January 30, 2024 • 50 mins
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Today's Guest Annie Dean of RecastSuccess is a TRUE CS veteran and is one of those rare individuals who was around when the term 'Customer Success' was coined!
What does that mean for us? Lots of insight and knowledge to learn from. In this fascinating conversation, Annie draws from her deep career at legendary companies like LinkedIn, Cisco & Coursera - as well as her current experience with RecastSuccess - to give us a ton of great nuggets of knowledge.
It was also a pleasure having her on as RecastSuccess does so much to drive equity and diversity within CS - which is definitely worth highlighting.
In this fantastic conversation, we cover a lot of ground including:
- How to prioritize where to start digitally
- How tooling has helped us to normalize digital CS
- The genesis of RecastSuccess and its mission to help foster diversity in CS
- The role profiles of Digital CS and how product management, marketing, sales ops and data science fit in well with DCS - not necessarily CSM.
- How RecastSuccess partners with VCs & Startups to help grow CS orgs with well trained team members
- Early stage startups have an advantage because you can start with automations and have them in place from the beginning
- How to be proactive with end-users (those that aren’t reaching out) to help drive outcomes for those executives
- Average professional in the US uses 80 apps regularly - which is why it is imperative to be proactive with users
- Semi-live webinars are a great way to scale
- New AI tools are there to augment and improve what you’re doing - not replace what you’re doing.
- Racial & Gender diversity in tech and RecastSuccess’ mission for building CS teams that are as diverse as possible
- The ever-present topic of whether to QBR or whether to not QBR
Annie's Industry Newsletter List
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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):
Your percentage of time that you can ask from an
executive should be directlyproportional to the level of
benefit they get from yourproduct.
So if you're the payrollsoftware and your executive
sponsor is the director ofpayroll, their jobs 100% rely on
your software, like you play ahuge part in their day to day
(00:25):
and they really care and theywant to know and they want an
opportunity to ask questions.
If you are, you know a plug-infor Zoom that has cute emojis
like no one wants to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
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
(00:56):
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
the latest updates, go toDigitalCustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome to theDigital Customer Success podcast
.
So great to have you back.
As usual, if you're listening tothis quote unquote live, you
(01:20):
have basically today andtomorrow because it's January
30th.
So you have till the end of day, january 31st, to enter to win
a gold pass to the CustomerSuccess Festival that's
happening in Austin next monthin February.
So the instructions for how toenter are down in the
description.
(01:40):
So if you want to enter, yougot two days left, get at it.
If the time has passed and youare now in February but the
event hasn't happened yet, justdrop me a message on LinkedIn or
send me an email, alex atDigitalCustomersuccesscom and
I'll shoot you a 20% off codethat you can use to get into the
event.
That aside, if you're listeningto this way in the future means
(02:05):
nothing to you, so it's time toget into today's conversation
with none other than Annie Dean.
This was an amazing conversationbecause she has such a wealth
of history in CS.
I mean, she's kind of like an.
She's a CS OG.
She spent a lot of time atLinkedIn and Cisco and a few
(02:28):
other places Coursera, I thinkas well.
I'm just building CS chops andbeing early to market with, like
digital customer success beforeit was called Digital Customer
Success.
These days, you can find her atRecast Success, where she's
been a few years with herco-founder, focused on building
CS careers, focused on careertransitioners and providing
(02:51):
workshops and certifications forfolks who want to get into CS,
and the best part about it isthey're focused on diversity.
They're focused on gender andracial equity and really making
CS as diverse as possible, whichI absolutely love.
We do talk about that a littlebit, but we also spend a ton of
(03:12):
time on just tactical advice andreal world examples of you know
just great digital CS bestpractices.
Lots of goodies in thisconversation.
I hope you enjoy it.
I certainly did.
Here we go with Annie Dean.
Annie, I am so happy thatyou're here.
Welcome to the podcast.
It's great to have you.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to chat with you.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
There's a number of reasons why I reached out.
You know, just because you'reprimarily the stuff that you do
with Recast Success is like suchkind of fundamentally cool and
awesome and like the missionthat you're on is great.
So definitely want to dig intothat.
But before we kind of get going, I'd love to get a sense for
(04:00):
kind of who you are, where youcame from, what got you into CS,
like that whole kind of journeythat we all take that's never a
direct line into CS.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Totally, totally.
I had.
I was pretty early days.
So all of my generation of CSpeople we all were career
transitioners coming from otherplaces.
Yeah, I did over a decade inretail and wholesale leadership,
which I really enjoyed, but wasready to have a better quality
of life and have a bigger impactand more scale.
(04:34):
I really wanted to get intotech and it was tough Like I
didn't know how to market myself, I didn't have the right
connections.
I applied for probably over ayear before you know, even
though I had 10 years ofleadership experience.
I'd run big businesses.
I had to start over again atlike an entry level job.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I was at Cisco as a project coordinator and, you
know, luckily moved up really,really quickly.
I was part of their learning atCisco, so customer education.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And got pretty quickly drafted into start the
customer education function,which was basically digital CS,
yeah, at LinkedIn in like 2013.
Right, and you know, when werebranded to customer success
back then, so it was a brandbrand you filled at that point.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's so funny how well I mean I say this all the
time that you know digital CSisn't necessarily a new concept.
It's.
It's, you know, taking thingsthat we've done as companies
forever, like email, marketingand in product and all that kind
of stuff, and it's likewrapping it around the customer
journey essentially.
But it's so cool how you knowyou said it was essentially
(05:52):
digital customer success,because it's what it was.
It's what it's.
It's been around for a whilejust as a name now.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, exactly we.
You know we were brought on mytiny little team to address no
and low touch solutions becauseyou know the company had been
around for a long time.
But their B2B business wasactually pretty new.
Yeah, they had been around fora hundred million, been going
for, I think, maybe three yearsor so.
They were seeing double digitchurn and everyone was getting
(06:20):
high touch white glove servicebecause they were figuring out
as they went.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Industry was brand new.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Throwing bodies at it .
Speaker 1 (06:26):
We came on to try and invent all of the no and low
touch strategies that we couldroll out, so we didn't have to
just hire a thousand CSMs tokeep up with the growth rate.
We went from a hundred millionto a billion in that first two
years and then to two billionabout a year and a half after
that.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
It's rare on this podcast.
In fact, you might be the firstone to ever mention billion on
this podcast.
So congratulations, I feelhonored.
That's a big number.
That's a big number.
So, okay, I think that we areon the digital CS podcast.
I ask all my guests the samequestion and I would love to get
(07:05):
your kind of elevator pitch onit, because everybody has a
different take and you have aprobably a more historically
relevant take on where thingshave been and what not.
So what, in your opinion, ifyou had to sum it up in 10, 30
seconds, what is digital CS?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, and we, you know we talk about this a lot
and you know I feel like it'sbringing the right communication
to the right person at theright moment in time and a
scaled low, no touch kind of way, and then using actionable data
and insights to prioritize yourlow touch interactions so that
you get the highest ROI forthose those interaction points.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I love that.
Do you do you have, do you have, some insight into what you've
used in the past or currently toget that prioritization Right,
like what I mean, obviously,with an email campaign you look
at, you can look at engagementmetrics and things like that
(08:08):
that's.
But like, how are you goingabout prioritizing those things
that need to be done oremphasizing things that are
already being done?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean we start with a really easy version of a
customer lifecycle right, whichis just like get a minute.
You know, get your end usersenrolled, get them using basic
functions, get them usingadvanced functions, demonstrate
the value to the decision makerand then, you know, look for
opportunities to expand yourrelationship.
(08:37):
And we look at what are the topdrivers of fall off at each of
those steps along the way.
And how could we address thosein a more meaningful way, even
if it's just like try, test outone strategy each month to try
and move the needle.
So, for example, if the biggestdrop off in getting people on
(08:58):
and using it for the first timeis they don't understand the why
, bother If you can't get pastthat hurdle.
They're never going to investthe time to actually come back
and learn how to master it andget the full value out of it.
So you know, that's usuallywhere we start is like start at
the beginning of the journey,start with some different
channels and see which onesstick.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, and before we started recording.
You know we're kind of jokingabout the fact that, like a lot
of people ask, you know, like,how do you get started in
digital?
And the thing is just start,Like, figure out where you need
to go, figure out what you have,just start and if you fail,
fine, fail fast, learn some goodstuff and then go on.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, if we had waited forthe tools to be invented and all
the analytics to be in placeand everything back when we were
starting out, we never wouldhave gotten customer success at
scale off the ground.
And we didn't always get itright.
We absolutely didn't.
But as long as you're learningsomething each step of the way
(10:05):
and each time is a little bitbetter than the time before,
then you're going to get to areally good place a lot faster
by getting going.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
The kids these days have it easy, because the kids
these days you've got thingslike Zappier and then all these
low cost ways of doing reallyniche things and you tie them
all together and it's so fun.
It's super fun.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
But yeah, oh, my God.
Yeah, people just don't haveany idea how good they have it.
I would have MBA internsdigging into this data for me,
trying to figure out whichactivity did this person perform
on average?
Of the customers that churned,what were they doing?
(10:48):
Are the customers that expanded?
What were they doing?
What were the touch points?
We were doing it on giant Excelfiles.
It was ridiculous.
