Airtable’s Journey to Scalable Customer Success with Alison Barrett | Episode 083 - The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Allison Barrett (00:03):
I want to get our lagging indicators up.
It takes a while for things tofeel like are we driving an
impact?
You're doing everything everysingle day, but ultimately
everyone's on an annual contract, and so you're waiting to see,
a year from now, what is goingto be the impact.

Alex Turkovic (00:17):
Once again, welcome to the Digital Customer
Experience Podcast with me, AlexTurkovich.
So glad you could join us heretoday and every week as we
explore how digital can helpenhance the customer and
employee experience.
My goal is to share what myguests and I have learned over
the years so that you can getthe insights that you need to
evolve your own digital programs.
If you'd like more info, needto get in touch or sign up for

(00:41):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome back to theDigital CX Podcast.
My name is Alex Turkovich.
I'm so glad that you're backhere with me this week and every
week as we talk about allthings digital in CX.
This is episode 83.

(01:05):
I'm pleased to be joined todayby Allison Barrett, who leads
digital at Airtable.
Many of you are familiar withAirtable.
Many of you use Airtable on aregular basis and if you are an
Airtable user, it is very likelyyou will have seen some of
Allison's team's work.
She joined Airtable quite awhile ago.

(01:27):
I want to say it's a year orsomething like that.
You'll have to listen to theinterview to find out the
specifics, but she joined andwas tasked with really building
a digital program from theground up, and has done a
phenomenal job of really gettingin the weeds and is gracious
enough to share with us some ofthe things that she did and the

(01:51):
journey that she's been on asshe has built this program,
because I know many, many of youare in the same boat of having
to build up a program and notreally knowing where to start,
not really knowing what totackle first, and Alison does a
really great job of opening upabout her own process and then
sharing some of her successesalong the way.

(02:12):
Before we get into thisconversation, though, I just
wanted to take a moment and wishyou all a very happy holiday
season.
Merry Christmas for those ofyou who celebrate, happy
Hanukkah, for those of you whocelebrate that and anyone else
who celebrates something else.
I just hope you get some timeoff and some rest, because
that's something that I'mlooking forward to as well.
I appreciate every single oneof you listening on a weekly

(02:35):
basis.
I wouldn't be here without you,obviously, and you know I
really appreciate all of thefeedback and the responses and,
you know, and the messages thatI get on a regular basis.
I want to also thank some ofthe sponsors that have been
along for the ride, this yearespecially, and looking forward

(02:56):
to seeing you next year.
We've got some amazing thingsplanned for next year and while
we will be publishing a couplemore episodes, I won't actually
be talking to you until the newyear.
So with that, have a greatbreak.
I really hope you enjoy thisconversation with Alison Barrett
, because I sure did.

(03:17):
Well, welcome to the show.
It's so lovely to have you.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for a bit
because you're doing some reallycool stuff at Airtable.
But yeah, super, super happy tohave you.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for a bit
because you're doing some reallycool stuff at Airtable.

But, yeah, super, super happy to have you.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you so much forhaving me.
Honestly, this is kind of afull circle moment for me,
because when I started this roleback in May of 2023, I went and
listened to the DCS podcast,trying to get some ideas of
other leaders and what peoplewere doing and what people were

(03:51):
talking about, and I actuallycame to this podcast.
So it was really cool that youreached out and it's kind of a
full circle moment, saying, youknow, been been doing this for
about a year and some change,and here we are ready to talk
about it.
So that's kind of nice toreflect, yeah, and see what
we've accomplished.

So you.
I guess that would have beenone of the early like.

I think like the very early.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like I was going to say, I think I launched in
May of 23.

So I know I went back and looked at your, at
the episodes and I was like no,I actually started from the
very beginning so awesome thankyou for doing this work.
I think it's really important.
I don't think that a lot offolks have known a ton about
scale and digital.
I learned about it from mymentors at slack.
Slack had a really wonderfulscaled program team there, but

(04:39):
it's really cool that you nowhave created this community of
leaders and you have your Slackworkspace, which I love to go in
there and chat with people.
And now we can always kind oflike find people to ask
questions about, so it's fun.
So thanks for doing all thiswork.

