Kari Ardalan of Qualtrics is a staple in the CS community and has been leading scaled motions for YEARS - which is sometime that not a lot of people can say. She also sits on Gainsight's Digital Advisory Board - so yeah, she's qualified to talk about this stuff. :-)
In this fantastic conversation, we talk about:
- Building digital first with humans coming in off of the back of those motions
- The evolution of ‘scaled’ from just email and outbound events to a push to come inbound
- Building one place portal where customers can go for everything and where CSMs can interact with their customers
- How Digital is structured at Qualtrics across various departments
- Internal cross-collaboration on digital motions
- What to look out for in a digital leader - specifically cross-collaboration and a varied background
- Focusing on Support deflection metrics and areas to automate
- Other interesting metrics in use at Qualtrics: % CTAs launched, penetration rate of closed success CTAs (conversation), Monthly Active Users, Monthly Active Customers, Flow Completion, % of Renewals Not Assisted by Humans
- Balancing being tactical and strategic as a leader
- Using special interests among the team to drive career growth and creativity - including Hackathons
- Cool examples of digital motions including customer-facing scorecards, micro-learning, AI and self-serve portals.
- AI bot & recommendation engine implementation at Qualtrics
- Letting data tell you who the customer personas are
- The dependency on operations work streams to get things done
Enjoy! I sure did...
Kari's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariardalan/
Link to Kari's post about the qualities of a Digital CS Leader: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kariardalan_digitalsuccess-leadership-recruitment-activity-7175101395631570944-qujn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Shoutouts:
- Delores Cooper (Zendesk): https://www.linkedin.com/in/delorescooper/
- Austin Kwon (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinkwon/
- Kelly Bray (MongoDB): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-bray-1684166/
- Rimple Patel (Eightfold): https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimpledpatel/
+++++++++++++++++
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're seeing less outbound because it's noisy and
annoying, and more of like, hey,a push to come inbound to do a
lot of these self-servicemotions.
So you're seeing an emergenceof these, like self-serve
portals or these self-serviceexperiences, which, to me, are
super, super cool, as well aswhen you can integrate the AI
(00:23):
and the bots.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And once again, welcome to the Digital Customer
Success Podcast with me, alexTrukovich.
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.
(00:47):
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.
Greetings and welcome to theDigital Customer Success Podcast
.
It is episode 49.
So great to have you back.
As usual, 49, close to 50.
(01:07):
Yeah, it's one less than 50.
Jeez, just real quick.
Before we get started, areminder I do send out a weekly
newsletter along with theepisode.
That includes not only the shownotes and info about the
upcoming episode, but I alsowrite quite a bit about digital
in there.
Most recently, I wrote abouthow digital customer success
(01:30):
people have the mindset ofMacGyver, which totally dates me
.
But I don't know.
We do a whole lot with.
You know what we have around usthe duct tape and the bobby
pins and you know, in the caseof digital, it's the tools that
we have around us and we'rewe're scrappy like that.
So so go check that out.
Subscribe atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
(01:50):
Today I'm joined by CarrieArdalan of Qualtrics.
Um, she is a staple in not onlyCS but digital CS because she's
been doing scaled for a longtime, um, and has her finger
firmly on the pulse of thiswhole digital revolution, scaled
revolution in customer successand is doing it extremely
(02:13):
successfully at Qualtrics.
She's pretty much, I think, thenumber one reference that
Gainsight always throws out whenthey're asked you know who's
doing digital?
Real well, pretty mucheverybody I've talked to
Gainsight says, hey, go checkout Qualtrics.
Anyway, in this episode we diginto obviously you know things
about her background and youknow what she's doing at
(02:35):
Qualtrics.
One of the hot takes that shehad is the fact that digital and
scaled is transitioning alittle bit more from an outbound
type environment to being muchmore inbound and really focused
on self-serve.
So that was great.
You know we talk about balancingstrategic and tactical, so a
lot of great content in thisepisode with Kerry Ardalan of
(02:58):
Qualtrics.
I hope you enjoy it, because Isure did.
It's been a little while sincewe first started talking about
this and I'm glad we made ithappen and I'm glad you joined.
Um, you know, I mean one thingthat uh is the obligatory
podcast thing is to just kind ofsay, hey, who are you, what do
(03:18):
you do, and all that kind ofstuff.
Um, and it'd be great to kindof get a little bit of
background.
The one thing I will say isyou're one of those few people
in the world that has been doingCS since it was called account
management.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, honestly.
Even before it was a thing tobe honest, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Right yeah.
So what's that journey beenlike for you Even before?
It was a thing to be honest,Right yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So what's that journey been like for you?
Yeah, so it's been interesting.
I started gosh decades ago insales, right out of college, but
I worked for a reseller forAdobe and so it was kind of a
mixture of sales and CS, but itwas like your typical 50 cold
calls a day, managing a lot ofcustomers at scale.
(04:06):
And then I moved over to amarket research firm and again,
this was before CS was a thing,this was more member services,
and that was my first foray intonow what's called scaled
success.
So we had, like gosh I think Iwant to say 200, 300 accounts.
It was in region, so we didmeet them in person, but we were
(04:26):
KPI on engagements and that waslike the first time that I was
like interesting, what if I metwith 30 customers in one and I
started to like blow myengagements out of the water?
And my retention rates werereally high.
So it was it.
It's really cool that I startedthat so early in my career.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Does that mean, you got paid really high too?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, I did really well there.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You blew it out of the water.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, but I moved to Enterprise CS, which that was
like your typical path,especially being in Washington
DC.
I did a lot of public sectorand regulated industry accounts
and started moving up intomanagement.
There I managed the whole Eastcoast and at that time scale
came back into my life becauseVox at the time said hey, we
(05:11):
can't keep throwing headcount atthese things, and so I I raised
my hand to build out theirscaled success team and so it
was kind of like my earliercareer coming back, which was
awesome.
And then I now work atQualtrics managing really a lot
of post-sale services.
(05:32):
So I have community, we run aself-serve portal, I run events,
we have lifecycle design teamand then I also have a frontline
scale success team.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Dang, you got your hands full.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, it's a lot, but it's good, because I get to
kind of control everything,which is nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And you've probably built a lovely team around you
that you know can specialize.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
obviously, Honestly, I wouldn't even be able to do
anything without them.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, for sure Love it.
That's cool, awesome.
Well, I mean, what betterperson to ask the standard
question that I ask all myguests, which is to say like,
what is your elevator pitch ofdigital CS?
Because you could argue, you'vebeen doing this stuff for a
long time.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
A long time, yeah.
So to me, digital customersuccess is more of like a
strategy right Designed todeliver exceptional digital
experiences, but at scale, andmanaging customers at scale.
One of my most recent LinkedInposts was 77% of businesses have
a demand for digital.
(06:35):
57% of users actually preferdigital experiences over human
ones.
I am one of those people, same.
And then, on top of that, 69%will ditch you if it's a poor
experience, and so for me, it'sreally around driving scalable
adoption retentionbound commsthat we've always seen like
(06:55):
email, and then there's beenthis transformation into inbound
self-service which has allowedfor, like generative AI coming
in, app guidance, communities,one to many programs, all those
(07:17):
great things to help interactand serve your customers
effortlessly.
Excuse me, yeah, and so for me,the impact, of course, is like
streamlining processes, reducingcosts, increasing efficiencies,
like we all like to tout about,but also really meeting those
evolving expectations of ourcustomers today?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
For sure I had.
I think I might've brought thisup on a previous episode.
I don't know if I have yet ornot.
So if you're listening, andthis is a repeat, deal with it.
I had a really amazing digitalexperience not long ago.
That just blew my mind and whatyou said kind of reminded me of
(08:00):
it, but it was in B2C, so itwas the shoot shoot.
Why am I forgetting the name?
Uh, they make storm doorslarson, maybe, larson storm
doors.
I needed to replace a thing onmy storm door and you can't like
go on the internet or on amazonand buy this thing.
