The Impact of SaaS Economics on CS (Plus Much More!) with Christine Raby | Episode 048 - The Digital CX Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
That South Park episode where they're talking
about how the aliens will taketheir jobs.
Like in my head, I'm thinkingAI is here to take our jobs
right, but really AI is a toolto help uplevel what we're doing
, and we have to remember thatour core value in customer
success is truly aboutdelivering that experience that
results in future growth, right,and so how can we do that in a

(00:23):
way that's maximally efficientand that makes our lives better?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And, once again, welcome to the Digital Customer
Success Podcast with me, alexTrukovich.
So glad you could join us heretoday and every week as I seek
out and interview leaders andpractitioners who are innovating
and building great scaled CSprograms.
My goal is to share what I'velearned and to bring you along
with me for the ride so that youget the insights that you need

(00:46):
to build and evolve your owndigital cs program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hey, welcome back to the show.
It's episode 48, which I can'tbelieve.
We're getting closer to that 50episode mark, which I guess is

(01:10):
just another number.
But I always kind of, when Istarted this whole thing,
actually just about a year ago Ikind of gave myself till
episode 50 to see if it wasgoing to be a thing.
And it's a thing, so we'regoing to keep doing them, which
is great.
Do have a little somethingplanned for episode 50, though

(01:31):
Bit of an announcement as well,so stay tuned for that.
Today's episode is a really coolone.
I've been a fan of this personfor quite some time and it's
always very humbling when youmeet someone who can just
seemingly do anything.
So today's conversation withChristine Rabi is fantastic on

(01:54):
multiple levels.
First off, she has anincredible backstory.
By all indications she wasgoing to spend her life in
medicine and healthcare but thenthat kind of took a right hand
turn into health tech and shegot obsessed with customer
success and has been justapplying her you know her

(02:17):
intelligence and smarts towardsthis thing we call CS and
specifically she's focused in onstartup founders and making
them as successful as possiblein their post-sale journeys.
So it's a lovely conversationwith Christine.
She brings up a ton of reallyreally helpful things.
We talk about kind of the stateof startup economics and how

(02:42):
that has an impact on CS.
We spend a fair amount of timetalking about things unrelated
to CS, but then also like AItools and you know where leaders
focus should be.
You know owning revenue, notowning revenue.

(03:02):
You know we get into that alittle bit and you know she's
also.
If you're not following her onTikTok, you should go follow her
on TikTok for my fellow TikTokaddicts out there, because the
advice that she offers and she'sreally career oriented there,
has a ton of great advice anddoes a lot to empower women in
the workplace.
I could go on and, on and on,but I'll let her speak for

(03:26):
herself in this conversationwith Christine Rabi, which I
enjoyed and.
I certainly hope you do too.
One of the funniest commentsthat I got from one of my guests
not long ago I forget who itwas actually they were like
you're like the NPR of CSpodcasts, and then he elaborated

(03:48):
and he was like I meant it inkind of like the sweaty balls
SNL NPR way Not necessarily thatyou're a brilliant journalist.
I was like thanks.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Wow, what a non-sector that was.
I was not expecting that to gothere.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
No, I wasn't really.
Yeah, yeah, so that wasinteresting, but I don't know.
Welcome to the NPR of CSpodcasts, I guess it's.
It's really nice to have youand and I've been a big fan of
kind of watching all of youramazing content in various

(04:27):
places, and I am aself-identified TikTok addict
and so it's also lovely seeingyou on TikTok and all the value
that you provide there, becauseyou provide a lot of really
crazy valuable and I'm going tolet you talk here in a second, I

(04:48):
promise but you provide crazyvaluable, career-oriented, just
great content that really anyonecan benefit from.
But especially your work inempowering women in the
workplace and those kinds ofthings is super cool.
So I'm just excited to have you.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Thank you, and it was lovely to be here.
Also, I will take Flattery allday, every day, so thank you so
much.
And likewise, I reallyappreciated your digital
approach to client success.
I do feel like today, customersuccess is undergoing a similar
evolution that marketing did,let's say, 10, 14 years ago,
where it went from being veryabout the vision and the dream

(05:28):
to now effectively.
If you're a digital marketer,you're like a physicist chasing
AI models, right?
And I do feel like we'reexperiencing a similar way in
our discipline of customersuccess, so I'm really excited
to collaborate with you on thisdigital effort and thinking
about how we're bringingtechnology to our discipline to
help make it better.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Totally.
I mean, it's like you know, Ifeel like a lot of ways we are
emerging out of the dark ageswhere we've we've been to the
place where we've just thrownmoney and people at this thing
called customer success and andthat is no longer a thing, and
so now we're like putting ourbig people pants on and trying

(06:10):
to figure out how you knowmarketing has done email
marketing for decades and howyou know product has done in
product for a long time, andputting it all into one house.
So I think you're right, it isa very exciting time to kind of
be in CS and talk about thesethings, but in some ways it also
kind of feels like hey, we'refinally growing up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
I really like it, though, because it's such an
apprenticeship discipline thattoday I can come to a founder
and I can say here are themetrics you have to be thinking
about, as they relate to theoverall health of your customer
success org.
And if you're going to invest Idon't know a million, 5 million
a year, depending on the sizeand scale of the company in your
post sale operations, youbetter darn well be looking at

(06:52):
your net retention.
If it's 120 or above, that'stop of market.
If you're not in an industrythat has a CAGR of above 10%,
should you really be investingin this area?
I don't know and engaging inmore of the kind of disciplined,
numeric conversations withfounders, whereas a few years
ago, typically conversations aremore along the line of how do
you want your customers to feelright, which I appreciate, of

(07:15):
course, a little bit of an artand a science, but for me, I'm
really liking having clearbenchmarks and metrics to be
able to say hey, here is what astrong performing team looks
like and here's how you candifferentiate between the levels
of people on your team.
And then you can tie that tocompensation, because when you
align individual contributorcompensation to the company's
goals, everyone wins typicallyright, it's just a beautiful

(07:38):
kind of synergy.
I'm like restaurants understoodthis a long time ago in the
States, right, you make a lot ofmoney in a restaurant if you're
like upselling, and so does therestaurant.
It's this beautiful world, andI feel like we're bringing that
kind of very practical bluecollar benefit to a white collar
environment in a good way.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
I love that perspective.
And there's this raging debateright now whether CS should be
in revenue or not in revenue andall this kind of stuff, and I'm
like why are we even talkingabout this?
Of course you want to be in thenumbers and of course you want
to be part of the equation,because that's part of your
relevance as an organization,right?

