Yeah, maybe they don't wanteveryone to do it yeah, exactly
Exactly.
Wait a minute, like, instead ofmaking install easier, which
(36:17):
it's the same way it's been forthe beginning of time, just get
it in the hands of the rightperson.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Right person, right time.
That's right.
What a novel idea.
What a novel idea.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, and I think it's hard for people to say what
will?
These people aren't asimportant, and I don't think
that's what we're saying either.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Again, you have to solve for the 80,.
You know you have to cannotsolve for everything.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
You can't at all At all.
Do you?
Is there a?
Is there a kind of a brandvoice that you operate under, if
that makes sense, or do you tryto create voice in the things
that you're doing?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So for anything in product, we just recently
created kind of some like inproduct standards, because I
don't think that our product, Idon't think you should know who
built a guide, versus like ifsomebody from my team built a
guide or somebody from thoseteam built a title do, do, do,
do.
Pendo is the messenger, so it'sPendo's brand.
(37:18):
So we do have brand standards.
That marketing has done youknow voice and tone, all of that
, so now we make sure that allof our guides have that.
When it comes to like videos, Ilet my team infuse a little bit
of personality into it, as longas the content is accurate.
I mean, I literally listened tosome of my team's videos and I
start laughing because they'reso funny, they're so engaging
(37:41):
and I'm like this is yeah, it'snice, because you're not just
like select the button on theright.
You know it's like.
You know we're trying to makeit fun, we're trying to make it
engaging and yeah.
So I think we have a little bitmore flexibility in emails,
depending on who is the senderand what the intent is.
And then our all of our videocontent.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah, well, there's a .
There's a time to humanize andthere's a time not to humanize,
and I think you know, if youtalk about technical
documentation, probably not thetime to to sneak in a dad joke,
right A?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
colloquial is that which I've learned a lot about
since I joined the educationteam with.
Just like, how much languagewe're using that is not
international or, you know, canbe offensive to others.
I'm like, oh my gosh, like Idon't even think about that,
it's a whole thing.
Yeah, it's a whole thing.
It's a whole thing.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yeah, we've.
We've even had to, you know,modify some of our email
messaging depending on, you know, like regionalization and and
we.
We tend to keep things a littlebit more straightforward for
media media audiences than wemight for America's audiences,
and those kinds of things.
It's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
I think, yeah, that's totally important for sure.
Yeah, then like, how manyversions of things do you have?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Just like right, exactly, there's more stuff to
track.
So, look as we.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation, but as we kind of
start to wind things down, onething that I always like to do
is to give my guests anopportunity to share you know
what's in their content, dietand what, what they're paying
attention to, because it's it'salways fascinating to to to see
(39:26):
you know what folks arelistening to and even if it's
not, you know CS related, it'ssuper cool.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
I gotta be honest, I I do get on LinkedIn and I like
to read, you know, like, what isthrown at me.
I think I just like really havea lot of like peers and in the
industry and the biz that I liketo talk to and bounce ideas off
of.
I don't listen to.
Sorry, I don't really listen toa lot of podcasts Like I
(39:55):
probably should get into it alittle bit more.
But yeah, I really like readinga lot about the product, like
growth function.
Cause I think that's veryinteresting to me.
It's so funny in like acustomer facing, like having a
customer facing background, andnow being at the opposite end
where you're like do anythingyou possibly can to not
(40:16):
interface with the humans.
So it's like an interestingchallenge and yeah, I think it's
, I think it's cool.
So I read a lot of that, likethe Lenny, you know.
Lenny podcast, little blurbs.
From time to time I'm more of areader than a listener.
So, I'll like read the recaps.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, that's awesome, I love it.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, I should probably do more.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
I mean should, don't should yourself, you know, it's
all good, it's whatever it isfor you.
Um, I love that saying.
By the way, don't shouldyourself.
We use it a lot in our house,don't should yourself.
Just be you.
Is there anyone that you mightwant to give a shout out to?
Maybe somebody on LinkedIn thatyou paid a lot of attention to,
(40:57):
that that's doing cool stuff indigital.
Or maybe you know some of your,some of the Pendo customers
that are doing cool stuff indigital.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Oh my gosh, there's so many I feel like there's so
many Pendo customers that Ilearned a lot from.
There was a recent um post fromthe head of customer success at
a HubSpot I don't know if youfollow her Daphne Costa.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Lopez, I think it's great.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
So, um, she just, it was like my two worlds combining
around, like customer successand product growth where, like I
don't know, a lot of timespeople think they're at odds
with each other.
Like I said, they think productled or digital is like trying
to replace humans.
But it was a really interestingum post just about, like I
(41:46):
don't know how to invest in likean integrated go to market
strategy.
Yeah, it's everywhere, and Ifeel like Pendo is at a point
now where we're starting to kindof converge and realizing that
like we were doing a lot ofthings in these silos.
Um, anyway, I thought it was areally good I can send you the
link to the um to the past.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, I love her stuff.
Um, I'm constantly in awe.
At how you know, usually whenyou, when you publish a lot of
quantity, your quality tends togo down, but she's always on it
and like the stuff that shepublishes yeah that is true.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
I do always kind of perk up when I see her stuff pop
up.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah for sure.
Well, cool.
Um, aside from, I guess,linkedin, which is the the
normal place of engagement thesedays, and in the professional
environment, where can peoplekind of find you engage with you
, connect with you?
All that fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
That's pretty much where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I don't have a podcast to promote.
I don't have a book to promote.
I'm just on LinkedIn.
If you want to connect, I'mhappy to, and I love, love, love
talking about all thingsdigital scale, customer
education, whatever you want tocall it.
I love talking to folks,whether you're a Pendo customer
or not, I'm happy to connect.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Well, I, you know, I love kindof your whole aura about things
and, um, you know what we'vetalked about today, obviously,
but I really appreciate yourtime and, uh, you know, sharing
your insights with us supervaluable stuff and and, yeah,
thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of the
digital customer success podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
It really helps us to grow andto provide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the digitalcustomer success definition word
map and get more details aboutthe show at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
(43:51):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
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