Now you can plug it into a CSPor, I mean hell, you can drop it
into chat GPT drop some dataand you're like summarize this
for me.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's like hardcore regression testing that you were
doing.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah, it wasn't easy, but it was pretty amazing.
I got to work with some likejust brilliant data scientists
and engineers and businessstrategists.
It was pretty awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, that's cool.
So okay, fast forward a bit.
Recast success Tell me a littlebit about that.
What was the genesis for that?
What got you kind of thinkingalong those lines?
And then, if you want to giveus kind of an overview of what
you are all about at Recast,it'd be awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Sure, yeah, it's funny we're coming up on.
We incorporated almost twoyears ago, but we've been
working on this for two and ahalf, almost three years.
My co-founder and I weresitting one day and kind of
talking about how challenging itwas to hire more diverse
customer success folks on ourown teams.
(12:04):
We've both been in CSleadership for quite some time.
I wanted more careertransitioners but it's really
challenging.
Right With your hiring manager,you're trusting someone to go
out and be the face of yourcompany.
With hundreds of thousands ormillions of dollars of business,
it's hard to find people whoyou can just plug in.
It's always going to take someresources that, as a hiring
(12:26):
manager, by the time we get ahead count approved, we're
already short staffed.
We don't have a ton ofresources available to train and
develop folks.
We also looked at just thediversity across the industry in
general the CSMs that were inthe market.
Everyone's fighting over thesame few people that were pretty
homogenous.
We wanted people that were abetter reflection of our
(12:47):
customers, that reallyunderstood a day in the life.
We decided, well, heck, let'sjust create a way to have a
better talent funnel of the kindof people that we want to hire
on to our own teams.
We originally founded this.
It was just a boot camp programfor mid-career professionals
(13:09):
coming from industries that havehighly transferable skills and
primarily focused onunderrepresented populations.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
That's great.
I think that speaks to thething that you see in CS all the
time, which is to say there'sfew people who start in CS.
Not until recently could you goand get a degree.
There were no degree programsand customers.
You have folks from sales andproduct and all different walks
(13:42):
of life.
This is a weird question and wetotally didn't prep for it, but
I'm going to ask it anyway.
Is there a previous experience,area or skill set that you find
lends itself particularly wellto somebody becoming a CSM, or
(14:05):
is it just all over the place?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It's a good question.
There's four key pillars tocustomer success.
We look for people that haveexperience in at least two of
them, One being thatimplementation, project
management, training function.
Two being sales components Canthey do an upsell or renewal or
negotiate a contract?
Three is business consultinghow well do they understand the
(14:30):
companies they'll be workingwith so that they can provide
valuable advice on things likechange management, internal
communications all those thingsthat drive adoption and
engagement?
Then fourth is being the voiceof the customer being able to do
a root cause analysis andprioritization and communicate
with your product team.
There's a lot of differentindustries that have components
(14:52):
that go along with that.
We look for people they need tohave at least two out of the
four and then we can help trainthem on the other two as needed.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, for sure, some of us.
I was having some conversationsthe other day I forget who, my
short-term memory is not greatthese days.
We were talking about whatmakes a good digital CSM or
somebody who's really focused ondigital.
There was a combination oflittle things.
(15:23):
There's marketing, customermarketing elements, there's data
analysis and reallyunderstanding how two data sets
compare all those kinds ofthings.
Then there's this customersuccess, customer advocacy
muscle.
Have you found, in the bootcamps that you've done, have you
(15:47):
encountered individuals whohave been maybe more focused or
inclined to go down a moredigital path versus traditional
one-to-one CSM?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, I think it's tough because a lot of people
don't know about digital.
Yeah, Yet.
Yes, it's definitely gainingpopularity.
I completely agree.
Product management feeds wellinto digital.
Marketing feeds well intodigital data science and
analytics feeds well intodigital.
(16:21):
It's frustrating because a lotof what you see in the job
descriptions hiring managersjust don't get it.
They're just like I want someonethat's been a CSM for five
years.
They don't have any of theskills you actually need to do
this job.
No, yeah, if I had to pick onefield to pull someone into for
digital CS, I would take someonefrom SalesOps a hundred times
(16:43):
over.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's super fascinating.
Have your goals and the thingsthat you're aiming to achieve
with Recast Success changedsince your founding two years
ago, or has it remained prettysteady?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, I mean it's definitely changed.
We've expanded quite a bit,because originally it was just
Bootcamp, yeah, and we help ourgrads find jobs.
Part of that is we have a largevolunteer mentor network.
They get to participate in ourcareer services.
So we always have this reallyamazing talent pool that's free
to hire from.
(17:27):
And two things happened fromthat.
One was employers would hiresomebody who'd gone through
Bootcamp and go, wow, thisperson's better trained than my
CSMs that have been here for acouple of years.
Can you do some training withus?
So we do have an arm that doesmore B2B training now, working
mostly with private equity andVCs that are.
They might see there's a needmore than a startup would really
(17:49):
know.
If they don't know what goodlooks like, they don't realize
that they don't really have bestin class, and so sometimes it's
those external advisors thatcan say, hey, by the way, you
guys really are kind of missingthe mark on some of these things
that could take your CS team tothe next level.
The other area was, since wehave this talent pool, we get
(18:13):
early stage founders coming tous and they're like, hey, I'm
looking to hire, can you give mean individual contributor who
they're going to have nosupervision.
We have no tools in place, wehave no playbooks in place and
no one here really understandswhat customer success is.
Can you give us some names?
We'd love to hire or the otherend of the spectrum was like we
(18:35):
want somebody who's an executive, who's built from scale up
through IPO, who is not going tohave a team to lead.
They're just going to do allthe work in the trenches, work
mostly for equity, for 60 to 80hours a week.
Who do you know?
I'm like I don't want to assignanyone up to either of these,
which is where we founded inJanuary.
(18:57):
We started offering afractional head of customer
success program, somebody whosees and who knows what they're
doing, embedded one day a week,paired with an individual
contributor who is being trainedand developed to kind of take
on that long term leadership inthe company.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
That's cool.
What a cool model, thank you.
Yeah, I couldn't imaginethrowing an individual
contributor into thatenvironment without any kind of
guidance whatsoever or models,or just set up for failure just
because somebody says, hey, thatcustomer success thing.
I think we need that.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Right, yeah, half the time you're talking to these
founders and they really have noidea what customer success even
is.
So they're expecting thisperson to take on absolutely
everything post-sale.
So they're like you're going todo support and you might be
doing bill collection and you'regoing to be doing a myriad of
things.
And if you get at IC, whohasn't been around very long,
(19:53):
they don't know how to push backand really help them think
about changing the culture oftheir business to be more
responsive to customers, how toplug in feedback, how to better
hone their ICP, their idealcustomer profile based on what's
working with the customers theyhave.
They're just putting out firesand running around like a
(20:14):
chicken with their head cut off.
So we're hoping to change thatmodel so we can get the
fundamentals of what customersuccess really is into startups
earlier and put them on a goodpath to have a really great
culture long-term.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah.
So I'd like to be kind of a flyin the room on the wall for a
second there.
I mean analogies, I get themwrong all the time.
You've just walked into kind offirst day, maybe first month of
(20:53):
a fractional head roll andspending one day a week maybe
meeting some customers.
You're kind of getting a lay ofthe land for what the product
is and all those kinds of things.
At what point do you typicallysay, hey look, these things
(21:17):
should and can be automatedversus these things need a human
for now?
I get that there's no onerecipe.
But at what point are youtypically starting to advise
these founders that, hey look,you can get a lot done with this
type of automation?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, we love that we're starting really early
stage so that we can build forthat from the beginning.
So sometimes they have a CRM inplace.
Sometimes they don't even havethat yet.
We're advising on okay, here'sthe CRM you need to run your
business and PS.
These are the features or theservice levels that are going to
allow us to capture theinformation that we need and
(21:57):
make that automatable acrossmultiple platforms in the future
.
So it's kind of helping themsee around corners, building
with that in mind from the verybeginning.
But we teach digital CSworkshops to a lot of our B2B
customers too, and it startssmall.
(22:17):
So we're like, okay, great, youare doing a high-touch webinar
with a new customer and you'regoing to walk them through how
to use your product.
Awesome, let's take thetranscript from that.
We're going to drop this intochat, GPT and get 10 articles we
could use for your help centerand for a newsletter.
And here's we'll chop up thisvideo and for your smaller
(22:40):
customers, we can reuse thisvideo segment using this
software.
So it's like really justthinking about how every action
should be replicable and be ableto be used at scale and just
starting to embed that culturefrom, hopefully, from the very,
very beginning.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It sounds to me like a lot of times you're
encountering not just a CS typesituation or CS leadership, but
it's really operations.
You're kind of advising on whatsystems they should and
shouldn't think about andprobably advising on what they
should and shouldn't do withthose.
Is that a fair assumption?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, I would say, when you're ahead of customer
success at a startup likepre-seed seed series A, your job
, a lot of your job, isoperational, totally More than
just you know.
You're setting the foundationto build on top of.
It's not doing just thetraditional, you know working
with customers and you knowmaking sure that the value
(23:44):
proposition is gettingcommunicated clearly.
It's putting the infrastructurein place so that everyone else
can do that going forward.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, or dealing with a haphazard infrastructure that
exists that was implementedwithout a strategy.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Correct.
Yeah, we can tie it togetherand clean it up.
You know, once you've donethese for a few startups,
there's very common themes yousee over and over again.