Speaker 1 (08:17):
You know, what's funny is I grew up in sales and
I did fun fact once tell a chiefrevenue officer that sales is
not a real job, because he triedto hire me, my title was
director of business development.
Right, I'm at a startup.
It's called Noom, so today it'squite a large business.
But I joined them justpost-series.
A right the hire and revenueleader, and he identifies the

(08:40):
fact that I have brought on thefirst four enterprise accounts
for this startup.
But I got my start in hospitalsright, so I knew very little
about business.
What I learned I learned on theground and he said wonderful,
here's your new title, You'regoing to be director of sales,
You're going to be helping usgrow the business.
And I look at him square in theeyes I'm not lying to you, Alex
.
And I was like that's not areal job.
Okay, Salespeople only get paidon commission and I do real

(09:03):
work and I expect a real salary.
God bless this man.
He did not fire me on the spot.
He educated me about what growthmeant and how to drive value in
an enterprise context.
And luckily for me very luckilyhe and the rest of that team
really brought me under theirwing and taught me that really

(09:25):
it's about solving problems andthat that's how we grow a
business.
But what I found was that,although I like the hunter sales
aspect, I really love gettingto know the customer and then
doing that kind of mental mathof realizing all right,
especially in healthcare, it'ssuch a regulated, complex
industry.
You have these 10 systems thatwe have to integrate with and
you have these three othervendor partners and these 10
budget line items.

(09:45):
How can I make this work sothat you love us and we keep
growing over time?
And also we're happy because wedon't have to be a custom dev
shop and I love that interplayof that complexity.
So that's how I ended up inclient success.
But having grown up in sales,to your point, when someone says
, oh, should CS live in sales ornot?
That's exactly my same reaction.
Like that's the wrong question,right?

(10:07):
Like we're all on the same team.
We're all driving value for ourcustomers, so I don't think it
really matters if it lives inops or in sales.
At the end of the day, it'sabout delivering a great client
experience and using thatexperience as leverage to grow
the account.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and not only grow
the account, but grow theaccounts you know, yeah, grow
the business.
Because I mean, there's so muchof those, those customer
experiences that you kind ofcollect along the route that are
just crazy relevant in othercustomers and so many of us kind

(10:43):
of fail to collect those andfail to utilize those in a
pre-sales motion or in renewalsmotions and all that kind of
stuff, which is just crazy to mebecause it's like nuggets of
gold sitting on the ground thatwe're not picking up.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
For sure.
The other day, I was reading anarticle on HBS that was talking
about how thehyper-personalization of sales
is now de rigueur in enterprise.
So, if you think about adirect-to-consumer brand, they
get very niche about theirmarket and they think, all right
, we're going to sell to52-year-old women who own
poodles and who live in condosin Florida named Susan, and they

(11:17):
tailor the whole campaign justfor Susan, right, and this has
been the motion now for severalyears.
But today we're seeing anincrease of that on the
enterprise side.
And, to your point, what I see,at least in my industry, which
is healthcare technology, isthat it may seem like this
massive industry, right, you'llhear people say, oh, the US
healthcare industry is worth $3trillion annually, which is, I

(11:40):
mean, something like 50% of theglobal healthcare market cap is
just the US, which is why everyinternational company wants to
play in the States, of course,which is like a story of
misaligned incentives and a bitof a mess.
It's a huge opportunity, butit's such a small industry,
right, yeah, and so if you don'treally deliver for your one
customer, you're not going toexpand.
And every time that I've seen ahealthcare technology startup

(12:02):
succeed, and truly 3 to 10x yearover year.
It's because they did exactlywhat you said.
They found those nuggets ofgold right, and they went to
this one customer in this oneorthopedic shop in the southeast
and they said hey, who are yourfriends?
You know?
Turns out they've already beentalking to their friends about
the startup.
They go to a regionalconference.
They don't get a booth, theyjust roam the, the halls, have
meetings with these people.

(12:23):
That one account turns to five,the five turned to ten, the ten
turned to fifteen, etc.
And it's all because you did areally good job with one
customer, particularly in thesehighly regulated industries
where the barrier to entry is sointense, because once you're in
, you're in, but if you muck itup, yeah everybody's going to

(12:55):
know it's that, yeah, right,it's, it's so interesting, it's
going to know.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
you know that way and you're right.
I mean, you know word of mouthis a big, is a big aspect of of
I would say, you know, not justin healthcare, but in general,
like, if you know whatever,whatever SaaS solution you
provide to whatever cottageindustry.
I talked to somebody, notrecently, you know recently,
that is building a SaaS platformfor the pool service industry

(13:23):
and I'm like, yes, of courseyou're doing that because
there's lots of pools out thereand there's lots of people
servicing pools, and but youknow, to your point, like it's
like these, uh, and I know we'regoing like way down the rabbit
hole already, which is cool.
That's why I love this, this uh, talking to folks like you.
But, um, you know, like, likeyou, you, you, you, you, the way

(13:45):
that you work with one customeror one group or one you know
cohort of people, um, you know,just just spreads like wildfire.
If you do a really great job,you know it's going to be like,
oh, yeah, you're going to becomethe recommended kind of
solution for that that thingthat you, you do.
But if you, if you mess it up,then equally it's going to be

(14:08):
hard, to hard, to catch up onthat one.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Well, if you look at any kind of market distribution,
I always think about ice cream.
I'm sure you've seen this chartwhere vanilla ice cream has 60%
of the market, chocolate has20% strawberry, and then it's a
long leading tail, and so nomatter what you do, I don't care
if you're in the pool industry.
Naturally that makes sense.
You have SaaS for pool Sure.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Or if you're in something like FinTech.
Ultimately, whatever your spaceis, people are going to want to
look at the top one to threeand they're going to invite you
to the request for proposalprocess or the request for
information.
They're going to look to you asa market leader.
So how do you get to those topthree?
Personally, in my opinion, theway that I've done it is by
delivering an amazing experienceand doing things that aren't

(14:53):
scalable at first, and then kindof building out the system as
you go.
So for example, at Arterra whichis formerly known as WellHealth
, we get a customer namedMemorial Care and they're in the
Orange County area.
It's a pretty large healthsystem.
They've got about fourhospitals there.
Early customer of ours that wegot through an investor
relationship at Cedars-Sinairight Came out of a Cedars-Sinai

