February 13, 2024 • 49 mins
Today's discussion with Dee Kapila is a fascinating insight into the world of building innovative digital programs within a very well known and broadly used organization, Miro. As Global Head of Scaled Customer Experience, Dee leads both digital and customer education functions. Her talk last year at Pulse on having SLG & PLG work in harmony for the benefit of the customer journey was fascinating on completely on point!
Our conversation focused on:
- How digital CS is putting many functions and practices together to scale CX - not just CS.
- Digital CS in relation to other orgs in the company and ensuring you are building together with cross-collaborators
- Leveraging cross functional competencies to work together on securing the customer journey
- Focusing on quick wins to get something going quickly, while you focus on the big picture, future state activities
- "Product vs. Sales Led Growth? Embrace BOTH with Scaled CX": Cliff notes of Dee’s talk at Pulse last year
- Her scaled team structure and the importance of leaving room for variability when building these teams
- Scaled Customer Experience Team with three pillars: Scaled Education, Scaled Production & Digital Success with Scaled teams to support
- A peek at the digital tech stack + the custom in-house tooling built at Miro
- In-app guidance needs to be elegant and not overbearing or clunky.
Enjoy! I sure did...
Dee's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deekapila/
Dee's Talk at Pulse in 2023: https://pulselibrary.gainsight.com/video/product-vs-sales-led-growth-embrace-both-with-scaled-cx
Dee's Substack: https://deekapila.substack.com/
Shoutout:
- Sam David @ Monday.com
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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):
You need to be almost undetectable, right?
You don't want to be anannoying like pop-up in the face
of a user who's trying toaccomplish a critical task by
the next meeting.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I was going to say.
Like you know, I've used Miroin screen share mode in the
middle of a meeting with, likeyou know, 20 expensive people on
the call.
The last thing I would want tohave is for it to be a pop-up
that goes hey, it looks likeyou're trying to do this.
And once again, welcome to theDigital Customer Success podcast
with me, alex Trokovich, soglad you could join us here
(00:35):
today and every week as I seekout and interview leaders and
practitioners who are innovatingand building great scaled CS
programs.
My goal is to share what I'velearned and to bring you along
with me for the ride so that youget the insights that you need
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
(00:55):
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom.
And for now, let's get started.
This is episode 38 of theDigital Customer Success podcast
.
Welcome back, it's so great tohave you.
I feel like I say that this isa great episode, every episode
but isn't that kind of the thingyou do as the host of one of
(01:17):
these things?
That said, today's episode isreally, really great.
We have Decapila, on which, ifyou don't know her, she is head
of global I'm going to butcherthis global scaled customer
experience I believe it is atMiro, which a lot of us use or
(01:38):
at least are aware of.
So she has under her purviewnot just digital customer
success but also customereducation and talks a lot about
her cross collaborative work atMiro and the tooling and all
that kind of stuff.
Just a lot of really cool,tactical, great advice and
(02:00):
insight into her world.
She gave a really cool talk atPulse last year all about how
PLG and SLG, product-led growthand sales-led growth should work
together in harmony to servethe customer journey.
Just really cool stuff, superbright, and we've been trying to
(02:22):
connect for a little while, soI'm so glad we finally got her
on the show.
One quick note of warning Iguess my audio is not the best
in this episode.
It jumps around a little bit.
I think I don't know mycomputer was revolting against
me that day when we recorded itor something.
I've edited through most of it.
(02:44):
But just know, once in a whileyou'll hear my audio kind of do
some weird stuff, use yourcontext clues and power through,
kind of like I did.
But I hope you enjoy thisepisode with DiCapilla, because
I sure did, di.
I want to welcome you to theDigital Customer Success Podcast
.
It's awesome to have you here.
It's been a long time coming.
(03:05):
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for frickin'
ever so welcome.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Thank you so much for having me Love the podcast,
love you, love Digital CS, loveit all.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, we're done.
That's great.
Good interview.
I appreciate that, as is normal, you do a little bit of
research on your guests and youdig into really.
Actually, somebody recentlysaid something interesting that
(03:38):
if you're looking throughsomebody's history on LinkedIn,
it's not considered stalking,it's considered research.
But if you're looking throughsomebody's history on Facebook
and Instagram, that's consideredstalking.
So I'm not going to say that Istalked you.
I'm going to say that Iresearched and a couple of
things jumped out at me.
The first is that we have a lotof similarities of.
(03:58):
You have some history inlearning and development.
I do as well.
We both put in some time atDell.
We've had some implementationkind of roles as a vice, so
there's a lot of kind of cool,congruent stuff there.
But the one thing that jumpedout at me so my mom spent years
(04:20):
as a GM of a public radiostation, classical music host as
well, and I noticed you spent aconsiderable amount of time at
KUT for those of you who aren'tin the Austin area, that's
Austin's local public radiobehemoth and so I wanted to just
pick your brain real quick onwhat that was like, because I
think you were kind of the web.
(04:41):
So in 2009, 2011,.
You were their web and mobileproducts person, according to
LinkedIn, which means that youwere probably like the tech guru
.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So I love your research, I love all the
similarities and we've got asidebar about your mom, because
I'm sure we were a lot of thesame people, because public
media is a small world and whenyou're in it and when you work
in it for years, I mean you loveit and you never really leave
like your public radio for lifeand public radio nerd for life,
(05:16):
and so that's definitely a bigpart of my heart.
But yeah, so it was sort of adual kind of a role, so it was
really you could think about itas product management.
Before that was really a thing,right.
Because when we were trying tofigure out traditional media is
dying, we're moving to the web,but what's the business model,
right, and how do you engagewith the audience and where are
(05:39):
they and where do we need to bebesides just radio, right, and
so we were kind of putting a lotof that stuff onto the web for
the first time.
So that was like a keycomponent of the role, like
working with the newsrooms, withhuman interest reporters, and
figuring out, ok, how do we dovideo and what does video look
and feel like for public radio?
right, and so that was a keycomponent of it, while also
(06:02):
figuring out like, ok, streamingservices, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, all of thatsort of thing, so I think in
that way you got to be thetechnical person, but like what
we back in that time used tosort of call trying to glamorize
ourselves as like creativetechnologists, right, I think a
lot of people across theindustry were in these sorts of
(06:22):
roles where they were trying tobring things to the web and
trying to figure out OK, like ifthe business model includes
advertising, what is that look?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
like.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
If the business model includes subscriptions or
donations, like, what does thatlook like?
Right, where you can drop yourcar off on the web, if that
comes to mind for KUT, right?
So it's sort of it was thatwhole space.
But I think there's so muchdeep connective tissue between
digital success, between all ofthe things that we're trying to
do to scale a CS organizationand some of the lessons that I
(06:51):
learned there.
But I think of it as like abeautiful on-ramp back into CS,
because I started in CS beforeit was CS, went into this world
and then came back into it.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, which is so cool.
I think that background in techand product and then combined
with the education bit that youhave a deep history in as well,
and learning and enablement andreally customer education that
(07:24):
to me, that forms the basis ofwhat a digital program is all
about.
It's like you're productizingthis content in a way that makes
it easily accessible at theright time but also enables your
teams to use it in an easy way.
So I would imagine and I'mputting words in your mouth, but
(07:45):
I would imagine, if you wereyou are today, which is to say,
you've morphed from educationback into CS and leading the
scale programs at Muro that thathas all come together for you
full circle maybe.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I love that.
Yes, and I would say that theseare all critical components of
CS.
I think CS is a newer function,if we really think about when
it started, and has gone througha lot of evolution and, I think
, is figuring out ways to put alot of things together.
I think as our customer needschange, their expectations
(08:23):
change, they're driving usreally to do that, and so when
we think about again going backto public radio, you think about
what that service is thatyou're providing to your
audience back in public radioland, like what is the service
that you're providing to yourcustomers in SAS and what is
CS's role in providing thatservice specifically, because CS
(08:44):
isn't providing the servicealone, but what is our specific
role?
And that is a really strategicblend of these things of
education, of orchestration thatwe do on the digital success
side, thinking about support instrategic ways, thinking about
all of, obviously, what our hightouch CS teams do, what
professional services does.
(09:05):
We're talking CX now.
Everything blends together andthat's really how digital
successes is a core component ofmy team's portfolio, but we're
really about scaling CX overall,because I think that's really
where all of this is moving to.
We're not going to create siloswithin CX.
We're trying to solve for silosacross organization.
(09:26):
So what are the key pieces thatare done extremely well by
these amazing dedicated teams inCX?
And then how do you have afunction or a team that can
scale across all of that?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And that's really what we're looking at doing with
, of course, digital being thatorchestrating kind of conductor
function of it all, yeah, yeah,and this probably lends into,
kind of, my next question andthe question that I basically
ask all of my guests, which isto say, you know, collecting
everybody's elevator pitch, soto speak, of digital CS, and I
(10:03):
have a feeling yours is going tobe a little bit unique, but,
again, I won't put words in yourmouth.
So if you had to explain tosomebody in 10 to 30 seconds,
you know what is digital CS,what would you say?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Man, I change my answer for that, I would say
every two weeks, and so I'llgive you a couple of components
of it and then eventually, maybewe'll stitch it together.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
One of the ways that I really like that.
My leader for digital successon my team, laura Johnson,
describes it as really we arethe CSM of record in a digital
capacity right, and I love thatbecause it's so much simpler
than I think.
What so many other people sayabout digital success and what I
(10:48):
hear when we start to talkabout things like ah, at scale,
at the right time, at the rightdata, at the right people are
just like well, we do that inmarketing, or we do that in
product, or we do that in thisteam, we do that in this team.
So it's really hard to cut tothe core of what it is that
you're trying to do,particularly in the initial part
(11:09):
of when you're like getting adigital success team off the
ground or when you're getting adigital success program off the
ground, it's very hard to sortof explain to people what you're
trying to do.
So I think the way that Lauradescribes is probably the best
way to cut to the heart of it.
