April 9, 2024 • 50 mins
Irit Eizips has been in and around CS for a long time. From being in on the ground floor at Gainsight to running her very successful consultancy, she has been a staple in the CS community and consistently produces fantastic content that we all benefit from!
In this episode, we get into:
- Irit’s days at the early-stage Gainsight and the culture of startups
- Her home in consulting (CSM Practice) vs. being a full time employee
- Being part of CS from the ground floor
- The advancement of CS to where certification and degree programs have enabled college grads an entry into the field
- Digital motions should support the work of humans in CS
- Implementing too much digital without touchpoints along the way can actually have negative customer implications
- Identifying risk in customers who are disengaging with digital programs
- Over-use of email via redundancy and simultaneous emails from multiple organizations
- The use of avatars in digital for communications to make things more fun when appropriate
- Protecting revenue and expansion via process automations to flag risk early before renewal and even close it early
- A few examples of great digital motions and practical advice around designing them
- Designing digital-first motions with client outcomes & a customer journey front and center
Loads of great info in this one. Enjoy! I know I sure did...
Irit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eizips/
CSM Practice: https://www.csmpractice.com/
CSM Practice YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSMPractice
Resources:
- Seven Pillars of Customer Success by Wayne McCulloch: https://amzn.to/3TLXYog
- CCO Playbook by Rod Cherkas: https://amzn.to/3TLXYog
- Onboarding Matters by Donna Webber: https://amzn.to/3TRk9cu
Shoutout:
- Yair Bortinger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yair-bortinger/
- Yair's episode on CSM Practice Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pwj634-qu0
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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 (00:03):
Where are customers getting themselves into trouble,
like you know, what are themoments along the customer
journey where we really need tocelebrate their wins when they
accomplish something, or ifthey're behind on something,
where they those things thendefine your vehicle right and
(00:28):
and, and how you engage thecustomer that way, um so yeah,
that would be a really greatplace to start to even figure
out what are your intentions.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Your intentions should stem from the, the key
moments in a client's life cycle.
How do you even know whatshould your intentions be?
Well, you look at the customerjourney.
What are the things that aregoing really well?
How can we celebrate them?
What are the things that arenot doing so well?
How can we mitigate them?
By introducing these, you know,engagement strategies way
(01:00):
earlier in the process, so thatwe have less of that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
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.
(01:26):
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.
Hello and welcome to the show.
It's lovely to have you back.
If you're a regular listener, Ialso know a lot of you have
recently joined the club, so tospeak.
(01:49):
So welcome to the show, pleasedto have you and pleased to see
you.
Today's conversation is withnone other than Irit Izips, who
is kind of a legend in CS.
She's been around since day one, whatever day.
That was very early atGainsight, but has been in the
(02:10):
consulting space for a long timewith CSM Practice, along with
her podcast and YouTube channel.
She interviews some greatpeople on those shows, has great
conversations and, I know,helps lots of folks in their CS
journey as well, has a newcoaching program out that she
(02:30):
talks about a little bit as well.
But you know, we obviously talkabout digital and we talk about
, you know, humans and digital,lots of practical application
stuff and examples in thisepisode, including, you know,
identifying risk in customersdigitally, and you know, really
cool resources she mentions aswell that are linked in the show
(02:51):
notes.
But enough of this yapping,let's get on to this
conversation with Irit Izips,who I enjoyed speaking with
immensely.
I enjoyed speaking withimmensely.
(03:19):
Pleased to have you on thepodcast, because you know you
are well, I mean, I guess, mostrecently, it should be noted
that you are a CX Hall of Fameinductee, which means you're a
big deal and you know you.
I also recently saw, didn't youlike, cross 10,000 subs on
YouTube or something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I think we're a little over 10,000.
Yeah, which like for?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
CS standards is like a million right.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Never thought about it like that.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
In CS world.
That's a lot of subscribers,but I want to welcome you to the
podcast because it's you knowyou're, you're kind of a uh, a
little bit of a legend You'vebeen, you know you, you advise
the best of the best and andit's uh, I can't wait to share
this conversation with theaudience.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, Awesome, Getting to, uh, getting really
excited.
Alex, I think you're a legendas well and I love your podcast
and it was such a treat when youasked me to be on it.
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I do want to before we kind of get into the nitty
gritty.
I did do a little bit ofLinkedIn stalking, because
that's what you do and and I,you know, one of the things that
I didn't realize before kind ofhitting the expand button is
that you were at your kind ofearly days at Gainsight.
(04:30):
Mm, hmm, yeah that's what I mean.
That must have.
Obviously it was.
It was, you know, 2013, 2014, Ibelieve it was.
So it was a while ago and thecompany was probably a whole lot
different back then.
But what was that?
What were the vibes back thenat Gainsight?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
All right.
Listen, if I hadn't worked atGainsight, I don't think I would
have been part of this customersuccess movement.
So I have to say thank you toNick Maeda to interviewing me
and giving me the thumbs up tojoin the company when I did.
Interviewing me and giving methe thumbs up to join the
(05:08):
company when I did Back thenthere were 18 people when I
joined, so myself, the VP,marketing at that time and the
product management or productmarketing guy all joined the
same day.
We had a blast.
I mean, it was just like about20 people, you know.
And and back then, you know, wewere all sitting in a open space
(05:31):
, a makeshift of what used to beprobably a restaurant.
At some point that was turnedinto a big space for startup
companies and we owned theentire, the entire second floor.
But they're like we it was.
It was really kind of likecrazy days, I think in those
(05:53):
times for Gainsight.
We were a very tight group.
Everybody knew everybody,obviously, and I would have to
give Nick a lot of props forsetting the culture very early
on to be a fun company and hisbig thing was childlike joy and
(06:15):
we had Nerf guns in the office.
We had lots of games.
We had the office manager who,by the way, is Dan Steinman's
the CCO's back then wife.
She's a hoot.
I'm good friends with her tillthis day and she organized like
beer pongs on Friday and sushiFridays, a bunch of stuff.
(06:40):
It was fun.
It was just startup days.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, I didn't, I
didn't realize it was that fewpeople there.
So, yeah, and I mean that thatculture of fun is so I've, I've
had the pleasure of being partof a couple of companies, but
one in particular, where therewas a lot of fun to be had and
you know.
One thing in particular Iremember is we used to do this
(07:04):
thing every year called CultureDay, where every team would like
pick a different culture,whether it was like a
nationality or whether it waslike I mean, one year we picked
like prison culture or like youknow a culture, a collection of
people, right, and we would justoffer food and beverages and it
was your opportunity to just goaround the office and honestly
(07:26):
get a little drunk.
But um, it does.
Those like startup, smallcompanies are super fun if you
get to live those.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, that's.
That's part of the fun ofjoining a very early stage
startup and I would say, uh, uh,I think Gainsight is still like
that.
Even though they have, you know, well over 20 people at this
point, it's still very much acore value for Nick Maeda as he
(07:56):
leads, continues to lead thecompany and I think now it's
basically ingrained in thecompany's culture and I think
it's kudos for him for makingthat happen and making that a
priority.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah, well, I guess, fast forward then a few years.
You, you exited, and, um, youknow, I guess CSM practice has
been a thing for you for a forquite a while now, right?
What was that journey for you?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You know, when I was at Gainsight and we had the very
first conference in the worldfor customer success, back then
there weren't a lot of customersuccess teams but there were a
lot of SaaS companies that werestruggling with churn.
And when we set up theconference we thought, well,
maybe we'll have 200 people.
(08:42):
We were calling everybody weknew to invite them to it and we
thought, you know, if we'relucky, we'll have 200 people.
We were calling everybody weknew to invite them to it and we
thought, you know, if we'relucky, we'll get 250 people.
And so we organized the room tohave about 200, 250 seats in it
.
We had 300 show up and so itwas like standing, you know,
like standing kind of event.
(09:04):
People stood around the room,you know, leaning on walls to
hear what was going on, and youcan kind of feel the popcorn
popping you know, like those andyou knew it was going to be a
big thing.
And my world, I, you know.
My history is that for the mostpart of my life I started out
(09:26):
as a management strategyconsultant and then I
transitioned into techconsulting and then accounting
consulting and then back, butI've been a consultant for the
most part of my life and theonly time I worked for software
companies I could count in likethe number of years in my five
(09:46):
fingers Right.
So, I always felt, even inGainsight, I had a tremendous
role.
I was reporting to Nick, I wasreporting to other executives.
It was really just like a grandexperience and I was given a
lot of opportunities, of given alot of opportunities and I
(10:09):
still felt like how do you callthis square peg in a round hole,
because I'm used to being aconsultant.
I know how consultant works.
I don't necessarily know how tofit in, as in a software
company, and I had to leavebecause I guess I just didn't.
It just something didn't feelright.
But what did feel right is thecustomer success movement and as
a consultant, you always dreamto be in the right place at the
(10:31):
right time and start yourconsulting firm about something
that's like really super hip.
So I started the very firststrategy consulting firm that
solely focuses on customersuccess in July of 2014.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And back then, you know, nobody believed in
customer success, so I don'tknow why I was thinking that
this is going to be a thrivingbusiness.