(15:16):
accelerator, so Memorial Carewe sent a whole team on site.
This company was based justnorth of Los Angeles so I think
there were six people there forGoLive.
I mean, we just kept hammeringthem with a very strong on-site
presence.
Well fast forward a year andtheir executive over innovation
gave me a ring and said hey, theUC systems, which I think there

(15:38):
were eight now at the timethere were seven All of the
major UC schools UCSF, ucsd,ucsb all have a big hospital.
They're looking for an RFP forthe thing that you do in patient
communications and werecommended that they choose you
because Memorial care isaffiliated of course with three
of the UC health systems and allthe doctors work there too, and

(15:59):
so we got kind of first dibs tocome to the table and of course
we had to compete but, we wonin part because the sales team
was strong and the product waswonderful, but in part because
we really went above and beyondin a way that was completely
unscalable for that one customerwho we knew could be the
linchpin in that area.
And this is a story I've seenplay out so many times, which is

(16:20):
why one easy way to make myblood boil is for a technical
leader to say, yes, but ourcurrent customers aren't the
ones who are going to get us ourfuture customers.
And so should we really waitour current customers needs
equally with our prospectivecustomers.
And look, if you're pivotingindustries, you know, if you're
going from health systems topayers, or you're saying we're

(16:41):
going to completely change whowe are as a company, that makes
perfect sense, but in thisinstance that was not the case
and it was a really fast way forsteam to start coming out of my
ears right to think of course,they are the key to our new
customers.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
That's what this whole thing is about yeah, it's
like you know, know it's it'signoring the expand part of land
and expand Like you know.
Then you just go have some teaor something.
Wow, Well, you know it's awhole, not really.

(17:22):
I just you know coming off ofuh, I have been a this.
This has nothing to do with ourtopic.
Um, I have been a severe coffeeaddict for probably the better
part of my life, like we'retalking 30 years of severe

(17:45):
coffee drinking habit.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
So far, is it just black coffee?
Yes, is it like the cappuccinosituation?
Just all of the above, likewhat are you doing?

Speaker 2 (17:55):
It's all of the above .
Like you know, I'm a fan ofblack coffee.
I'm a fan of espresso, Maybe alittle bit of milk in there.
I'm not a big sweet coffeeperson.
But, sorry, my printer is allof a sudden printing.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
I thought you were getting a fax for a moment.
Yeah, totally.
My fax machine is going off.
It wants its fax machine back.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
I have a new Gainsight integration into my
fax machine that tells mewhenever a customer goes into a
red health score.
Just kidding good way to keepyourself up at night, right,
that thing's going while you'resleeping, it's cranking them out
cranking them out, but my pointis like I've been a very recent
convert to tea and it's I, myeyes have been opened um to the

(18:47):
world of tea and, uh, just themassive amount of variety there
is and how horrible coffeeactually tastes.
So I've been lied to the last30 years anyway.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
I don't know podcast you got to give me your top tea
recommendations, because I feellike there's a certain stage in
everyone's human evolution wherethey realize that tea is in
fact delicious and I realizethis is a thing I should know.
But every time I think aboutgetting into that world I just
feel a little intimidated, rightlike, what is an oolong
relative to a blue tea or awhite tea?
How do I know I'm choosing theright one?

(19:25):
Which one's right versusorganic.
That just feel like there's alot of info out there.
Yeah, and I've worked forstarbucks in college, you know I
feel like I already know a lotabout coffee and like I can
navigate that landscape quiteeffectively.
So let me give me your top teahacks after this.
I'm into.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
I don't think I have them yet, but I am looking
forward to going.
So my dad lives in Vienna andright around the corner from his
place there's this tea shop andyou walk into this place and
it's like walking into somethingoff of a Harry Potter set you
know where.
It's like wood panelingeverywhere.

(20:01):
You've got jars like all overthe place.
Like wood paneling everywhere.
You've got jars like all overthe place and they're like
blending tea for you right therewith loose leaf, that's like
that.
So I'm I'm looking forward tonerding out on that, cause
that's always a place that Iignored.
I was like, ah, tea, whatever.
I should start a tea podcast.
Okay, so while we're kind ofoff off the topic a little bit,

(20:27):
I do want to get just a quicklike who are you, the person you
know?
Kind of CS origin story, likewhere did you come from?
Like what got you into?
Like health tech specificallyand healthcare, and what is it
about you that, uh, reallyidentifies with, with you know

(20:47):
that industry.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
I got my start in healthcare by virtue of first
being a professional equestrian.
My first job in high school wasbuying and selling race horses.
I grew up riding horses andafter years of blunt force
trauma, of being thrown fromevery horse imaginable into
everything from a saguaro cactusto a metal fence, my body kind
of gave out yeah and I couldn'tpursue that avenue anymore.

(21:14):
And, luckily for me, the womenat the very fancy stables that I
worked at in scottsdale,arizona, sat me down and they
said, hey, um, what are yourgrades like?
And I was like they'reexcellent.
And they're like, oh okay, whatare your test like?
And I was like they'reexcellent.
And they're like, oh okay, whatare your test scores like?
And I said, well, I thinkthey're good.
And they looked at the numbersand they said we're going to get
you a scholarship.
And so they helped me understandthat the kind of undergraduate

(21:35):
work that I had done in theequestrian arena could be
translated to a state university.
So I ended up getting a fullride at Arizona State.
But because I studied equinescience, I already had all of
these biology classes, physicsclasses, etc.
Which naturally translated wellinto a health sciences degree.
So that's what I studied and Ithought I'm gonna go to med.
School.
Seems like a good option for me.
You know that's what people dowhen they want to build a career

(21:56):
they go to law school or medschool.
Those are the two options,right, because I grew up very
blue collar and, through the wayof applying to medical school,
I ended up working at MountSinai at a hospital in New York
city, and I piloted this programcalled the national diabetes
prevention program, which, atthe time was only being
delivered in person.
We're talking at a YMCA and it'sbasically a program that

(22:19):
reduces your chances ofdeveloping type two diabetes by
60% for 10 years, which is waymore effective than metformin,
which is great.
I won a grant for about $3million to scale it over several
years, and so I went lookingfor a company to build a mobile
app for this thing, cause Ithought every patient I talked
to says they don't have time forthis, but everyone also has a
smartphone, so how can we getthis thing into a smartphone?