But you know, most startups areadvised to focus on growth,
right Like growth at all costs.
If you want to raise your nextround of funding, you've got to
hit this dollar level, and so ifthere isn't someone there that
(24:16):
has enough credibility, enoughauthority, you know, and enough
experience to talk to them abouthow to think broader than that,
then they won't.
You know, like most founders,if there isn't somebody telling
them to focus, they have so manyother things going on it's just
going to, you know, fall by thewayside.
So we try and be that advocate,for here's how you need to
(24:39):
structure for more long-termthinking If you actually want to
keep this revenue you'refighting so hard to get in the
door.
Here are the fundamentals weneed to put in place.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, that's awesome, so important and often missed,
which is great for you from anopportunity standpoint.
You know, and as you start tothink about you know what.
You know what this companyshould be putting in place in
terms of their customer journeyand just the kind of thinking
(25:12):
through what those key momentsare along that customer journey
Are there, every company isdifferent, every software is
different, customer segments,all that kind of stuff.
But do you find that there arekey moments that you're advising
over and over and over againthat hey, look, this really
needs to be digitally supportedor, you know, put some
(25:35):
automation behind it to supportyour humans?
Like, are you finding yourselfkind of advising on those same
moments over and over again?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, I think the biggest miss we see almost every
single time is they only thinkabout end users in a reactive
way.
Right, so they'll focus onexecutive sponsors and point of
contact, if you're lucky, andthen they'll have a reactive
motion.
You know, maybe there's someimplementation work at the very
(26:08):
beginning of the contract andthen that's it.
There's nothing proactive goingout to those end users and
without the end users actuallyutilizing and finding value in
your product, that you know thebigger outcomes that the
executive sponsors care aboutare never going to happen.
So, really thinking about howto be more proactive, so we're
always telling them.
You know, if you think aboutwho's reaching out for support
(26:32):
from a personality standpoint,it's probably only about one in
five that need help or reachingout for help.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
The other four out of five are just going to give up.
They're like, yeah, this toolsucks, I'm not going to use it
anymore.
And so if you can't understandwhat problems they are having,
that maybe they don't even knowthey're having, and reach out
proactively to offer solutions,you're losing A huge percentage
of the value of your product.
That happens at pretty muchevery early stage startup.
(27:00):
They just don't put enoughthought into that.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Right, it's like once it's implemented, you're off to
the races or whatever next youknow.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Right, yeah, well, and you know, we know, turnover
in jobs is pretty high.
So even if that was true forthe population you originally
changed, what happens whenthere's new hire is what happens
, you know, when there's reorgsand redesigns and all those
things like training needs to beconstant.
You know communication needs tobe constant so that you stay
(27:30):
top of mind and you're providingrelevant information when they
need it.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, we think aboutonboarding and we think you know
the word that that word justconjures up this whole notion of
, okay, you need to get them setup and stood up and enabled or
whatever.
But we think about useronboarding nearly enough, I
think, especially in a platformwhere you know, maybe you have a
lot of users coming and goingand whatnot.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
That's a huge part of it, yeah, I mean the average
professional in the US uses 80apps professionally.
There's no way they'reutilizing the full depth and
breadth of the features on anyof those.
Probably Right, they're notjust get them to log in and use
it once and magically they'regoing to see why it's worth
(28:19):
investing their time to learnall of the features to get the
full benefit.
You know if you're notproactive about constantly
reinforcing why they shouldbother to learn something new.
Like change is hard, You'refighting for their attention for
a lot of different directions,so if you're really smart about
it, you know.
(28:40):
Give it to them in bite-sizedpieces and keep them coming back
for more and help them.
Help them understand the valueof what they've already invested
time learning.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, totally Thinking back this is a bit of a
left turn, but thinking backover all of the kind of work
you've done, that's kind ofdigital CS related, is there
maybe like is there a program ora specific time or a specific
motion that you can point to,that you're like you look back
(29:08):
on your like that was reallycool.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I'm still a really big fan of semi-live webinars.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I love that so much.
Yeah, I did that at a previousplace.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, we spent so much time here in a rapid growth
company you've got a lot of newcustomers coming on all the
time as watching my CSMs gothrough leading what you know.
90% of it was exactly the sameover and over and over again.
So setting up kind of recurringwebinar series is where you
know we're like we'll just do anonboarding once a week.
(29:44):
Everyone who joined that weekcan go into this onboarding and
80% of it's pre-recorded.
We only have to hop on for thelast 20% to answer questions.
That brought us so muchbandwidth and delivered more
consistency, like we could makesure that it was the perfect
version.
You know nobody had bandwidthissues or audio issues or bad
(30:06):
hair day or whatever on thatvideo where we had to do it live
every time.
There's always things that cango wrong.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
So it was higher quality and easier for us.
So that was when I really waspleased to get in place, and one
that I do again, over and overagain in other companies as well
.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I wish I could remember what platform we used,
but at a previous employer weused this platform that
basically you pre-record yourwebinar like soup to nuts.
It feels completely live.
You pepper in some kind of likefake questions in the chat from
fake people just to kind of getthe conversation going, but
(30:45):
then on the back end you have anactual human manning the chat
that's going on while thiswebinar is happening so that you
can actually interact with it.
So literally from a staffingperspective, to your point, you
didn't have to get quaffed, youdidn't have to go to the studio,
you didn't have to turn yourlights on and get your mic set
up and do all that kind of stuff.
You just had to make sure youhad somebody in the live chat
(31:08):
ready to go to answer questions.
And that was such a cool thingbecause I think a lot of times
when we go to implement some ofthese digital motions, the first
thing that can kind of leave isthe personality and the human
element of it.
And it's hard to be human overemail unless you're super
(31:30):
creative about your copy andspend a lot of time on that.
But I think those kinds ofthings still allow you to
present a sense of who you areas a brand and who you are as a
company, while, at the same time, being efficient with the
resources that you have.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, it's emails.
I don't know about you, but Idon't have positive warm, fuzzy
vibes when I open my inbox inthe morning and there's 300
emails in there.
There's nothing that's poppingup but I'm like oh, I'm excited
to read this from whatevervendor.
So, I always push to try andthink beyond the email cadences
(32:08):
and all of that.
What other ways can we connect?
What other channels areemployees and customers already
on that we can tap into thatthey're more likely to be
participating in and feelpositively about participating
in?
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, totally.
I love vendors that can make melaugh over email.
They'll have my businessforever.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
but a few, far between A few far between, Maybe
with chat to BT or AI.
If people get better at that, Idon't know.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Maybe yeah, as the better those tools get, are
there kind of today?
You've kind of fast forwardingto today.
I know you probably see quite abit and you interact with a lot
of different organizations andleaders and things like that.
Are there cool things thatyou're seeing out there right
(32:59):
now that you're really excitedabout that are related?
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah for sure.
Yeah, all these companies wework with are always asking for
advice on what tools they shouldbe thinking about, and so we
take a lot of demos and a lot oftrade shows.
We're kind of looking at what'sout there, Couple of the ones
I'm really excited about.
Well, let me take a step back.
Part of what we do is not justlook at tools that are already
(33:25):
for customer success.
Unfortunately, most of theinnovation it doesn't happen for
customer success.
If you go on G2, there's over15,000 tools for sales.
There is like 30 something forcustomer success.
So what we try to do is talk tofounders a little earlier in
their journey, try to pivot themtowards actually making it
(33:48):
built for a customer successperspective, purpose built,
instead of us having to later goand try and adapt something
that wasn't really built for us.
So one example of that I'mworking with a company called
Agent Co-Pilot that I discoveredit faster and they were
(34:09):
building for marketing.
It's a it's kind of a loomstyle video that uses deepfakes,
so you can like create anavatar of yourself, your video
and your voice in a few minutesand then you can create scripts
that will connect to your CSP oryour CRM and can like inform
(34:33):
what goes into that script topersonalize it and then create a
video from your CSM that looksexactly like your CSM across
your entire customer base.
So you could do a thousandcustom videos in a few minutes
instead of recording a thousandlooms.
That one I'm really excitedabout because we talked up into
going to CSRoute instead of themarketing route.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Is that?
Is that also the one that thatdoes the translation really well
?
Which one is that?
Speaker 1 (34:58):
No, that's hey Jen.
That's definitely on my list aswell.
Yeah, I love that.
We spent so much time atLinkedIn, especially because we
were global.
We covered 47 differentlanguages and so when I left
there, we were doing about 350webinars every month in 27
different languages just to tryand cover the most of our
(35:19):
population.
We spent so much money and hadso many resources to try and
cover all this language Like heyJen would have been absolutely
revolutionary for us, absolutelyyeah.
Yeah, amazing.
I love that.
I think that's really cool.
(35:39):
I don't know if you've seenthem.
I have.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, but that was another thing.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Customer education, like one of our big pain points
is product change is probablyevery two weeks.
Like how do you keep all yourmaterials up to date?
So there's, does you know?
I think all of these need somework.
Like none of them are 100%there yet, but like the
direction they're going.
I'm really excited.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, video is, you know.
Again, it's solving a problemthat a lot of large training
organizations Well, part of thereasons are so large is because
they've had to support this kindof, you know, level of quality
of video creation and all ofthat kind of stuff that is now
(36:24):
just like at the tip of yourfinger.