So it was a grind, maybe for thefirst two to three years, but I
was doing something that Iloved.
I was doing something that Ibelieved in and super passionate
about and the way that I waslooking at it I was thinking,
(11:11):
okay, gainsight can lead thetechnology and they will
probably put most of theinvestment in educating
companies that are their clientsfor the most part, even though,
granted to them, they did a lotof education for the entire
community with their books andtheir conference open for
everybody, and certificationprograms that were open for
everybody.
But I thought you know,somebody actually needs to hold
(11:34):
these companies hands and teachthem how to implement it and
deal with change management.
And so I thought you know whatI could be a reinforcement
player in this arena and makesure that I educate as well.
From my perspective, which isnot necessarily biased towards a
specific technology in ourproduct roadmap, but it's more
(11:58):
unbiased and unhinged onanything and I started doing
that and you know I don't regretit.
I think it was a tremendousjourney and I'm very honored to
be part of that customer successmovement and say, yes, you know
what I did have a weight in howfast this movement and change,
(12:18):
the radical change in howbusinesses are doing business.
Not just software companies aredoing business, but everybody
embraced customer success.
And what a great journey.
It is to say, hey, I've been atremendous part in it.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You were in on the ground floor, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Ground floor like the OG the original gangster.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
That's right, ogcs, you need a t-shirt.
You should work on that.
It is interesting, though,because there are so many people
in CS that you speak with andthe assumption is that you did
something else and you foundyour way into CS, and everybody
has their own little journeyinto role.
(13:01):
We're now finding people thatare new to their careers and
they're starting in CS, which isa whole new thing.
Is that interesting for you tokind of observe, or have you
made some observations alongthose lines?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, I've seen it evolve, obviously.
So in the early days, peoplewere migrating into CS from
other roles.
Obviously, it would have beenhighly unlikely that somebody
would hire into CS somebody thathad no professional experience.
And I think sometimes, around2019, 2020, when universities
(13:39):
started teaching CS, thecertification programs had been
a little bit more popular andcompanies, on the other hand,
were opening up more and morescaled CS, meaning before 2019,
most companies not all of them,most companies heavily invested
(14:02):
in high touch.
When you do high touch, you needa consultative CS.
You know it's very rare thatyou'll bring somebody right off
of college to do that becausethey need to have some industry
expertise.
But when you open it up for ascaled engagement model, like
(14:22):
what we call scaled CS or pooledmodel, or you start having
specialized roles in CS renewal,manager, onboarding, specialist
, activation, specialist forcompanies that are more PLG, but
the first touch, they actuallywant it to be personalized you
could definitely now hiresomebody right off of college,
(14:47):
give them the right talk track,the right product training and
they could do a really good jobat it.
So I think that that's whywe're seeing this change.
It's part of the evolution ofcustomer success and the
maturity of the businessindustry in embracing it.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Well, you mentioned scaled abit ago, so you know you're an
amazing segue master, so tospeak, which is, you know we are
on the Digital CS podcast andobviously digital is a part of
any healthy scaled program.
You know, one thing that I askall of my guests is what their
kind of elevator pitchdefinition of digital CS is,
(15:27):
because it does vary from personto person, and I'd love to get
your sense on that and what yourown definition is if you had to
describe it in a few seconds.
I don't think I could but I'llgive it a go.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, the way my brain works is that everything
has to be categorized, and mypersonality doesn't like to have
black and white definitions,but I would say that digital CS
is anything that we can scalefast as we grow faster, faster.
(16:09):
For high touch, it would meanpotentially having clear
playbooks with AI enabled andwhatever we can do, you know,
taking all the manual processesand making them automated so
that we can focus on value-basedactivities.
For lower touch, it could be apooled model, alongside working
with marketing to createawareness in a large, more
scalable manner and I love todefine scale with the word scale
(16:31):
, by the way.
That's so brilliant, right andpure digital CS would mean, by
the way, I think pure digital CS, I'm going to say it's a high
risk strategy.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And we can dive into that.
But pure digital CS means thatyou almost never have a
personable touch point with yourend users or your buyer.
It's pure self-serve buyer.
(17:10):
It's pure self-serve.
And I would include a myriad ofmethodologies and strategies
around that, from buildingcommunity to educating, to
expanding the relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know I've maintained for a
while this digital thing, or youdon't have this digital thing
(17:43):
and in reality it's like, hey,why not use this digital thing
as like your way of bolsteringyour human activity?
Like you, know, it should bekind of the other way around, to
where, like you know, yourhumans need to be supported by
what you do.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
digitally, you need to be supported by what you do
digitally.
A hundred percent agree, and Ireally thank you for delivering
that message.
So important You're at stamp ofapproval right there.
No, listen.
A few years back I did apresentation at a conference
(18:20):
called TSW, organized by thefamous organization TSIA.
It's a membership organizationfor large enterprise companies
for the most part, and they havethis conference twice a year
and I had the honor ofpresenting with Salesforce.
(18:46):
Salesforce and the executivethat was presenting with me
showcased that they actually hadan experiment where they took a
large cohort of their clients Ithink it was like X ARR, fairly
like six figure ARR and belowlow six figure ARR and below and
because they had so muchself-service and predictive
analytics and their digitalstrategy was so mature that they
(19:08):
thought you know what?
We don't really need to assigna designated CSM for them.
We can switch them over toself-serve, and what they found
is that right.
So here's what they found whenyou increase digital engagement
(19:29):
alongside the personal touch, atsome point it actually
amplifies the personal touch andyou'll see an increase in
renewals and an increase inadd-ons.
You know they have like themarketplace, but as soon as you
do too much CS and no personaltouch or human touch or very
(19:50):
little, too little of it whatthey've actually seen is a sharp
decline in add-on purchases ontheir marketplace as well as
increase in churn.
So one you're right, hybridapproach is really important,
and not only that, you need tofind the right place where the
(20:11):
digital and personal interjectintersect, and that's like your
optimal point, and so it mighttake you a little bit of time to
play around with it.
To say what's the right levelof personal touch versus digital
touch, where I see an increasein renewals and an increase in
upsell, and where is it too muchdigital that I'm starting to
(20:33):
see a negative trend, and get itjust right.
You won't know exactly what isthat, but I can tell you that
when you go full digital CS,even if your churn is not super
high and your upsell is good, itmight just mean that it could
be even the churn could be evenlower and upsell could be even
(20:55):
higher if you had one or twopersonal touch points that you
decided on in critical momentsin the lifecycle of the customer
.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, you know, I think it's.
I mean, it's that old adage oflike, once you start seeing, you
know, repeated messages thatare of maybe kind of
questionable value or no value,you end up just ignoring
everything else that comes afterthat.
Right, I mean with email, right, if you're on the receiving end
(21:30):
of too many emails from oneindividual and you're just like
I can't I don't have brain spacefor that I think you know,
ideally you would use that aspart of a healthy digital
program to identify customerswho are disengaging with your
digital programs, for that humanoutreach, you know, like, if
(21:51):
they've stopped opening youremails or they, you know they're
dismissing their in-appnotifications and stuff like
that, that that should kind ofring some alarm bells sometimes,
I think should kind of ringsome alarm bells.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Sometimes, I think Absolutely.
I've seen the email system orsequence emails really being
abused by a few clients thatwere just onboarding into my
coaching programs.
We have marketing campaigns andwe keep on sending the same
(22:23):
marketing messages.
After they signed up for trial,after they already started
using the system, I still feedthem these generic marketing
emails.
I mean, come on, shouldn't youjust stop that and make it a
little bit more personalized?
Talk about account-basedmarketing.
(22:44):
If the client is in a differentphase, you need to have some
sort of personalization and, bythe way, they keep doing it
every day.
Not only are you getting thosetotally unrelevant for you,
you're going to get them everyday instead of now switching
gears and showing you how youcan set up the system.
Get more use cases.
Do it like a pro.
Let me give you industry bestpractices, like things that
(23:05):
you're actually concerned aboutwhen you're just on board with a
company, so doing it too often.
Not the right content, I meannot the right use case.
Like I'm sending you stuff forlawyers when you're an
accountant, I mean the list goeson.
How much this is being abused?
Right, you're an accountant, I?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
mean the list goes on .
How much this is being abused,right?
I mean simply put, like let'srecognize when you've closed a
deal and let's let's move youfrom one email list to another
email list and that second, likeI saw something had a.
I had just like a uh, uh, a duhmoment the other day.
I forget what I signed up forsomething sassy, something you
know freemium kind of SASplatform.
(23:43):
I forget what I signed up forSomething sassy, something you
know, freemium kind of SaaSplatform.
I forget what it was.
If I remember it, I'll mentionit.
The onboarding emails werebrilliant for kind of two
reasons.
One is they were very short,like super short.
There were eight of them and Iknew from the first email that
(24:05):
there were eight of them becausein the subject line it said
what the email was about is likethree words and at the end, in
brackets, it was like one ofeight, two of eight, three of
eight.
I'm like why aren't more peopledoing this?
Because it's so important in anonboarding journey to give your
customer like the context ofwhere they are in that journey
(24:26):
so that they're progressingtowards completion.
Love that, what a great tip.
I just thought it was brilliant.