(22:40):
Right, that was my goal, and Iended up meeting the SVP of
strategy at Noom, which at thetime was doing consumer weight
loss and still is primarilyknown for that, and he was
actually looking to get into thepre-chronic chronic condition
management space and to enterinto the enterprise healthcare
arena.
So I ended up getting intomedical school, didn't go joined
Noom full time instead andfirst started off more in that

(23:03):
business development side ofthings, but then quickly landed
in the client success arena andrealized that was really the
area that I love to thrive in,because I love getting to know
someone very well and getting tothat level of depth where
there's a lot of complexity withthe account and then using that
to naturally grow over time.
So, that's how I ended up inclient success in a roundabout
way, started studying health,found my way into startups and

(23:26):
then figured out that I loveworking with people to solve
their problems, and customersuccess is truly, I think, the
discipline that allows me to dothat the best.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Fascinating.
What a cool story.
Okay, you probably get theaward for most unique story on
the podcast so far.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
I still write horses for fun, but not professionally
anymore, Not into cactuses.
Time I fell off and landed on acactus.
I mean, I was a kid so you canimagine like a cartoon you're
going across the desert, youjust go and then you land.
And I landed straight on my bumon this little kind of barrel

(24:05):
cactus and I hollered and mytrainer just like pulled over
laughing.
She just fell over like thehorse ran off.
No one had time for the horse.
I learned very quickly not tofall off when they're cactus
around.
You don't want to do that.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
No, that was a good for.
I mean, if you're going to fall, you know, fall into a cactus.
Teach you not to do thatanymore.
Yeah, it's not a good idea.
Yeah, yeah, exactly podcast.
And I ask all my guests,including you, the same general
question, which is to say I'dlove your elevator pitch if you

(24:44):
had to describe digital CS tosomebody who wasn't really in
the know.
What is this whole thing we'recalling digital CS these days?

Speaker 1 (24:50):
I love this question because it does have that
digital bent to it which isreally unique, and for me,
digital customer success is thediscipline that helps customers
derive maximum value from yourcompany's products and services
using advanced technologies.
So for me, it's abouttechnologically empowered client
experience, and that meanshaving a matrices by which you

(25:10):
identify high touch and lowtouch modalities of interacting
with your customers and youblend those things such that
you're not constantly grindingout the high volume, low value
things all day, every day.
Right, you can outsource thosethings to robots.
Instead, you're really focusingon that customer experience
element and the human elementthat right now, at least for now

(25:31):
, can't be outsourced to a chat,gpt, an open AI, a Gemini, et
cetera.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
I love that you hit on that, because there is this.
You know, one of the thingsthat I get asked about quite
often is this whole thing aboutis AI and, you know, digital
going to replace me?
Like is it here to take my job?
And I'm like, no, it's a tool.
Like it's it you, so you don'thave to spend five hours making

(26:02):
a PowerPoint and sending thesame email over and over again
and doing all that kind of stuff.
Let's not do that and let'sspend some time with your
customers.
How about that?

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Well, and let me ask you this have you ever spoken to
a single customer successrepresentative and said the
question do you feel like you'remore proactive or reactive, and
have them say anything otherthan so reactive?
But I wish I could be proactiveright All the time.
So for me, exactly that'sexactly the point.
Although there are lots of kindof fear inducing stories like

(26:34):
Klarna laying off, what was it600 employees saying?
In my opinion, that's badbusiness management.
If you have a business and AIcan take away some of that
workload and you aren't alreadyleveraging that, then your
leadership did a bad job there.
This, for me, is about helpingthose CS reps get out of that
grindy support ticket.
Let me hunt down anotherinterface issue.

(26:55):
Right, let me hunt down anotherinterface issue right and
getting into the how can Ileverage this account's
connections in this particularpart of the industry to create
white pages, white papers, onepages, all the things that you
need, all those assets that arerepeatable both in
implementation and the salesprocess and also help grow that
area of the business, whetherit's regional or industry

(27:16):
specific?

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that this kind of gets
into my next question, which isreally just around your take on
the state of CS and CX.
So, for those that don't know,the big thing that you missed in
your intro is that you'refounder of Deliver Delight,
which you know helps people dothis stuff, and so you, by

(27:43):
virtue of you kind of, you know,being in the space and talking
with lots of different leadersand different people and whatnot
, you probably have a prettygood kind of insight into, like,
what's the current state of CX?
What are you seeing in terms oftrends, how people are treating

(28:03):
their organizations, maybe alittle bit differently these
days?
Lay it on me.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yes, thank you for that.
I'm the founder of Delivered toLight and I today, with my team
, partner with mostly foundersof early stage, stage growth
startups, and the key thingsthat I'm seeing in the startup
landscape, with a special lensthrough healthcare technology,
are that number one there's astrong emphasis on the growth
aspect of customer success, morethan I've ever seen.

(28:32):
As we all know, anytime thatyou're in a kind of startup
environment, you want tomaximize the valuation.
You maximize your valuation bymaximizing how much money.
You're in a kind of startupenvironment you want to maximize
the valuation.
You maximize your valuation bymaximizing how much money you're
earning per year on a contractbasis, and the way that you do
that, as well as by boostingyour margin like that's the
other way that you can boostyour valuation right.
And anytime that you've alreadysold a customer, when you go to

(28:53):
upsell them, that cost ofcustomer acquisition immediately
comes out of that budget lineitem, which means that your
margin on upsell, resale,cross-sale whatever is typically
20% higher than your margin onnet new sales.
And so if you're thinking aboutproactively looking at your
book of business and thinking,all right, I have these three
use cases already deployed.

(29:14):
But here are the top 20% of mycustomers by their gross revenue
, not by how much they're payingyou today, I don't care about
that but by their gross revenue.
Where can I add enough valuesuch that I can take that
$10,000 account to $100,000,that $100,000 account to a
million dollars and that I canleverage that relationship with
that account to tap into theaccounts in that same region or

(29:36):
in that same specialty area?
And so I do feel like today morethan ever, founders are seeing
their current customers as thekey to future revenue, which
excites me, because this issomething I've been very bullish
about for many years and I'mloving to see that more and more
founders are thinking that way.
And then on the startup side, Iwill say there's some positives
and negatives here, particularlyfor those smaller startups.