(08:20):
And so I, you know, I engagedthe chat bot on their website
and it was like, okay, you know,the chat bot said, okay, go to
your storm door and take apicture of this barcode on your
door.
I was like, okay, this.
And then it's like, okay, whatpart do you need?
And I typed in roughly what Ineeded and I was like, okay, you
need exactly this part.
(08:41):
You bought your storm doorwithin the last five years, or
something like that, and somehowit I've never registered the
thing somehow it knew that Ibought it at lowes within the
last few years and it saysbecause of that, your thing is
still in warranty, so we'regoing to ship it to you for free
.
What's your mailing address?
And this was all a bot doingthis.
(09:02):
And I was like, okay.
So I was, I was kind of blownaway because, working in digital
, I'm like I love a good digitalexperience.
But then yeah, um, what Ireally loved about it is they've
then taken this digitalexperience and combined the
human element on the back end,because the next day I got a
phone call from a real, liveperson who was like hey, you
(09:27):
know, we've.
I just want to let you knowthat part's been shipped today.
How's your door been Like, isthere anything else that you
need?
And I'm just like I wasabsolutely blown away because I
think that's to me.
I've kind of seen what a lot ofpeople strive for in digital
motions.
That doesn't really exist todaybut I think should kind of be
(09:49):
the norm and will hopefully bethe norm going forward.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, I agree.
That's essentially why they atQualtrics they set up my team
like that everything to bedigital first, and then you
should have those proactiveelements through a human.
I actually talked to someonefrom Randstat yesterday and then
you should have those proactiveelements through a human.
I actually talked to someonefrom Randstat yesterday and
they're building that in theirbots as well.
It's like, while you're waitingfor a human to join you, it
(10:13):
walks you through all the thing,all the documentation you need
to provide, and so when theyjoin, they're like oh hi, carrie
, how are you?
We see this as your problem.
They have the answer.
So I do see that like 10xingvery quickly over the next few
years.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, exactly, it's fascinating and I guess this
leads to kind of one of my firstquestions that I had for you,
which is really just tounderstand a little bit based on
your experience.
Based on your experience, whatwas scale like when you first
(10:50):
were in?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
scale versus what it is now and what it's going to be
.
Yeah, so when we first started,it was like your traditional
pooled account management, right, and a lot of it was email
based.
It was like how many customerscan we email in a day?
And it was that strategy oflike one-to-one, one-to-few,
one-to-many, and it was alwaysseen as lesser than which kind
(11:11):
of bothered me too.
It's like, oh, scale doesnothing, and you still hear that
sometimes, but it's like no, weactually do a lot, right, and
you have to explain the model.
So it's interesting.
There's still sometimes a lackof understanding of what that
model is, but it has changed somuch since then and I've kind of
been riding that wave eversince I started gosh, like
several years ago.
(11:32):
But now it all this datatelemetry to send a personalized
email and now it is much moreinbound.
So, because of all the emailchanges that have been happening
with, like Google and Yahoo,you're seeing less outbound
(11:55):
because it's noisy and annoying,and more of like, hey, a push
to come inbound to do a lot ofthese self-service motions.
So you're seeing an emergenceof these like self-serve, a lot
of these self-service motions.
So you're seeing an emergenceof these self-serve portals or
these self-service experiences,which to me are super, super
cool, as well as when you canintegrate the AI and the bots.
So a lot of these companies arestarting to think about how do
(12:18):
I create a LinkedIn or Facebookthat's like my all one-stop shop
for every service you mightneed, so that customers can help
themselves.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, that one place where you can, you can, you can
go versus.
Oh, here's the LMS, and here'sthe community and here's the.
You know the docs and here'sthe.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, and where it's going is we're starting to think
about not only are we buildingout that self-serve portal, but
then where is the human elementin that right?
So we've started with doing allof our intake there, and it
automates routing to Gainsightor Salesforce, depending on the
account number that needs totake the action.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
But we've been talking to companies is could we
have a CSM interacting with thecustomer while they're in that
self-serve portal?
And I'll say we haven't nailedit yet, but that's something we
would love to see in the futureas well.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, and I would imagine part of the conversation
there is that that has thepotential to be super creepy.
You know, hey, I'm watching you.
Yeah, this isn't the doc youwant.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
you want this document yeah that's true, but
hopefully it's like theexperience you just had with
your story more right and we'rereaching out at the appropriate
time, like if there was exactlyin that interaction uh-huh yeah,
for sure, that's super.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I love it.
There was a question that I hadin my brain on the heels of
that that I've completelyforgotten and I didn't even
write it down.
So that's how organized I am,but anyway, I'm sure we'll get
to it.
So I think you talked a littlebit about the structure of the
(14:03):
team and your remit.
Does that encompass the entiredigital strategy at Qualtrics?
Are there other elements You're?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
obviously very digital first, but what does the
lifecycle of digital look like?
Yeah, so there are separateteams, like marketing obviously
owns the online sales motion andthe digital engagements.
From a marketing and salesperspective, we try and align as
much as possible.
So if they enter in as adigital customer, how do we
continue that experience all theway through renewal?
That's been challenging, right,because we're on different
(14:42):
systems, different teams,different processes, but working
to align that much, much morethan we have in the past.
Yeah, um, uh.
And then obviously in product,uh, the product team owns the
PLG motion, but we meet a lot tosay okay, from a customer
success view, these are theresources we think are important
to increase maturity.
(15:02):
And then we partner withproduct on what are like, like
what's the data telemetry or thetrigger points we need to look
out for as far as thosein-problem experiences.
So those are why the two Idon't own, but we heavily
partner in those areas you haveto.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
One of the things that um, I uh ran across the
other day.
Actually, you posted onlinkedin about the qualities you
look for in a leader, like indigital um and and the list.
I'll link the post in the inthe show notes because it's
(15:37):
fascinating, because the list isspot on and it's like, but it's
extensive, it's like, it's likebut it's extensive, it's like
holy cow, like where do you findthese people now?
Like you know, seriously.
But I think one of the pointsyou just made reminded me of
that, because so much of what wedo in digital is that
(16:00):
collaborative kind of handshakeinternally with other
organizations, because you'vegot the sales handoff situation,
then you've got supporthappening in the background as
well, and then you've got yourrenewals team and then you've
got product inputs and ops teamsand all that kind of stuff, and
so you know, I guess my pointis that you know that
(16:25):
collaborative element is sotricky but so vital to a digital
program.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, and it's probably the most important
characteristic, and that in adiverse background.
I think, too, like you can'tjust have someone come from
marketing or just from customersuccess, like I.
I think one thing I prioritizedthroughout my career was, uh,
definitely differentiation,right, like experiencing all
different areas, and so I'vebeen in ops, I've been
(16:53):
enterprise, I've been scale,I've been in sales, I've been in
support.
So knowing all those differentthings has really helped me in
my career better understand thebusiness needs of those partners
.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Totally.
Somebody asked me recently youknow kind of what what my view
on support is in relation todigital and my answer was like I
love going and just bunkingwith support because that's
where you learn what's what theheartbeat is, what the pulse is
of the customer, like what theproblems are, what's working,
(17:28):
what's not working.
I just I love sitting in thesupport org and just listening.
It's so cool.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, agreed, and that's one thing.
We did take ownership ofsupport deflection metrics and
that brought us a lot closerbecause they're able now to
focus on their frontline teamsengaging with customers, where
we take on like what is thecontent we need in the support
portal and how does the botgoing to work, et cetera, and so
it's kind of eased theirconcerns there.
(17:59):
Where that's my wheelhouseright is automating manual
processes and letting customersself-serve, so not having that
be siloed has been helpful aswell.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
You reminded me of what my question was in your
support kind of ticketdeflection thing, because that's
such a cool metric to measure,kind of like you know what's
happening, kind of betweenrenewals, so to speak.
You know, it's like you knowhow.