Yeah, for sure.
I mean, it's still such a blackbox for a lot of people you
know like.
Dan Ennis and I did a thing atZero In recently and it was like
it was just by the nature ofsome of the questions that were
asked in the room.
It was like, oh okay, let'spull it back a little bit, let's

(05:15):
dial it back a little bit,because, you know, digital CS or
scaled CS or whatever you wantto call it, it's like still this
, it's like this thing andeverybody knows now that you
should do it.
But what is it really?
And it's so funny, differentapproaches to it and we
definitely want to talk aboutyour approach to it at Airtable
coming out of Slack and all thatkind of stuff.

(05:37):
But do you want to give us alittle bit of a history lesson
on Alice and Parrot?

Yes, definitely so.
Started my career at Deloitte,did tech consulting there right
out of college.
It was like business bootcamp.
I was flying all over going onsite with customers for a few
years working on some reallyexciting multi-year SAP
implementations.

Wow Jeez.

Yes, yes, back in the day, and it was.
It was a wonderful experience,but I was drawn to more of the
startup environment.
I lived in San Francisco, but Iwas on a flight every morning,
every Monday morning at 6am, soI wanted to be, you know, where
all the action was happening.

And I mean coming out of college, that's, that's
probably super fun.
But then at some point you'relike okay.

Coming out of college.
I would highly recommendconsulting to anybody graduating
.
You get to see so many thingsright out of the gate and I
learned such core skills that Istill use today PowerPoint,
excel, all day, every daypresenting to customers going on
site right.
You're working side by side withyou know, some senior leaders

(06:47):
still have some great mentorsfrom you.
Know that experience.
And then you got to travel andget points.
I still have some Starwoodpoints.
So, yes, wonderful experience.
But I was really gravitatingmore towards the tech startup
environment.
So I started at a smallerstartup in San Francisco where I

(07:09):
was doing account management ata company called MoveWeb, where
we were in charge of helpingcompanies go mobile optimized on
their websites.
So this was before people werereally even before they even had
an app or mobile strategy fortheir com sites.
So I helped to manage thoseprojects and professional

(07:31):
services.
So, yeah, a lot of fun.
I'm kind of dating myself.
Before, you know, everyone hadtheir apps and websites.
But then I went over toMixpanel and Mixpanel is a
product analytics company andthat's where I actually really
started to love data and productanalytics and started as a CSM.

(07:53):
There was kind of right in thebeginning when the CSM function
started happening.
So really feel like I was partof that beginning cohort of CSMs
so it was really really fun.
That was when it was just hightouch, right.
So we only worked with our moststrategic customers.
We did onsites with them.
It was a very, you know, hightouch, very consultative

(08:13):
experience for our largecustomers.
I moved into management there,helped to grow the team there,
managed a team across the Statesand via an APAC, and then moved
over to Slack.
So Slack, I was actuallybrought on for a very specific
role.
I was brought on to build thechampion program at Slack, which

(08:36):
is a community program for ourenterprise customers, and so it
was an opportunity to kind of goback into an icy role and roll
up my sleeves and build out thisSlack champion community and it
was an absolute blast.
I was on the road again, I wastalking with customers and we

(08:57):
built out the Slack community,which was on on the product, on
on Slack.
So I think it was one of thevery first Slack communities
within a workspace, so it was anawesome experience and that's
where I started to get reallyexcited about communities and
how community could be a reallyfundamental way that you can
scale your business right.

(09:18):
Because what we were doing andwhat the kind of the core focus
there was that we knew wecouldn't scale our CSM team fast
enough, but we wanted toactually create CSMs within the
client, within the customer base.
So, we would train them as ifthey were CSMs working for us at

(09:40):
Slack and they became, you know, slack champions.
And then they could, you know,we did a lot of train the
trainers and they would go andtrain their you know their
employees.
And that was kind of afundamental way that we could
scale what we were doing,because there were so many
people that we needed to reach,people that we needed to train.
You know, back then, you know,people weren't totally all

(10:02):
bought in on Slack.
Everyone's still using email.
They're like what is this thingRight?
And so we really needed theselike champions within the
company because, you know, ifnot everybody is on the tool,
then it doesn't really workTotally.
So we had to do a lot of changemanagement.
So that was the primary firstrole that I started there and
then my remit grew into allscaled programs for all of CSG.