I was like I'm going to startdoing that.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think I am too.
That's what I love about thisspace you meet a person, you
learn something new.
By the way, I don't think Iknow everything.
That's what I love about thisspace you meet a person, you
learn something new.
By the way, I don't think Iknow everything.
That's why I love doing mypodcast.
I always learn something new.
But this is kind of like cooltip, you know, tell them how
many there are in the series andkeep it super short.
(24:57):
Coming from a specific personor did they come from like a
marketing email?
And B?
Did they include a video inthem or were they just text only
?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It's a great question .
So the other, the other thingabout them is that I got, I
think, two a day for four daysand that would two a day, but
they were short, right, it'slike okay, now do this One thing
, click done.
And I think the briefness of itallowed for that kind of
(25:31):
cadence but it kept you kind oflike okay, top of mind, like hey
, you know, I'm going to be withyou for four days, so use this.
It's not going to be this fiveweek thing, but to your point,
it was short.
A couple of them had somevideos in there, but it wasn't
like narrated stuff, it was morelike GIF type video Go here,
click on this and do that.
(25:55):
And I think they came from apersona.
I think they came from ageneralized kind of inbox.
But I do love a good personafor digital motions.
It does create some personality.
So I love that you asked thatquestion, because I do think a
lot of people kind of strugglewith okay, should I be on brand
and on marketing, kind of speak,or should I be like a human or
(26:16):
at least an avatar?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, I wonder if anybody did a research to say,
when you use an avatar, but it'sa consistent avatar for the
duration of the life cycle,doctor, whatever, yeah, doctor,
scope, right?
Or is it from the CEO, if it'sa small company that sells to,
(26:44):
you know, individuals like a B2C, almost like a small business
owners, or should it be yourdesignated CSM?
You know, I'm in the strongopinion that if you're going to
use this email sequence and it'sa higher touch model, you
should use your CSM as thepersona sending those emails.
And if you have a very lowtouch, like a long tail customer
(27:07):
base, 10,000, 7,000 customersand you're not going to have a
designated CSM, then yeah,either an avatar or the CEO or
the whomever is heading supportor whatnot.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Right, yeah, I totally agree.
I also think there's some roomfor fun there, especially for
your platform and your customerbase.
Like I don't know if you're, Ithink it depends on your
customer base, right.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Like an animated avatar.
If you're like a big company,you're not going to send it from
the CEO, obviously, and youhave a long customer tail.
Yeah, come up with a, with apersona.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You know, like a chatbot should have the same
persona and your, you know,whatever it is.
Yeah, yeah, make it animated,make it fun.
Why?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
not.
I mean, why not have a?
Speaker 1 (27:56):
mascot right Like Salesforce kind of has their
little thing.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I forget what it is.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
but so so, in those eight emails that you loved so
much, did they include anembedded video some of them did,
yeah, so like a like a like agif type situation, but it
wasn't like a gif okay, animatedgif, but not a video like a one
minute video light video thatwas like.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
This is how to uh like an animated gif.
You click here.
Let me show you how it's done.
Okay, yeah, basically.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Interesting.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool.
So one of the things I wantedto ask you about, which you know
on this podcast we've talked alot about just like digital
motions you know buildingefficiency throughout teams and
(28:51):
helping customers and all thatkind of stuff, but I know that
you help a lot of your clientsthrough revenue retention and
you know really buildingstrategy around protecting your
revenue and you know making surethat renewal goes through and
you've got expansion kind oflined up and whatnot.
And I'm curious what youropinion is about the role of
digital in that, because I mean,you're not going to have
complex, you know financialdiscussions in your digital
(29:14):
channels, but there's but I butbut I do think there's probably
room for digital in the lead upto that.
I'm just curious what your kindof take on all that is.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I mean, there's so many opportunities to leverage
automation during the renewalprocess to make a killer process
.
So if you were looking forhigher touch, one of the things
I encourage all of my clients todo is either send the annual
survey or just an email with onequestion, hypothetically if you
could renew right now, wouldyou?
(29:46):
Yeah, just to flag risk early,and early is not 30 days before
the renewal.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
No.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It's 90 days at a minimum by the way.
Because, yeah, tsaa, by the way,they did a benchmark survey and
they found that on average, ittakes about 90 days to resolve a
technical issue.
I'm not talking about okay, Ican't log in I'm talking about,
like, a technical issue that acompany have that might
otherwise not renew unless yousolve it.
So why not ask that question120 days or 180 days prior to
(30:17):
the renewal?
By the way, if you do send itout 120 days prior to the
renewal and they say, yeah,actually I would.
By the way, if you do send itout 120 days prior to the
renewal and they say, yeah,actually I would, then it gives
you an incentive to, you know,have a conversation about
renewing early.
I just had a podcast episodelaunched with Renew Plus, a new
(30:37):
podcast by Renew Track andMichael, their CEO.
Pretty awesome, yeah, prettyawesome podcast.
I think it's going to bebonanza, like a better word.
I chose that word.
It's going to be great, I loveit.
And he said that they'reobviously enabling clients to
have the renewal processcompletely automated.
And he said that with the rightincentives and the right
(31:00):
approach, they can increase theaverage time to renew.
They can advance it by 45 days.
So their clients seeing ithappens because you put some
things and some of the thingsthat you can automate is that
question.
(31:27):
You can also automate completely, especially if the contracts
are you know whether they'resimple, just time consuming and
doing manually.
You can totally automate thecompilation of you know
everything all the contracts,everything that the PO,
everything that's sort of thecommunication, everything that's
related to you know manual work, that's just busy work.
(31:55):
So then the CSM, or the renewalmanager, plays a role in having
the right conversation aboutupsell, about you know, renewing
early or extending the contractconditions.
Now, if you're in a completePLG, meaning product-led growth,
self-serve, you can stillleverage the renewal moment to
(32:16):
increase upsell attach rate tothe renewal motion.
And again, I think thetechnology helps a lot in that
sense.
If you set it up so that as theyrenew, it doesn't renew to
completely automatically, butthey get an email and say hey,
by the way, we have thispromotion, here's a code.
(32:37):
If you do that, you also getthis, this and that that's a
good one.
Can we create awareness to whatelse you can have?
And if you're already committedto my brand, you have a good
experience.
Why not A sign up for atwo-year deal instead of one for
your upcoming renewal and getsome discount if you know you're
(32:58):
not leaving anytime soon, orupgrade with a heavy discount or
whatever incentives you haveout there, like a better support
or whatever it is that you'regoing to offer or announce a new
module and kind of like.
Allow for that moment to amplifyby creating awareness to what
(33:27):
are the possibilities the clientcan take as they approach the
renewal.
And again, I think that thecritical piece is to A leverage
technology to find risk, likethe hypothetical question is one
of them, and second, createawareness to what else opens up.
If you are already loyal to mybrand, how else can we expand on
that relationship?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, it's great insight and, I think, really
good practical advice and,granted, full renewal.
Automation isn't a luxury that Ithink a lot of you know, a lot
of companies have, just becausethere's inherent complexity that
you have to solve for.
But I, I, I think that you know,in a, in a, especially in a
(34:15):
post COVID world, whereeverybody's just gotten used a
little bit more to operatinglike digitally and like remotely
and like those those old salescycles and statements of work
and all that kind of stuff stillnecessary, but it just feels
dinosaurish these days and soyou know it would be cool to see
(34:36):
a lot more of that stuff kindof move automated and and you
know, you know it's.
It's kind of like, again, it'sthat combination of human and
digital, like that firstquestion, like how likely are
you to renew?
Um, that starts your branchingright there, you know, and and
from there you have furtherbranching that may or may not
have humans involved, dependingon what your answer is and
(34:59):
depending on you know what it isthat you're you're after with
the account.
So, um, that's, I guess, in thewild or among you know your
clients from a consultancyperspective?
Have you seen some really cooldigital motions or things where
you've been like oh, I recognizewhat that is.
(35:21):
That's really neat.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I think that Yair Bottinger when I interviewed him
on my podcast on YouTube, hehad some really cool stuff that
he's done podcast on YouTube.
He had some really cool stuffthat he's done.
One to upgrade a bunch ofclients from an old version to a
new version and the way he wasthinking about it when he was
designing it like the actualframework.
(35:44):
I think he used something likeyou have to think about what is
the next bucket, talk about youreight sequence email.
Right, that was just one stepthat you were encouraged to do.
I think that's why the sequencethat you liked worked so much,
so well.
And then he did the same thing,but he used a platform called
EverAfter because it was like alittle bit more complicated.
(36:05):
More steps needed to have somevideos in it to make it happen.
Obviously, more steps needed tohave some videos in it to make
it happen.
Obviously, upgrading from anold platform to a new one is a
big deal and if you want to have300 or 700 customers do it all
in four short weeks, you have tothink about automation.
You're not going to be able tomeet with it.
You don't have an army of CSMsto work with each of them
(36:27):
individually.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
And so I think that whenever you're thinking about
upgrade, onboarding, upsell,whatever the problem, when
there's like multiple stepsincluded, you want to think
about avoiding overwhelming yourclients.
Meaning an email or a page withlots of different steps I think
it's completely overwhelming.