How are you in, how are you,how effective are you at
engaging customers to where,over time, you see that
(18:31):
reduction in in in supportcontact which is which is cool,
but are there other kind ofmetrics that you're you're
tracking aside from, like youknow, NRR, GRR, all the usual
suspects and things like that?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, so because we also activate frontline teams,
we've got like percent of CTAslaunched, penetration, rate of
closed success CTAs.
So like, how many customers arewe converting with our human
teams, our scale frontline andthen from a digital perspective,
because I own that self-serviceportal.
(19:05):
We do measure monthly activecustomer and monthly active user
and then these goal completionpaths.
So if they came in there toonboard, what did they click on?
Did they get through theonboarding materials and have
they hit exit criteria foronboarding without talking to
the human?
So those types of things as faras the self-serve portal.
(19:26):
And then we do own a ticketdeflection metric and then we
also own a percent of renewalsnon-assisted by humans as well.
Oh cool.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, non-assisted by humans.
I like it, I know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
You're seeing a lot of people these days not want to
even talk to humans during thatrenewal experience, and so
again, especially if they comein through online sales, we want
to make sure they can renewonline as well.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, don't, don't make them talk to a human if
they don't want to.
So kind of back on the on.
I guess the leadership front,one of the things that you and I
(20:15):
talked about as part of ourearlier discussions was that
kind of balance point betweenbeing strategic and tactical,
because you sound like you're alot like me, like you like to be
in the weeds and you like tounderstand what's going on and
you liked you know kind of theknowledge of the backend, but
too much of that and you'regetting sunken down into the
quicksand and and it's hard tokind of pull back and and and
and be strategic and be forwardthinking and what it is you need
(20:35):
to do with the team.
What's your, what's yourapproach to that?
Just in general.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, I would say I wasn't very good at it at the
beginning.
Like, I am like a roll yoursleeves up, I'll do it type of
person, but it comes to thedetriment of my team because I'm
not empowering them to do it.
So I've kind of zoomed out abit more right and doing more of
(21:00):
bringing my team along on thejourney of like what is the
strategic aspect that we'retrying to achieve, and then
break that down into thetactical execution areas and
delegate that um, and then, ifit's missing the mark, sometimes
I'll give them an example oflike what I'm expecting like,
and that's through a template ora program guide, something like
(21:22):
that, and then, but thenthey're able to go and do the
rest of it themselves and thatallows or likes emails, you know
, or likes copywriting, orsomething like that.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
And even though it's not necessarily part of their
day gig, like go do a project,do something, you know.
I love that because it's likeum, I mean a as a, as a leader.
It kind of shows that, hey,you're actually listening,
you're actually engaging withyour employees, but it works to
the, the, the, the overallbenefit of the team when you
(22:17):
have people doing stuff thatthey like doing.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, qualtrics is very good at that.
We have very cross-functionalOKRs and then we even run a
regular hackathon where peoplecan come up with different ideas
for teams and we implement them.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
So love that.
Love hackathons that's cool,Awesome.
Are there?
Are there, like digital motions, getting more into the tactical
speaking of tactical speakingof tactical are there digital
motions that you areparticularly fond of, proud of,
or that you've seen in the wildMaybe that you haven't created,
(22:51):
but that you've seen in the wildthat are really cool and left
an imprint?
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, I mean so I've been involved in several
projects.
I'll name a few.
So I've been involved inseveral projects, I'll name a
few.
But when I joined Qualtrics,this idea of that self-serve
portal, unlocked a whole newdoor for me, I will say, in just
the way to deliver differentexperiences and then I think
again, powering that through AIhas been massive as well and
(23:18):
just how you're able to deliverpersonalized experiences and at
scale, and I'm not programming amillion email journeys anymore.
So that, to me, was an unlock.
Other companies and teams thatI've been admiring Autodesk has
an incredible e-commerce motionthat we've been studying and
trying to build out ourselves.
(23:38):
You just interviewed DoloresCooper the other day with a
short form video learning.
Zendesk was the first time Isaw that kind of TikTok style of
enablement and the engagementthey get on.
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
It's insane, and it's so like scrappy and wonderful,
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
And then the CSMs do it, so they feel the impact as
well and it's it's sometimesbeat some of marketing's content
, so that was good to learn.
When I was there, workday wasone I was a part of.
It's more of a self-service ofadoption value drivers.
So what they were trying tobuild out where customers could
(24:16):
choose some sort of value driverthey were looking to achieve
and it spit out all the featuresthat they needed to adapt to do
that if they weren't using them.
I wasn't there to see the endof that and how that worked, but
that's something I've alwaysbeen very interested in and how
to replicate.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And then the last one is Salesforce has a customer
facing health score calledals,which I like as well because
it's very transparent.
It allows the customer to kindof manage their own health and
what's important to them.
So that's another area we'vebeen looking at as well.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Back on the AI front.
What are you doing today froman AI perspective?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, we started with the bot, so we launched intake
through the hub, but noweventually all intake will go
through that bot, right, and weare scanning support
documentation, customer successdocumentation, thought
leadership, the whole gamut.
We have a ton of content, and sothe idea is they would
(25:22):
self-serve as much as they can,but if they cannot, it will
route them to their sales rep,their customer success manager
or support, and so we're workingmore on that automated routing
on the backend, but againpushing them to self-serve first
.
And then the next area is thisidea of a recommendation engine.
So when you're in our portal itwill surface up like this
(25:45):
training might be important toyou, this event, this product
release, etc.
And again, like I said, tryingto build out that like Facebook
or LinkedIn feed where customerscan come in and see all the
relevant things to them.
Other things are more internalright, like understanding
customer health and theiradoption of certain features.
(26:06):
I actually talked to a gal fromLinkedIn today and they're
doing a ton around clusteringcustomers and they're utilizing
AI to see what differentclusters and features they're
using, and it's helped themenhance their email
personalization a ton.
So I always thought that wasinteresting to do.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
It's kind of like the advanced version of what you
were talking about, where youknow a customer identifies like
what their goal is.
Like you can I meantheoretically, you can use AI to
really analyze customer usageacross all their users and
figure out okay this is whatthey're trying to do, so let's
surface this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
What are the different cohorts of customers
and or personas, and letting thedata tell us who those people
are, and so that's beeninteresting as well.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
AI has is starting to help us move away from rules
based automation and andespecially like from a health
scoring perspective and thosekinds of things.
Like we all live in rules-basedworlds.
We've gotten very good atwriting these rules based on the
data that we have and all thatkind of stuff, and you know, I
(27:17):
see more and more kind ofplatforms that are switching
towards rules.
You know just reallyintelligent ways of doing stuff
without having to get into theweeds of the rules and just
using plain English to do thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah exactly.
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I don't know where I was going with that, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
For me anyway, I don't know if this is your
experience, but when, when, whenI've been, you know, working on
these digital motions andimplementing things and trying
to get, you know, trying to getprograms off the line, for me my
experience has been like look,we're going to do V1.
It's going to be scrappy, it'sgoing to be ugly, there's going
(28:00):
to be some manual stuff that wehave to do as part of it, but
we're going to learn a ton andthen we're going to automate
based off of that.
But we're going to learn a tonand then we're going to automate
based off of that and we'regoing to iterate based off of
that.
We're going to make somemistakes and we're going to
learn from that.
And I'm curious if I thinkwe've all gone through that
period, you know, inimplementing stuff, where we've
made these blunders and we'vesaid, oh, that doesn't work, so
(28:21):
let's pivot.
Are there any kind of classicthings that you've experienced
along those lines where you'vepivoted hard based on initial
assumptions being wrong orsomething?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, and you always enter the design phase right and
you're like this is how itshould work and it's so simple.
And then you go to the op sideof the house and it's like, oh,
we can't segment customers likethat, or we don't know if a
customer is a multi-year or anauto renewal, and so you then
have to like regroup and say howare we going to deliver this
(28:52):
experience, or do we ditch ituntil the company is at a
certain level of maturity tothen go be able to digitize that
?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So we have a lot of things like built on the back
end ready to go.