(29:59):
I am seeing more of adissolution of what I would
consider to be a traditionalcustomer success team, and what
I mean by that is, instead ofcoming and hiring a VP of
customer success and thenstaffing a huge support team,
I'm seeing more and morestartups say well, we only have
30 or 50 people, so how can wethink about the support function
as a holistic discipline andeveryone wears the client
success hat instead of hiringspecifically for customer

(30:22):
success?
So the pros there actually are.
That means that your customeris truly at the heart of
everything you do, because ifyou have an engineer doing
solutions engineering, then whenthey're writing code, they're
thinking about your customerright.
If you have a seller who alsois responsible for the renewal,
they care about the experience,which is great.
And on the flip side you may beseeing for these earlier stage
companies we're talking C toSeries A we may be seeing a

(30:47):
slightly stronger dip in termsof hiring for CS-specific roles.
But I do think that there'sstill more opportunity for them
on the solutions engineeringside or the implementation side
or the solutions architect arena, which would be customer
success by different names.
So there's still a lot ofgrowth there, but kind of a
dissolution of what would beconsidered a traditional
customer success org, which iskind of nice because sometimes

(31:10):
if you have that organizationright, it can be a dumping
ground for any perceivedcustomer issue.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
And it's much better, I think, for everyone to kind
of just say no, the customer'sat the heart of what we do and
we're all here for our customerbecause that's how we're growing
our business.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, I've, I've sensed this growing um notion as
well, where you knowtraditional, traditional CS orgs
, you know, are like thepost-sale owner of the account
and the customer journey and allthat kind of stuff.
And I think in certain sizebusinesses, especially as you
grow and you scale, that makesabsolute sense.

(31:46):
Like you're going to wantaccount management, you're going
to want kind of that oversightor whatnot.
But I think what you're hittingon is super important,
especially with early growthstage companies, where if you
start and you really instill thesense that everybody is part of
the customer journey andeverybody has inputs into it and

(32:07):
everybody should be documentingcertain areas of it and you
know and all of that kind ofstuff, that's immensely powerful
.
I mean even I'm even thinkingabout you know, immensely
powerful.
I mean even I'm even thinkingabout you know finance teams and
IT teams and all those kinds ofthings, like if there is a CS
lens that everybody within thecompany kind of shares, and

(32:27):
that's insanely powerful.
Just yes, tactically and inwhat you do every day, but more
so as just a mindset.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, actually putting your customer first, and
within that, the only othertrend that I'd identify, that I
wanted to highlight for thisconversation, is specific to
technology.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
And.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
I have seen a strong advent of AI driven chat tools
and a layering in AI to thecurrent toolkit that already
exists.
So, whether you're using Zendeskor HubSpot or Help Scout or
Help Juice, being able to tie insomething like a drift or a
Bing chat or the embedded kindof AI chat function and then

(33:08):
really leveling up thosepre-built templates.
For me, that kind of goes backto the question that always
springs to mind when I think ofthis as that South Park episode
where they're talking about howthe aliens will take their jobs.
Like in my head I'm thinking AIis here to take our jobs, right
, but really AI is a tool tohelp uplevel what we're doing,

(33:30):
and we have to remember that ourcore value in customer success
is truly about delivering thatexperience that results in
future growth, right.
And so how can we do that in away that's maximally efficient
and that makes our lives better?
And that's what I'm seeing onthe chat side, which I'm
personally excited about,because I don't know about you,
but I don't like being up at twoin the morning answering no
road support tickets like we'veall been there yeah, and I think

(33:51):
there's tremendous lessons.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
I think we kind of alluded to it a little bit
earlier, but there's tremendouslessons that we can take from
b2c in this whole thing as well,because b2c has kind of
mastered a lot of this stuff.
Um, story time, uh, my, thestorm door on our front front
door, um, the, the, the closermechanism or whatever busted

(34:17):
didn't work, made the door slamclose, right.
So um, and I, you know, wentonline, did the whole Googling
thing, did the Amazon thing andnobody stocks this thing.
And so I reached out to thecompany that makes the storm
door on chat, because I'mantisocial sometimes, and the
chat bot was like yeah, you know, go take, uh, go take a picture

(34:37):
of this little label.
And uh, I did, and it scannedit and it told me exactly what
part I needed and it put it onorder and it was like you're,
you're, we see that youpurchased your storm door within
the last X number of years, sothis is free, we're going to
ship it out to you.
No humans involved, no humansinvolved, and I was like how?
First off, holy shit, this isamazing.

(34:59):
Second of all, though, the nextday I get a call from the
company.
It's a human being calling mesaying hey, how was your
experience?
What could we have done better?
How's your door?
Like.
So my point is like they'reusing this AI chat bot in this

(35:24):
really great, innovative waythat made me go, wow, this
company has their stuff together, and then, instead of having a
human being like okay, this isthe part number you need and all
this kind of stuff, the humanis calling me and providing
value and really like hammeringhome that this company actually
kind of cares about itscustomers.
I was like, yes, Awesome,that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
I've never had that experience with a chat bot.
I recently did, though, need anarborist to come, because I
live in an area with a lot ofvery large trees, and this
hundred year old Oak tree in myfront yard had a couple of limbs
that were looking a little bitsuspect, so we thought let's
just take those down before theytake down the house.
I told you I don't even know howmany times I had to contact

(36:09):
different companies to try toget anyone to come out to give
me a quote.
It's very clear to me this isgoing to be a very long and
drawn out process until I founda company who clearly has been
purchased by a PE firm so justsaying that for now and I sent
them and they had a little form,I filled it out and then in an
hour they had a preloadedSalesforce page that had a quote

(36:29):
already laid out in it and thenthey had taken some Google
Earth shots of my front yard andsaid if it's this tree so smart
, here's what we're thinking.
We're going to have someonecome out and look at it today.
And then they did.
They came out to they useCalendly to schedule.
They're like pick your Calendlytime for our team to come out.