And I think when you start tomature the program, that's
really when you can bring insome of this additional
terminology and say, okay, look,we're automating success
(11:32):
milestones across the deliveryjourney or the value delivery
journey for the customer, andthat could look different
depending on if you're serving adigital only book of business
or if digital is a strategy forall CS segments or if it's both,
which is ideally what you'redoing.
You're doing kind of a blend ofboth those things to explain to
(11:52):
people who are like oh, tell usmore about digital success,
what is it?
I'm like let me tell you whatthe industry definition is and
break that down, and thensubsequent slides will break
that down and at the end youkind of come back to that
definition.
And that's because when you hearit it's a mouthful and you're
like that sounds a little bitjargony, but when you break it
down, those are the best wordsthat we have in the English
(12:13):
language actually to communicatewhat digital success is trying
to do.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You know it just doesn't make it easy.
That's so interesting, becauseI find myself doing that Like
I'll throw out kind of like myown definition, and then I'll be
like but let me unpack that foryou a little bit, and then you
come back to it and you're likeOK, does that make sense?
You know, now, does that makesense?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Because we have this packing problem for somebody.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, yeah, it's like , and we're supposed to be the
ones that communicate this stuffvery clearly, right, yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I know and then that's.
I think that's that's the ironyRight and it's it's so funny.
So like I think the OK, I foundit.
So the thought leader kind oflends and this is a quote from
somewhere and it's brilliant.
But again it takes breakingdown it's digital CSS of data
driven methodology for creatingvalues for customers at scale by
using purpose built tools thatfacilitate a personalized
(13:05):
customer experience, regardlessof segment or journey stage.
So that's a paragraph.
There's a lot of reallycritical bits and pieces of it,
but when you're talking likepractitioner to practitioner
outside of CS, it's verydifficult to grasp.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It is.
And what's interesting is, asyou probably know, on the
website I've been collecting alleverybody's definition, turned
it into a word map or whatever,and what's interesting is that
definition is kind ofencapsulates bits and pieces
from everybody's little.
You know everybody's definitionand and it goes to show that
(13:42):
that you know what somebodythinks of as digital CS has a
lot to do with also with howthey're operating, what their
history is, and you know what'skind of fed into that and how
their organization views CS aswell.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, and to clarify, that's not my definition.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
That is like right, sure, yeah, that one Like I
ripped that from.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I'll have to give you the attribution later.
But, yeah, it is.
It is all the bits and piecesthat I think we have, you know
as as doers of this thing,accumulated over time.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, going perhaps a little bit
deeper on something you saidearlier in relation to digital
CS as it pertains to otherorganizations within the company
.
Because I see this, there's nosecret that you know, digital CS
(14:34):
is is kind of a collection ofskills and things and processes
that other organizations havebeen doing for a while.
You mentioned marketing.
I think product could fit, youknow, in product kind of stuff,
and there's there's a number ofother things too, but it's kind
of like this close things allfocused on on that outcomes
(14:55):
journey or the customer journeyor whatever you want to call it
right.
And and that's where I thinkthe role of somebody you know
leading these things becomesparticularly tricky, because it
can be kind of seen as, hey, I'mstepping on your toes or, you
know, this is your thing versusmy thing, and there's kind of
(15:16):
like this ownership thing, and Ithink it takes a really
open-minded and collaborativestructure to support those
things.
And, you know, and at the endof the day it's like whether you
do that or I do that doesn'treally matter, as long as it's
coordinated, looks kind ofsimilar or whatnot.
But I wanted to get your takeon how a digital strategy kind
(15:39):
of fits in cross-functionally.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, it's such a great question and I think it.
You know, to me everything juststarts with culture, really,
for all this stuff, becausedigital successes is newer than
a lot of the, you know, thefolks that we're going to be
collaborating withcross-functionally.
And to your point, they havebeen doing these things right
for a little while.
So who are we all of a suddento come up and say, hey, we're
(16:03):
doing this thing, it's neverbeen invented, we're inventing
it.
It's like I would be upset tooright, and so I think there is
occasionally a little bit ofthat that you know
unintentionally can come across.
But I think what I'veexperienced and this is sort of
I think you want to buildtogether with those teams from
the beginning is probably thefirst thing I would say.
(16:27):
But I think you also want tokind of sit down and co-own that
journey together.
Like to your point, what I loveabout what you said is you're
starting with a journey, whichto me it's like you want to
start with a customer at thecenter of everything.
Right, and I think what you'llfind when you sit down with some
of your counterparts in productmarketing, sales, what have you
is that we all have one sort ofdifferent versions of a
(16:51):
customer journey that are alittle bit more about internal
processes and how our teams goto market than they really are
what the customer isexperiencing.
And the second thing is that weall have different metrics and
so those journeys morph actuallyto optimize for those metrics.
And those metrics are internalbusiness metrics, they're not
customer metrics.
(17:11):
And so, again, is it really acustomer experience or is it
really a customer journey thatwe're rallying around?
And so I think that that is arole that we can play as a CX
org, or CS org is to come in andsay, here's a customer's
journey from their experience,and let's kind of rally all of
our stuff that we have aroundthis, and then you want to audit
(17:34):
that right and you want tofigure out all right whether
it's auditing overall programsthat seem to be duplicative in
nature or maybe they have somesort of like a little bit of
event diagram and they can bothstay, but they need to have
their distinct kind of valueprops all the way to a level of
detail of like whatnotifications are they getting
right?
Do you have a governance modelin place to make sure it doesn't
(17:55):
feel like different departmentsthat your company are talking
to your customer?
It's like these things need tobe mapped out because you really
don't know your customerexperience.
Otherwise, I think we might lookat some data and get some
indication.
We might get some qualitativeresults or conversational inputs
from customers that make usthink we know what they're
experiencing.
But until you do this level ofdetail like top down analysis of
(18:19):
it, you don't, and I thinkthat's those two places are
where I would start buildingtogether.
It's really rallying aroundthat journey and doing an audit
with your cross-functionalpartners and then starting to
talk about overlap, teamcompetencies and how do we all
get together and do thistogether.
I think the third thing I wouldsay that just kind of dawned on
(18:42):
me, but this is something we youand I have talked about this
before, and I think looking atyour go-to-market model, looking
at your business model andfiguring out where the gaps are
in plugging those is, I think,where a skilled team or a
digital success team isparticularly effective.
So the two models that arereally that everyone talks about
(19:03):
these days is like product-ledgrowth, so PLG, and then
sales-led growth or product-ledsales, or either one of those
three, and when you actually putthe tenets of those models
together, you start to realizewhere each of them is really
effective and where each of themeither hands off to the other
or is actually missing,something that you can plug and
(19:25):
fill, and so that's somethingelse that we did, and, again, an
audit really kind of helps withthis is it helps you figure out
what are our customers actuallymissing and how do we bring
that to the table?
Now I'm going to argue with whatI said earlier and say, like,
if you don't have the ability tolike build together and like
you've got, you know folks inother departments they want to
work with you but they justdon't have the time right now
(19:47):
and they're like look, go, doyour thing.
Let's come back in a couplequarters and figure it out.
I would start in the gaps.
I would start in the gaps inthe areas where you've clearly
identified no one at yourcompany is tackling these
problems, and try to, you know,get some traction there before
you go and work with yourpartners.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So that's my very long-winded answer to your
question and I do feel likethere is.
You know, when folks aretalking about digital customers,
that's like two years ago itwas like okay, we just need to
cover this segment.
More recently, obviously, it'sshifted to okay, it's just, you
know, strategy, not a segment,and I think everybody kind of
(20:25):
gets that now.
Where I kind of feel likepeople are starting to shift a
little bit more is this notionof getting these, this, you know
, this program implemented insuch a way to where it's not a
CS thing, it's like everybody'sdoing CS in relation to what
(20:46):
their remit is.
And I know I'm just completelyrepeating what you just said.
But you know, I think it's aprofound shift in mentality
where you're not just talkingabout, you know, okay, this
email needs to go out, then thisemail needs to go out.
Then it's like okay, there's abunch of stuff that happens
pre-sale, there's a bunch ofstuff that happens in the
renewal cycle that don't live inCS, but all of that stuff needs
(21:08):
to inform you.
You know your processes.
There's a bunch of stuff thathappens in finance hey, guess
what?
That should be part of thejourney.
There's a bunch of stuff thathappens in product and support
Holy cow, like you know, it'salmost like a return to what we
used to call like voice of thecustomer committee and like
where you try to like wrangleeverybody.
(21:29):
But it's, it's, you know, andwe're finally getting a little
bit more programmatic about it,to we're having these
cross-functional conversations,or at least you should be, and I
do.
There's, I think, there's acautionary bit here too, though,
because there are.
Probably the number onequestion I get is like okay,
this is great, I want to, I wantto go do this.
(21:51):
Where the fuck do I start?
Like you know, I it's like.
It's like there's a lot ofstuff I could do, or there's a
lot of stuff I need to do, butwhere do I start?
And yes, you should have thosecross functional conversations.
And yes, you should start withkind of like mapping out a high
level journey and knowinggenerally where your customers
(22:11):
need to go, but then also, it'sjust about, you know, failing
fast and getting some stuff inplace while you map out all that
other stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Right, yeah, no, totally, and do them in parallel
, right.
It's like it's sort of the wayyou would balance a healthy
portfolio right.
When you're working on anything, on launching anything new you
have, you've got to get somequick wins, you've got to get
things to market quickly andwhile you're doing that, you're
building a solid foundation thatis going to sustain you for
quarters and quarters and yearsand years and years and years to
(22:41):
come.
Right, you can't just like dothe quick win stuff and not
focus on the bigger picture.
You can't just focus on thebigger picture stuff and like
never execute anything.
And so it's always aboutlooking at, like your Starbucks
cup sizes, quarter of a quarterof like initiatives and being
like okay, what are my liketalls, my grand days and my
ventes?
to get digital success off theground and, you know, making
(23:02):
sure that those are in balanceand in harmony.
And I think you know, are therebig business problems that
people are complaining aboutthat you could make a dent in
right away, like that's.
You know, to me that's, that'sa place to start while you start
on that overall journey mapright.