We're just waiting, becauseoperations prioritization is
probably the hardest thing todeal with and so getting those
resources to help.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
There have been times whereI've inserted myself into
various ops projects justbecause they are.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
You know, it's like a massive dependency on doing
this one thing, where it's justlike, hey, you know, know, let
me help you, drive your kpis anddrive this thing over the line,
you know yeah and I thinkthere's a lot of instances where
we have to go do that yeah, Itend to be very nosy in their
work because a lot of times,even if they're launching a new
(29:40):
process right especially if it'scustomer facing a lot of the
times they're like well, we'llget that information via email
and I'm like, but's so manual,like we could put it in the
self-serve portal.
So, um, they don't always loveme when I interrupt and
intervene in some of thoseprocesses, but we're good at
partnering on the end result.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, I mean, it means you're doing your job, you
know, rather than just idlystanding by.
You know, rather than just idlystanding by.
Yeah, yeah, so funny, I mean,you know it.
Um, one of the things that Ithink I've been battling with um
is the fact that look,salesforce or HubSpot or
(30:21):
whatever, um, any CRM is goingto be extremely focused on the
sales motion, and rightfully so.
You know it's.
It's kind of you know, all thetools that are built around it
are very sales focused andthings like that.
And then it gets to the postsale and you have this data set
that is very focused on, youknow, the sales process and
(30:43):
whatnot.
But when but then you realizepost-sale you need all this
other stuff that you couldcollect pre-sale, and so I you
know, my own experience is I'mconstantly like chasing these
things.
Well, why didn't we collectthis contact name pre-sale?
Or you know, why didn't wecapture, you know, these goals
(31:03):
and outcomes pre-sale, and canwe have those flow over and like
those kinds of things?
Does that ring true with youtoo?
Like, do you battle that stuffall the time?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
And the good news is we have alot of cross-functional
leadership meetings, and sothat's the time where we surface
like, hey, if we're not gettingthis data, then I have to go do
all these manual things to getit, and it's impacting on
customer experience, and sosales has been a good partner on
like an opportunity can't closeuntil certain fields are filled
(31:35):
out.
But you always have to balancethat too with, like the
administrative, how people don'twant people in sales doing
administrative things right, andso there's always a healthy
balance there of what shouldthey be entering versus not.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Totally, and a lot of times when you force somebody
to enter something to close adeal, they're going to just
enter something.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, there's a lot of bad data
out there, so that's been achallenge, I will say, a lot of
times too, where someone goes inwith the intent to purchase
something that changes so muchthrough the implementation and
then when they actually startusing it.
So I do think even havingadditional intervention points
(32:16):
to get that data is important aswell.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I think a lot of folks arestarting to use in-product for
those kinds of things which issuper powerful of folks are
starting to use in-product forthose kinds of things which is
super powerful.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, gainsight's a good one, like the first time
you log in, you say your roleand your use case and those
types of things, and so and itre-asks.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Actually, I was talking to Aaron Hatton, who's
kind of behind that program alittle bit, and he was like yeah
, I think we collected initialround, but then we realized we
need to ask this again becausepeople change roles and change
yeah.
So it's interesting becauseit's you know, once you start,
once you collect the data, theclock starts ticking on that
(32:57):
data.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
We have a my Profile in ourcustomer hub and we're looking
at do we get like a CDP on theback backend to start to store
some of that data?
But we've talked about exactlythat Like how often do you nudge
them to fix that?
Do you get something like azoom business info to help keep
that data up to date as well andautomate it?
(33:19):
And so it depends how, I guesshow much funding you have to do
all those things, but it'sdefinitely something to pay
attention to.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Any other kind of cool thingsthat you're working on that you
want to highlight or, like youknow your cool things your team
is working on kind of fun stuffthat the that the audience might
appreciate.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, I mean a lot of it.
I.
We do so much across the wholegamut.
It's always astonishing to mehow much we release per quarter.
I will say the bot right now isthe most exciting.
Like, our unauthenticated isdeflecting at like 70% at this
point, and that was massivechange management.
(34:04):
Our customers at first werelike, where did my support
buttons go?
Why do I have to talk to a bot?
But we're starting to see agreater adoption of that and
them being like oh, this is sucha better experience because I'm
able to get my answers, andrather quickly.
But yeah, I would say that'sthe top one.
And then again e-commerce.
We are moving to a new markettexture and figuring out how do
(34:27):
we do that via self-serve aswell has been a challenge,
because we want to make surethat is an optimal experience
for our customers too, andsomething that we're not forcing
but that they see the value in.
But how do you do that withouthuman intervention has been a
challenge, has been a challenge.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
So the the uptake on the bot is fascinating to me
because to me, the fact thatusers are starting to get used
to it means that it it'sactually doing what it's
supposed to you know Um and soI'm curious what, what, what was
your testing campaign aroundthat Like like yeah.
Did you roll it out?
Speaker 1 (35:03):
We launched it internally, first on a gain site
, so we embedded the bot onGainsight, so my frontline team
were the first testers of it,and so you know customers ask
questions on calls.
They were able to search it andthen their email responses
after meetings, and so that wasthe first launch.
And then we launched it to ourunauthenticated customers, so
(35:26):
anyone on the support portal butperhaps not logged in can ask
most basic questions.
And then we just most recentlylaunched the authenticated
version and we did it for thedigital tier first, and then
we're starting to slowly bringthat up into different segments.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
That's cool.
Are the internal teams stillusing it?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
They are.
And then we've considered youknow, do we pump in ticket data
in there and do automatedresponses based on that?
We have to test out theaccuracy and obviously work
through some legal requirementsbefore we do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Well, look, I've reallyappreciated all the insight and
like tactical kind of practicalknowledge that you've brought to
the convo.
So that's super helpful and Ican't wait to share it with
everybody.
What's, as we kind of rounddown like, what do you, what's
(36:20):
in your content diet?
What do you pay attention to tokeep yourself up to speed?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, absolutely One your podcast.
Of course, people come onLinkedIn.
I I watch that feed a lot.
If if folks are sharinginteresting things, I connect
with them and we meet one-on-one.
I had one this morning whichwas great, and then I'm on
Gainsight's digital advisoryboard and a lot of different
(36:46):
customers from Gainsight sharetheir digital motions.
And then ValueEyes is anotherpartner of Gainsight.
They have a really good digitalmaturity model and some thought
leadership around digital aswell.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, for sure.
I've seen that maturity model.
It's nicely detailed, for sure.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, it's very detailed.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
It's very detailed, it's a little repetitive, I will
say, but it's, it's nice.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, yeah, I've been helping them on how it's just
that digital maturity frameworkis so hard because you can start
from really anywhere, rightLike you don't have to start
with email, and so that to me,has been hard to translate.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, it's true, I've been working on kind of a
similar thing, like a version ofit, and I think the thing that
I keep going back to is just thefact that, to your point, the
variability that exists inanyone's digital program is just
, I mean, it's infinite right.
Infinite right, so you can'tplunk a model that worked one
(37:46):
place down into another place,and so it's like okay because of
that, like how do you measuredigital maturity?
That isn't like okay, here's anemail campaign or here's in-app
or here's whatever.
It's like it's a little.
Yeah, it's trickier yeah, Iagree.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
I mean, I've done it at three companies and it's
looked very different at allthree, so I'm in full agreement.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
For sure, for sure.
Do you want to give a shout outor kudos to anyone that's doing
cool stuff in digital?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, of course I mean.
Well, dolores already gave oneon LinkedIn, but she's an up and
comer in digital.
Austin Kwan is another one.
He's over at LinkedIn.
He used to be my manager overat.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Box, but we share what works.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
He does B2B as well as B2C, so it's interesting to
hear from him how he approachesthose two motions.
Kelly Bray at MongoDB she and Iused to work together at Box,
but she's kind of risen upthrough the scale and digital
world as well.
And then Rimpel Patel she's thechief customer officer at
Eightfold, but we used to worktogether at Workday and she
taught me the most aroundcustomer experience and digital.