(36:50):
They came out two weeks later,did a great job.
Crew came on site, talked to us, went through the whole
checklist and then they calledme back two weeks later and said
how was everything?
And do you want to refer us?
And I was like five stars, 100%referring you.
Also, why doesn't every othervendor?
I mean, how much time and moneywould you save even if you were

(37:10):
to misquote consistently right,but you?
would still win so many bidsjust by leveraging this
effectively seamless workflow,whether it's via chat love that,
or through some sort ofSalesforce or HubSpot, enabled
landing page Right, and I meanyou think about that's an

(37:31):
arborist, but that model isanything any services type model
out there, absolutelyEspecially ones that are hard to
get at.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
If you make it easy, the money's there.
Business has just got to pickit up.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, I often got the pushback on the sales side and
I say this lovingly, I do lovemy sales colleagues, I work very
closely with them.
Sure, a customer would come tous and they would say we want a
blue widget, right?
And I would say, great, let'sjust scope it out for you and
price it and then package it andship it.
But then generally the responsethat I would get on both the
sales and the engineering sidewas whoa, whoa, whoa, we need to

(38:09):
be thoughtful about this, Idon't know, right.
And so I eventually came to theCEO of this last company I was
working with most recently and Isaid look, you are.
This is how much money I'mestimating that you're losing on
a quarterly basis by not doingbasic scoping for professional
services and then packaging itin a way that helps your
customer see, you're notnickeling and diming them, right
, yeah, but rather you'resolving their problem in the way

(38:32):
that they want you to, which,by the way, this is very
standard in healthcaretechnology.
Everyone has an electronicmedical record.
You're actually required tohave one for the government.
And if I want to I don't knowstand up a new interface.
I'm going to pay for theinterface, but I'm also going to
pay a professional services feeand a 20% annual maintenance
fee to the company and they'renot starting to work until those

(38:53):
things are paid upfront,because it's a services,
business and so we found that byjust adjusting that model, the
professional services team,which admittedly was small, went
from being a cost center to arevenue driver, because we could
goto customers and say hey, for a
customer like you, we normallysee a package of X number of
hours that's to do projects withABC.
You can talk to these guys overhere.

(39:14):
They can tell you what that.
It's great.
We got this gal over here.
She recently did this work, youknow.
And then the customer was likeoh, absolutely, you're speaking
my language and you'reproactively thinking about the
kinds of work that I'm going toneed you to do, which is so much
better than waiting for them tocome to you in this reactive
capacity and saying I want ablue widget and then having
everyone you know throw theirhands up like no, no, we're not

(39:36):
a custom dev shop.
I'm like, no, but you know, weare in an enterprise field,
right?
So there's going to be sometailoring going on, yeah we
should price for that and chargefor it.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Totally.
I love this model.
I'm seeing more and more ofthis model in terms of like
service subscriptions as well.
Absolutely which I think isfreaking brilliant because you
know, obviously you want yourcustomers to achieve maximum
value and you'd like that valueto hit as soon as possible.
And yes, you can have anonboarding team that specializes

(40:08):
in getting somebody stood upand all those kinds of things.
But then you know, nine timesout of 10 after onboarding it's
like crickets and it's likethere's your support team.
You know, go to town.
It's like crickets and it'slike there's your support team.
You know, go to town.
Versus if you say to thecustomer look, here's a couple
of service subscription options.
Option one is mandatory.
It's 20, 20 K a year.

(40:29):
We're going to check in withyou every single month.
We're going to work in sprintsto get X, y, z done.
Customers like, okay, you know,and it's not like this uphill
battle.
And then, to your point, youbecome this part of the ARR
renewal cycle because ideallyyou will have provided a lot of

(40:53):
value throughout the course ofthat services subscription and
the renewal will be a foregoneconclusion.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
The most beautiful example of this I have is from
Twilio At the time I was workingfor a company called Arterra.
It's in the patientcommunication space and we were
sending millions upon millionsof patient messages a month.
It was easily 10 million plus amonth.
So we were actually one ofTwilio's larger customers at the
time.
We were negotiating thiscontract and I'm working with
this guy.
I think his name's Randy.
I really liked him, based outof New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
I mean his name's Randy.
What's not to like you can?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
imagine this human right.
He's like, based out of Hoboken.
This is the situation.
So I'm talking to Randy and I'mlike hey man, your support.
I don't even have swear wordsstrong enough to describe what a
cesspit it is All right.
What an awful fire swamp of asupport team you have.
And he said, oh, hang on, letme just look at the level of
support you have today.
And he said, oh well, well,that's why you have a free

(41:48):
support tier.
Why would you have a freesupport tier?
You're one of our largercustomers.
I actually recommend thisenterprise grade thing, which is
8%, and customers like you usethis and you get a dedicated or
designated technical accountmanager with a designated Slack
thread and you get committed toour return time, where we have

(42:09):
an SLA that we have to hit andif we don't hit, it you'll get a
discount, and I called the CEObecause we're in the middle of
negotiating this really large,multi-year, multi-million dollar
contract with them wherebythere's a referral element for
us.
It's a complex deal and I toldthe CEO I was like we need this
thing.
I don't care, I know this isgoing to be north of $100,000 a

(42:30):
year, but I've got to show youwhat it means for us and for our
ability to deliver a goodexperience for our customers,
because this is the pass-throughentity and if something goes
wrong for us, we can't just sayit's a black box of Twilio.
We have to get to a greaterlevel of granularity and we have
to have a higher level offidelity, because that's what
differentiates us from ourcompetitors in the marketplace.
I need this and we got it andeverything changed.

(42:56):
Everything was so much better,but Twilio had this beautiful,
simply laid out packaging rightthat very clearly described what
the levels were, how much eachone cost, and that, for me, was
absolutely worth it.
Now they could have lost thaton money because we might not
have renewed, we might've triedto build it ourselves right, but
instead it gave us a betterexperience and they just charged
for it so that we were notexperiencing a situation where

(43:16):
they were trying to foot thebill for something right they
were smart, they knew theyneeded to fund that section of
the business and then,effectively, this is a services
arm of their company.
So what I often see founders dois they'll say, oh well, I want
to maximize my car on the SaaSside because I'm only getting a
3x multiple on anythingprofessional services or it's a

(43:36):
one-time fee.
I don't care about one-timefees.
So I'm going to waive theone-time fees and I'm going to
maximize SaaS.
And if you want to do that, mynumber one contract hack for you
raise your prices 10%.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, absolutely Just , full stop Just raise them 10%.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
I don't care if you're 10% more than your
competitor.
If they really think thatyou're that much better, they're
going to pay the 10% more.
Like think about the last timeyou went to a really nice
restaurant you liked you knowthat one versus the one on the
street that you don't like asmuch.
Are you willing to pay 10% more?
Yes, you are.
So that's the only way to payand then make a professional
services fee line item for 10%and then waive it.