And what's interesting about it, when I really think about
these things, is, you know, youmentioned that they're not quite
there yet, or that you knowthey still have some maturing to
do, and I totally agree withthat, because I don't I don't
for once think that you coulduse any of these tools to A
(36:48):
replace your CSM we don't,that's not what they're there
for or B like just B, the CSfunction for you.
I think there are all tools toaugment what you do and to make
your humans like more efficientand more effective.
And you have to kind of reallylead into that, like, hey, we've
(37:11):
got this virtual assistant, orwe have this persona named Bob
and he's going to talk to youevery once in a while about the
health of your account.
This isn't me, this is you know.
It's like we almost have tolike use it as, as a tool and
and you know, I don't know whereI'm going with this, but it's
like it's like it's it's.
(37:31):
It's not there yet, nor do Ireally want it to be there where
it's like you're just puttingan avatar with Jenae I in front
of a customer for all of your CSneeds.
But what it does do is it takessome of the mundane, makes it
entertaining, makes it fun, putsit in front of the customer
when they need it, where theyneed it, and your CSM can then
(37:53):
focus on having, like thosereally high value conversations
that you know in strategicconversations.
I think that's where I wantedto go with that.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, I mean, I think about it like maybe graphic
design like nineties and before,probably most designers were
designing print media, right,like they're sending out
postcards, they're putting upflyers, they're doing billboards
, whatever.
And then all of a sudden, youknow, graphic design, digital
(38:23):
graphic design got a lot easier.
You didn't have to be anengineer to do it.
You can use templates, you candrag and drop, you can change
the colors, all those things.
It doesn't mean there were nomore designers, it just meant
that they could be a lot moreeffective, a lot more creative
and reach way more people, sohave higher impact.
And that's kind of how I thinkabout you know, ai affecting the
(38:44):
digital CS landscape.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Just because you have a Canvasubscription doesn't make you a
good designer.
You can make crap in Canva too.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
True, I do it all the time yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
That's awesome, as we kind of start to round things
down a little bit, or windthings down a little bit.
What's you've mentioned, someapps and some technology that
you're really excited about.
Are there some people that aredoing cool things in digital
that you might want to, you know, give a shout out to, or point
out or give a high five to,virtually?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, I mean I A lot of what I do is kind of we're
following the tools thannecessarily following the
influencers.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, I love Rachel Woods.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
He has the AI exchange.
She puts out some amazingcontent.
That is a really good summaryof what's going on in AI.
Cool.
They have a Slack community aswell.
People are always postingamazing things and good tips for
each other there, so that'sprobably my top go-to at the
moment.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Are there things outside of CS or professional
content whatever, that you payattention to that influences you
as a CS leader?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, again, not necessarily following CS
specific.
I follow 15 industrynewsletters that talk about
what's going on in differentsegments of tech.
It helps me understand what thefinance landscape looks like,
because where the money goes,the industry will follow.
(40:25):
I pick one for each industrythat I really love, like NTUK
for ed tech and Rock Health forhealth tech.
I've got my list there.
Feel free to DM me if you'reunhappy to share it.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Send it to me.
I'll put it in the show notesif anybody's interested.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah For sure.
Also a great way.
If you're looking for work,follow the money.
If you've been fundraising,they're probably going to have
headcount opening.
It's a great way to get aheadof the curve.
I also really love CaesarRomero does a Beyond the Job
podcast, which just gives meinspiration for career
(41:02):
transition or stories Back toour boot camp roots there.
I really love connecting withpeople who have made those
transitions, not just tocustomer success but just in
general hearing how people canhighlight their transferable
skills in a really meaningfulway to move towards the
lifestyle they want to have.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
That's so great.
Yeah, it's a good call out Toyour earlier point.
Christy Faltrosi also gave thisadvice on the podcast, which is
her main thing.
That she called out wasBloomberg Just follow the money.
That's where the opportunity is.
One thing that actually Iwanted to touch on that we
didn't touch on earlier, when wewere talking about recast, and
(41:42):
I wanted to dig in a little bitdeeper on this, on the mission
of equity in the workplace,because I think it's crazy
important.
We've highlighted it on theshow before with various guests.
You've got your finger on thepulse, I feel like in CS anyway,
(42:03):
I feel like gender equity hassome room to grow at the
leadership level, at the IClevel.
It seems pretty good, but Ithink racial diversity still in
tech, in CS and everywhere isjust way off the mark.
I would love your finger on thepulse as to what you're seeing.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, Thank you for highlighting that.
Definitely things we care a lotabout.
Yeah, when we started thiscompany in 2020, we started
working on it.
We looked at the statisticsacross customer success.
A lot of them were still from2019.
There At that point in time, 81percent of CSMs were white, 90
(42:47):
percent had a bachelor's degreeor higher and 95 percent lived
in one of 15 major Metro urbanareas.
So like a very specificdemographic which 100 percent
did not look like my customers.
So we've made and lost someprogress across those areas.
Specifically, Then, thepercentage of white CSMs now is
(43:11):
78 percent, so we've made alittle bit of progress there.
Still not fully representativeof the US population.
Only 3 percent of CSMs areblack, which has been pretty
flat over the last five years,versus 13 percent of the US
population is black.
10 percent of CSMs are Latinx,which has improved over the last
(43:35):
few years but still is nowherenear the 19 percent of the US
population.
Degrees has actually gone thewrong direction, Like we started
to see a lot of positive changein 2021-22, where the labor
market was really really tightand people started removing that
requirement.
This year, we've lost a ton ofground.
(43:57):
It's actually higher than itwas in 2019, at 92 percent have
a bachelor's degree or higher,which I don't think is needed.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
No.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Which also has some implications for diversity in
class and I feel like college ingeneral is not needed anymore.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
I know, having launched degrees for Coursera, I
probably shouldn't say this outloud, but I absolutely agree.
I think it's pretty antiquatedand a pretty big problem We'll
have to address this generation.
The bright spot has been theurban versus rural divide has
drastically changed.
Those 15 urban areas wereacross about 10 states.
(44:46):
There's now concentrations ofat least 150 CSMs across 48
states.
It's just absolutely exploded.
I'm really hoping we don't losetoo much ground as companies are
starting to pull back on remote, friendly roles, because it
makes no sense for your CSM tohave to be where your
headquarters are Zero.
This should be where theircustomers are Correct, even in
(45:08):
the communities that they'reserving.
I'm really hoping that trenddoesn't backtrack too much.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, that's very interesting.
Do you find that because ofthat, do you find that CS orgs
are segmenting their customersby geographic location more than
they may have in the past, oris that not really a thing?
Speaker 1 (45:32):
I feel like they always did.
I don't know, maybe that's justthe companies I've worked at,
but I think time zones play alot into it.
Yeah, so being available thehours that your customers are
available.
But before digital was aspopular, there was a lot of
travel for CS Funds.
Ideally, you want it local.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
A couple hour drive.
I remember doing these crazyroad shows supporting a CSM
during quarterly business reviewseason where we'd go down the
entire Eastern seaboard and see70 customers in two weeks or
something, but those would allbe with the customers for the
East Coast that were within acouple hours drive of most of
(46:16):
their customers.
So I feel like CS has alwaysbeen more remote, friendly than
other jobs in tech and I'mreally hoping, as people are
pulling these streams andrequiring people to come back to
the office, that they don'textend that to their CS teams.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, I totally agree .
It's interesting one thing thatcame to mind as you were
talking about kind of those QBRroad shows or whatever you know,
the QBR I think makes perfectsense in an in-person
environment.
Obviously you want to comeprepared with a deck and with
(46:54):
the supporting details and beingin person, you want to have
something to present to and etcetera, et cetera.
I'm finding that I thinkthey're completely ineffective
in a virtual kind of Zoomsetting, because I bet you, your
executive, doesn't even want tobe in the meeting.
They're like why are we allhere?
(47:15):
This could have been an emailkind of thing you know, and
curious to get your take on that.
And if you're seeing kind ofsomething similar, if you think
something similar.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, I know this isn't always the popular opinion
to have.
It's contentious, but I thinkit's okay.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
We've got to have the conversation, folks, because
you're being ineffective withthis stuff sometimes.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, no, I mean, I feel like your percentage of
time that you can ask from anexecutive should be directly
proportional to the level ofbenefit they get from your
product.
So if you're the payrollsoftware and your executive
sponsor is the director ofpayroll, their jobs 100% rely on
(48:01):
your software, like you play ahuge part in their day to day
and they really care and theywant to know and they want an
opportunity to ask questions.
If you are, you know a plug-infor Zoom that has cute emojis
like no one wants to talk to you, right?
If you are one tenth of 1% ofthe budget that that executive
(48:23):
oversees, you should not beasking for their time or
expecting your CSMs to get theirtime.
You still need to communicatevalue, but it should be in a
proportional way that says, likeyou know, here's a five-minute
video I put together that'sgoing to quickly walk you
through all of the highlights ofwhat we're doing together here
if you have questions.
(48:44):
But keep up the great work youknow.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Well, with that hot take because it is a hot take, I
love it it's time to wrapthings up.
But I would love for you toenlighten us on how folks can
find you LinkedIn, obviously buthow they can engage with you
and all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, LinkedIn's the easiest.