(38:54):
So that's awesome.
Those are my mentors definitelygo to for any help.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
That's a strong set of mentors right there, yeah,
where?
So?
Where can people find you,engage with you and interact
with you, and all that goodstuff?
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, definitely on LinkedIn, People reach out all
the time and ask to connect.
Um, I'm very open to that.
Um, I always love to hear whatother folks are doing.
Uh, and offer my advice in anyway I can.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, you, you're, you're more than forthright with
that stuff.
Um, on LinkedIn, both publiclyand, I'm sure you know,
privately people hit you up indms all the time, I'm sure.
So, yeah, cool, thanks againfor sharing your wealth and your
experience with us.
It's, it's uh, it's beenawesome chatting with you and I
can't share it out, thank youthank you for joining me for
(39:43):
this episode of the digitalcustomer 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 Terkovich.
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
You're seeing less outbound because it's noisy and
annoying, and more of like, hey,a push to come inbound to do a
lot of these self-servicemotions.
So you're seeing an emergenceof these, like self-serve
portals or these self-serviceexperiences, which, to me, are
super, super cool, as well aswhen you can integrate the AI
(00:23):
and the bots.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And once again, welcome to the Digital Customer
Success Podcast with me, alexTrukovich.
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.
(00:47):
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.
Greetings and welcome to theDigital Customer Success Podcast
.
It is episode 49.
So great to have you back.
As usual, 49, close to 50.
(01:07):
Yeah, it's one less than 50.
Jeez, just real quick.
Before we get started, areminder I do send out a weekly
newsletter along with theepisode.
That includes not only the shownotes and info about the
upcoming episode, but I alsowrite quite a bit about digital
in there.
Most recently, I wrote abouthow digital customer success
(01:30):
people have the mindset ofMacGyver, which totally dates me
.
But I don't know.
We do a whole lot with.
You know what we have around usthe duct tape and the bobby
pins and you know, in the caseof digital, it's the tools that
we have around us and we'rewe're scrappy like that.
So so go check that out.
Subscribe atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
(01:50):
Today I'm joined by CarrieArdalan of Qualtrics.
Um, she is a staple in not onlyCS but digital CS because she's
been doing scaled for a longtime, um, and has her finger
firmly on the pulse of thiswhole digital revolution, scaled
revolution in customer successand is doing it extremely
(02:13):
successfully at Qualtrics.
She's pretty much, I think, thenumber one reference that
Gainsight always throws out whenthey're asked you know who's
doing digital?
Real well, pretty mucheverybody I've talked to
Gainsight says, hey, go checkout Qualtrics.
Anyway, in this episode we diginto obviously you know things
about her background and youknow what she's doing at
(02:35):
Qualtrics.
One of the hot takes that shehad is the fact that digital and
scaled is transitioning alittle bit more from an outbound
type environment to being muchmore inbound and really focused
on self-serve.
So that was great.
You know we talk about balancingstrategic and tactical, so a
lot of great content in thisepisode with Kerry Ardalan of
(02:58):
Qualtrics.
I hope you enjoy it, because Isure did.
It's been a little while sincewe first started talking about
this and I'm glad we made ithappen and I'm glad you joined.
Um, you know, I mean one thingthat uh is the obligatory
podcast thing is to just kind ofsay, hey, who are you, what do
(03:18):
you do, and all that kind ofstuff.
Um, and it'd be great to kindof get a little bit of
background.
The one thing I will say isyou're one of those few people
in the world that has been doingCS since it was called account
management.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, honestly.
Even before it was a thing tobe honest, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Right yeah.
So what's that journey beenlike for you Even before?
It was a thing to be honest,Right yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So what's that journey been like for you?
Yeah, so it's been interesting.
I started gosh decades ago insales, right out of college, but
I worked for a reseller forAdobe and so it was kind of a
mixture of sales and CS, but itwas like your typical 50 cold
calls a day, managing a lot ofcustomers at scale.
(04:06):
And then I moved over to amarket research firm and again,
this was before CS was a thing,this was more member services,
and that was my first foray intonow what's called scaled
success.
So we had, like gosh I think Iwant to say 200, 300 accounts.
It was in region, so we didmeet them in person, but we were
(04:26):
KPI on engagements and that waslike the first time that I was
like interesting, what if I metwith 30 customers in one and I
started to like blow myengagements out of the water?
And my retention rates werereally high.
So it was it.
It's really cool that I startedthat so early in my career.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Does that mean, you got paid really high too?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, I did really well there.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You blew it out of the water.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, but I moved to Enterprise CS, which that was
like your typical path,especially being in Washington
DC.
I did a lot of public sectorand regulated industry accounts
and started moving up intomanagement.
There I managed the whole Eastcoast and at that time scale
came back into my life becauseVox at the time said hey, we
(05:11):
can't keep throwing headcount atthese things, and so I I raised
my hand to build out theirscaled success team and so it
was kind of like my earliercareer coming back, which was
awesome.
And then I now work atQualtrics managing really a lot
of post-sale services.
(05:32):
So I have community, we run aself-serve portal, I run events,
we have lifecycle design teamand then I also have a frontline
scale success team.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Dang, you got your hands full.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, it's a lot, but it's good, because I get to
kind of control everything,which is nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And you've probably built a lovely team around you
that you know can specialize.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
obviously, Honestly, I wouldn't even be able to do
anything without them.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, for sure Love it.
That's cool, awesome.
Well, I mean, what betterperson to ask the standard
question that I ask all myguests, which is to say like,
what is your elevator pitch ofdigital CS?
Because you could argue, you'vebeen doing this stuff for a
long time.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
A long time, yeah.
So to me, digital customersuccess is more of like a
strategy right Designed todeliver exceptional digital
experiences, but at scale, andmanaging customers at scale.
One of my most recent LinkedInposts was 77% of businesses have
a demand for digital.
(06:35):
57% of users actually preferdigital experiences over human
ones.
I am one of those people, same.
And then, on top of that, 69%will ditch you if it's a poor
experience, and so for me, it'sreally around driving scalable
adoption retentionbound commsthat we've always seen like
(06:55):
email, and then there's beenthis transformation into inbound
self-service which has allowedfor, like generative AI coming
in, app guidance, communities,one to many programs, all those
(07:17):
great things to help interactand serve your customers
effortlessly.
Excuse me, yeah, and so for me,the impact, of course, is like
streamlining processes, reducingcosts, increasing efficiencies,
like we all like to tout about,but also really meeting those
evolving expectations of ourcustomers today?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
For sure I had.
I think I might've brought thisup on a previous episode.
I don't know if I have yet ornot.
So if you're listening, andthis is a repeat, deal with it.
I had a really amazing digitalexperience not long ago.
That just blew my mind and whatyou said kind of reminded me of
(08:00):
it, but it was in B2C, so itwas the shoot shoot.
Why am I forgetting the name?
Uh, they make storm doorslarson, maybe, larson storm
doors.
I needed to replace a thing onmy storm door and you can't like
go on the internet or on amazonand buy this thing.
(08:20):
And so I, you know, I engagedthe chat bot on their website
and it was like, okay, you know,the chat bot said, okay, go to
your storm door and take apicture of this barcode on your
door.
I was like, okay, this.
And then it's like, okay, whatpart do you need?
And I typed in roughly what Ineeded and I was like, okay, you
need exactly this part.
(08:41):
You bought your storm doorwithin the last five years, or
something like that, and somehowit I've never registered the
thing somehow it knew that Ibought it at lowes within the
last few years and it saysbecause of that, your thing is
still in warranty, so we'regoing to ship it to you for free
.
What's your mailing address?
And this was all a bot doingthis.
(09:02):
And I was like, okay.
So I was, I was kind of blownaway because, working in digital
, I'm like I love a good digitalexperience.
But then yeah, um, what Ireally loved about it is they've
then taken this digitalexperience and combined the
human element on the back end,because the next day I got a
phone call from a real, liveperson who was like hey, you
(09:27):
know, we've.