(36:51):
You don't want to underwhelmthem, like give them something
stupid Okay, log in, then sendthe other email but you want to
get the whelm just right.
And to me, that means that whenyou do it, you get a little bit
of a wow moment when you getthat done, and maybe it's like
three simple steps, but then youget some sort of a result and I
(37:14):
think it takes a little bit ofart and creativity to think how
to break those steps down sothat you get the whelm just
right, even though you're justusing digital components.
And I encourage everybody towatch that, and I encourage
everybody to watch that.
He actually had two YouTubevideos that we record, two
videos that we posted on YouTubefor the podcast where he walks
(37:38):
through the framework, and bothhe's showing some really great
examples.
If you wanted to get thatframework really digested.
Well, just to watch thosevideos.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
We'll link it in the show notes so that folks can go
watch it.
Yeah, that's cool.
I love that, and I love thatyou used the word Like we have
overwhelm, we have underwhelm,whelm.
I don't, is it a thing?
Like, just write whelm Get thewhelm, just right.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
By the way, that's something that I learned it from
somebody else.
There's a guy called Taki Mooreand he says that a lot.
I was like yeah, you know whatrecipe book, playbook kind of
standards in terms ofimplementing digital.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Like, there are many different flavors and there are
so many variables thateveryone's digital emotions look
a little bit different.
Sure, everyone kind of hasaccess to email stuff and maybe
some in-product, but your actualstrategy and what you do and
all that kind of stuff variesfrom client to client.
But are there someconsistencies when it comes to
(38:58):
you actually advise your clientson their digital strategy?
Are there some kind of go-tothings that you always kind of
advise clients do?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, actually I have a full framework and a model
for that and we're actuallyapproaching it from a
customer-centric standpoint.
We start with the intent whatare we trying to accomplish and
what are the wow moments that wewant to create in that journey
and only then design it for that, and then the how is you know
(39:33):
becomes minor.
We will look at the intent,what we want to accomplish, and
then, when we design, we pointthe path to get this done.
We create the content and onlythen we think about okay, what
channels are our clients on sothat we can broadcast and create
awareness to this new content?
(39:54):
And then what's the best wayfor them to digest it?
Is it with group, you know,open office hours?
Is it a workshop that they needto sign up and it's like a five
five session, maybe acertification program?
Are we putting those videos ona library and with a course and
a training?
You know, it just depends.
(40:15):
Is it a five sequence email?
Where are, where are they?
first of all, and what's thebest way to digest it, pending
the complexity and how long ittakes and how much handholding
they might need.
But yeah, there's absolutely aframework for that handholding
they might need.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
But yeah, there's absolutely a framework for that.
Yeah, I mean, I think theinclination when it comes to
some of these things is to startway too early.
You're like, okay, yeah, weneed onboarding emails, so let's
go do that.
Sure, okay, but now let's dothis and let's do this, instead
of you know, kind of like saying, okay, where are customers
(40:55):
getting themselves into trouble?
Like, you know, what are themoments along the customer
journey where we really need tocelebrate their wins, when they
accomplish something, or ifthey're behind on something,
where do they need a little bitof extra shove?
A little bit of extra extrashove, and and a lot of times, I
think once you define thosethings, they, they, those things
(41:21):
then define your vehicle rightand and and how you engage the
customer that way.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Um, so, yeah, that would be a really great place to
start to even figure out whatare your intentions.
Your intentions should stemfrom the the key moments in a
client's life cycle, just likeyou said.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I think that's a really goodpoint.
How do you even know whatshould your intentions be so
well?
How can we mitigate them?
By introducing these you knowengagement strategies way
(41:43):
earlier in the process, so thatwe have less of them.
Yeah, exactly Exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
There's a reason why the majority of your support
cases land in this category, soyou might as well go after that,
right.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Yeah exactly.
Brilliant.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, exactly Brilliant.
So look, as we kind of start toyou know, wrap up our
conversation.
I would which I've thoroughlyenjoyed, by the way, and I think
we could probably do a wholenother hour on this stuff but
I'd love to get a sense from you.
What's in your content dietwhat do you pay attention to,
because I love you know sharingthat with the audience.
(42:32):
Content diet what do you payattention to?
Because I love you know sharingthat with the audience, so that
they can also pay attention tothose things uh, what do I love
to watch and like, uh, read andthat kind of.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I think, like you know for me, in terms of, uh,
just in general, I love readingbusiness books in general.
I don't necessarily so muchimmerse myself in CS books,
although when one comes out Iwould usually read it.
So the last two books that I'veread were one, the Seven
(43:06):
Pillars by Wayne McCulloch, theSeven Pillars of Customer
Success, and I also read the CCObook by Rod Cherkas and the
Onboarding Matters by DonnaWeber.
I think, yeah, there you go.
All of them are really greatbooks.
I recommend them to all of them, to everybody, to all of them,
(43:30):
I recommend Rod.
Cherkas to read his own book.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, to everyone.
Have you read your book?
Speaker 2 (43:36):
All of them are great .
You'd be surprised, I thinkDonna Weber definitely read her
book because she did an audioversion of it, which was
brilliant, totally so for her Ithink that was like a lot of
work.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah, I think I embarrassed her when she was on
the podcast because Icomplimented her on her
voiceover skills.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, I thought she did a really good job honestly.
Yeah, I think it says somethingabout something when you
compliment her.
I think people should know thatthey're doing a good job, and I
think all three of them did agreat job.
Really, quite a bit is thatwhen you read Wayne McCulloch's
book, it has a lot of tacticaladvice and models which I think
(44:18):
really help understand very deepcontext around how do you
structure the strategy.
And I love Rod's book because Ilearned something new about
storytelling and things that Inot necessarily thought about
and like.
His approach to metricshonestly is a little bit
different than mine, but it wasreally interesting to see how
(44:39):
other people think Mine isbetter, by the way no, I'm just
kidding, it's just different.
I was like, hi, interesting,okay, I'm still like mine better
, but it's always good to seehow people approach and think
about these things and you canalways learn something new and
mad respect for all of them, youknow for writing these books.
(44:59):
So I recommend you know, ifyou're new to customer success
or you're a CS executive andjust needs to be inspired, just
read these three books.
And, of course, if you have thetime, sign up for my youtube
channel csm practice.
My focus is on strategies andmethodologies and playbooks that
work.
So I end up interviewing a lotof cs execs and team leaders and
(45:23):
cs ops managers just to askthem hey, what did you do and
what worked for you, and can yougive us all the little details
so that everybody can learn howto uplevel their CSM practice?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Yeah, that's one of the things I love about your
channel is is is you walk you?
Invariably, after everyconversation, you walk away with
like stuff that you can go.
Do you know um which is whichis which is so cool?
So um mission complete on thatone Nice job.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, and, if I can put like a quick plug, that's
the essence, necessarily, of mynew coaching program for
startups.
As you know, I've been workingwith a lot of different
companies over since 2013, so2014, now almost 10 years and
primarily I used to work withlarger companies.
That used to be my domain, andin the last two, three years, I
(46:12):
used to work with largercompanies.
Uh, you know, that used to bemy domain, and in the last two,
three years, I've gotten a lotof asks from startups hey, can
you work with us too?
And I said I think it's liketoo much, like you know, it
would be too much requirementsfor your resources and budget.
And then I said you know whatyou read.
Enough is enough.
You're going to build acoaching program for startups,
(46:37):
startup executives, team leaders, and just take everything that
you've learned in the lastdecade and open it up for them.
And I'm proud to say that thisyear 2024, I've officially
launched my 120 plus NRRcoaching program.
It's designed for startups andI this is like.
The goal of the coachingprogram is not to show you a
bunch of videos, which you coulddo on my YouTube channel, but
actually give you the templates,give you the coaching, the
(47:02):
address, how to implement it inyour organization and all the
support that you need to getthis done and accelerate your
pace to 120 plus NRR.
And if you're already there,how do you scale that up as you
continue to grow?
So if anybody's interestedactually you know I'm just going
to put this plug in go to mycompany's website,
(47:25):
csnpracticecom, and, yeah, let'sget a conversation going to see
if that might be a good fit.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
That's cool.
I love that you're doing thatand it's it's.
I think it's an underservedpart of the market for sure.
So that's good stuff, I agree,is there?
Is there anyone you thought outto, maybe somebody that's doing
something you know particularlycool and digital, or somebody
that you're just a general fanof?
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Like I said, I'm big, big, big fan of Yael Bottinger
and what he does, big fan ofGainset and the thought
leadership that they producearound scaled CS community
online communities, and youshould also check Planhat and
the sales machine.
All of them are doing reallygreat things in the lower touch
(48:14):
and scaling CS.
Uh, obviously, softwarecompanies, but I really love the
, the content uh that theyproduce and, um, I think the
their focus is there for scaledCS and, uh, that's my world.
You know, this is what I uhlove learning.
I think you know full admission.
You know, sometimes I talk topeople on LinkedIn that message
(48:36):
me or whatever, and if they'rean executive, I always ask them
you know what is, what is yourfocus?
And in December, I must havetalked to I don't know 30
different CS executives and Iwould say that 80% of them, if
not more, say that.