(44:11):
Just that, there you go.
You know what I mean.
Like you're done.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
It's good.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
And that way you can say look, it's a SaaS revenue,
because it is.
But at the end of the day, youhave to recognize that in order
for you to compete in the B2BSaaS space, you need people.
At least today, you do.
Maybe in 20 years, chatgpt canjust do all this for us.
I don't know.
But today you do need people toactually make this work for you
in the enterprise environment,and the best thing for you to do

(44:38):
is to create a system for thosepeople to be able to earn their
own keep.
Right and to have proactivepackaging that allows for your
customers to get the experienceyou want them to have at a price
point that makes sense for them.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Right, exactly, and I mean you know, and to that
point I mean, if you do it right, the ROI is like a no brainer,
it's killer.
It's a no brainer, right?
Yeah, it's kind of like youknow you buy a really expensive
car but then you never changethe oil in the car.
It's like, okay, stupid, don'tdo that.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
No, and the reality is you know.
You need to know also what thelevel of effort that your
customer should experience ontheir side.
So when I'm selling to a largehealth system.
I will tell them you need tohire someone to manage this
software, because I knew, atleast most of the time, I know
I'm selling against an incumbent, which means that there's
already someone there who'salready managing that element of

(45:36):
the work, and oftentimesthey'll think, oh, this is a
startup, so we can just peelthis person out.
But you can't.
You need someone there to makesure that the software is truly
meeting the business's needs ona tactical, practical level, and
that person needs to beresponsible for the success of
the technology within thatorganization, because if you
have someone doing that work andyou just pull them out, there's

(45:59):
going to be a vacuum andnothing's going to fill it.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Totally.
Yeah, exactly, we're going totake a hard left here for a
second, Because I know that alot of the content that you put
out there, um, is really focusedon um, you know, career advice
and those kinds of things.
But you also, you know, focus alot on um, you know, equity in,

(46:21):
in, in equality in theworkplace and especially with
regards to, you know, to womenand all that kind of stuff.
But I wanted to um, you know,give you a little bit of time
just to just to talk throughthrough some of those things,
because I think, anytime that wecan speak about these things,
no matter what the form.
This is the digital CS podcast,so we're talking about this,

(46:42):
but I think, I think it'simportant to, like, really
highlight some of those thingssometimes.
So I'd love from you, kind ofyour take on where we are today,
but then also, like, you know,what are the things that
everyone should essentially bedoing in order to help you know
the solution towards the equityand inequality problems that we

(47:03):
still have.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
No, I really appreciate that and I do think
it blends nicely into digitalcustomer success, because
customer success for me is thislandscape of varied humans.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
right, we're like this model band of bits you know
, and that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
And one thing I will say is, if you want to encourage
people who maybe have anon-traditional business
background or who didn't studyspecific computer science but
who want to work in technology,customer success is a beautiful
entry point into the world oftechnology because really all
you have to do is be likable,right?
Everyone wants like a goldenretriever customer success

(47:39):
person.
So if you've got the goodattitude to start with.
that's 80% of the battle, right.
And then you also have to be agood problem solver.
So you have to like workingwith people and you have to like
solving problems and you haveto be willing to learn on the
job.
And I've hired hundreds ofpeople into this function from
all walks of life and oftentimesthey'll be referred to me by
someone, and so often I'll talkto someone and they'll say, oh,

(48:00):
but I'm not really technical,particularly women.
Or oh, but I'm not reallybusiness oriented, Right.
And so for me, as I'm thinkingabout practical, tactical ways
that we can encourage diversityin the workplace full stop.
Number one encourage peoplefrom non-traditional business
backgrounds to think ofthemselves as having the
capacity to be very successfulin this kind of startup

(48:22):
technical environment.
Right To say look, this is justskill acquisition, you made it
through university or you madeit through community college or
you made it to where you aretoday Right, so you can learn
this skill.
To just being encouraging, Iwould also say having an open
mind to hiring folks fromdifferent walks of life.
Like, I've gotten a lot offlack for hiring people who went
to community college.
I went to community college.

(48:44):
I don't put that on my resume,naturally, but I did and I
personally find that oftentimesthese folks are wonderful did,
and I personally find thatoftentimes these folks are
wonderful at what they do.
They just didn't have the samestarting place that someone who
maybe went to a four-year schooldid, or they weren't willing to
take on a lot of debt to fundtheir own education.
Right, which is also smart,especially when you're talking

(49:08):
entry-level customer successrole right, it's a good job,
it's a great career trajectory,but it's a good entry point for
you.
So if you've got someone whomaybe has a couple of years of
experience, right, but they alsohave that drive, they can be
phenomenally talented there andjust encouraging them to say,
yeah, you can be technical here,and also, when you have them in
the door, prioritizing, dolingout those high visibility

(49:29):
projects and speaking about themin a positive way, you know.
One example that springs tomind for me is a woman who's a
director today.
She's got a team of 15 people.
She's crushing it.
But when I first started workingwith her, the positioning for
me was we have this woman let'scall her Brianna, that's not her
name and in Bree she has anattitude problem.

(49:49):
I think we're going to fire her.
And I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, what, why?
What is the attitude problem?
You know Well, it turns outBrianna was a classically
beautiful woman, if you imagine,like a Barbie just walking up
to you, one of the mostbeautiful women you've ever met,
face to face.
This is this woman and she alsois an extreme questioner.
Okay, and she also is anextreme questioner.