I just want to let you knowthat part's been shipped today.
How's your door been Like, isthere anything else that you
need?
And I'm just like I wasabsolutely blown away because I
think that's to me.
I've kind of seen what a lot ofpeople strive for in digital
motions.
That doesn't really exist todaybut I think should kind of be
(09:49):
the norm and will hopefully bethe norm going forward.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, I agree.
That's essentially why they atQualtrics they set up my team
like that everything to bedigital first, and then you
should have those proactiveelements through a human.
I actually talked to someonefrom Randstat yesterday and then
you should have those proactiveelements through a human.
I actually talked to someonefrom Randstat yesterday and
they're building that in theirbots as well.
It's like, while you're waitingfor a human to join you, it
(10:13):
walks you through all the thing,all the documentation you need
to provide, and so when theyjoin, they're like oh hi, carrie
, how are you?
We see this as your problem.
They have the answer.
So I do see that like 10xingvery quickly over the next few
years.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, exactly, it's fascinating and I guess this
leads to kind of one of my firstquestions that I had for you,
which is really just tounderstand a little bit based on
your experience.
Based on your experience, whatwas scale like when you first
(10:50):
were in?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
scale versus what it is now and what it's going to be
.
Yeah, so when we first started,it was like your traditional
pooled account management, right, and a lot of it was email
based.
It was like how many customerscan we email in a day?
And it was that strategy oflike one-to-one, one-to-few,
one-to-many, and it was alwaysseen as lesser than which kind
(11:11):
of bothered me too.
It's like, oh, scale doesnothing, and you still hear that
sometimes, but it's like no, weactually do a lot, right, and
you have to explain the model.
So it's interesting.
There's still sometimes a lackof understanding of what that
model is, but it has changed somuch since then and I've kind of
been riding that wave eversince I started gosh, like
several years ago.
(11:32):
But now it all this datatelemetry to send a personalized
email and now it is much moreinbound.
So, because of all the emailchanges that have been happening
with, like Google and Yahoo,you're seeing less outbound
(11:55):
because it's noisy and annoying,and more of like, hey, a push
to come inbound to do a lot ofthese self-service motions.
So you're seeing an emergenceof these like self-serve, a lot
of these self-service motions.
So you're seeing an emergenceof these self-serve portals or
these self-service experiences,which to me are super, super
cool, as well as when you canintegrate the AI and the bots.
So a lot of these companies arestarting to think about how do
(12:18):
I create a LinkedIn or Facebookthat's like my all one-stop shop
for every service you mightneed, so that customers can help
themselves.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, that one place where you can, you can, you can
go versus.
Oh, here's the LMS, and here'sthe community and here's the.
You know the docs and here'sthe.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, and where it's going is we're starting to think
about not only are we buildingout that self-serve portal, but
then where is the human elementin that right?
So we've started with doing allof our intake there, and it
automates routing to Gainsightor Salesforce, depending on the
account number that needs totake the action.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
But we've been talking to companies is could we
have a CSM interacting with thecustomer while they're in that
self-serve portal?
And I'll say we haven't nailedit yet, but that's something we
would love to see in the futureas well.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, and I would imagine part of the conversation
there is that that has thepotential to be super creepy.
You know, hey, I'm watching you.
Yeah, this isn't the doc youwant.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
you want this document yeah that's true, but
hopefully it's like theexperience you just had with
your story more right and we'rereaching out at the appropriate
time, like if there was exactlyin that interaction uh-huh yeah,
for sure, that's super.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I love it.
There was a question that I hadin my brain on the heels of
that that I've completelyforgotten and I didn't even
write it down.
So that's how organized I am,but anyway, I'm sure we'll get
to it.
So I think you talked a littlebit about the structure of the
(14:03):
team and your remit.
Does that encompass the entiredigital strategy at Qualtrics?
Are there other elements You're?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
obviously very digital first, but what does the
lifecycle of digital look like?
Yeah, so there are separateteams, like marketing obviously
owns the online sales motion andthe digital engagements.
From a marketing and salesperspective, we try and align as
much as possible.
So if they enter in as adigital customer, how do we
continue that experience all theway through renewal?
That's been challenging, right,because we're on different
(14:42):
systems, different teams,different processes, but working
to align that much, much morethan we have in the past.
Yeah, um, uh.
And then obviously in product,uh, the product team owns the
PLG motion, but we meet a lot tosay okay, from a customer
success view, these are theresources we think are important
to increase maturity.
(15:02):
And then we partner withproduct on what are like, like
what's the data telemetry or thetrigger points we need to look
out for as far as thosein-problem experiences.
So those are why the two Idon't own, but we heavily
partner in those areas you haveto.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
One of the things that um, I uh ran across the
other day.
Actually, you posted onlinkedin about the qualities you
look for in a leader, like indigital um and and the list.
I'll link the post in the inthe show notes because it's
(15:37):
fascinating, because the list isspot on and it's like, but it's
extensive, it's like, it's likebut it's extensive, it's like
holy cow, like where do you findthese people now?
Like you know, seriously.
But I think one of the pointsyou just made reminded me of
that, because so much of what wedo in digital is that
(16:00):
collaborative kind of handshakeinternally with other
organizations, because you'vegot the sales handoff situation,
then you've got supporthappening in the background as
well, and then you've got yourrenewals team and then you've
got product inputs and ops teamsand all that kind of stuff, and
so you know, I guess my pointis that you know that
(16:25):
collaborative element is sotricky but so vital to a digital
program.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, and it's probably the most important
characteristic, and that in adiverse background.
I think, too, like you can'tjust have someone come from
marketing or just from customersuccess, like I.
I think one thing I prioritizedthroughout my career was, uh,
definitely differentiation,right, like experiencing all
different areas, and so I'vebeen in ops, I've been
(16:53):
enterprise, I've been scale,I've been in sales, I've been in
support.
So knowing all those differentthings has really helped me in
my career better understand thebusiness needs of those partners
.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Totally.
Somebody asked me recently youknow kind of what what my view
on support is in relation todigital and my answer was like I
love going and just bunkingwith support because that's
where you learn what's what theheartbeat is, what the pulse is
of the customer, like what theproblems are, what's working,
(17:28):
what's not working.
I just I love sitting in thesupport org and just listening.
It's so cool.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, agreed, and that's one thing.
We did take ownership ofsupport deflection metrics and
that brought us a lot closerbecause they're able now to
focus on their frontline teamsengaging with customers, where
we take on like what is thecontent we need in the support
portal and how does the botgoing to work, et cetera, and so
it's kind of eased theirconcerns there.
(17:59):
Where that's my wheelhouseright is automating manual
processes and letting customersself-serve, so not having that
be siloed has been helpful aswell.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
You reminded me of what my question was in your
support kind of ticketdeflection thing, because that's
such a cool metric to measure,kind of like you know what's
happening, kind of betweenrenewals, so to speak.
You know, it's like you knowhow.
How are you in, how are you,how effective are you at
engaging customers to where,over time, you see that
(18:31):
reduction in in in supportcontact which is which is cool,
but are there other kind ofmetrics that you're you're
tracking aside from, like youknow, NRR, GRR, all the usual
suspects and things like that?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, so because we also activate frontline teams,
we've got like percent of CTAslaunched, penetration, rate of
closed success CTAs.
So like, how many customers arewe converting with our human
teams, our scale frontline andthen from a digital perspective,
because I own that self-serviceportal.
(19:05):
We do measure monthly activecustomer and monthly active user
and then these goal completionpaths.
So if they came in there toonboard, what did they click on?
Did they get through theonboarding materials and have
they hit exit criteria foronboarding without talking to
the human?
So those types of things as faras the self-serve portal.
(19:26):
And then we do own a ticketdeflection metric and then we
also own a percent of renewalsnon-assisted by humans as well.
Oh cool.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, non-assisted by humans.