Like in looking at that journey,it's like do those things
concurrently and I think youdon't need a ton of resources to
(23:24):
do it.
In fact, that's pretty anti.
What, like a digital successteam is all about?
Really right, but I think youcan be really smart, yeah, and
you can do both.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I'm going on a complete tangent here and
Googling while you're talking,because you just reminded me of
that hilarious Paul Rudd rantabout the sizes of cups or
whatever it was.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Oh, you have to say I don't think I've seen this.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, it's like.
It's like you know, talkingabout how venti actually means
20 and all this kind of stuff islike it's.
It's really funny.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I'll send it to you.
We're going to have to editthat out then.
Yeah, I should have just said Tshould sizes, right?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, there you go.
Exactly, although it is anExcel really an Excel.
And is a large really a large?
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I know right you can, it's just yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
And no, we're not editing that out.
So, tying back to what you saidearlier, you were at Pulse this
year, the Pulse conference thisyear.
You were a speaker and yourtalk was all about this notion
(24:33):
that there is no PLG or SLG.
It's like you know, neither aredead and I love the analogies,
but the link to the talk will bein the show notes, so if
anybody wants to go see it, it'shilarious and great and the
analogies are on point.
But you really clearlyarticulated this notion of you
(24:57):
know together these strategiesare like the recipe and the
killer for how we should beengaging our customers on both
kind of like the machine level,but then also, you know, let's
not forget about the humanelement of things as well.
Do you want to give us like aquick cliff notes of what that
talk is and then everybody cango check it out, like you're
(25:20):
going to do the trailer in aworld?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm really sure, and thank you, yeah
.
So this talk at Pulse wascalled product and sales led
growth embrace, both with scaledCX, and essentially I was kind
of showcasing what happenedduring and after the pandemic,
which is where we saw a lot ofthese headlines in the press
about how sales led growth,which is kind of the incumbent
(25:45):
model, was dying, right, and itwas the year of product led
growth and literally six monthslater, product led growth was
dying and said, like, you needsales.
And so it was just like it wasjust kind of looking at this
sort of thinking and essentiallymy talk was about well, first
of all, none of them are goinganywhere.
They're both incrediblestrategies and a business should
leverage everything at theirdisposal to succeed.
(26:07):
Right, and for your customersto succeed, for your customers,
like you also have to be reallyruthless about and self aware
about what's missing in yourmodels and what you might be
able to bring to the table thatyour customers need that you
haven't yet and what does thatlook like?
And so essentially it was likelooking at right, where do these
things, what are the strengthsof both these models and what
(26:28):
are the gaps, and essentiallysaying that, hey, scaled CX,
which is the name of my team,which comprises of essentially
all of the engines you can thinkof.
That could scale CS right,whether that's education,
digital success, production,you're like all in house, so on
and so forth.
The idea was, look, we can addsomething to these models on the
CX side that don't exist, right, and essentially that's the
(26:50):
talk and it kind of goes through.
Well, what are those thingsLike?
Where do these models succeed,where do they fall short and
what do we introduce into themix?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
It's so great because you give some actual practical
example.
There's a lot of talks outthere where you're like, okay,
great now.
But actually if you go look atthe slides and look at what you
presented, it's like, okay, well, there's some actual like shit
I can go do, which is great.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Thank you, and I consider that the highest
compliment right.
It's like talking topractitioners, people who do
things every day, and not reallyjust giving a TED talk with
vagaries that don't result inanything actionable.
Right, and that's I think I'dlove to hear that.
Thank you, High compliment, andI think that's what we strive
(27:34):
to do in digital success and onour teams is to make sure that
the things that we're puttingout there are actually used to
yeah.
And that's something thatcarries through in how we do
talks too.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, exactly Well, in that spirit of tangible kind
of examples.
You know your team at Muro, bythe way.
I love that you have global inyour title, because it's a big
distinction, right, and there'sa big tendency to kind of be
(28:05):
very regional focused and thenforget about the rest.
Anyway, that's a tangent.
That's another thing altogether.
It's a good point though, what'sthe state of your team?
Because I know you've beenbuilding like crazy and you've
hired some very cool roles.
I've seen over the past year orso that you've hired some
(28:27):
really interesting roles intoyour team and maybe in ways
you're building things in waysthat I don't think a lot of
other people are really thinkingabout building this.
So would you give us kind of aroadmap?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Sure of the roles, specifically on the team
programs, or.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, of the team structure or kind of how you're
thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, and I think leave room for it to evolve
organically is one thing I'llsay as a caveat right Before we
go, before we kind of going todetailing this out, because this
worked in my current context inMuro, right, and it may or may
not.
Your mileage may varyessentially, is what I'm saying
right?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
And again.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
So we'll find in a previous company, future company
, so on.
So I think what has workedreally well for us is high level
.
We have essentially we're thescaled customer experience team.
We have three major streams orpillars.
We have scaled education,scaled production and then
digital success All global.
(29:29):
We look after everybody.
So, whether you're a premiumtrial user or you are our
largest customer, we take careof you right, and that's
essentially been our philosophyfrom the very beginning, when we
started as primarily aneducation team and so kind of
started as education built fromthere we've got production,
(29:51):
digital success, and I think thekey roles on the education side
are our learning experiencedesigners, which is pretty
common in education.
We've got facilitators, slashcoaches, slash consultant role,
which is also pretty common, andwe have, essentially we run our
own help center as well.
So we've got, you know,technical writers that take care
(30:12):
of the helps in our content.
So those are our education teamroles.
We have a production team whichreally functions as sort of a
shared service between bothteams.
It's all in house.
You know, our secret sauce isreally our content and the
delight that comes throughprimarily in our videos and the
beautiful assets that that teamcreates.
And so they, you know, we've gotmultimedia designers and we've
(30:35):
got essentially in app, almostlike product managers within
that team or that we don't callthem such.
They're almost like anevolution or like a hybrid
between learning experiencedesigner and a product manager
type role.
Take care of our in appexperiences, right, whether
that's your guided tutorials orwhether that's our short form,
(30:56):
robust learning center in theapp, and so that's, that's our
second stream, and then ourdigital success team is program
managers, so they take care ofthat happy path journey.
They take care of theessentially the risk journey,
right.
So if you're off path, and thenyou know we've got we've got
some program managers across theteam that are that are looking
(31:18):
at other things likelocalization and distribution
and things like that, so youknow, for us this is something
we've built like brick by brickover the last three years and
you know we really every singlerole on the team like to me I
feel like it's five roles, right.
It's just, and that's how itshould feel when you're building
intentionally and when you're,you know, really responding to
(31:42):
the needs of your customers.
That's what it's going to feellike.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And so that's just how we built it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, I love those, those, those three kind of
segmentations and, I guess, acouple of follow ups.
You know, you have theseprogram managers in the digital
customer success team and myassumption is that they're
(32:08):
really looking after journeys,building up certain things,
working on probably projectsrelated to flows and things like
that.
I'm guessing there's a lot ofcross-functional work within
your teams to get some of theright assets in place and all
that kind of stuff.
But at what point do youtransition a custom just engage
(32:33):
to maybe proactively reachingout?
And who does that within Miro?
Is there proactive engagementwith the customer?
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Great question.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
When something goes awry, yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
we do have a skilled success team as well.
That is essentially.
It's a segment powered by ourdigital journey with proactive
calls to action, and CSFs getinvolved that way, and that's
something obviously you don'thave to have a segment for.
You can do this across yourentire CS model.
What's interesting, too, is youcan do this outside of CS, so
(33:07):
you can do this when you startto get really interesting
indications for a renewals teamfor your AE buddy in sales.
You can do this when there'sinteresting things that are
coming in that you want yourproduct managers to know about,
right?
Maybe you launched a newfeature, went to market with a
new feature.
You did it in a scaled way.
You're starting to get someinteresting buzz from your
customers and you want to alertproduct managers who may want to
(33:30):
speak to customers, right?
There's just a lot of ways, Ithink, to think about this
concept that we have in CS oflike, hey, how do we do this
proactive engagement on the CSside?
Now think beyond CS.
How about we do it across theorganization and pull in a
different lens for the customer?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, that's really cool.
Are you tech stack wise?
I think you're a Gainside house, right.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
We are yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
And do you use PX for in?
Are you a Pendo Like what'syour in-app stuff looking like
these days?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It's all custom yeah our in-app stuff is all custom
right now.
Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah Not to saythat we're not poking around
and looking at other things, butif you look at our learning
center, we actually have thisamazing product team that we get
to work with on a regular basisto enhance, maintain and that
(34:26):
in-app full-on learning centerthat we have alongside them.
So it's been really amazing.
And then also, outside of thatparticular surface, we do a ton
of things with our variousproduct teams in-app.
So it's one of those thingswhere it's like custom that's a
lot, but it is a lot if youactually look at the product
inside the app.
It allows you to do quite a bitwithout leaving a mural board
(34:50):
and getting exactly what youneed when you need it, and so it
works for us.
But again, your mileage mayvary, but we're again, we're
very lucky though Our team thisis one of the things I think is
so special about our team andreally it's special about Miro
is that we get to work withfolks cross-functionally in a
way that I've never seen.
It sounds so cheesy, but in away I've never seen done at
(35:10):
other organizations, which iswhy I started our whole
conversation with.
This is all about culture.
It just depends on if yourculture is set up to help you
succeed.
In this way, you're going to beable to get something a little
bit controversial off the ground, which, let's face it,
sometimes digital success can be.
And so, I think, in-app, wework really closely with our
product teams.
We've got amazing relationshipwith our data analytics teams,
(35:34):
with our operations teams.
I don't even think of them asseparate teams, they're our team
and that's just how closely wework together, and I think
without these relationships,you're just not going to be able
to do a lot.
So it's just crucial, I think.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
But yeah, I posted not too long ago about the fact
that I think let's just call itdigital CS.
However, your structured arounddigital CS, but the function of
digital CS is probably thefunction with the most number of
variables.