I worked at LinkedIn early daysso I got good naming there, so
it's just Annie Deed, whichthere's a couple like much more
influential Annie Deeds now, butI stole it, so occasionally I
get like congratulations on theaward and I'm like I don't think
that's me, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Annie Deed, if you're interested in mentoring or
taking a workshop or anythinglike that, you know
recastsuccesscom is probably theeasiest way and conference
season's over, so I'm actuallyhome for a couple months, I know
, super enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's amazing It'll be good.
Well, thanks for taking thetime today.
I know it's Friday afternoonand I might be keeping you from
your weekend, so I appreciatethe time.
It was a pleasure, and thanksfor sharing all of your valuable
insights with the listener.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I love what you're doing fordigital customer success and I
can't wait to see 10 years fromnow or if people are like you
know, back before it was a thing.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
You remember when.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of the
Digital Customer Success Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
It really helps us to grow andto provide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition Word
Map and get more details aboutthe show at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
(50:39):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
Your percentage of time that you can ask from an
executive should be directlyproportional to the level of
benefit they get from yourproduct.
So if you're the payrollsoftware and your executive
sponsor is the director ofpayroll, their jobs 100% rely on
your software, like you play ahuge part in their day to day
(00:25):
and they really care and theywant to know and they want an
opportunity to ask questions.
If you are, you know a plug-infor Zoom that has cute emojis
like no one wants to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
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
(00:56):
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
the latest updates, go toDigitalCustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome to theDigital Customer Success podcast
.
So great to have you back.
As usual, if you're listening tothis quote unquote live, you
(01:20):
have basically today andtomorrow because it's January
30th.
So you have till the end of day, january 31st, to enter to win
a gold pass to the CustomerSuccess Festival that's
happening in Austin next monthin February.
So the instructions for how toenter are down in the
description.
(01:40):
So if you want to enter, yougot two days left, get at it.
If the time has passed and youare now in February but the
event hasn't happened yet, justdrop me a message on LinkedIn or
send me an email, alex atDigitalCustomersuccesscom and
I'll shoot you a 20% off codethat you can use to get into the
event.
That aside, if you're listeningto this way in the future means
(02:05):
nothing to you, so it's time toget into today's conversation
with none other than Annie Dean.
This was an amazing conversationbecause she has such a wealth
of history in CS.
I mean, she's kind of like an.
She's a CS OG.
She spent a lot of time atLinkedIn and Cisco and a few
(02:28):
other places Coursera, I thinkas well.
I'm just building CS chops andbeing early to market with, like
digital customer success beforeit was called Digital Customer
Success.
These days, you can find her atRecast Success, where she's
been a few years with herco-founder, focused on building
CS careers, focused on careertransitioners and providing
(02:51):
workshops and certifications forfolks who want to get into CS,
and the best part about it isthey're focused on diversity.
They're focused on gender andracial equity and really making
CS as diverse as possible, whichI absolutely love.
We do talk about that a littlebit, but we also spend a ton of
(03:12):
time on just tactical advice andreal world examples of you know
just great digital CS bestpractices.
Lots of goodies in thisconversation.
I hope you enjoy it.
I certainly did.
Here we go with Annie Dean.
Annie, I am so happy thatyou're here.
Welcome to the podcast.
It's great to have you.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to chat with you.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
There's a number of reasons why I reached out.
You know, just because you'reprimarily the stuff that you do
with Recast Success is like suchkind of fundamentally cool and
awesome and like the missionthat you're on is great.
So definitely want to dig intothat.
But before we kind of get going, I'd love to get a sense for
(04:00):
kind of who you are, where youcame from, what got you into CS,
like that whole kind of journeythat we all take that's never a
direct line into CS.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Totally, totally.
I had.
I was pretty early days.
So all of my generation of CSpeople we all were career
transitioners coming from otherplaces.
Yeah, I did over a decade inretail and wholesale leadership,
which I really enjoyed, but wasready to have a better quality
of life and have a bigger impactand more scale.
(04:34):
I really wanted to get intotech and it was tough Like I
didn't know how to market myself, I didn't have the right
connections.
I applied for probably over ayear before you know, even
though I had 10 years ofleadership experience.
I'd run big businesses.
I had to start over again atlike an entry level job.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I was at Cisco as a project coordinator and, you
know, luckily moved up really,really quickly.
I was part of their learning atCisco, so customer education.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And got pretty quickly drafted into start the
customer education function,which was basically digital CS,
yeah, at LinkedIn in like 2013.
Right, and you know, when werebranded to customer success
back then, so it was a brandbrand you filled at that point.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's so funny how well I mean I say this all the
time that you know digital CSisn't necessarily a new concept.
It's.
It's, you know, taking thingsthat we've done as companies
forever, like email, marketingand in product and all that kind
of stuff, and it's likewrapping it around the customer
journey essentially.
But it's so cool how you knowyou said it was essentially
(05:52):
digital customer success,because it's what it was.
It's what it's.
It's been around for a whilejust as a name now.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, exactly we.
You know we were brought on mytiny little team to address no
and low touch solutions becauseyou know the company had been
around for a long time.
But their B2B business wasactually pretty new.
Yeah, they had been around fora hundred million, been going
for, I think, maybe three yearsor so.
They were seeing double digitchurn and everyone was getting
(06:20):
high touch white glove servicebecause they were figuring out
as they went.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Industry was brand new.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Throwing bodies at it .
Speaker 1 (06:26):
We came on to try and invent all of the no and low
touch strategies that we couldroll out, so we didn't have to
just hire a thousand CSMs tokeep up with the growth rate.
We went from a hundred millionto a billion in that first two
years and then to two billionabout a year and a half after
that.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
It's rare on this podcast.
In fact, you might be the firstone to ever mention billion on
this podcast.
So congratulations, I feelhonored.
That's a big number.
That's a big number.
So, okay, I think that we areon the digital CS podcast.
I ask all my guests the samequestion and I would love to get
(07:05):
your kind of elevator pitch onit, because everybody has a
different take and you have aprobably a more historically
relevant take on where thingshave been and what not.
So what, in your opinion, ifyou had to sum it up in 10, 30
seconds, what is digital CS?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, and we, you know we talk about this a lot
and you know I feel like it'sbringing the right communication
to the right person at theright moment in time and a
scaled low, no touch kind of way, and then using actionable data
and insights to prioritize yourlow touch interactions so that
you get the highest ROI forthose those interaction points.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I love that.
Do you do you have, do you have, some insight into what you've
used in the past or currently toget that prioritization Right,
like what I mean, obviously,with an email campaign you look
at, you can look at engagementmetrics and things like that
(08:08):
that's.
But like, how are you goingabout prioritizing those things
that need to be done oremphasizing things that are
already being done?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean we start with a really easy version of a
customer lifecycle right, whichis just like get a minute.
You know, get your end usersenrolled, get them using basic
functions, get them usingadvanced functions, demonstrate
the value to the decision makerand then, you know, look for
opportunities to expand yourrelationship.
(08:37):
And we look at what are the topdrivers of fall off at each of
those steps along the way.
And how could we address thosein a more meaningful way, even
if it's just like try, test outone strategy each month to try
and move the needle.
So, for example, if the biggestdrop off in getting people on
(08:58):
and using it for the first timeis they don't understand the why
, bother If you can't get pastthat hurdle.
They're never going to investthe time to actually come back
and learn how to master it andget the full value out of it.
So you know, that's usuallywhere we start is like start at
the beginning of the journey,start with some different
channels and see which onesstick.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, and before we started recording.
You know we're kind of jokingabout the fact that, like a lot
of people ask, you know, like,how do you get started in
digital?
And the thing is just start,Like, figure out where you need
to go, figure out what you have,just start and if you fail,
fine, fail fast, learn some goodstuff and then go on.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, if we had waited forthe tools to be invented and all
the analytics to be in placeand everything back when we were
starting out, we never wouldhave gotten customer success at
scale off the ground.
And we didn't always get itright.
We absolutely didn't.
But as long as you're learningsomething each step of the way
(10:05):
and each time is a little bitbetter than the time before,
then you're going to get to areally good place a lot faster
by getting going.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
The kids these days have it easy, because the kids
these days you've got thingslike Zappier and then all these
low cost ways of doing reallyniche things and you tie them
all together and it's so fun.
It's super fun.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
But yeah, oh, my God.
Yeah, people just don't haveany idea how good they have it.
I would have MBA internsdigging into this data for me,
trying to figure out whichactivity did this person perform
on average?
Of the customers that churned,what were they doing?
(10:48):
Are the customers that expanded?
What were they doing?
What were the touch points?
We were doing it on giant Excelfiles.
It was ridiculous.
Now you can plug it into a CSPor, I mean hell, you can drop it
into chat GPT drop some dataand you're like summarize this
for me.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's like hardcore regression testing that you were
doing.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah, it wasn't easy, but it was pretty amazing.
I got to work with some likejust brilliant data scientists
and engineers and businessstrategists.
It was pretty awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, that's cool.
So okay, fast forward a bit.
Recast success Tell me a littlebit about that.
What was the genesis for that?
What got you kind of thinkingalong those lines?
And then, if you want to giveus kind of an overview of what
you are all about at Recast,it'd be awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Sure, yeah, it's funny we're coming up on.
We incorporated almost twoyears ago, but we've been
working on this for two and ahalf, almost three years.
My co-founder and I weresitting one day and kind of
talking about how challenging itwas to hire more diverse
customer success folks on ourown teams.
(12:04):
We've both been in CSleadership for quite some time.