I like it, I know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
You're seeing a lot of people these days not want to
even talk to humans during thatrenewal experience, and so
again, especially if they comein through online sales, we want
to make sure they can renewonline as well.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, don't, don't make them talk to a human if
they don't want to.
So kind of back on the on.
I guess the leadership front,one of the things that you and I
(20:15):
talked about as part of ourearlier discussions was that
kind of balance point betweenbeing strategic and tactical,
because you sound like you're alot like me, like you like to be
in the weeds and you like tounderstand what's going on and
you liked you know kind of theknowledge of the backend, but
too much of that and you'regetting sunken down into the
quicksand and and it's hard tokind of pull back and and and
and be strategic and be forwardthinking and what it is you need
(20:35):
to do with the team.
What's your, what's yourapproach to that?
Just in general.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, I would say I wasn't very good at it at the
beginning.
Like, I am like a roll yoursleeves up, I'll do it type of
person, but it comes to thedetriment of my team because I'm
not empowering them to do it.
So I've kind of zoomed out abit more right and doing more of
(21:00):
bringing my team along on thejourney of like what is the
strategic aspect that we'retrying to achieve, and then
break that down into thetactical execution areas and
delegate that um, and then, ifit's missing the mark, sometimes
I'll give them an example oflike what I'm expecting like,
and that's through a template ora program guide, something like
(21:22):
that, and then, but thenthey're able to go and do the
rest of it themselves and thatallows or likes emails, you know
, or likes copywriting, orsomething like that.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
And even though it's not necessarily part of their
day gig, like go do a project,do something, you know.
I love that because it's likeum, I mean a as a, as a leader.
It kind of shows that, hey,you're actually listening,
you're actually engaging withyour employees, but it works to
the, the, the, the overallbenefit of the team when you
(22:17):
have people doing stuff thatthey like doing.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, qualtrics is very good at that.
We have very cross-functionalOKRs and then we even run a
regular hackathon where peoplecan come up with different ideas
for teams and we implement them.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
So love that.
Love hackathons that's cool,Awesome.
Are there?
Are there, like digital motions, getting more into the tactical
speaking of tactical speakingof tactical are there digital
motions that you areparticularly fond of, proud of,
or that you've seen in the wildMaybe that you haven't created,
(22:51):
but that you've seen in the wildthat are really cool and left
an imprint?
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, I mean so I've been involved in several
projects.
I'll name a few.
So I've been involved inseveral projects, I'll name a
few.
But when I joined Qualtrics,this idea of that self-serve
portal, unlocked a whole newdoor for me, I will say, in just
the way to deliver differentexperiences and then I think
again, powering that through AIhas been massive as well and
(23:18):
just how you're able to deliverpersonalized experiences and at
scale, and I'm not programming amillion email journeys anymore.
So that, to me, was an unlock.
Other companies and teams thatI've been admiring Autodesk has
an incredible e-commerce motionthat we've been studying and
trying to build out ourselves.
(23:38):
You just interviewed DoloresCooper the other day with a
short form video learning.
Zendesk was the first time Isaw that kind of TikTok style of
enablement and the engagementthey get on.
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
It's insane, and it's so like scrappy and wonderful,
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
And then the CSMs do it, so they feel the impact as
well and it's it's sometimesbeat some of marketing's content
, so that was good to learn.
When I was there, workday wasone I was a part of.
It's more of a self-service ofadoption value drivers.
So what they were trying tobuild out where customers could
(24:16):
choose some sort of value driverthey were looking to achieve
and it spit out all the featuresthat they needed to adapt to do
that if they weren't using them.
I wasn't there to see the endof that and how that worked, but
that's something I've alwaysbeen very interested in and how
to replicate.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And then the last one is Salesforce has a customer
facing health score calledals,which I like as well because
it's very transparent.
It allows the customer to kindof manage their own health and
what's important to them.
So that's another area we'vebeen looking at as well.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Back on the AI front.
What are you doing today froman AI perspective?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, we started with the bot, so we launched intake
through the hub, but noweventually all intake will go
through that bot, right, and weare scanning support
documentation, customer successdocumentation, thought
leadership, the whole gamut.
We have a ton of content, and sothe idea is they would
(25:22):
self-serve as much as they can,but if they cannot, it will
route them to their sales rep,their customer success manager
or support, and so we're workingmore on that automated routing
on the backend, but againpushing them to self-serve first
.
And then the next area is thisidea of a recommendation engine.
So when you're in our portal itwill surface up like this
(25:45):
training might be important toyou, this event, this product
release, etc.
And again, like I said, tryingto build out that like Facebook
or LinkedIn feed where customerscan come in and see all the
relevant things to them.
Other things are more internalright, like understanding
customer health and theiradoption of certain features.
(26:06):
I actually talked to a gal fromLinkedIn today and they're
doing a ton around clusteringcustomers and they're utilizing
AI to see what differentclusters and features they're
using, and it's helped themenhance their email
personalization a ton.
So I always thought that wasinteresting to do.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
It's kind of like the advanced version of what you
were talking about, where youknow a customer identifies like
what their goal is.
Like you can I meantheoretically, you can use AI to
really analyze customer usageacross all their users and
figure out okay this is whatthey're trying to do, so let's
surface this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
What are the different cohorts of customers
and or personas, and letting thedata tell us who those people
are, and so that's beeninteresting as well.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
AI has is starting to help us move away from rules
based automation and andespecially like from a health
scoring perspective and thosekinds of things.
Like we all live in rules-basedworlds.
We've gotten very good atwriting these rules based on the
data that we have and all thatkind of stuff, and you know, I
(27:17):
see more and more kind ofplatforms that are switching
towards rules.
You know just reallyintelligent ways of doing stuff
without having to get into theweeds of the rules and just
using plain English to do thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah exactly.
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I don't know where I was going with that, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
For me anyway, I don't know if this is your
experience, but when, when, whenI've been, you know, working on
these digital motions andimplementing things and trying
to get, you know, trying to getprograms off the line, for me my
experience has been like look,we're going to do V1.
It's going to be scrappy, it'sgoing to be ugly, there's going
(28:00):
to be some manual stuff that wehave to do as part of it, but
we're going to learn a ton andthen we're going to automate
based off of that.
But we're going to learn a tonand then we're going to automate
based off of that and we'regoing to iterate based off of
that.
We're going to make somemistakes and we're going to
learn from that.
And I'm curious if I thinkwe've all gone through that
period, you know, inimplementing stuff, where we've
made these blunders and we'vesaid, oh, that doesn't work, so
(28:21):
let's pivot.
Are there any kind of classicthings that you've experienced
along those lines where you'vepivoted hard based on initial
assumptions being wrong orsomething?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, and you always enter the design phase right and
you're like this is how itshould work and it's so simple.
And then you go to the op sideof the house and it's like, oh,
we can't segment customers likethat, or we don't know if a
customer is a multi-year or anauto renewal, and so you then
have to like regroup and say howare we going to deliver this
(28:52):
experience, or do we ditch ituntil the company is at a
certain level of maturity tothen go be able to digitize that
?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So we have a lot of things like built on the back
end ready to go.
We're just waiting, becauseoperations prioritization is
probably the hardest thing todeal with and so getting those
resources to help.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
There have been times whereI've inserted myself into
various ops projects justbecause they are.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
You know, it's like a massive dependency on doing
this one thing, where it's justlike, hey, you know, know, let
me help you, drive your kpis anddrive this thing over the line,
you know yeah and I thinkthere's a lot of instances where
we have to go do that yeah, Itend to be very nosy in their
work because a lot of times,even if they're launching a new
(29:40):
process right especially if it'scustomer facing a lot of the
times they're like well, we'llget that information via email
and I'm like, but's so manual,like we could put it in the
self-serve portal.
So, um, they don't always loveme when I interrupt and
intervene in some of thoseprocesses, but we're good at
partnering on the end result.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, I mean, it means you're doing your job, you
know, rather than just idlystanding by.
You know, rather than just idlystanding by.