Oh, my gosh, that's true Withinan org because of what you're
(36:14):
highlighting, right, I mean, itis truly different within every
company.
But then you've got a differenttech stack, you've got data
everywhere, you've got differentroles You're working across.
There's just the amount ofvariables that you navigate in
this role is not for the faintof heart, and so kudos to you
for being able to operate thatway.
(36:35):
Obviously, I think it soundslike Miro culture has definitely
helped facilitate some of thosethings in a way that's
productive.
But that's really cool thatthat's in-house, because I think
, to your point too, miro issuch a unique product that if
(36:56):
you want to surface that in-appkind of guidance and things like
that, I would say it almost hasto be a custom-built kind of
thing, because it is very, very,very.
The tool itself is rich by thatnature.
You need kind of a rich in-appguidance.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, and it's going to need to be really sort of
elegant in the flow of work,right, because our infinite
canvas how hyper-collaborativeour product is.
I think if we were layering toomuch on top of it, it's like the
whole square likepeg-round-hole situation where
it's like it's just not, it'sgoing to feel clunky, it's going
(37:36):
to impact the user experience,and so just flowing those things
together in a way that makessense, Having you know I think
we were getting anything off theshelf You're sort of you know,
you're pushed into kind of theirmodel of what an artifact
inside of a product should lookand feel like, or even what the
content type is.
And I think we have a lot moreflexibility in this case to make
it a lot more fluid when we'redoing it with our product teams
(37:59):
and trying to get to a specificoutcome.
That isn't getting in the wayof them doing their work right.
I mean, it's a productivitysoftware, right.
Ultimately, we don't want toimpact that and I think the nice
thing doing it this way too isthat we can evolve as the
product does right.
Like those experiences that wecreate can evolve as the product
does and because, primarily,that experience is like a
(38:23):
customer education experience inthe product.
Right, you need to be almostundetectable, right, you don't
want to be an annoying pop-up inthe face of a user who's trying
to accomplish a critical taskby the next meeting.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I was going to say.
Like you know, I've used Miroin screen share mode in the
middle of a meeting with, likeyou know, 20 expensive people on
the call.
The last thing I would want tohave is for it to be a pop-up
that goes hey, it looks likeyou're trying to do this.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that there's just so
much of that that you know weyou mean you'll learn as you go
through.
When you're doing this stufftoo, like no matter how much
you've done in-app, like I feellike every time I've done in-app
in any product, I learn like amillion things that I and think
like, oh, everything we've everdone before was wrong, right.
(39:13):
So I think it's just importantto sort of follow along and
learn as your you know, as yourcustomers, your users experience
.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
You know, you've got yourself in those shoes too.
You know, I think a lot of usare afraid to, kind of like,
have the customer experiencefirsthand.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
So yeah, and like knowing that it changes.
Right, we spent a lot of time,let's say, on onboarding three
quarters ago and then we're like, oh, we're done.
And then we move on and wedon't come back to it for a year
and in that time the productchanges significantly.
Or you know, xyz, things happenand your experience is not like
you need to go back to thatexperience, you need to rethink
(39:48):
that experience.
So I think, just constantlyiterating and experimenting and
learning and changing thatexperience so that it's again
always helping the customerachieve their outcomes yeah,
that's the.
I think that's the key.
It is indeed Well all thesesimple things, like we know
these things right.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
It's very simple, you put them together and it
becomes complex all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Simple, simple, not easy, my friend.
That's right, yeah, that'sright.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
So we kind of start to round down.
I'd like to get a sense forwhat you're paying attention to,
what's in your content dietthat you might want to share
with folks out there.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I am really riding the the Substack Train these
days.
I am living for some of themost incredible substacks that I
have seen out there.
It's all practitioners that aredoing the work on a regular
basis, so you're getting advicefrom people who have rolled up
their sleeves, done a thing andeither succeeded wildly or
(40:50):
failed miserably, and they'reboth equally amazing learning.
So I'll send you a couple ofthose substacks.
I also have been reading ShaneParrish's new book A Clear
Thinking.
I'm a big, big fan ofstructured thinking and
frameworks to a certain point,and you know so I like that's
what I'm reading at the moment,but I'll have to get you a
(41:13):
better list I have to.
I have to like open my thingsand get you a list of stuff.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
What about you?
Substack's a real.
Yeah, oh, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
I know that's going to be interviewing you, but I'm
going to start.
Give me some things.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Give you some things.
You know it's pretty varied.
I, I, I tend to, I tend to uselike LinkedIn and stuff as a way
to just you know, even usingLinkedIn as a search engine is
is, is crazy powerful becausethere's people that have posted
on there and it just kind ofdisappears until it doesn't you
(41:52):
know, but there are.
You know, there's some totallyunrelated stuff Attention to
like.
There's this guy, I think hisname is Mark Williams.
He does a.
He does a podcast calledLinkedIn formed and it's all
about LinkedIn, like all thestuff that's happening on
LinkedIn and and and whatnot,which is which is super cool.
I'm an atomic habits, you know,guy, so I definitely love that.
(42:18):
And I've been.
There's one area where there'sa there's a digital CS Slack
community that that Marie Lundystarted not long ago.
That's starting to get sometraction.
That I've been in called DCSconnect, which has been cool.
But I really like your, yourthing on sub stack.
(42:41):
Sub stack, because I don't.
I think that's a very worldlykind of place to get some really
, really good, good insights.
You know, I don't think that'ssuper mainstream.
It's kind of like the Reddit ofprofessionalism, I think.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
It's.
I think it's getting there.
I mean, I think like everyone'sstarting a sub stack, I like
I'm going to do a reading listsub stack to start, just to get
back into the rhythm of writing.
I used to write all the timeabout the work that I was doing
and I don't really do thatanymore, and it's it's it's very
90s to me, like it reminds meof when live journal.
It's obviously much slickerthan that now.
(43:16):
And like you know, people havelegitimate businesses on here.
But like it reminds me of thatera when we were all writing
about the stuff that we wereworking on and it was a little
bit more of a hodgepodge.
It was sort of like thoughts ornotes from the field and, like
you know, not everything waslike the super polished thing.
It was very much like apractitioner's notebook and I
kind of like really loved thatfeel.
(43:36):
I hope they don't lose it, butall, yeah, I'll send you a some
of my favorite sub-sex, becausethere's like there's a lot of
these folks in SASS who weretalking about like what's next
for PLG, what's next for SLG,what's next what's product-led
sales, and, like you know, and Ithink, like what I'm trying to
also make sure there's a spacefor is having that same
(43:57):
discussion around digital CS oron customer education, across
all of these things that we doTo scale CX, because that is you
know, and beyond, because thatis what we need to be doing as
practitioners.
Right, and you're doing it withthis podcast.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And it's so important what you said about paying
attention to kind of otherplaces.
Right Like I've had a fewguests that say, hey look, I
focus has been completely on theeconomy and where we're going,
because I want to know where themoney is.
And, you know, I think thefocus on kind of product
strategy in the future of SASand those kinds of that's why,
like SASSTER and all those kindsof things, like like it's very
(44:33):
easy to stay in the bubble andmaybe not so obvious, you know
where to go to not be in thebubble.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
No for sure.
One of my, one of our leadersat Merah, is fabulous that our
CFO always says, like you haveto like actively try to break
that inertia right.
And it's so true, Like we tendto get into this like zone as as
workers, humans, practitionerswhat have you where we're like
you're just kind of goingthrough the motion or you're
(45:06):
doing the thing that has alwaysled to success.
But we are all working in timeswhere we're defining new things
and you know, like success iskind of uncharted and so you
have to do that.
And so I just I love thesetypes of places where you can
see how people are thinking yeah, right, yeah, there's so much
value in that like metacognition.
So I love, I love stuff stuckfor that.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Metacognition that's real good.
Are there?
You shouted out your CFO justnow, but are there people that
are doing cool things anddigital that you might want to
shout out as well?
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Oh my gosh, there's so many people I feel like I'm
so bad with, like on the spotlist.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
I am right there with you.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
You're going to sound like a terrible person.
It's another thing I'm going tohave to get you a list of.
There's so many cool peoplethere's.
There's a meetup that happensonce a month for digital success
that you were probably on, Ithink, sam.
From when are we at here?
Like Mondaycom started and it'slike a pretty cool beat up of
(46:10):
practice.
Yeah, I think you're on thatone Like and I think it's lovely
because of the way that, likethey sort of she drives the
agenda and kind of sends out therecording and the next steps
and the show and it's almostlike it's almost like it's own
thing and it's a really coolcommunity and it's just folks
that get together once a monthand I haven't been in a little
bit, but they just talk abouthey, what are the tactics that
(46:32):
are working for you, what arethe tactics that aren't working?
And like we kind of just youknow, when I was going, we were
trading back and forth andtrying different things and
seeing what would stick, and itwas this was a while ago, it was
like early days and we werejust getting digital off the
ground my team goes, my teamgoes.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Oh, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, there's a lot of cool people doing doing great
things and I, you know, I alsowant to shout out the people in
customer education who I thinkare doing a lot of scaling that
the DCS teams like rely on,right.
So I mean in another simplisticway that I've always talked
about, digital for folks whoaren't familiar is like it is a
distribution engine for customereducation, right, I mean.
(47:14):
And if you just define customereducation beyond like an old
school definition of customereducation, like it starts to
make sense that those two wouldlive together and live in the
same portfolio and like in thesame department and team, and I
think both like I'm starting tosee a lot of leaders like when I
started this journey, likenobody was really doing that,
and now I'm starting to see alot of leaders who are like oh,
(47:35):
why aren't these two?
Speaker 2 (47:35):
things together.
They should be yeah, absolutely, that's awesome, Cool.
Well, we are unfortunately,painfully and sadly out of time
and I feel, super fast.
I feel like we could go onforever.
But where can the good peopleof digital CS find you?
(47:57):
And you say hi, send you giftcards.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Coffee, coffee beans.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
So I'm working.
People send you coffee.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
I'm on LinkedIn.
I used to be on Twitter but nowI guess I'm on threads, so you
can find me at D capilla.