80% of them, if not more, saidthat they were working on
something and they were workingon scaling their CS engagement
(48:58):
model Like bar none.
80% of all the executives thatI spoke to in the past two
months and we're in January 2024, are focused on scaling their
operations, absolutely.
And so I think it's going to bejust like a.
You know Konami is down, youhave less people.
You have to learn, you have tosqueeze it and get the most out
(49:19):
of what you have.
I think it's going to be a big,big focus for 2024.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Well, look, it's been a pleasure.
I'm such a big fan of yours andI'm glad we could make this
work, and I appreciate youtaking an hour out of your day
and joining me.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, Listen man, it was awesome.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for everybody thatlistened Really appreciate you
taking the time to listen to usboth chit-chatting and it was
absolutely awesome being here.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
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 Terkovich.
(50:10):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
Where are customers getting themselves into trouble,
like you know, what are themoments along the customer
journey where we really need tocelebrate their wins when they
accomplish something, or ifthey're behind on something,
where they those things thendefine your vehicle right and
(00:28):
and, and how you engage thecustomer that way, um so yeah,
that would be a really greatplace to start to even figure
out what are your intentions.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Your intentions should stem from the, the key
moments in a client's life cycle.
How do you even know whatshould your intentions be?
Well, you look at the customerjourney.
What are the things that aregoing really well?
How can we celebrate them?
What are the things that arenot doing so well?
How can we mitigate them?
By introducing these, you know,engagement strategies way
(01:00):
earlier in the process, so thatwe have less of that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
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.
(01:26):
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.
Hello and welcome to the show.
It's lovely to have you back.
If you're a regular listener, Ialso know a lot of you have
recently joined the club, so tospeak.
(01:49):
So welcome to the show, pleasedto have you and pleased to see
you.
Today's conversation is withnone other than Irit Izips, who
is kind of a legend in CS.
She's been around since day one, whatever day.
That was very early atGainsight, but has been in the
(02:10):
consulting space for a long timewith CSM Practice, along with
her podcast and YouTube channel.
She interviews some greatpeople on those shows, has great
conversations and, I know,helps lots of folks in their CS
journey as well, has a newcoaching program out that she
(02:30):
talks about a little bit as well.
But you know, we obviously talkabout digital and we talk about
, you know, humans and digital,lots of practical application
stuff and examples in thisepisode, including, you know,
identifying risk in customersdigitally, and you know, really
cool resources she mentions aswell that are linked in the show
(02:51):
notes.
But enough of this yapping,let's get on to this
conversation with Irit Izips,who I enjoyed speaking with
immensely.
I enjoyed speaking withimmensely.
(03:19):
Pleased to have you on thepodcast, because you know you
are well, I mean, I guess, mostrecently, it should be noted
that you are a CX Hall of Fameinductee, which means you're a
big deal and you know you.
I also recently saw, didn't youlike, cross 10,000 subs on
YouTube or something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I think we're a little over 10,000.
Yeah, which like for?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
CS standards is like a million right.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Never thought about it like that.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
In CS world.
That's a lot of subscribers,but I want to welcome you to the
podcast because it's you knowyou're, you're kind of a uh, a
little bit of a legend You'vebeen, you know you, you advise
the best of the best and andit's uh, I can't wait to share
this conversation with theaudience.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, Awesome, Getting to, uh, getting really
excited.
Alex, I think you're a legendas well and I love your podcast
and it was such a treat when youasked me to be on it.
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I do want to before we kind of get into the nitty
gritty.
I did do a little bit ofLinkedIn stalking, because
that's what you do and and I,you know, one of the things that
I didn't realize before kind ofhitting the expand button is
that you were at your kind ofearly days at Gainsight.
(04:30):
Mm, hmm, yeah that's what I mean.
That must have.
Obviously it was.
It was, you know, 2013, 2014, Ibelieve it was.
So it was a while ago and thecompany was probably a whole lot
different back then.
But what was that?
What were the vibes back thenat Gainsight?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
All right.
Listen, if I hadn't worked atGainsight, I don't think I would
have been part of this customersuccess movement.
So I have to say thank you toNick Maeda to interviewing me
and giving me the thumbs up tojoin the company when I did.
Interviewing me and giving methe thumbs up to join the
(05:08):
company when I did Back thenthere were 18 people when I
joined, so myself, the VP,marketing at that time and the
product management or productmarketing guy all joined the
same day.
We had a blast.
I mean, it was just like about20 people, you know.
And and back then, you know, wewere all sitting in a open space
(05:31):
, a makeshift of what used to beprobably a restaurant.
At some point that was turnedinto a big space for startup
companies and we owned theentire, the entire second floor.
But they're like we it was.
It was really kind of likecrazy days, I think in those
(05:53):
times for Gainsight.
We were a very tight group.
Everybody knew everybody,obviously, and I would have to
give Nick a lot of props forsetting the culture very early
on to be a fun company and hisbig thing was childlike joy and
(06:15):
we had Nerf guns in the office.
We had lots of games.
We had the office manager who,by the way, is Dan Steinman's
the CCO's back then wife.
She's a hoot.
I'm good friends with her tillthis day and she organized like
beer pongs on Friday and sushiFridays, a bunch of stuff.
(06:40):
It was fun.
It was just startup days.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, I didn't, I
didn't realize it was that fewpeople there.
So, yeah, and I mean that thatculture of fun is so I've, I've
had the pleasure of being partof a couple of companies, but
one in particular, where therewas a lot of fun to be had and
you know.
One thing in particular Iremember is we used to do this
(07:04):
thing every year called CultureDay, where every team would like
pick a different culture,whether it was like a
nationality or whether it waslike I mean, one year we picked
like prison culture or like youknow a culture, a collection of
people, right, and we would justoffer food and beverages and it
was your opportunity to just goaround the office and honestly
(07:26):
get a little drunk.
But um, it does.
Those like startup, smallcompanies are super fun if you
get to live those.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, that's.
That's part of the fun ofjoining a very early stage
startup and I would say, uh, uh,I think Gainsight is still like
that.
Even though they have, you know, well over 20 people at this
point, it's still very much acore value for Nick Maeda as he
(07:56):
leads, continues to lead thecompany and I think now it's
basically ingrained in thecompany's culture and I think
it's kudos for him for makingthat happen and making that a
priority.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah, well, I guess, fast forward then a few years.
You, you exited, and, um, youknow, I guess CSM practice has
been a thing for you for a forquite a while now, right?
What was that journey for you?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You know, when I was at Gainsight and we had the very
first conference in the worldfor customer success, back then
there weren't a lot of customersuccess teams but there were a
lot of SaaS companies that werestruggling with churn.
And when we set up theconference we thought, well,
maybe we'll have 200 people.
(08:42):
We were calling everybody weknew to invite them to it and we
thought, you know, if we'relucky, we'll have 200 people.
We were calling everybody weknew to invite them to it and we
thought, you know, if we'relucky, we'll get 250 people.
And so we organized the room tohave about 200, 250 seats in it
.
We had 300 show up and so itwas like standing, you know,
like standing kind of event.
(09:04):
People stood around the room,you know, leaning on walls to
hear what was going on, and youcan kind of feel the popcorn
popping you know, like those andyou knew it was going to be a
big thing.
And my world, I, you know.
My history is that for the mostpart of my life I started out
(09:26):
as a management strategyconsultant and then I
transitioned into techconsulting and then accounting
consulting and then back, butI've been a consultant for the
most part of my life and theonly time I worked for software
companies I could count in likethe number of years in my five
(09:46):
fingers Right.
So, I always felt, even inGainsight, I had a tremendous
role.
I was reporting to Nick, I wasreporting to other executives.
It was really just like a grandexperience and I was given a
lot of opportunities, of given alot of opportunities and I
(10:09):
still felt like how do you callthis square peg in a round hole,
because I'm used to being aconsultant.
I know how consultant works.
I don't necessarily know how tofit in, as in a software
company, and I had to leavebecause I guess I just didn't.
It just something didn't feelright.
But what did feel right is thecustomer success movement and as
a consultant, you always dreamto be in the right place at the
(10:31):
right time and start yourconsulting firm about something
that's like really super hip.
So I started the very firststrategy consulting firm that
solely focuses on customersuccess in July of 2014.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And back then, you know, nobody believed in
customer success, so I don'tknow why I was thinking that
this is going to be a thrivingbusiness.
So it was a grind, maybe for thefirst two to three years, but I
was doing something that Iloved.
I was doing something that Ibelieved in and super passionate
about and the way that I waslooking at it I was thinking,
(11:11):
okay, gainsight can lead thetechnology and they will
probably put most of theinvestment in educating
companies that are their clientsfor the most part, even though,
granted to them, they did a lotof education for the entire
community with their books andtheir conference open for
everybody, and certificationprograms that were open for
everybody.
But I thought you know,somebody actually needs to hold
(11:34):
these companies hands and teachthem how to implement it and
deal with change management.
And so I thought you know whatI could be a reinforcement
player in this arena and makesure that I educate as well.
From my perspective, which isnot necessarily biased towards a
specific technology in ourproduct roadmap, but it's more
(11:58):
unbiased and unhinged onanything and I started doing
that and you know I don't regretit.