I wanted more careertransitioners but it's really
challenging.
Right With your hiring manager,you're trusting someone to go
out and be the face of yourcompany.
With hundreds of thousands ormillions of dollars of business,
it's hard to find people whoyou can just plug in.
It's always going to take someresources that, as a hiring
(12:26):
manager, by the time we get ahead count approved, we're
already short staffed.
We don't have a ton ofresources available to train and
develop folks.
We also looked at just thediversity across the industry in
general the CSMs that were inthe market.
Everyone's fighting over thesame few people that were pretty
homogenous.
We wanted people that were abetter reflection of our
(12:47):
customers, that reallyunderstood a day in the life.
We decided, well, heck, let'sjust create a way to have a
better talent funnel of the kindof people that we want to hire
on to our own teams.
We originally founded this.
It was just a boot camp programfor mid-career professionals
(13:09):
coming from industries that havehighly transferable skills and
primarily focused onunderrepresented populations.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
That's great.
I think that speaks to thething that you see in CS all the
time, which is to say there'sfew people who start in CS.
Not until recently could you goand get a degree.
There were no degree programsand customers.
You have folks from sales andproduct and all different walks
(13:42):
of life.
This is a weird question and wetotally didn't prep for it, but
I'm going to ask it anyway.
Is there a previous experience,area or skill set that you find
lends itself particularly wellto somebody becoming a CSM, or
(14:05):
is it just all over the place?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It's a good question.
There's four key pillars tocustomer success.
We look for people that haveexperience in at least two of
them, One being thatimplementation, project
management, training function.
Two being sales components Canthey do an upsell or renewal or
negotiate a contract?
Three is business consultinghow well do they understand the
(14:30):
companies they'll be workingwith so that they can provide
valuable advice on things likechange management, internal
communications all those thingsthat drive adoption and
engagement?
Then fourth is being the voiceof the customer being able to do
a root cause analysis andprioritization and communicate
with your product team.
There's a lot of differentindustries that have components
(14:52):
that go along with that.
We look for people they need tohave at least two out of the
four and then we can help trainthem on the other two as needed.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, for sure, some of us.
I was having some conversationsthe other day I forget who, my
short-term memory is not greatthese days.
We were talking about whatmakes a good digital CSM or
somebody who's really focused ondigital.
There was a combination oflittle things.
(15:23):
There's marketing, customermarketing elements, there's data
analysis and reallyunderstanding how two data sets
compare all those kinds ofthings.
Then there's this customersuccess, customer advocacy
muscle.
Have you found, in the bootcamps that you've done, have you
(15:47):
encountered individuals whohave been maybe more focused or
inclined to go down a moredigital path versus traditional
one-to-one CSM?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, I think it's tough because a lot of people
don't know about digital.
Yeah, Yet.
Yes, it's definitely gainingpopularity.
I completely agree.
Product management feeds wellinto digital.
Marketing feeds well intodigital data science and
analytics feeds well intodigital.
(16:21):
It's frustrating because a lotof what you see in the job
descriptions hiring managersjust don't get it.
They're just like I want someonethat's been a CSM for five
years.
They don't have any of theskills you actually need to do
this job.
No, yeah, if I had to pick onefield to pull someone into for
digital CS, I would take someonefrom SalesOps a hundred times
(16:43):
over.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's super fascinating.
Have your goals and the thingsthat you're aiming to achieve
with Recast Success changedsince your founding two years
ago, or has it remained prettysteady?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, I mean it's definitely changed.
We've expanded quite a bit,because originally it was just
Bootcamp, yeah, and we help ourgrads find jobs.
Part of that is we have a largevolunteer mentor network.
They get to participate in ourcareer services.
So we always have this reallyamazing talent pool that's free
to hire from.
(17:27):
And two things happened fromthat.
One was employers would hiresomebody who'd gone through
Bootcamp and go, wow, thisperson's better trained than my
CSMs that have been here for acouple of years.
Can you do some training withus?
So we do have an arm that doesmore B2B training now, working
mostly with private equity andVCs that are.
They might see there's a needmore than a startup would really
(17:49):
know.
If they don't know what goodlooks like, they don't realize
that they don't really have bestin class, and so sometimes it's
those external advisors thatcan say, hey, by the way, you
guys really are kind of missingthe mark on some of these things
that could take your CS team tothe next level.
The other area was, since wehave this talent pool, we get
(18:13):
early stage founders coming tous and they're like, hey, I'm
looking to hire, can you give mean individual contributor who
they're going to have nosupervision.
We have no tools in place, wehave no playbooks in place and
no one here really understandswhat customer success is.
Can you give us some names?
We'd love to hire or the otherend of the spectrum was like we
(18:35):
want somebody who's an executive, who's built from scale up
through IPO, who is not going tohave a team to lead.
They're just going to do allthe work in the trenches, work
mostly for equity, for 60 to 80hours a week.
Who do you know?
I'm like I don't want to assignanyone up to either of these,
which is where we founded inJanuary.
(18:57):
We started offering afractional head of customer
success program, somebody whosees and who knows what they're
doing, embedded one day a week,paired with an individual
contributor who is being trainedand developed to kind of take
on that long term leadership inthe company.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
That's cool.
What a cool model, thank you.
Yeah, I couldn't imaginethrowing an individual
contributor into thatenvironment without any kind of
guidance whatsoever or models,or just set up for failure just
because somebody says, hey, thatcustomer success thing.
I think we need that.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Right, yeah, half the time you're talking to these
founders and they really have noidea what customer success even
is.
So they're expecting thisperson to take on absolutely
everything post-sale.
So they're like you're going todo support and you might be
doing bill collection and you'regoing to be doing a myriad of
things.
And if you get at IC, whohasn't been around very long,
(19:53):
they don't know how to push backand really help them think
about changing the culture oftheir business to be more
responsive to customers, how toplug in feedback, how to better
hone their ICP, their idealcustomer profile based on what's
working with the customers theyhave.
They're just putting out firesand running around like a
(20:14):
chicken with their head cut off.
So we're hoping to change thatmodel so we can get the
fundamentals of what customersuccess really is into startups
earlier and put them on a goodpath to have a really great
culture long-term.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah.
So I'd like to be kind of a flyin the room on the wall for a
second there.
I mean analogies, I get themwrong all the time.
You've just walked into kind offirst day, maybe first month of
(20:53):
a fractional head roll andspending one day a week maybe
meeting some customers.
You're kind of getting a lay ofthe land for what the product
is and all those kinds of things.
At what point do you typicallysay, hey look, these things
(21:17):
should and can be automatedversus these things need a human
for now?
I get that there's no onerecipe.
But at what point are youtypically starting to advise
these founders that, hey look,you can get a lot done with this
type of automation?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, we love that we're starting really early
stage so that we can build forthat from the beginning.
So sometimes they have a CRM inplace.
Sometimes they don't even havethat yet.
We're advising on okay, here'sthe CRM you need to run your
business and PS.
These are the features or theservice levels that are going to
allow us to capture theinformation that we need and
(21:57):
make that automatable acrossmultiple platforms in the future
.
So it's kind of helping themsee around corners, building
with that in mind from the verybeginning.
But we teach digital CSworkshops to a lot of our B2B
customers too, and it startssmall.
(22:17):
So we're like, okay, great, youare doing a high-touch webinar
with a new customer and you'regoing to walk them through how
to use your product.
Awesome, let's take thetranscript from that.
We're going to drop this intochat, GPT and get 10 articles we
could use for your help centerand for a newsletter.
And here's we'll chop up thisvideo and for your smaller
(22:40):
customers, we can reuse thisvideo segment using this
software.
So it's like really justthinking about how every action
should be replicable and be ableto be used at scale and just
starting to embed that culturefrom, hopefully, from the very,
very beginning.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It sounds to me like a lot of times you're
encountering not just a CS typesituation or CS leadership, but
it's really operations.
You're kind of advising on whatsystems they should and
shouldn't think about andprobably advising on what they
should and shouldn't do withthose.
Is that a fair assumption?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, I would say, when you're ahead of customer
success at a startup likepre-seed seed series A, your job
, a lot of your job, isoperational, totally More than
just you know.
You're setting the foundationto build on top of.
It's not doing just thetraditional, you know working
with customers and you knowmaking sure that the value
(23:44):
proposition is gettingcommunicated clearly.
It's putting the infrastructurein place so that everyone else
can do that going forward.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, or dealing with a haphazard infrastructure that
exists that was implementedwithout a strategy.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Correct.
Yeah, we can tie it togetherand clean it up.
You know, once you've donethese for a few startups,
there's very common themes yousee over and over again.
But you know, most startups areadvised to focus on growth,
right Like growth at all costs.
If you want to raise your nextround of funding, you've got to
hit this dollar level, and so ifthere isn't someone there that
(24:16):
has enough credibility, enoughauthority, you know, and enough
experience to talk to them abouthow to think broader than that,
then they won't.
You know, like most founders,if there isn't somebody telling
them to focus, they have so manyother things going on it's just
going to, you know, fall by thewayside.
So we try and be that advocate,for here's how you need to
(24:39):
structure for more long-termthinking If you actually want to
keep this revenue you'refighting so hard to get in the
door.
Here are the fundamentals weneed to put in place.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, that's awesome, so important and often missed,
which is great for you from anopportunity standpoint.
You know, and as you start tothink about you know what.