(50:10):
So when you meet her, you expecther to present in this kind of
stereotypical way of this, beingthis blonde sea bunny, that she
is right, but she hits you hard.
She's like what do you mean,fire HL7.
What's this in her face?
Why do you want to do this?
And she has this really intensepersonality which I love about
her.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
And I was like I don't think she has an attitude
problem at all.
I just think that she's staffedin the wrong area of our
business, right, like let metake her, you know.
Like let me let me work withher.
She's going to work for my teamI want to hire her and they were
like, okay, and it took me ayear of intentionally
positioning her in specificprojects and showing the work
that she was doing for myexecutive team to see her

(50:48):
capacity and to really see heras someone who was doing good
work and she's done incrediblywell at that business.
But I think it's for you as aleader, identifying talent and
then looking at how you canmaximize that talent and
intentionally saying I want morepeople of color in leadership,
I want more women in leadership,and so for me, if I'm just
taking all the inbounds, look,80% of inbound resumes are most

(51:11):
likely going to be from peoplefrom traditional schools,
traditional backgrounds, a lotof people who do not give you
that kind of diverse bag.
And so you have to beintentional about opening the
door and people can say, oh,you're lowering the standard or
you're kind of using an unfairbias here or discriminating.
But I would advocate to say thatyou are trying to create the
world you want to live in, whichmeans intentionally giving

(51:34):
opportunity to people who maynot have found it otherwise, and
then letting them succeed orfail right Because their success
, ultimately, is their own.
They have to put in the work andit's going to be harder for
them than for anyone else.
But you, as a leader, have thecapacity and the potential to
say I'm going to be reallyintentional here and I'm going
to hire a recruiter and I'mgoing to tell this recruiter I
only have four directorpositions.

(51:55):
Three of them are held by whitemen.
This fourth one is not going tobe held by someone that looks
like everyone else.
I need you to show me profilesof different types of candidates
, right and just work like that.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I learned kind of a verysimilar lesson several several
years ago when I took aleadership role on an
implementation team for softwarethat serviced primarily the
hospitality, like restaurant,industry.

(52:26):
Yeah, and you know by nature ofwhat it is we did.
We hired probably 70, 75percent out of hospitality, out
of restaurants, a lot of thesefolks.
It was their first gig in techperiod and so you know, you got,
we got a lot of folks whodidn't finish college, did

(52:49):
community college, did whatever.
I never had to do a singlesession of customer service
training, customer skills, likethese people.
Of course they did.
I mean, that's your restaurantanalogy earlier was like in full
display and it was one of themost wonderfully diverse, you

(53:12):
know teams with all kinds ofdifferent people on it that all
you know got along, they hadthis kinship and it was just
like a beautiful thing.
And so you know, similarly toyou, the lesson I learned was
hey, look, you know, I reallydon't.
I don't care where you went toschool, I don't super care what

(53:34):
your experience has been, I carewho you are as a person, I care
who, who I'm sitting acrossfrom, you know what motivates
you, what drives you.
I want to.
I want people from diversebackgrounds that maybe have had
challenges, that can thrivebecause of those challenges and
those kinds of things.
It's just it's fascinating tome how you know, tech hasn't

(53:58):
really caught on to that.
It's starting to, but it's likestill kind of in the dark ages
that way.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah, Attitude and aptitude, man all day, every day
, and you know, I thought youand those people were probably
really grateful too for the gigthat they had.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
You know having been used as bumping around the
restaurant.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
It's exhausting work.
You know when you're doing itlike that.
It's exhausting work, it'smoving to something else until
they were, like, so jazzed rightTo move their career in a
different direction.
So yeah, weren't you know,putting in 30 000 steps a day
anymore?

(54:34):
You might underestimate theamount of bread rolls and french
fries you eat.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Tell me about it.
Tell me about it.
Tell me about it.
I.
I am extremely sad because weare out of time.
Um, and the reason I'm sad isbecause I've really enjoyed this
conversation and I know we havemore to talk about, so we might
do a part two if you're gamefor it, or we might, you know,
continue the conversation onanother platform of choice

(54:57):
somewhere some at some point.
But I've really really enjoyedhaving you on the show.
Your, your unique, yourperspectives are unique and
healthy and full of massiveexperience, and so I'm I'm
excited to share this with theaudience and would love to give
you a little bit of a time to Alet us know where people can

(55:18):
find you.
But also, are there people youwant to shout out?
Is there cool content that youwant to turn people on to?
This is your time to promotewhat you want to promote or
share what you want to share.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Wonderful.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me.
Alex Love this conversation.
I felt like it was wide rangingand overall very positive, so I
really appreciated beinginvited to be on the podcast and
, in terms of shout outs and CS,I would say, individual humans.
Sarah Roberts, who youintroduced me to, has success
unscripted as a podcast, whichis a very different kind of bent
to this particular podcast thatwe're on now on the digital

(55:53):
side, but really haveappreciated getting to know her
work a little bit more.
And then Jess Osborne, on theLinkedIn side, as a content
creator at GoCardless, does alot of really great work in
customer success and I reallyappreciate just the tactical
approach that she's taking onLinkedIn.
And then on the TikTok front, Iwould say Diana in Customer

(56:18):
Success, or Diana DeJesus.
So Woman of Color talks a lotabout how women of color can get
their start in tech underCustomer Success as a banner,
which I love.
And then finally, if folks arelistening to this and they think
I want to really get into thisarena but I don't know where to
start, there is a company calledhow to Break Into Tech and it's
by Charlotte Sage.
She also has a lot of freecontent on TikTok and she
created a digital trainingprogram that you can do on your

(56:38):
own for how to do data analytics, and she has had literally
thousands of people graduatefrom her course and go from
earning 40 grand a year to 90grand a year using data
analytics.
So folks, who are?
Police officers, teachers whodidn't have a traditional
background.
Um, she has a lot of reallywonderful free content and I
think the course itself is like200 bucks, so it's really

(56:58):
accessible and affordable to alot of things out there.
Um, and if folks want to find me, I'm at deliver delightxyz, or
hello at deliver delightxyz, andI work with mostly VC companies
on their portfolio managementside, founders and CEOs of
growth stage companies who arelooking to use their current
customer base as a primary leverto drive further growth.

(57:20):
So if you have questions aboutthat, you can reach me at
Deliver Delight.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Amazing.
I love it.
I love the name too.
It's so good, puts a smile onyour face.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
I still think about Dungeons Dragons a little bit
with a double D, but yeah.
I like a good alliteration.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
You know, you got a little bit of whimsy in your day
.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I dig it Cool.
Thanks again for the time and,you know, thanks for everything
you do for the community.
It's so great.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Thanks so much, alex.
Have a great rest of your day,sir.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of the
Digital Customer Success Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
It really helps us to grow andto provide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition
Wordmap and get more detailsabout the show at

(58:12):
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
My name is Alex Terkovich.
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.

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The Impact of SaaS Economics on CS (Plus Much More!) with Christine Raby | Episode 048

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Impact of SaaS Economics on CS (Plus Much More!) with Christine Raby | Episode 048