I think it was a tremendousjourney and I'm very honored to
be part of that customer successmovement and say, yes, you know
what I did have a weight in howfast this movement and change,
(12:18):
the radical change in howbusinesses are doing business.
Not just software companies aredoing business, but everybody
embraced customer success.
And what a great journey.
It is to say, hey, I've been atremendous part in it.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You were in on the ground floor, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Ground floor like the OG the original gangster.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
That's right, ogcs, you need a t-shirt.
You should work on that.
It is interesting, though,because there are so many people
in CS that you speak with andthe assumption is that you did
something else and you foundyour way into CS, and everybody
has their own little journeyinto role.
(13:01):
We're now finding people thatare new to their careers and
they're starting in CS, which isa whole new thing.
Is that interesting for you tokind of observe, or have you
made some observations alongthose lines?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, I've seen it evolve, obviously.
So in the early days, peoplewere migrating into CS from
other roles.
Obviously, it would have beenhighly unlikely that somebody
would hire into CS somebody thathad no professional experience.
And I think sometimes, around2019, 2020, when universities
(13:39):
started teaching CS, thecertification programs had been
a little bit more popular andcompanies, on the other hand,
were opening up more and morescaled CS, meaning before 2019,
most companies not all of them,most companies heavily invested
(14:02):
in high touch.
When you do high touch, you needa consultative CS.
You know it's very rare thatyou'll bring somebody right off
of college to do that becausethey need to have some industry
expertise.
But when you open it up for ascaled engagement model, like
(14:22):
what we call scaled CS or pooledmodel, or you start having
specialized roles in CS renewal,manager, onboarding, specialist
, activation, specialist forcompanies that are more PLG, but
the first touch, they actuallywant it to be personalized you
could definitely now hiresomebody right off of college,
(14:47):
give them the right talk track,the right product training and
they could do a really good jobat it.
So I think that that's whywe're seeing this change.
It's part of the evolution ofcustomer success and the
maturity of the businessindustry in embracing it.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Well, you mentioned scaled abit ago, so you know you're an
amazing segue master, so tospeak, which is, you know we are
on the Digital CS podcast andobviously digital is a part of
any healthy scaled program.
You know, one thing that I askall of my guests is what their
kind of elevator pitchdefinition of digital CS is,
(15:27):
because it does vary from personto person, and I'd love to get
your sense on that and what yourown definition is if you had to
describe it in a few seconds.
I don't think I could but I'llgive it a go.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, the way my brain works is that everything
has to be categorized, and mypersonality doesn't like to have
black and white definitions,but I would say that digital CS
is anything that we can scalefast as we grow faster, faster.
(16:09):
For high touch, it would meanpotentially having clear
playbooks with AI enabled andwhatever we can do, you know,
taking all the manual processesand making them automated so
that we can focus on value-basedactivities.
For lower touch, it could be apooled model, alongside working
with marketing to createawareness in a large, more
scalable manner and I love todefine scale with the word scale
(16:31):
, by the way.
That's so brilliant, right andpure digital CS would mean, by
the way, I think pure digital CS, I'm going to say it's a high
risk strategy.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And we can dive into that.
But pure digital CS means thatyou almost never have a
personable touch point with yourend users or your buyer.
It's pure self-serve buyer.
(17:10):
It's pure self-serve.
And I would include a myriad ofmethodologies and strategies
around that, from buildingcommunity to educating, to
expanding the relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know I've maintained for a
while this digital thing, or youdon't have this digital thing
(17:43):
and in reality it's like, hey,why not use this digital thing
as like your way of bolsteringyour human activity?
Like you, know, it should bekind of the other way around, to
where, like you know, yourhumans need to be supported by
what you do.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
digitally, you need to be supported by what you do
digitally.
A hundred percent agree, and Ireally thank you for delivering
that message.
So important You're at stamp ofapproval right there.
No, listen.
A few years back I did apresentation at a conference
(18:20):
called TSW, organized by thefamous organization TSIA.
It's a membership organizationfor large enterprise companies
for the most part, and they havethis conference twice a year
and I had the honor ofpresenting with Salesforce.
(18:46):
Salesforce and the executivethat was presenting with me
showcased that they actually hadan experiment where they took a
large cohort of their clients Ithink it was like X ARR, fairly
like six figure ARR and belowlow six figure ARR and below and
because they had so muchself-service and predictive
analytics and their digitalstrategy was so mature that they
(19:08):
thought you know what?
We don't really need to assigna designated CSM for them.
We can switch them over toself-serve, and what they found
is that right.
So here's what they found whenyou increase digital engagement
(19:29):
alongside the personal touch, atsome point it actually
amplifies the personal touch andyou'll see an increase in
renewals and an increase inadd-ons.
You know they have like themarketplace, but as soon as you
do too much CS and no personaltouch or human touch or very
(19:50):
little, too little of it whatthey've actually seen is a sharp
decline in add-on purchases ontheir marketplace as well as
increase in churn.
So one you're right, hybridapproach is really important,
and not only that, you need tofind the right place where the
(20:11):
digital and personal interjectintersect, and that's like your
optimal point, and so it mighttake you a little bit of time to
play around with it.
To say what's the right levelof personal touch versus digital
touch, where I see an increasein renewals and an increase in
upsell, and where is it too muchdigital that I'm starting to
(20:33):
see a negative trend, and get itjust right.
You won't know exactly what isthat, but I can tell you that
when you go full digital CS,even if your churn is not super
high and your upsell is good, itmight just mean that it could
be even the churn could be evenlower and upsell could be even
(20:55):
higher if you had one or twopersonal touch points that you
decided on in critical momentsin the lifecycle of the customer
.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, you know, I think it's.
I mean, it's that old adage oflike, once you start seeing, you
know, repeated messages thatare of maybe kind of
questionable value or no value,you end up just ignoring
everything else that comes afterthat.
Right, I mean with email, right, if you're on the receiving end
(21:30):
of too many emails from oneindividual and you're just like
I can't I don't have brain spacefor that I think you know,
ideally you would use that aspart of a healthy digital
program to identify customerswho are disengaging with your
digital programs, for that humanoutreach, you know, like, if
(21:51):
they've stopped opening youremails or they, you know they're
dismissing their in-appnotifications and stuff like
that, that that should kind ofring some alarm bells sometimes,
I think should kind of ringsome alarm bells.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Sometimes, I think Absolutely.
I've seen the email system orsequence emails really being
abused by a few clients thatwere just onboarding into my
coaching programs.
We have marketing campaigns andwe keep on sending the same
(22:23):
marketing messages.
After they signed up for trial,after they already started
using the system, I still feedthem these generic marketing
emails.
I mean, come on, shouldn't youjust stop that and make it a
little bit more personalized?
Talk about account-basedmarketing.
(22:44):
If the client is in a differentphase, you need to have some
sort of personalization and, bythe way, they keep doing it
every day.
Not only are you getting thosetotally unrelevant for you,
you're going to get them everyday instead of now switching
gears and showing you how youcan set up the system.
Get more use cases.
Do it like a pro.
Let me give you industry bestpractices, like things that
(23:05):
you're actually concerned aboutwhen you're just on board with a
company, so doing it too often.
Not the right content, I meannot the right use case.
Like I'm sending you stuff forlawyers when you're an
accountant, I mean the list goeson.
How much this is being abused?
Right, you're an accountant, I?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
mean the list goes on .
How much this is being abused,right?
I mean simply put, like let'srecognize when you've closed a
deal and let's let's move youfrom one email list to another
email list and that second, likeI saw something had a.
I had just like a uh, uh, a duhmoment the other day.
I forget what I signed up forsomething sassy, something you
know freemium kind of SASplatform.
(23:43):
I forget what I signed up forSomething sassy, something you
know, freemium kind of SaaSplatform.
I forget what it was.
If I remember it, I'll mentionit.
The onboarding emails werebrilliant for kind of two
reasons.
One is they were very short,like super short.
There were eight of them and Iknew from the first email that
(24:05):
there were eight of them becausein the subject line it said
what the email was about is likethree words and at the end, in
brackets, it was like one ofeight, two of eight, three of
eight.
I'm like why aren't more peopledoing this?
Because it's so important in anonboarding journey to give your
customer like the context ofwhere they are in that journey
(24:26):
so that they're progressingtowards completion.
Love that, what a great tip.
I just thought it was brilliant.
I was like I'm going to startdoing that.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think I am too.
That's what I love about thisspace you meet a person, you
learn something new.
By the way, I don't think Iknow everything.
That's what I love about thisspace you meet a person, you
learn something new.
By the way, I don't think Iknow everything.
That's why I love doing mypodcast.
I always learn something new.
But this is kind of like cooltip, you know, tell them how
many there are in the series andkeep it super short.
(24:57):
Coming from a specific personor did they come from like a
marketing email?
And B?
Did they include a video inthem or were they just text only
?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It's a great question .
So the other, the other thingabout them is that I got, I
think, two a day for four daysand that would two a day, but
they were short, right, it'slike okay, now do this One thing
, click done.
And I think the briefness of itallowed for that kind of
(25:31):
cadence but it kept you kind oflike okay, top of mind, like hey
, you know, I'm going to be withyou for four days, so use this.