Yeah, yeah, so funny, I mean,you know it.
Um, one of the things that Ithink I've been battling with um
is the fact that look,salesforce or HubSpot or
(30:21):
whatever, um, any CRM is goingto be extremely focused on the
sales motion, and rightfully so.
You know it's.
It's kind of you know, all thetools that are built around it
are very sales focused andthings like that.
And then it gets to the postsale and you have this data set
that is very focused on, youknow, the sales process and
(30:43):
whatnot.
But when but then you realizepost-sale you need all this
other stuff that you couldcollect pre-sale, and so I you
know, my own experience is I'mconstantly like chasing these
things.
Well, why didn't we collectthis contact name pre-sale?
Or you know, why didn't wecapture, you know, these goals
(31:03):
and outcomes pre-sale, and canwe have those flow over and like
those kinds of things?
Does that ring true with youtoo?
Like, do you battle that stuffall the time?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
And the good news is we have alot of cross-functional
leadership meetings, and sothat's the time where we surface
like, hey, if we're not gettingthis data, then I have to go do
all these manual things to getit, and it's impacting on
customer experience, and sosales has been a good partner on
like an opportunity can't closeuntil certain fields are filled
(31:35):
out.
But you always have to balancethat too with, like the
administrative, how people don'twant people in sales doing
administrative things right, andso there's always a healthy
balance there of what shouldthey be entering versus not.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Totally, and a lot of times when you force somebody
to enter something to close adeal, they're going to just
enter something.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, there's a lot of bad data
out there, so that's been achallenge, I will say, a lot of
times too, where someone goes inwith the intent to purchase
something that changes so muchthrough the implementation and
then when they actually startusing it.
So I do think even havingadditional intervention points
(32:16):
to get that data is important aswell.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I think a lot of folks arestarting to use in-product for
those kinds of things which issuper powerful of folks are
starting to use in-product forthose kinds of things which is
super powerful.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, gainsight's a good one, like the first time
you log in, you say your roleand your use case and those
types of things, and so and itre-asks.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Actually, I was talking to Aaron Hatton, who's
kind of behind that program alittle bit, and he was like yeah
, I think we collected initialround, but then we realized we
need to ask this again becausepeople change roles and change
yeah.
So it's interesting becauseit's you know, once you start,
once you collect the data, theclock starts ticking on that
(32:57):
data.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
We have a my Profile in ourcustomer hub and we're looking
at do we get like a CDP on theback backend to start to store
some of that data?
But we've talked about exactlythat Like how often do you nudge
them to fix that?
Do you get something like azoom business info to help keep
that data up to date as well andautomate it?
(33:19):
And so it depends how, I guesshow much funding you have to do
all those things, but it'sdefinitely something to pay
attention to.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Any other kind of cool thingsthat you're working on that you
want to highlight or, like youknow your cool things your team
is working on kind of fun stuffthat the that the audience might
appreciate.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, I mean a lot of it.
I.
We do so much across the wholegamut.
It's always astonishing to mehow much we release per quarter.
I will say the bot right now isthe most exciting.
Like, our unauthenticated isdeflecting at like 70% at this
point, and that was massivechange management.
(34:04):
Our customers at first werelike, where did my support
buttons go?
Why do I have to talk to a bot?
But we're starting to see agreater adoption of that and
them being like oh, this is sucha better experience because I'm
able to get my answers, andrather quickly.
But yeah, I would say that'sthe top one.
And then again e-commerce.
We are moving to a new markettexture and figuring out how do
(34:27):
we do that via self-serve aswell has been a challenge,
because we want to make surethat is an optimal experience
for our customers too, andsomething that we're not forcing
but that they see the value in.
But how do you do that withouthuman intervention has been a
challenge, has been a challenge.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
So the the uptake on the bot is fascinating to me
because to me, the fact thatusers are starting to get used
to it means that it it'sactually doing what it's
supposed to you know Um and soI'm curious what, what, what was
your testing campaign aroundthat Like like yeah.
Did you roll it out?
Speaker 1 (35:03):
We launched it internally, first on a gain site
, so we embedded the bot onGainsight, so my frontline team
were the first testers of it,and so you know customers ask
questions on calls.
They were able to search it andthen their email responses
after meetings, and so that wasthe first launch.
And then we launched it to ourunauthenticated customers, so
(35:26):
anyone on the support portal butperhaps not logged in can ask
most basic questions.
And then we just most recentlylaunched the authenticated
version and we did it for thedigital tier first, and then
we're starting to slowly bringthat up into different segments.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
That's cool.
Are the internal teams stillusing it?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
They are.
And then we've considered youknow, do we pump in ticket data
in there and do automatedresponses based on that?
We have to test out theaccuracy and obviously work
through some legal requirementsbefore we do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Well, look, I've reallyappreciated all the insight and
like tactical kind of practicalknowledge that you've brought to
the convo.
So that's super helpful and Ican't wait to share it with
everybody.
What's, as we kind of rounddown like, what do you, what's
(36:20):
in your content diet?
What do you pay attention to tokeep yourself up to speed?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, absolutely One your podcast.
Of course, people come onLinkedIn.
I I watch that feed a lot.
If if folks are sharinginteresting things, I connect
with them and we meet one-on-one.
I had one this morning whichwas great, and then I'm on
Gainsight's digital advisoryboard and a lot of different
(36:46):
customers from Gainsight sharetheir digital motions.
And then ValueEyes is anotherpartner of Gainsight.
They have a really good digitalmaturity model and some thought
leadership around digital aswell.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, for sure.
I've seen that maturity model.
It's nicely detailed, for sure.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, it's very detailed.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
It's very detailed, it's a little repetitive, I will
say, but it's, it's nice.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, yeah, I've been helping them on how it's just
that digital maturity frameworkis so hard because you can start
from really anywhere, rightLike you don't have to start
with email, and so that to me,has been hard to translate.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, it's true, I've been working on kind of a
similar thing, like a version ofit, and I think the thing that
I keep going back to is just thefact that, to your point, the
variability that exists inanyone's digital program is just
, I mean, it's infinite right.
Infinite right, so you can'tplunk a model that worked one
(37:46):
place down into another place,and so it's like okay because of
that, like how do you measuredigital maturity?
That isn't like okay, here's anemail campaign or here's in-app
or here's whatever.
It's like it's a little.
Yeah, it's trickier yeah, Iagree.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
I mean, I've done it at three companies and it's
looked very different at allthree, so I'm in full agreement.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
For sure, for sure.
Do you want to give a shout outor kudos to anyone that's doing
cool stuff in digital?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, of course I mean.
Well, dolores already gave oneon LinkedIn, but she's an up and
comer in digital.
Austin Kwan is another one.
He's over at LinkedIn.
He used to be my manager overat.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Box, but we share what works.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
He does B2B as well as B2C, so it's interesting to
hear from him how he approachesthose two motions.
Kelly Bray at MongoDB she and Iused to work together at Box,
but she's kind of risen upthrough the scale and digital
world as well.
And then Rimpel Patel she's thechief customer officer at
Eightfold, but we used to worktogether at Workday and she
taught me the most aroundcustomer experience and digital.
(38:54):
So that's awesome.
Those are my mentors definitelygo to for any help.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
That's a strong set of mentors right there, yeah,
where?
So?
Where can people find you,engage with you and interact
with you, and all that goodstuff?
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, definitely on LinkedIn, People reach out all
the time and ask to connect.
Um, I'm very open to that.
Um, I always love to hear whatother folks are doing.
Uh, and offer my advice in anyway I can.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, you, you're, you're more than forthright with
that stuff.
Um, on LinkedIn, both publiclyand, I'm sure you know,
privately people hit you up indms all the time, I'm sure.
So, yeah, cool, thanks againfor sharing your wealth and your
experience with us.
It's, it's uh, it's beenawesome chatting with you and I
can't share it out, thank youthank you for joining me for
(39:43):
this episode of the digitalcustomer 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 Terkovich.
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
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