You can also find my sub stack,I guess D capilla dot sub
stackcom.
So that's D E, k, p, I, l, aand at whatever thing, as I just
mentioned.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Cool.
I will link both of thosethings In the description.
I thank you for joining.
It's been awesome.
You health of information andand energy and positive you know
it's.
It's awesome what you'rebuilding over at Miro and I
can't wait to see where thatgoes.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Right back at you.
Thank you so much for having melove the podcast.
Yeah, we should.
We should continue to chat asas we both build, build cool.
Next thing.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah, and grab some breakfast tacos.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yes, breakfast tacos, always breakfast tacos.
Thank you, my friends.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Cool, see you.
Thank you for joining me forthis 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 digital customer
(49:26):
success dot com.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
You need to be almost undetectable, right?
You don't want to be anannoying like pop-up in the face
of a user who's trying toaccomplish a critical task by
the next meeting.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I was going to say.
Like you know, I've used Miroin screen share mode in the
middle of a meeting with, likeyou know, 20 expensive people on
the call.
The last thing I would want tohave is for it to be a pop-up
that goes hey, it looks likeyou're trying to do this.
And once again, welcome to theDigital Customer Success podcast
with me, alex Trokovich, soglad you could join us here
(00:35):
today and every week as I seekout and interview leaders and
practitioners who are innovatingand building great scaled CS
programs.
My goal is to share what I'velearned and to bring you along
with me for the ride so that youget the insights that you need
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
(00:55):
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom.
And for now, let's get started.
This is episode 38 of theDigital Customer Success podcast
.
Welcome back, it's so great tohave you.
I feel like I say that this isa great episode, every episode
but isn't that kind of the thingyou do as the host of one of
(01:17):
these things?
That said, today's episode isreally, really great.
We have Decapila, on which, ifyou don't know her, she is head
of global I'm going to butcherthis global scaled customer
experience I believe it is atMiro, which a lot of us use or
(01:38):
at least are aware of.
So she has under her purviewnot just digital customer
success but also customereducation and talks a lot about
her cross collaborative work atMiro and the tooling and all
that kind of stuff.
Just a lot of really cool,tactical, great advice and
(02:00):
insight into her world.
She gave a really cool talk atPulse last year all about how
PLG and SLG, product-led growthand sales-led growth should work
together in harmony to servethe customer journey.
Just really cool stuff, superbright, and we've been trying to
(02:22):
connect for a little while, soI'm so glad we finally got her
on the show.
One quick note of warning Iguess my audio is not the best
in this episode.
It jumps around a little bit.
I think I don't know mycomputer was revolting against
me that day when we recorded itor something.
I've edited through most of it.
(02:44):
But just know, once in a whileyou'll hear my audio kind of do
some weird stuff, use yourcontext clues and power through,
kind of like I did.
But I hope you enjoy thisepisode with DiCapilla, because
I sure did, di.
I want to welcome you to theDigital Customer Success Podcast
.
It's awesome to have you here.
It's been a long time coming.
(03:05):
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for frickin'
ever so welcome.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Thank you so much for having me Love the podcast,
love you, love Digital CS, loveit all.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, we're done.
That's great.
Good interview.
I appreciate that, as is normal, you do a little bit of
research on your guests and youdig into really.
Actually, somebody recentlysaid something interesting that
(03:38):
if you're looking throughsomebody's history on LinkedIn,
it's not considered stalking,it's considered research.
But if you're looking throughsomebody's history on Facebook
and Instagram, that's consideredstalking.
So I'm not going to say that Istalked you.
I'm going to say that Iresearched and a couple of
things jumped out at me.
The first is that we have a lotof similarities of.
(03:58):
You have some history inlearning and development.
I do as well.
We both put in some time atDell.
We've had some implementationkind of roles as a vice, so
there's a lot of kind of cool,congruent stuff there.
But the one thing that jumpedout at me so my mom spent years
(04:20):
as a GM of a public radiostation, classical music host as
well, and I noticed you spent aconsiderable amount of time at
KUT for those of you who aren'tin the Austin area, that's
Austin's local public radiobehemoth and so I wanted to just
pick your brain real quick onwhat that was like, because I
think you were kind of the web.
(04:41):
So in 2009, 2011,.
You were their web and mobileproducts person, according to
LinkedIn, which means that youwere probably like the tech guru
.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So I love your research, I love all the
similarities and we've got asidebar about your mom, because
I'm sure we were a lot of thesame people, because public
media is a small world and whenyou're in it and when you work
in it for years, I mean you loveit and you never really leave
like your public radio for lifeand public radio nerd for life,
(05:16):
and so that's definitely a bigpart of my heart.
But yeah, so it was sort of adual kind of a role, so it was
really you could think about itas product management.
Before that was really a thing,right.
Because when we were trying tofigure out traditional media is
dying, we're moving to the web,but what's the business model,
right, and how do you engagewith the audience and where are
(05:39):
they and where do we need to bebesides just radio, right, and
so we were kind of putting a lotof that stuff onto the web for
the first time.
So that was like a keycomponent of the role, like
working with the newsrooms, withhuman interest reporters, and
figuring out, ok, how do we dovideo and what does video look
and feel like for public radio?
right, and so that was a keycomponent of it, while also
(06:02):
figuring out like, ok, streamingservices, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, all of thatsort of thing, so I think in
that way you got to be thetechnical person, but like what
we back in that time used tosort of call trying to glamorize
ourselves as like creativetechnologists, right, I think a
lot of people across theindustry were in these sorts of
(06:22):
roles where they were trying tobring things to the web and
trying to figure out OK, like ifthe business model includes
advertising, what is that look?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
like.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
If the business model includes subscriptions or
donations, like, what does thatlook like?
Right, where you can drop yourcar off on the web, if that
comes to mind for KUT, right?
So it's sort of it was thatwhole space.
But I think there's so muchdeep connective tissue between
digital success, between all ofthe things that we're trying to
do to scale a CS organizationand some of the lessons that I
(06:51):
learned there.
But I think of it as like abeautiful on-ramp back into CS,
because I started in CS beforeit was CS, went into this world
and then came back into it.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, which is so cool.
I think that background in techand product and then combined
with the education bit that youhave a deep history in as well,
and learning and enablement andreally customer education that
(07:24):
to me, that forms the basis ofwhat a digital program is all
about.
It's like you're productizingthis content in a way that makes
it easily accessible at theright time but also enables your
teams to use it in an easy way.
So I would imagine and I'mputting words in your mouth, but
(07:45):
I would imagine, if you wereyou are today, which is to say,
you've morphed from educationback into CS and leading the
scale programs at Muro that thathas all come together for you
full circle maybe.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I love that.
Yes, and I would say that theseare all critical components of
CS.
I think CS is a newer function,if we really think about when
it started, and has gone througha lot of evolution and, I think
, is figuring out ways to put alot of things together.
I think as our customer needschange, their expectations
(08:23):
change, they're driving usreally to do that, and so when
we think about again going backto public radio, you think about
what that service is thatyou're providing to your
audience back in public radioland, like what is the service
that you're providing to yourcustomers in SAS and what is
CS's role in providing thatservice specifically, because CS
(08:44):
isn't providing the servicealone, but what is our specific
role?
And that is a really strategicblend of these things of
education, of orchestration thatwe do on the digital success
side, thinking about support instrategic ways, thinking about
all of, obviously, what our hightouch CS teams do, what
professional services does.
(09:05):
We're talking CX now.
Everything blends together andthat's really how digital
successes is a core component ofmy team's portfolio, but we're
really about scaling CX overall,because I think that's really
where all of this is moving to.
We're not going to create siloswithin CX.
We're trying to solve for silosacross organization.
(09:26):
So what are the key pieces thatare done extremely well by
these amazing dedicated teams inCX?
And then how do you have afunction or a team that can
scale across all of that?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And that's really what we're looking at doing with
, of course, digital being thatorchestrating kind of conductor
function of it all, yeah, yeah,and this probably lends into,
kind of, my next question andthe question that I basically
ask all of my guests, which isto say, you know, collecting
everybody's elevator pitch, soto speak, of digital CS, and I
(10:03):
have a feeling yours is going tobe a little bit unique, but,
again, I won't put words in yourmouth.
So if you had to explain tosomebody in 10 to 30 seconds,
you know what is digital CS,what would you say?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Man, I change my answer for that, I would say
every two weeks, and so I'llgive you a couple of components
of it and then eventually, maybewe'll stitch it together.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
One of the ways that I really like that.
My leader for digital successon my team, laura Johnson,
describes it as really we arethe CSM of record in a digital
capacity right, and I love thatbecause it's so much simpler
than I think.
What so many other people sayabout digital success and what I
(10:48):
hear when we start to talkabout things like ah, at scale,
at the right time, at the rightdata, at the right people are
just like well, we do that inmarketing, or we do that in
product, or we do that in thisteam, we do that in this team.
So it's really hard to cut tothe core of what it is that
you're trying to do,particularly in the initial part
(11:09):
of when you're like getting adigital success team off the
ground or when you're getting adigital success program off the
ground, it's very hard to sortof explain to people what you're
trying to do.
So I think the way that Lauradescribes is probably the best
way to cut to the heart of it.
And I think when you start tomature the program, that's
really when you can bring insome of this additional
terminology and say, okay, look,we're automating success
(11:32):
milestones across the deliveryjourney or the value delivery
journey for the customer, andthat could look different
depending on if you're serving adigital only book of business
or if digital is a strategy forall CS segments or if it's both,
which is ideally what you'redoing.
You're doing kind of a blend ofboth those things to explain to
(11:52):
people who are like oh, tell usmore about digital success,
what is it?
I'm like let me tell you whatthe industry definition is and
break that down, and thensubsequent slides will break
that down and at the end youkind of come back to that
definition.
And that's because when you hearit it's a mouthful and you're
like that sounds a little bitjargony, but when you break it
down, those are the best wordsthat we have in the English
(12:13):
language actually to communicatewhat digital success is trying
to do.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You know it just doesn't make it easy.