It's not going to be this fiveweek thing, but to your point,
it was short.
A couple of them had somevideos in there, but it wasn't
like narrated stuff, it was morelike GIF type video Go here,
click on this and do that.
(25:55):
And I think they came from apersona.
I think they came from ageneralized kind of inbox.
But I do love a good personafor digital motions.
It does create some personality.
So I love that you asked thatquestion, because I do think a
lot of people kind of strugglewith okay, should I be on brand
and on marketing, kind of speak,or should I be like a human or
(26:16):
at least an avatar?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, I wonder if anybody did a research to say,
when you use an avatar, but it'sa consistent avatar for the
duration of the life cycle,doctor, whatever, yeah, doctor,
scope, right?
Or is it from the CEO, if it'sa small company that sells to,
(26:44):
you know, individuals like a B2C, almost like a small business
owners, or should it be yourdesignated CSM?
You know, I'm in the strongopinion that if you're going to
use this email sequence and it'sa higher touch model, you
should use your CSM as thepersona sending those emails.
And if you have a very lowtouch, like a long tail customer
(27:07):
base, 10,000, 7,000 customersand you're not going to have a
designated CSM, then yeah,either an avatar or the CEO or
the whomever is heading supportor whatnot.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Right, yeah, I totally agree.
I also think there's some roomfor fun there, especially for
your platform and your customerbase.
Like I don't know if you're, Ithink it depends on your
customer base, right.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Like an animated avatar.
If you're like a big company,you're not going to send it from
the CEO, obviously, and youhave a long customer tail.
Yeah, come up with a, with apersona.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You know, like a chatbot should have the same
persona and your, you know,whatever it is.
Yeah, yeah, make it animated,make it fun.
Why?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
not.
I mean, why not have a?
Speaker 1 (27:56):
mascot right Like Salesforce kind of has their
little thing.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I forget what it is.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
but so so, in those eight emails that you loved so
much, did they include anembedded video some of them did,
yeah, so like a like a like agif type situation, but it
wasn't like a gif okay, animatedgif, but not a video like a one
minute video light video thatwas like.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
This is how to uh like an animated gif.
You click here.
Let me show you how it's done.
Okay, yeah, basically.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Interesting.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool.
So one of the things I wantedto ask you about, which you know
on this podcast we've talked alot about just like digital
motions you know buildingefficiency throughout teams and
(28:51):
helping customers and all thatkind of stuff, but I know that
you help a lot of your clientsthrough revenue retention and
you know really buildingstrategy around protecting your
revenue and you know making surethat renewal goes through and
you've got expansion kind oflined up and whatnot.
And I'm curious what youropinion is about the role of
digital in that, because I mean,you're not going to have
complex, you know financialdiscussions in your digital
(29:14):
channels, but there's but I butbut I do think there's probably
room for digital in the lead upto that.
I'm just curious what your kindof take on all that is.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I mean, there's so many opportunities to leverage
automation during the renewalprocess to make a killer process
.
So if you were looking forhigher touch, one of the things
I encourage all of my clients todo is either send the annual
survey or just an email with onequestion, hypothetically if you
could renew right now, wouldyou?
(29:46):
Yeah, just to flag risk early,and early is not 30 days before
the renewal.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
No.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It's 90 days at a minimum by the way.
Because, yeah, tsaa, by the way,they did a benchmark survey and
they found that on average, ittakes about 90 days to resolve a
technical issue.
I'm not talking about okay, Ican't log in I'm talking about,
like, a technical issue that acompany have that might
otherwise not renew unless yousolve it.
So why not ask that question120 days or 180 days prior to
(30:17):
the renewal?
By the way, if you do send itout 120 days prior to the
renewal and they say, yeah,actually I would.
By the way, if you do send itout 120 days prior to the
renewal and they say, yeah,actually I would, then it gives
you an incentive to, you know,have a conversation about
renewing early.
I just had a podcast episodelaunched with Renew Plus, a new
(30:37):
podcast by Renew Track andMichael, their CEO.
Pretty awesome, yeah, prettyawesome podcast.
I think it's going to bebonanza, like a better word.
I chose that word.
It's going to be great, I loveit.
And he said that they'reobviously enabling clients to
have the renewal processcompletely automated.
And he said that with the rightincentives and the right
(31:00):
approach, they can increase theaverage time to renew.
They can advance it by 45 days.
So their clients seeing ithappens because you put some
things and some of the thingsthat you can automate is that
question.
(31:27):
You can also automate completely, especially if the contracts
are you know whether they'resimple, just time consuming and
doing manually.
You can totally automate thecompilation of you know
everything all the contracts,everything that the PO,
everything that's sort of thecommunication, everything that's
related to you know manual work, that's just busy work.
(31:55):
So then the CSM, or the renewalmanager, plays a role in having
the right conversation aboutupsell, about you know, renewing
early or extending the contractconditions.
Now, if you're in a completePLG, meaning product-led growth,
self-serve, you can stillleverage the renewal moment to
(32:16):
increase upsell attach rate tothe renewal motion.
And again, I think thetechnology helps a lot in that
sense.
If you set it up so that as theyrenew, it doesn't renew to
completely automatically, butthey get an email and say hey,
by the way, we have thispromotion, here's a code.
(32:37):
If you do that, you also getthis, this and that that's a
good one.
Can we create awareness to whatelse you can have?
And if you're already committedto my brand, you have a good
experience.
Why not A sign up for atwo-year deal instead of one for
your upcoming renewal and getsome discount if you know you're
(32:58):
not leaving anytime soon, orupgrade with a heavy discount or
whatever incentives you haveout there, like a better support
or whatever it is that you'regoing to offer or announce a new
module and kind of like.
Allow for that moment to amplifyby creating awareness to what
(33:27):
are the possibilities the clientcan take as they approach the
renewal.
And again, I think that thecritical piece is to A leverage
technology to find risk, likethe hypothetical question is one
of them, and second, createawareness to what else opens up.
If you are already loyal to mybrand, how else can we expand on
that relationship?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, it's great insight and, I think, really
good practical advice and,granted, full renewal.
Automation isn't a luxury that Ithink a lot of you know, a lot
of companies have, just becausethere's inherent complexity that
you have to solve for.
But I, I, I think that you know,in a, in a, especially in a
(34:15):
post COVID world, whereeverybody's just gotten used a
little bit more to operatinglike digitally and like remotely
and like those those old salescycles and statements of work
and all that kind of stuff stillnecessary, but it just feels
dinosaurish these days and soyou know it would be cool to see
(34:36):
a lot more of that stuff kindof move automated and and you
know, you know it's.
It's kind of like, again, it'sthat combination of human and
digital, like that firstquestion, like how likely are
you to renew?
Um, that starts your branchingright there, you know, and and
from there you have furtherbranching that may or may not
have humans involved, dependingon what your answer is and
(34:59):
depending on you know what it isthat you're you're after with
the account.
So, um, that's, I guess, in thewild or among you know your
clients from a consultancyperspective?
Have you seen some really cooldigital motions or things where
you've been like oh, I recognizewhat that is.
(35:21):
That's really neat.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I think that Yair Bottinger when I interviewed him
on my podcast on YouTube, hehad some really cool stuff that
he's done podcast on YouTube.
He had some really cool stuffthat he's done.
One to upgrade a bunch ofclients from an old version to a
new version and the way he wasthinking about it when he was
designing it like the actualframework.
(35:44):
I think he used something likeyou have to think about what is
the next bucket, talk about youreight sequence email.
Right, that was just one stepthat you were encouraged to do.
I think that's why the sequencethat you liked worked so much,
so well.
And then he did the same thing,but he used a platform called
EverAfter because it was like alittle bit more complicated.
(36:05):
More steps needed to have somevideos in it to make it happen.
Obviously, more steps needed tohave some videos in it to make
it happen.
Obviously, upgrading from anold platform to a new one is a
big deal and if you want to have300 or 700 customers do it all
in four short weeks, you have tothink about automation.
You're not going to be able tomeet with it.
You don't have an army of CSMsto work with each of them
(36:27):
individually.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
And so I think that whenever you're thinking about
upgrade, onboarding, upsell,whatever the problem, when
there's like multiple stepsincluded, you want to think
about avoiding overwhelming yourclients.
Meaning an email or a page withlots of different steps I think
it's completely overwhelming.
(36:51):
You don't want to underwhelmthem, like give them something
stupid Okay, log in, then sendthe other email but you want to
get the whelm just right.
And to me, that means that whenyou do it, you get a little bit
of a wow moment when you getthat done, and maybe it's like
three simple steps, but then youget some sort of a result and I
(37:14):
think it takes a little bit ofart and creativity to think how
to break those steps down sothat you get the whelm just
right, even though you're justusing digital components.
And I encourage everybody towatch that, and I encourage
everybody to watch that.
He actually had two YouTubevideos that we record, two
videos that we posted on YouTubefor the podcast where he walks
(37:38):
through the framework, and bothhe's showing some really great
examples.
If you wanted to get thatframework really digested.
Well, just to watch thosevideos.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
We'll link it in the show notes so that folks can go
watch it.