You know what this companyshould be putting in place in
terms of their customer journeyand just the kind of thinking
(25:12):
through what those key momentsare along that customer journey
Are there, every company isdifferent, every software is
different, customer segments,all that kind of stuff.
But do you find that there arekey moments that you're advising
over and over and over againthat hey, look, this really
needs to be digitally supportedor, you know, put some
(25:35):
automation behind it to supportyour humans?
Like, are you finding yourselfkind of advising on those same
moments over and over again?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, I think the biggest miss we see almost every
single time is they only thinkabout end users in a reactive
way.
Right, so they'll focus onexecutive sponsors and point of
contact, if you're lucky, andthen they'll have a reactive
motion.
You know, maybe there's someimplementation work at the very
(26:08):
beginning of the contract andthen that's it.
There's nothing proactive goingout to those end users and
without the end users actuallyutilizing and finding value in
your product, that you know thebigger outcomes that the
executive sponsors care aboutare never going to happen.
So, really thinking about howto be more proactive, so we're
always telling them.
You know, if you think aboutwho's reaching out for support
(26:32):
from a personality standpoint,it's probably only about one in
five that need help or reachingout for help.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
The other four out of five are just going to give up.
They're like, yeah, this toolsucks, I'm not going to use it
anymore.
And so if you can't understandwhat problems they are having,
that maybe they don't even knowthey're having, and reach out
proactively to offer solutions,you're losing A huge percentage
of the value of your product.
That happens at pretty muchevery early stage startup.
(27:00):
They just don't put enoughthought into that.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Right, it's like once it's implemented, you're off to
the races or whatever next youknow.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Right, yeah, well, and you know, we know, turnover
in jobs is pretty high.
So even if that was true forthe population you originally
changed, what happens whenthere's new hire is what happens
, you know, when there's reorgsand redesigns and all those
things like training needs to beconstant.
You know communication needs tobe constant so that you stay
(27:30):
top of mind and you're providingrelevant information when they
need it.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, we think aboutonboarding and we think you know
the word that that word justconjures up this whole notion of
, okay, you need to get them setup and stood up and enabled or
whatever.
But we think about useronboarding nearly enough, I
think, especially in a platformwhere you know, maybe you have a
lot of users coming and goingand whatnot.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
That's a huge part of it, yeah, I mean the average
professional in the US uses 80apps professionally.
There's no way they'reutilizing the full depth and
breadth of the features on anyof those.
Probably Right, they're notjust get them to log in and use
it once and magically they'regoing to see why it's worth
(28:19):
investing their time to learnall of the features to get the
full benefit.
You know if you're notproactive about constantly
reinforcing why they shouldbother to learn something new.
Like change is hard, You'refighting for their attention for
a lot of different directions,so if you're really smart about
it, you know.
(28:40):
Give it to them in bite-sizedpieces and keep them coming back
for more and help them.
Help them understand the valueof what they've already invested
time learning.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, totally Thinking back this is a bit of a
left turn, but thinking backover all of the kind of work
you've done, that's kind ofdigital CS related, is there
maybe like is there a program ora specific time or a specific
motion that you can point to,that you're like you look back
(29:08):
on your like that was reallycool.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I'm still a really big fan of semi-live webinars.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I love that so much.
Yeah, I did that at a previousplace.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, we spent so much time here in a rapid growth
company you've got a lot of newcustomers coming on all the
time as watching my CSMs gothrough leading what you know.
90% of it was exactly the sameover and over and over again.
So setting up kind of recurringwebinar series is where you
know we're like we'll just do anonboarding once a week.
(29:44):
Everyone who joined that weekcan go into this onboarding and
80% of it's pre-recorded.
We only have to hop on for thelast 20% to answer questions.
That brought us so muchbandwidth and delivered more
consistency, like we could makesure that it was the perfect
version.
You know nobody had bandwidthissues or audio issues or bad
(30:06):
hair day or whatever on thatvideo where we had to do it live
every time.
There's always things that cango wrong.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
So it was higher quality and easier for us.
So that was when I really waspleased to get in place, and one
that I do again, over and overagain in other companies as well
.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I wish I could remember what platform we used,
but at a previous employer weused this platform that
basically you pre-record yourwebinar like soup to nuts.
It feels completely live.
You pepper in some kind of likefake questions in the chat from
fake people just to kind of getthe conversation going, but
(30:45):
then on the back end you have anactual human manning the chat
that's going on while thiswebinar is happening so that you
can actually interact with it.
So literally from a staffingperspective, to your point, you
didn't have to get quaffed, youdidn't have to go to the studio,
you didn't have to turn yourlights on and get your mic set
up and do all that kind of stuff.
You just had to make sure youhad somebody in the live chat
(31:08):
ready to go to answer questions.
And that was such a cool thingbecause I think a lot of times
when we go to implement some ofthese digital motions, the first
thing that can kind of leave isthe personality and the human
element of it.
And it's hard to be human overemail unless you're super
(31:30):
creative about your copy andspend a lot of time on that.
But I think those kinds ofthings still allow you to
present a sense of who you areas a brand and who you are as a
company, while, at the same time, being efficient with the
resources that you have.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, it's emails.
I don't know about you, but Idon't have positive warm, fuzzy
vibes when I open my inbox inthe morning and there's 300
emails in there.
There's nothing that's poppingup but I'm like oh, I'm excited
to read this from whatevervendor.
So, I always push to try andthink beyond the email cadences
(32:08):
and all of that.
What other ways can we connect?
What other channels areemployees and customers already
on that we can tap into thatthey're more likely to be
participating in and feelpositively about participating
in?
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, totally.
I love vendors that can make melaugh over email.
They'll have my businessforever.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
but a few, far between A few far between, Maybe
with chat to BT or AI.
If people get better at that, Idon't know.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Maybe yeah, as the better those tools get, are
there kind of today?
You've kind of fast forwardingto today.
I know you probably see quite abit and you interact with a lot
of different organizations andleaders and things like that.
Are there cool things thatyou're seeing out there right
(32:59):
now that you're really excitedabout that are related?
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah for sure.
Yeah, all these companies wework with are always asking for
advice on what tools they shouldbe thinking about, and so we
take a lot of demos and a lot oftrade shows.
We're kind of looking at what'sout there, Couple of the ones
I'm really excited about.
Well, let me take a step back.
Part of what we do is not justlook at tools that are already
(33:25):
for customer success.
Unfortunately, most of theinnovation it doesn't happen for
customer success.
If you go on G2, there's over15,000 tools for sales.
There is like 30 something forcustomer success.
So what we try to do is talk tofounders a little earlier in
their journey, try to pivot themtowards actually making it
(33:48):
built for a customer successperspective, purpose built,
instead of us having to later goand try and adapt something
that wasn't really built for us.
So one example of that I'mworking with a company called
Agent Co-Pilot that I discoveredit faster and they were
(34:09):
building for marketing.
It's a it's kind of a loomstyle video that uses deepfakes,
so you can like create anavatar of yourself, your video
and your voice in a few minutesand then you can create scripts
that will connect to your CSP oryour CRM and can like inform
(34:33):
what goes into that script topersonalize it and then create a
video from your CSM that looksexactly like your CSM across
your entire customer base.
So you could do a thousandcustom videos in a few minutes
instead of recording a thousandlooms.
That one I'm really excitedabout because we talked up into
going to CSRoute instead of themarketing route.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Is that?
Is that also the one that thatdoes the translation really well
?
Which one is that?
Speaker 1 (34:58):
No, that's hey Jen.
That's definitely on my list aswell.
Yeah, I love that.
We spent so much time atLinkedIn, especially because we
were global.
We covered 47 differentlanguages and so when I left
there, we were doing about 350webinars every month in 27
different languages just to tryand cover the most of our
(35:19):
population.
We spent so much money and hadso many resources to try and
cover all this language Like heyJen would have been absolutely
revolutionary for us, absolutelyyeah.
Yeah, amazing.
I love that.
I think that's really cool.
(35:39):
I don't know if you've seenthem.
I have.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, but that was another thing.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Customer education, like one of our big pain points
is product change is probablyevery two weeks.
Like how do you keep all yourmaterials up to date?
So there's, does you know?
I think all of these need somework.
Like none of them are 100%there yet, but like the
direction they're going.
I'm really excited.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, video is, you know.
Again, it's solving a problemthat a lot of large training
organizations Well, part of thereasons are so large is because
they've had to support this kindof, you know, level of quality
of video creation and all ofthat kind of stuff that is now
(36:24):
just like at the tip of yourfinger.
And what's interesting about it, when I really think about
these things, is, you know, youmentioned that they're not quite
there yet, or that you knowthey still have some maturing to
do, and I totally agree withthat, because I don't I don't
for once think that you coulduse any of these tools to A
(36:48):
replace your CSM we don't,that's not what they're there
for or B like just B, the CSfunction for you.
I think there are all tools toaugment what you do and to make
your humans like more efficientand more effective.
And you have to kind of reallylead into that, like, hey, we've
(37:11):
got this virtual assistant, orwe have this persona named Bob
and he's going to talk to youevery once in a while about the
health of your account.
This isn't me, this is you know.
It's like we almost have tolike use it as, as a tool and
and you know, I don't know whereI'm going with this, but it's
like it's like it's it's.