That's so interesting, becauseI find myself doing that Like
I'll throw out kind of like myown definition, and then I'll be
like but let me unpack that foryou a little bit, and then you
come back to it and you're likeOK, does that make sense?
You know, now, does that makesense?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Because we have this packing problem for somebody.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, yeah, it's like , and we're supposed to be the
ones that communicate this stuffvery clearly, right, yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I know and then that's.
I think that's that's the ironyRight and it's it's so funny.
So like I think the OK, I foundit.
So the thought leader kind oflends and this is a quote from
somewhere and it's brilliant.
But again it takes breakingdown it's digital CSS of data
driven methodology for creatingvalues for customers at scale by
using purpose built tools thatfacilitate a personalized
(13:05):
customer experience, regardlessof segment or journey stage.
So that's a paragraph.
There's a lot of reallycritical bits and pieces of it,
but when you're talking likepractitioner to practitioner
outside of CS, it's verydifficult to grasp.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It is.
And what's interesting is, asyou probably know, on the
website I've been collecting alleverybody's definition, turned
it into a word map or whatever,and what's interesting is that
definition is kind ofencapsulates bits and pieces
from everybody's little.
You know everybody's definitionand and it goes to show that
(13:42):
that you know what somebodythinks of as digital CS has a
lot to do with also with howthey're operating, what their
history is, and you know what'skind of fed into that and how
their organization views CS aswell.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, and to clarify, that's not my definition.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
That is like right, sure, yeah, that one Like I
ripped that from.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I'll have to give you the attribution later.
But, yeah, it is.
It is all the bits and piecesthat I think we have, you know
as as doers of this thing,accumulated over time.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, going perhaps a little bit
deeper on something you saidearlier in relation to digital
CS as it pertains to otherorganizations within the company
.
Because I see this, there's nosecret that you know, digital CS
(14:34):
is is kind of a collection ofskills and things and processes
that other organizations havebeen doing for a while.
You mentioned marketing.
I think product could fit, youknow, in product kind of stuff,
and there's there's a number ofother things too, but it's kind
of like this close things allfocused on on that outcomes
(14:55):
journey or the customer journeyor whatever you want to call it
right.
And and that's where I thinkthe role of somebody you know
leading these things becomesparticularly tricky, because it
can be kind of seen as, hey, I'mstepping on your toes or, you
know, this is your thing versusmy thing, and there's kind of
(15:16):
like this ownership thing, and Ithink it takes a really
open-minded and collaborativestructure to support those
things.
And, you know, and at the endof the day it's like whether you
do that or I do that doesn'treally matter, as long as it's
coordinated, looks kind ofsimilar or whatnot.
But I wanted to get your takeon how a digital strategy kind
(15:39):
of fits in cross-functionally.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, it's such a great question and I think it.
You know, to me everything juststarts with culture, really,
for all this stuff, becausedigital successes is newer than
a lot of the, you know, thefolks that we're going to be
collaborating withcross-functionally.
And to your point, they havebeen doing these things right
for a little while.
So who are we all of a suddento come up and say, hey, we're
(16:03):
doing this thing, it's neverbeen invented, we're inventing
it.
It's like I would be upset tooright, and so I think there is
occasionally a little bit ofthat that you know
unintentionally can come across.
But I think what I'veexperienced and this is sort of
I think you want to buildtogether with those teams from
the beginning is probably thefirst thing I would say.
(16:27):
But I think you also want tokind of sit down and co-own that
journey together.
Like to your point, what I loveabout what you said is you're
starting with a journey, whichto me it's like you want to
start with a customer at thecenter of everything.
Right, and I think what you'llfind when you sit down with some
of your counterparts in productmarketing, sales, what have you
is that we all have one sort ofdifferent versions of a
(16:51):
customer journey that are alittle bit more about internal
processes and how our teams goto market than they really are
what the customer isexperiencing.
And the second thing is that weall have different metrics and
so those journeys morph actuallyto optimize for those metrics.
And those metrics are internalbusiness metrics, they're not
customer metrics.
(17:11):
And so, again, is it really acustomer experience or is it
really a customer journey thatwe're rallying around?
And so I think that that is arole that we can play as a CX
org, or CS org is to come in andsay, here's a customer's
journey from their experience,and let's kind of rally all of
our stuff that we have aroundthis, and then you want to audit
(17:34):
that right and you want tofigure out all right whether
it's auditing overall programsthat seem to be duplicative in
nature or maybe they have somesort of like a little bit of
event diagram and they can bothstay, but they need to have
their distinct kind of valueprops all the way to a level of
detail of like whatnotifications are they getting
right?
Do you have a governance modelin place to make sure it doesn't
(17:55):
feel like different departmentsthat your company are talking
to your customer?
It's like these things need tobe mapped out because you really
don't know your customerexperience.
Otherwise, I think we might lookat some data and get some
indication.
We might get some qualitativeresults or conversational inputs
from customers that make usthink we know what they're
experiencing.
But until you do this level ofdetail like top down analysis of
(18:19):
it, you don't, and I thinkthat's those two places are
where I would start buildingtogether.
It's really rallying aroundthat journey and doing an audit
with your cross-functionalpartners and then starting to
talk about overlap, teamcompetencies and how do we all
get together and do thistogether.
I think the third thing I wouldsay that just kind of dawned on
(18:42):
me, but this is something we youand I have talked about this
before, and I think looking atyour go-to-market model, looking
at your business model andfiguring out where the gaps are
in plugging those is, I think,where a skilled team or a
digital success team isparticularly effective.
So the two models that arereally that everyone talks about
(19:03):
these days is like product-ledgrowth, so PLG, and then
sales-led growth or product-ledsales, or either one of those
three, and when you actually putthe tenets of those models
together, you start to realizewhere each of them is really
effective and where each of themeither hands off to the other
or is actually missing,something that you can plug and
(19:25):
fill, and so that's somethingelse that we did, and, again, an
audit really kind of helps withthis is it helps you figure out
what are our customers actuallymissing and how do we bring
that to the table?
Now I'm going to argue with whatI said earlier and say, like,
if you don't have the ability tolike build together and like
you've got, you know folks inother departments they want to
work with you but they justdon't have the time right now
(19:47):
and they're like look, go, doyour thing.
Let's come back in a couplequarters and figure it out.
I would start in the gaps.
I would start in the gaps inthe areas where you've clearly
identified no one at yourcompany is tackling these
problems, and try to, you know,get some traction there before
you go and work with yourpartners.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So that's my very long-winded answer to your
question and I do feel likethere is.
You know, when folks aretalking about digital customers,
that's like two years ago itwas like okay, we just need to
cover this segment.
More recently, obviously, it'sshifted to okay, it's just, you
know, strategy, not a segment,and I think everybody kind of
(20:25):
gets that now.
Where I kind of feel likepeople are starting to shift a
little bit more is this notionof getting these, this, you know
, this program implemented insuch a way to where it's not a
CS thing, it's like everybody'sdoing CS in relation to what
(20:46):
their remit is.
And I know I'm just completelyrepeating what you just said.
But you know, I think it's aprofound shift in mentality
where you're not just talkingabout, you know, okay, this
email needs to go out, then thisemail needs to go out.
Then it's like okay, there's abunch of stuff that happens
pre-sale, there's a bunch ofstuff that happens in the
renewal cycle that don't live inCS, but all of that stuff needs
(21:08):
to inform you.
You know your processes.
There's a bunch of stuff thathappens in finance hey, guess
what?
That should be part of thejourney.
There's a bunch of stuff thathappens in product and support
Holy cow, like you know, it'salmost like a return to what we
used to call like voice of thecustomer committee and like
where you try to like wrangleeverybody.
(21:29):
But it's, it's, you know, andwe're finally getting a little
bit more programmatic about it,to we're having these
cross-functional conversations,or at least you should be, and I
do.
There's, I think, there's acautionary bit here too, though,
because there are.
Probably the number onequestion I get is like okay,
this is great, I want to, I wantto go do this.
(21:51):
Where the fuck do I start?
Like you know, I it's like.
It's like there's a lot ofstuff I could do, or there's a
lot of stuff I need to do, butwhere do I start?
And yes, you should have thosecross functional conversations.
And yes, you should start withkind of like mapping out a high
level journey and knowinggenerally where your customers
(22:11):
need to go, but then also, it'sjust about, you know, failing
fast and getting some stuff inplace while you map out all that
other stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Right, yeah, no, totally, and do them in parallel
, right.
It's like it's sort of the wayyou would balance a healthy
portfolio right.
When you're working on anything, on launching anything new you
have, you've got to get somequick wins, you've got to get
things to market quickly andwhile you're doing that, you're
building a solid foundation thatis going to sustain you for
quarters and quarters and yearsand years and years and years to
(22:41):
come.
Right, you can't just like dothe quick win stuff and not
focus on the bigger picture.
You can't just focus on thebigger picture stuff and like
never execute anything.
And so it's always aboutlooking at, like your Starbucks
cup sizes, quarter of a quarterof like initiatives and being
like okay, what are my liketalls, my grand days and my
ventes?
to get digital success off theground and, you know, making
(23:02):
sure that those are in balanceand in harmony.
And I think you know, are therebig business problems that
people are complaining aboutthat you could make a dent in
right away, like that's.
You know, to me that's, that'sa place to start while you start
on that overall journey mapright.
Like in looking at that journey,it's like do those things
concurrently and I think youdon't need a ton of resources to
(23:24):
do it.
In fact, that's pretty anti.
What, like a digital successteam is all about?
Really right, but I think youcan be really smart, yeah, and
you can do both.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I'm going on a complete tangent here and
Googling while you're talking,because you just reminded me of
that hilarious Paul Rudd rantabout the sizes of cups or
whatever it was.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Oh, you have to say I don't think I've seen this.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, it's like.
It's like you know, talkingabout how venti actually means
20 and all this kind of stuff islike it's.
It's really funny.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I'll send it to you.
We're going to have to editthat out then.
Yeah, I should have just said Tshould sizes, right?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, there you go.