Yeah, that's cool.
I love that, and I love thatyou used the word Like we have
overwhelm, we have underwhelm,whelm.
I don't, is it a thing?
Like, just write whelm Get thewhelm, just right.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
By the way, that's something that I learned it from
somebody else.
There's a guy called Taki Mooreand he says that a lot.
I was like yeah, you know whatrecipe book, playbook kind of
standards in terms ofimplementing digital.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Like, there are many different flavors and there are
so many variables thateveryone's digital emotions look
a little bit different.
Sure, everyone kind of hasaccess to email stuff and maybe
some in-product, but your actualstrategy and what you do and
all that kind of stuff variesfrom client to client.
But are there someconsistencies when it comes to
(38:58):
you actually advise your clientson their digital strategy?
Are there some kind of go-tothings that you always kind of
advise clients do?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, actually I have a full framework and a model
for that and we're actuallyapproaching it from a
customer-centric standpoint.
We start with the intent whatare we trying to accomplish and
what are the wow moments that wewant to create in that journey
and only then design it for that, and then the how is you know
(39:33):
becomes minor.
We will look at the intent,what we want to accomplish, and
then, when we design, we pointthe path to get this done.
We create the content and onlythen we think about okay, what
channels are our clients on sothat we can broadcast and create
awareness to this new content?
(39:54):
And then what's the best wayfor them to digest it?
Is it with group, you know,open office hours?
Is it a workshop that they needto sign up and it's like a five
five session, maybe acertification program?
Are we putting those videos ona library and with a course and
a training?
You know, it just depends.
(40:15):
Is it a five sequence email?
Where are, where are they?
first of all, and what's thebest way to digest it, pending
the complexity and how long ittakes and how much handholding
they might need.
But yeah, there's absolutely aframework for that handholding
they might need.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
But yeah, there's absolutely a framework for that.
Yeah, I mean, I think theinclination when it comes to
some of these things is to startway too early.
You're like, okay, yeah, weneed onboarding emails, so let's
go do that.
Sure, okay, but now let's dothis and let's do this, instead
of you know, kind of like saying, okay, where are customers
(40:55):
getting themselves into trouble?
Like, you know, what are themoments along the customer
journey where we really need tocelebrate their wins, when they
accomplish something, or ifthey're behind on something,
where do they need a little bitof extra shove?
A little bit of extra extrashove, and and a lot of times, I
think once you define thosethings, they, they, those things
(41:21):
then define your vehicle rightand and and how you engage the
customer that way.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Um, so, yeah, that would be a really great place to
start to even figure out whatare your intentions.
Your intentions should stemfrom the the key moments in a
client's life cycle, just likeyou said.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I think that's a really goodpoint.
How do you even know whatshould your intentions be so
well?
How can we mitigate them?
By introducing these you knowengagement strategies way
(41:43):
earlier in the process, so thatwe have less of them.
Yeah, exactly Exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
There's a reason why the majority of your support
cases land in this category, soyou might as well go after that,
right.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Yeah exactly.
Brilliant.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, exactly Brilliant.
So look, as we kind of start toyou know, wrap up our
conversation.
I would which I've thoroughlyenjoyed, by the way, and I think
we could probably do a wholenother hour on this stuff but
I'd love to get a sense from you.
What's in your content dietwhat do you pay attention to,
because I love you know sharingthat with the audience.
(42:32):
Content diet what do you payattention to?
Because I love you know sharingthat with the audience, so that
they can also pay attention tothose things uh, what do I love
to watch and like, uh, read andthat kind of.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I think, like you know for me, in terms of, uh,
just in general, I love readingbusiness books in general.
I don't necessarily so muchimmerse myself in CS books,
although when one comes out Iwould usually read it.
So the last two books that I'veread were one, the Seven
(43:06):
Pillars by Wayne McCulloch, theSeven Pillars of Customer
Success, and I also read the CCObook by Rod Cherkas and the
Onboarding Matters by DonnaWeber.
I think, yeah, there you go.
All of them are really greatbooks.
I recommend them to all of them, to everybody, to all of them,
(43:30):
I recommend Rod.
Cherkas to read his own book.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, to everyone.
Have you read your book?
Speaker 2 (43:36):
All of them are great .
You'd be surprised, I thinkDonna Weber definitely read her
book because she did an audioversion of it, which was
brilliant, totally so for her Ithink that was like a lot of
work.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah, I think I embarrassed her when she was on
the podcast because Icomplimented her on her
voiceover skills.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, I thought she did a really good job honestly.
Yeah, I think it says somethingabout something when you
compliment her.
I think people should know thatthey're doing a good job, and I
think all three of them did agreat job.
Really, quite a bit is thatwhen you read Wayne McCulloch's
book, it has a lot of tacticaladvice and models which I think
(44:18):
really help understand very deepcontext around how do you
structure the strategy.
And I love Rod's book because Ilearned something new about
storytelling and things that Inot necessarily thought about
and like.
His approach to metricshonestly is a little bit
different than mine, but it wasreally interesting to see how
(44:39):
other people think Mine isbetter, by the way no, I'm just
kidding, it's just different.
I was like, hi, interesting,okay, I'm still like mine better
, but it's always good to seehow people approach and think
about these things and you canalways learn something new and
mad respect for all of them, youknow for writing these books.
(44:59):
So I recommend you know, ifyou're new to customer success
or you're a CS executive andjust needs to be inspired, just
read these three books.
And, of course, if you have thetime, sign up for my youtube
channel csm practice.
My focus is on strategies andmethodologies and playbooks that
work.
So I end up interviewing a lotof cs execs and team leaders and
(45:23):
cs ops managers just to askthem hey, what did you do and
what worked for you, and can yougive us all the little details
so that everybody can learn howto uplevel their CSM practice?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Yeah, that's one of the things I love about your
channel is is is you walk you?
Invariably, after everyconversation, you walk away with
like stuff that you can go.
Do you know um which is whichis which is so cool?
So um mission complete on thatone Nice job.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, and, if I can put like a quick plug, that's
the essence, necessarily, of mynew coaching program for
startups.
As you know, I've been workingwith a lot of different
companies over since 2013, so2014, now almost 10 years and
primarily I used to work withlarger companies.
That used to be my domain, andin the last two, three years, I
(46:12):
used to work with largercompanies.
Uh, you know, that used to bemy domain, and in the last two,
three years, I've gotten a lotof asks from startups hey, can
you work with us too?
And I said I think it's liketoo much, like you know, it
would be too much requirementsfor your resources and budget.
And then I said you know whatyou read.
Enough is enough.
You're going to build acoaching program for startups,
(46:37):
startup executives, team leaders, and just take everything that
you've learned in the lastdecade and open it up for them.
And I'm proud to say that thisyear 2024, I've officially
launched my 120 plus NRRcoaching program.
It's designed for startups andI this is like.
The goal of the coachingprogram is not to show you a
bunch of videos, which you coulddo on my YouTube channel, but
actually give you the templates,give you the coaching, the
(47:02):
address, how to implement it inyour organization and all the
support that you need to getthis done and accelerate your
pace to 120 plus NRR.
And if you're already there,how do you scale that up as you
continue to grow?
So if anybody's interestedactually you know I'm just going
to put this plug in go to mycompany's website,
(47:25):
csnpracticecom, and, yeah, let'sget a conversation going to see
if that might be a good fit.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
That's cool.
I love that you're doing thatand it's it's.
I think it's an underservedpart of the market for sure.
So that's good stuff, I agree,is there?
Is there anyone you thought outto, maybe somebody that's doing
something you know particularlycool and digital, or somebody
that you're just a general fanof?
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Like I said, I'm big, big, big fan of Yael Bottinger
and what he does, big fan ofGainset and the thought
leadership that they producearound scaled CS community
online communities, and youshould also check Planhat and
the sales machine.
All of them are doing reallygreat things in the lower touch
(48:14):
and scaling CS.
Uh, obviously, softwarecompanies, but I really love the
, the content uh that theyproduce and, um, I think the
their focus is there for scaledCS and, uh, that's my world.
You know, this is what I uhlove learning.
I think you know full admission.
You know, sometimes I talk topeople on LinkedIn that message
(48:36):
me or whatever, and if they'rean executive, I always ask them
you know what is, what is yourfocus?
And in December, I must havetalked to I don't know 30
different CS executives and Iwould say that 80% of them, if
not more, say that.
80% of them, if not more, saidthat they were working on
something and they were workingon scaling their CS engagement
(48:58):
model Like bar none.
80% of all the executives thatI spoke to in the past two
months and we're in January 2024, are focused on scaling their
operations, absolutely.
And so I think it's going to bejust like a.
You know Konami is down, youhave less people.
You have to learn, you have tosqueeze it and get the most out
(49:19):
of what you have.
I think it's going to be a big,big focus for 2024.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Well, look, it's been a pleasure.
I'm such a big fan of yours andI'm glad we could make this
work, and I appreciate youtaking an hour out of your day
and joining me.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, Listen man, it was awesome.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for everybody thatlistened Really appreciate you
taking the time to listen to usboth chit-chatting and it was
absolutely awesome being here.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
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 Terkovich.
(50:10):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
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