(37:31):
It's not there yet, nor do Ireally want it to be there where
it's like you're just puttingan avatar with Jenae I in front
of a customer for all of your CSneeds.
But what it does do is it takessome of the mundane, makes it
entertaining, makes it fun, putsit in front of the customer
when they need it, where theyneed it, and your CSM can then
(37:53):
focus on having, like thosereally high value conversations
that you know in strategicconversations.
I think that's where I wantedto go with that.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, I mean, I think about it like maybe graphic
design like nineties and before,probably most designers were
designing print media, right,like they're sending out
postcards, they're putting upflyers, they're doing billboards
, whatever.
And then all of a sudden, youknow, graphic design, digital
(38:23):
graphic design got a lot easier.
You didn't have to be anengineer to do it.
You can use templates, you candrag and drop, you can change
the colors, all those things.
It doesn't mean there were nomore designers, it just meant
that they could be a lot moreeffective, a lot more creative
and reach way more people, sohave higher impact.
And that's kind of how I thinkabout you know, ai affecting the
(38:44):
digital CS landscape.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Just because you have a Canvasubscription doesn't make you a
good designer.
You can make crap in Canva too.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
True, I do it all the time yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
That's awesome, as we kind of start to round things
down a little bit, or windthings down a little bit.
What's you've mentioned, someapps and some technology that
you're really excited about.
Are there some people that aredoing cool things in digital
that you might want to, you know, give a shout out to, or point
out or give a high five to,virtually?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, I mean I A lot of what I do is kind of we're
following the tools thannecessarily following the
influencers.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, I love Rachel Woods.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
He has the AI exchange.
She puts out some amazingcontent.
That is a really good summaryof what's going on in AI.
Cool.
They have a Slack community aswell.
People are always postingamazing things and good tips for
each other there, so that'sprobably my top go-to at the
moment.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Are there things outside of CS or professional
content whatever, that you payattention to that influences you
as a CS leader?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, again, not necessarily following CS
specific.
I follow 15 industrynewsletters that talk about
what's going on in differentsegments of tech.
It helps me understand what thefinance landscape looks like,
because where the money goes,the industry will follow.
(40:25):
I pick one for each industrythat I really love, like NTUK
for ed tech and Rock Health forhealth tech.
I've got my list there.
Feel free to DM me if you'reunhappy to share it.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Send it to me.
I'll put it in the show notesif anybody's interested.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah For sure.
Also a great way.
If you're looking for work,follow the money.
If you've been fundraising,they're probably going to have
headcount opening.
It's a great way to get aheadof the curve.
I also really love CaesarRomero does a Beyond the Job
podcast, which just gives meinspiration for career
(41:02):
transition or stories Back toour boot camp roots there.
I really love connecting withpeople who have made those
transitions, not just tocustomer success but just in
general hearing how people canhighlight their transferable
skills in a really meaningfulway to move towards the
lifestyle they want to have.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
That's so great.
Yeah, it's a good call out Toyour earlier point.
Christy Faltrosi also gave thisadvice on the podcast, which is
her main thing.
That she called out wasBloomberg Just follow the money.
That's where the opportunity is.
One thing that actually Iwanted to touch on that we
didn't touch on earlier, when wewere talking about recast, and
(41:42):
I wanted to dig in a little bitdeeper on this, on the mission
of equity in the workplace,because I think it's crazy
important.
We've highlighted it on theshow before with various guests.
You've got your finger on thepulse, I feel like in CS anyway,
(42:03):
I feel like gender equity hassome room to grow at the
leadership level, at the IClevel.
It seems pretty good, but Ithink racial diversity still in
tech, in CS and everywhere isjust way off the mark.
I would love your finger on thepulse as to what you're seeing.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, Thank you for highlighting that.
Definitely things we care a lotabout.
Yeah, when we started thiscompany in 2020, we started
working on it.
We looked at the statisticsacross customer success.
A lot of them were still from2019.
There At that point in time, 81percent of CSMs were white, 90
(42:47):
percent had a bachelor's degreeor higher and 95 percent lived
in one of 15 major Metro urbanareas.
So like a very specificdemographic which 100 percent
did not look like my customers.
So we've made and lost someprogress across those areas.
Specifically, Then, thepercentage of white CSMs now is
(43:11):
78 percent, so we've made alittle bit of progress there.
Still not fully representativeof the US population.
Only 3 percent of CSMs areblack, which has been pretty
flat over the last five years,versus 13 percent of the US
population is black.
10 percent of CSMs are Latinx,which has improved over the last
(43:35):
few years but still is nowherenear the 19 percent of the US
population.
Degrees has actually gone thewrong direction, Like we started
to see a lot of positive changein 2021-22, where the labor
market was really really tightand people started removing that
requirement.
This year, we've lost a ton ofground.
(43:57):
It's actually higher than itwas in 2019, at 92 percent have
a bachelor's degree or higher,which I don't think is needed.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
No.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Which also has some implications for diversity in
class and I feel like college ingeneral is not needed anymore.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
I know, having launched degrees for Coursera, I
probably shouldn't say this outloud, but I absolutely agree.
I think it's pretty antiquatedand a pretty big problem We'll
have to address this generation.
The bright spot has been theurban versus rural divide has
drastically changed.
Those 15 urban areas wereacross about 10 states.
(44:46):
There's now concentrations ofat least 150 CSMs across 48
states.
It's just absolutely exploded.
I'm really hoping we don't losetoo much ground as companies are
starting to pull back on remote, friendly roles, because it
makes no sense for your CSM tohave to be where your
headquarters are Zero.
This should be where theircustomers are Correct, even in
(45:08):
the communities that they'reserving.
I'm really hoping that trenddoesn't backtrack too much.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, that's very interesting.
Do you find that because ofthat, do you find that CS orgs
are segmenting their customersby geographic location more than
they may have in the past, oris that not really a thing?
Speaker 1 (45:32):
I feel like they always did.
I don't know, maybe that's justthe companies I've worked at,
but I think time zones play alot into it.
Yeah, so being available thehours that your customers are
available.
But before digital was aspopular, there was a lot of
travel for CS Funds.
Ideally, you want it local.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
A couple hour drive.
I remember doing these crazyroad shows supporting a CSM
during quarterly business reviewseason where we'd go down the
entire Eastern seaboard and see70 customers in two weeks or
something, but those would allbe with the customers for the
East Coast that were within acouple hours drive of most of
(46:16):
their customers.
So I feel like CS has alwaysbeen more remote, friendly than
other jobs in tech and I'mreally hoping, as people are
pulling these streams andrequiring people to come back to
the office, that they don'textend that to their CS teams.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, I totally agree .
It's interesting one thing thatcame to mind as you were
talking about kind of those QBRroad shows or whatever you know,
the QBR I think makes perfectsense in an in-person
environment.
Obviously you want to comeprepared with a deck and with
(46:54):
the supporting details and beingin person, you want to have
something to present to and etcetera, et cetera.
I'm finding that I thinkthey're completely ineffective
in a virtual kind of Zoomsetting, because I bet you, your
executive, doesn't even want tobe in the meeting.
They're like why are we allhere?
(47:15):
This could have been an emailkind of thing you know, and
curious to get your take on that.
And if you're seeing kind ofsomething similar, if you think
something similar.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, I know this isn't always the popular opinion
to have.
It's contentious, but I thinkit's okay.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
We've got to have the conversation, folks, because
you're being ineffective withthis stuff sometimes.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, no, I mean, I feel like your percentage of
time that you can ask from anexecutive should be directly
proportional to the level ofbenefit they get from your
product.
So if you're the payrollsoftware and your executive
sponsor is the director ofpayroll, their jobs 100% rely on
(48:01):
your software, like you play ahuge part in their day to day
and they really care and theywant to know and they want an
opportunity to ask questions.
If you are, you know a plug-infor Zoom that has cute emojis
like no one wants to talk to you, right?
If you are one tenth of 1% ofthe budget that that executive
(48:23):
oversees, you should not beasking for their time or
expecting your CSMs to get theirtime.
You still need to communicatevalue, but it should be in a
proportional way that says, likeyou know, here's a five-minute
video I put together that'sgoing to quickly walk you
through all of the highlights ofwhat we're doing together here
if you have questions.
(48:44):
But keep up the great work youknow.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Well, with that hot take because it is a hot take, I
love it it's time to wrapthings up.
But I would love for you toenlighten us on how folks can
find you LinkedIn, obviously buthow they can engage with you
and all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, LinkedIn's the easiest.
I worked at LinkedIn early daysso I got good naming there, so
it's just Annie Deed, whichthere's a couple like much more
influential Annie Deeds now, butI stole it, so occasionally I
get like congratulations on theaward and I'm like I don't think
that's me, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Annie Deed, if you're interested in mentoring or
taking a workshop or anythinglike that, you know
recastsuccesscom is probably theeasiest way and conference
season's over, so I'm actuallyhome for a couple months, I know
, super enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's amazing It'll be good.
Well, thanks for taking thetime today.
I know it's Friday afternoonand I might be keeping you from
your weekend, so I appreciatethe time.
It was a pleasure, and thanksfor sharing all of your valuable
insights with the listener.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I love what you're doing fordigital customer success and I
can't wait to see 10 years fromnow or if people are like you
know, back before it was a thing.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
You remember when.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of the
Digital Customer Success Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
It really helps us to grow andto provide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition Word
Map and get more details aboutthe show at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
(50:39):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
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