Exactly, although it is anExcel really an Excel.
And is a large really a large?
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I know right you can, it's just yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
And no, we're not editing that out.
So, tying back to what you saidearlier, you were at Pulse this
year, the Pulse conference thisyear.
You were a speaker and yourtalk was all about this notion
(24:33):
that there is no PLG or SLG.
It's like you know, neither aredead and I love the analogies,
but the link to the talk will bein the show notes, so if
anybody wants to go see it, it'shilarious and great and the
analogies are on point.
But you really clearlyarticulated this notion of you
(24:57):
know together these strategiesare like the recipe and the
killer for how we should beengaging our customers on both
kind of like the machine level,but then also, you know, let's
not forget about the humanelement of things as well.
Do you want to give us like aquick cliff notes of what that
talk is and then everybody cango check it out, like you're
(25:20):
going to do the trailer in aworld?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm really sure, and thank you, yeah
.
So this talk at Pulse wascalled product and sales led
growth embrace, both with scaledCX, and essentially I was kind
of showcasing what happenedduring and after the pandemic,
which is where we saw a lot ofthese headlines in the press
about how sales led growth,which is kind of the incumbent
(25:45):
model, was dying, right, and itwas the year of product led
growth and literally six monthslater, product led growth was
dying and said, like, you needsales.
And so it was just like it wasjust kind of looking at this
sort of thinking and essentiallymy talk was about well, first
of all, none of them are goinganywhere.
They're both incrediblestrategies and a business should
leverage everything at theirdisposal to succeed.
(26:07):
Right, and for your customersto succeed, for your customers,
like you also have to be reallyruthless about and self aware
about what's missing in yourmodels and what you might be
able to bring to the table thatyour customers need that you
haven't yet and what does thatlook like?
And so essentially it was likelooking at right, where do these
things, what are the strengthsof both these models and what
(26:28):
are the gaps, and essentiallysaying that, hey, scaled CX,
which is the name of my team,which comprises of essentially
all of the engines you can thinkof.
That could scale CS right,whether that's education,
digital success, production,you're like all in house, so on
and so forth.
The idea was, look, we can addsomething to these models on the
CX side that don't exist, right, and essentially that's the
(26:50):
talk and it kind of goes through.
Well, what are those thingsLike?
Where do these models succeed,where do they fall short and
what do we introduce into themix?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
It's so great because you give some actual practical
example.
There's a lot of talks outthere where you're like, okay,
great now.
But actually if you go look atthe slides and look at what you
presented, it's like, okay, well, there's some actual like shit
I can go do, which is great.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Thank you, and I consider that the highest
compliment right.
It's like talking topractitioners, people who do
things every day, and not reallyjust giving a TED talk with
vagaries that don't result inanything actionable.
Right, and that's I think I'dlove to hear that.
Thank you, High compliment, andI think that's what we strive
(27:34):
to do in digital success and onour teams is to make sure that
the things that we're puttingout there are actually used to
yeah.
And that's something thatcarries through in how we do
talks too.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, exactly Well, in that spirit of tangible kind
of examples.
You know your team at Muro, bythe way.
I love that you have global inyour title, because it's a big
distinction, right, and there'sa big tendency to kind of be
(28:05):
very regional focused and thenforget about the rest.
Anyway, that's a tangent.
That's another thing altogether.
It's a good point though, what'sthe state of your team?
Because I know you've beenbuilding like crazy and you've
hired some very cool roles.
I've seen over the past year orso that you've hired some
(28:27):
really interesting roles intoyour team and maybe in ways
you're building things in waysthat I don't think a lot of
other people are really thinkingabout building this.
So would you give us kind of aroadmap?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Sure of the roles, specifically on the team
programs, or.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, of the team structure or kind of how you're
thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, and I think leave room for it to evolve
organically is one thing I'llsay as a caveat right Before we
go, before we kind of going todetailing this out, because this
worked in my current context inMuro, right, and it may or may
not.
Your mileage may varyessentially, is what I'm saying
right?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
And again.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
So we'll find in a previous company, future company
, so on.
So I think what has workedreally well for us is high level
.
We have essentially we're thescaled customer experience team.
We have three major streams orpillars.
We have scaled education,scaled production and then
digital success All global.
(29:29):
We look after everybody.
So, whether you're a premiumtrial user or you are our
largest customer, we take careof you right, and that's
essentially been our philosophyfrom the very beginning, when we
started as primarily aneducation team and so kind of
started as education built fromthere we've got production,
(29:51):
digital success, and I think thekey roles on the education side
are our learning experiencedesigners, which is pretty
common in education.
We've got facilitators, slashcoaches, slash consultant role,
which is also pretty common, andwe have, essentially we run our
own help center as well.
So we've got, you know,technical writers that take care
(30:12):
of the helps in our content.
So those are our education teamroles.
We have a production team whichreally functions as sort of a
shared service between bothteams.
It's all in house.
You know, our secret sauce isreally our content and the
delight that comes throughprimarily in our videos and the
beautiful assets that that teamcreates.
And so they, you know, we've gotmultimedia designers and we've
(30:35):
got essentially in app, almostlike product managers within
that team or that we don't callthem such.
They're almost like anevolution or like a hybrid
between learning experiencedesigner and a product manager
type role.
Take care of our in appexperiences, right, whether
that's your guided tutorials orwhether that's our short form,
(30:56):
robust learning center in theapp, and so that's, that's our
second stream, and then ourdigital success team is program
managers, so they take care ofthat happy path journey.
They take care of theessentially the risk journey,
right.
So if you're off path, and thenyou know we've got we've got
some program managers across theteam that are that are looking
(31:18):
at other things likelocalization and distribution
and things like that, so youknow, for us this is something
we've built like brick by brickover the last three years and
you know we really every singlerole on the team like to me I
feel like it's five roles, right.
It's just, and that's how itshould feel when you're building
intentionally and when you're,you know, really responding to
(31:42):
the needs of your customers.
That's what it's going to feellike.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And so that's just how we built it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, I love those, those, those three kind of
segmentations and, I guess, acouple of follow ups.
You know, you have theseprogram managers in the digital
customer success team and myassumption is that they're
(32:08):
really looking after journeys,building up certain things,
working on probably projectsrelated to flows and things like
that.
I'm guessing there's a lot ofcross-functional work within
your teams to get some of theright assets in place and all
that kind of stuff.
But at what point do youtransition a custom just engage
(32:33):
to maybe proactively reachingout?
And who does that within Miro?
Is there proactive engagementwith the customer?
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Great question.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
When something goes awry, yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
we do have a skilled success team as well.
That is essentially.
It's a segment powered by ourdigital journey with proactive
calls to action, and CSFs getinvolved that way, and that's
something obviously you don'thave to have a segment for.
You can do this across yourentire CS model.
What's interesting, too, is youcan do this outside of CS, so
(33:07):
you can do this when you startto get really interesting
indications for a renewals teamfor your AE buddy in sales.
You can do this when there'sinteresting things that are
coming in that you want yourproduct managers to know about,
right?
Maybe you launched a newfeature, went to market with a
new feature.
You did it in a scaled way.
You're starting to get someinteresting buzz from your
customers and you want to alertproduct managers who may want to
(33:30):
speak to customers, right?
There's just a lot of ways, Ithink, to think about this
concept that we have in CS oflike, hey, how do we do this
proactive engagement on the CSside?
Now think beyond CS.
How about we do it across theorganization and pull in a
different lens for the customer?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, that's really cool.
Are you tech stack wise?
I think you're a Gainside house, right.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
We are yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
And do you use PX for in?
Are you a Pendo Like what'syour in-app stuff looking like
these days?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It's all custom yeah our in-app stuff is all custom
right now.
Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah Not to saythat we're not poking around
and looking at other things, butif you look at our learning
center, we actually have thisamazing product team that we get
to work with on a regular basisto enhance, maintain and that
(34:26):
in-app full-on learning centerthat we have alongside them.
So it's been really amazing.
And then also, outside of thatparticular surface, we do a ton
of things with our variousproduct teams in-app.
So it's one of those thingswhere it's like custom that's a
lot, but it is a lot if youactually look at the product
inside the app.
It allows you to do quite a bitwithout leaving a mural board
(34:50):
and getting exactly what youneed when you need it, and so it
works for us.
But again, your mileage mayvary, but we're again, we're
very lucky though Our team thisis one of the things I think is
so special about our team andreally it's special about Miro
is that we get to work withfolks cross-functionally in a
way that I've never seen.
It sounds so cheesy, but in away I've never seen done at
(35:10):
other organizations, which iswhy I started our whole
conversation with.
This is all about culture.
It just depends on if yourculture is set up to help you
succeed.
In this way, you're going to beable to get something a little
bit controversial off the ground, which, let's face it,
sometimes digital success can be.
And so, I think, in-app, wework really closely with our
product teams.
We've got amazing relationshipwith our data analytics teams,
(35:34):
with our operations teams.
I don't even think of them asseparate teams, they're our team
and that's just how closely wework together, and I think
without these relationships,you're just not going to be able
to do a lot.
So it's just crucial, I think.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
But yeah, I posted not too long ago about the fact
that I think let's just call itdigital CS.
However, your structured arounddigital CS, but the function of
digital CS is probably thefunction with the most number of
variables.
Oh, my gosh, that's true Withinan org because of what you're
(36:14):
highlighting, right, I mean, itis truly different within every
company.
But then you've got a differenttech stack, you've got data
everywhere, you've got differentroles You're working across.
There's just the amount ofvariables that you navigate in
this role is not for the faintof heart, and so kudos to you
for being able to operate thatway.
(36:35):
Obviously, I think it soundslike Miro culture has definitely
helped facilitate some of thosethings in a way that's
productive.
But that's really cool thatthat's in-house, because I think
, to your point too, miro issuch a unique product that if
(36:56):
you want to surface that in-appkind of guidance and things like
that, I would say it almost hasto be a custom-built kind of
thing, because it is very, very,very.
The tool itself is rich by thatnature.
You need kind of a rich in-appguidance.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, and it's going to need to be really sort of
elegant in the flow of work,right, because our infinite
canvas how hyper-collaborativeour product is.
I think if we were layering toomuch on top of it, it's like the
whole square likepeg-round-hole situation where
it's like it's just not, it'sgoing to feel clunky, it's going
(37:36):
to impact the user experience,and so just flowing those things
together in a way that makessense, Having you know I think
we were getting anything off theshelf You're sort of you know,
you're pushed into kind of theirmodel of what an artifact
inside of a product should lookand feel like, or even what the
content type is.
And I think we have a lot moreflexibility in this case to make
it a lot more fluid when we'redoing it with our product teams
(37:59):
and trying to get to a specificoutcome.
That isn't getting in the wayof them doing their work right.
I mean, it's a productivitysoftware, right.
Ultimately, we don't want toimpact that and I think the nice
thing doing it this way too isthat we can evolve as the
product does right.
Like those experiences that wecreate can evolve as the product
does and because, primarily,that experience is like a
(38:23):
customer education experience inthe product.
Right, you need to be almostundetectable, right, you don't
want to be an annoying pop-up inthe face of a user who's trying
to accomplish a critical taskby the next meeting.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I was going to say.
Like you know, I've used Miroin screen share mode in the
middle of a meeting with, likeyou know, 20 expensive people on
the call.
The last thing I would want tohave is for it to be a pop-up
that goes hey, it looks likeyou're trying to do this.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that there's just so
much of that that you know weyou mean you'll learn as you go
through.
When you're doing this stufftoo, like no matter how much
you've done in-app, like I feellike every time I've done in-app
in any product, I learn like amillion things that I and think
like, oh, everything we've everdone before was wrong, right.
(39:13):
So I think it's just importantto sort of follow along and
learn as your you know, as yourcustomers, your users experience
.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
You know, you've got yourself in those shoes too.
You know, I think a lot of usare afraid to, kind of like,
have the customer experiencefirsthand.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
So yeah, and like knowing that it changes.
Right, we spent a lot of time,let's say, on onboarding three
quarters ago and then we're like, oh, we're done.
And then we move on and wedon't come back to it for a year
and in that time the productchanges significantly.
Or you know, xyz, things happenand your experience is not like
you need to go back to thatexperience, you need to rethink
(39:48):
that experience.
So I think, just constantlyiterating and experimenting and
learning and changing thatexperience so that it's again
always helping the customerachieve their outcomes yeah,
that's the.
I think that's the key.
It is indeed Well all thesesimple things, like we know
these things right.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
It's very simple, you put them together and it
becomes complex all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Simple, simple, not easy, my friend.
That's right, yeah, that'sright.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
So we kind of start to round down.
I'd like to get a sense forwhat you're paying attention to,
what's in your content dietthat you might want to share
with folks out there.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I am really riding the the Substack Train these
days.
I am living for some of themost incredible substacks that I
have seen out there.
It's all practitioners that aredoing the work on a regular
basis, so you're getting advicefrom people who have rolled up
their sleeves, done a thing andeither succeeded wildly or
(40:50):
failed miserably, and they'reboth equally amazing learning.
So I'll send you a couple ofthose substacks.
I also have been reading ShaneParrish's new book A Clear
Thinking.
I'm a big, big fan ofstructured thinking and
frameworks to a certain point,and you know so I like that's
what I'm reading at the moment,but I'll have to get you a
(41:13):
better list I have to.
I have to like open my thingsand get you a list of stuff.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
What about you?
Substack's a real.
Yeah, oh, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
I know that's going to be interviewing you, but I'm
going to start.
Give me some things.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Give you some things.
You know it's pretty varied.
I, I, I tend to, I tend to uselike LinkedIn and stuff as a way
to just you know, even usingLinkedIn as a search engine is
is, is crazy powerful becausethere's people that have posted
on there and it just kind ofdisappears until it doesn't you
(41:52):
know, but there are.
You know, there's some totallyunrelated stuff Attention to
like.
There's this guy, I think hisname is Mark Williams.
He does a.
He does a podcast calledLinkedIn formed and it's all
about LinkedIn, like all thestuff that's happening on
LinkedIn and and and whatnot,which is which is super cool.
I'm an atomic habits, you know,guy, so I definitely love that.
(42:18):
And I've been.
There's one area where there'sa there's a digital CS Slack
community that that Marie Lundystarted not long ago.
That's starting to get sometraction.
That I've been in called DCSconnect, which has been cool.
But I really like your, yourthing on sub stack.
(42:41):
Sub stack, because I don't.
I think that's a very worldlykind of place to get some really
, really good, good insights.
You know, I don't think that'ssuper mainstream.
It's kind of like the Reddit ofprofessionalism, I think.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
It's.
I think it's getting there.
I mean, I think like everyone'sstarting a sub stack, I like
I'm going to do a reading listsub stack to start, just to get
back into the rhythm of writing.
I used to write all the timeabout the work that I was doing
and I don't really do thatanymore, and it's it's it's very
90s to me, like it reminds meof when live journal.
It's obviously much slickerthan that now.
(43:16):
And like you know, people havelegitimate businesses on here.
But like it reminds me of thatera when we were all writing
about the stuff that we wereworking on and it was a little
bit more of a hodgepodge.
It was sort of like thoughts ornotes from the field and, like
you know, not everything waslike the super polished thing.
It was very much like apractitioner's notebook and I
kind of like really loved thatfeel.
(43:36):
I hope they don't lose it, butall, yeah, I'll send you a some
of my favorite sub-sex, becausethere's like there's a lot of
these folks in SASS who weretalking about like what's next
for PLG, what's next for SLG,what's next what's product-led
sales, and, like you know, and Ithink, like what I'm trying to
also make sure there's a spacefor is having that same
(43:57):
discussion around digital CS oron customer education, across
all of these things that we doTo scale CX, because that is you
know, and beyond, because thatis what we need to be doing as
practitioners.
Right, and you're doing it withthis podcast.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And it's so important what you said about paying
attention to kind of otherplaces.
Right Like I've had a fewguests that say, hey look, I
focus has been completely on theeconomy and where we're going,
because I want to know where themoney is.
And, you know, I think thefocus on kind of product
strategy in the future of SASand those kinds of that's why,
like SASSTER and all those kindsof things, like like it's very
(44:33):
easy to stay in the bubble andmaybe not so obvious, you know
where to go to not be in thebubble.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
No for sure.
One of my, one of our leadersat Merah, is fabulous that our
CFO always says, like you haveto like actively try to break
that inertia right.
And it's so true, Like we tendto get into this like zone as as
workers, humans, practitionerswhat have you where we're like
you're just kind of goingthrough the motion or you're
(45:06):
doing the thing that has alwaysled to success.
But we are all working in timeswhere we're defining new things
and you know, like success iskind of uncharted and so you
have to do that.
And so I just I love thesetypes of places where you can
see how people are thinking yeah, right, yeah, there's so much
value in that like metacognition.
So I love, I love stuff stuckfor that.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Metacognition that's real good.
Are there?
You shouted out your CFO justnow, but are there people that
are doing cool things anddigital that you might want to
shout out as well?
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Oh my gosh, there's so many people I feel like I'm
so bad with, like on the spotlist.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
I am right there with you.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
You're going to sound like a terrible person.
It's another thing I'm going tohave to get you a list of.
There's so many cool peoplethere's.
There's a meetup that happensonce a month for digital success
that you were probably on, Ithink, sam.
From when are we at here?
Like Mondaycom started and it'slike a pretty cool beat up of
(46:10):
practice.
Yeah, I think you're on thatone Like and I think it's lovely
because of the way that, likethey sort of she drives the
agenda and kind of sends out therecording and the next steps
and the show and it's almostlike it's almost like it's own
thing and it's a really coolcommunity and it's just folks
that get together once a monthand I haven't been in a little
bit, but they just talk abouthey, what are the tactics that
(46:32):
are working for you, what arethe tactics that aren't working?
And like we kind of just youknow, when I was going, we were
trading back and forth andtrying different things and
seeing what would stick, and itwas this was a while ago, it was
like early days and we werejust getting digital off the
ground my team goes, my teamgoes.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Oh, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, there's a lot of cool people doing doing great
things and I, you know, I alsowant to shout out the people in
customer education who I thinkare doing a lot of scaling that
the DCS teams like rely on,right.
So I mean in another simplisticway that I've always talked
about, digital for folks whoaren't familiar is like it is a
distribution engine for customereducation, right, I mean.
(47:14):
And if you just define customereducation beyond like an old
school definition of customereducation, like it starts to
make sense that those two wouldlive together and live in the
same portfolio and like in thesame department and team, and I
think both like I'm starting tosee a lot of leaders like when I
started this journey, likenobody was really doing that,
and now I'm starting to see alot of leaders who are like oh,
(47:35):
why aren't these two?
Speaker 2 (47:35):
things together.
They should be yeah, absolutely, that's awesome, Cool.
Well, we are unfortunately,painfully and sadly out of time
and I feel, super fast.
I feel like we could go onforever.
But where can the good peopleof digital CS find you?
(47:57):
And you say hi, send you giftcards.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Coffee, coffee beans.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
So I'm working.
People send you coffee.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
I'm on LinkedIn.
I used to be on Twitter but nowI guess I'm on threads, so you
can find me at D capilla.
You can also find my sub stack,I guess D capilla dot sub
stackcom.
So that's D E, k, p, I, l, aand at whatever thing, as I just
mentioned.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Cool.
I will link both of thosethings In the description.
I thank you for joining.
It's been awesome.
You health of information andand energy and positive you know
it's.
It's awesome what you'rebuilding over at Miro and I
can't wait to see where thatgoes.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Right back at you.
Thank you so much for having melove the podcast.
Yeah, we should.
We should continue to chat asas we both build, build cool.
Next thing.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah, and grab some breakfast tacos.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yes, breakfast tacos, always breakfast tacos.
Thank you, my friends.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Cool, see you.
Thank you for joining me forthis 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 digital customer
(49:26):
success dot com.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.
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