(10:23):
So you know, we were doing alot of back of house.
So that was kind of the frontof house program and then back
of house we my team was incharge of the customer health
program, so building out all ofour health scoring, red account
program, the tools so how to youknow the entire CS tools
strategy and we brought, we hadGainsight, and then we use some

(10:45):
internal tools as well and thenthe voice of customer program,
which I'm super, superpassionate about.
Voice of customer programs andthat's really where you get your
customer's feedback and you canfunnel it to the product team
and then you close the loop whenit's time to go to market with
the products that your customersrequested.
And so just really building thatloyalty within your customer

(11:07):
base I think is super importantto retention and so give it,
giving them a voice to theproduct team.
So we built out the voice ofcustomer program and and then we
also built all of the contentand playbooks for all of the CS
team across the globe.
So we had about 400 CSMs thatwe were supporting CS and

(11:29):
services that we were supportingand making sure that everyone
was using the standard playbooksand all the kind of the same
processes across the board.
So that's where I became quiteobsessed with standardization
and processes, because when itcomes to scaling your business,
that is extremely important tomake sure that everybody is

(11:51):
doing kind of the same thing andthat you're using the best in
class resources.
Because you would be surprised,a lot of companies, a lot of
CSMs are just, you know,building their own versions of
decks, and then you know you'rewasting a ton of time there.
So when I think about scale, Ithink about every single person

(12:12):
within the organization and howwe are scaling what we're doing
and in order to you know, to bemore successful internally, to
be more efficient internally andproductive, but then also to
support our customers.
So yeah, heavy operations,muscle at Slack, you know very

(12:35):
big operations, muscle at Slackoperations, change management
and enablement.
So my team also ran our entirelike V2 mom OKR process.
So I'm very into OKRs and howthey're really important to
ladder up to.
What is the company objectiveand what are we doing?
Where are we going?
And then how does what I amdoing every day, how does that
align to the company's coreobjective?
Right, and if you can't seethat alignment of like, oh, what

(12:59):
is this task and why am I doingit?
And if it doesn't actually, youknow, align to the company
objective, then you know that'skind of a question mark of why
is it even on my priority list?
So I really feel strongly aboutkind of the OKR process and
making sure that people feellike the work that they're doing
is connected to, you know, thecompany's objective.

(13:19):
So yeah that's a little bit of ahigh level story of Slack.
We got acquired by Salesforce.
I stuck that out for about ayear and then something was
calling me to build again.
I'm like such a builder.
I love to start from scratch.
This opportunity at Airtablecame up and I had a friend that
worked at Mixpanel with me,reach out.

(13:39):
She said you know, I think you'dbe awesome at kind of leading
our scale.
We're trying to figure it out.
We have no idea what to do.
What do you think?
And I was like this soundsawesome.

Sounds good.
Yeah, so that's a little bit ofa history.
That's so cool.
One thing that you said thatreally struck me about your
Slack kind of journey was thefact that you treated your
champions as essentiallyextensions of your team, as CSMs

(14:07):
, and I think that is one thingthat a lot of companies strive
to achieve and they can'tnecessarily get there.
I don't think, because, forwhatever reason, I mean it does
take a lot of effort and a lotof mindfulness and a lot of
intention to, like you know,really build up champions,
champions in that way.
And you know, I think this isthe digital cx podcast, but when

(14:33):
you think of it there, it is adigital.
I mean, there there's, you'retalking about thousands of
champions, right?
yes, so inherently it's adigital first program where the
enablement is digital and themechanisms for tracking
champions is digital and allthat kind of stuff.
But I love that kind ofmethodology.
Is that something that you'recarrying forward into your state

(14:56):
of being going forward?

Yes, yes, absolutely.
I think it's vital to everyorganization.
We call it something a littlebit different here at Airtable
it's our Airtable ambassadorprogram, but the same concept,
right?
So, extension of the CS team,you have boots on the ground
that are within the company.
They understand their ownprocesses and what they're
trying to accomplish way betterthan we ever could, right?

(15:22):
And so we give them theresources to be successful.
And then, you know, you rewardthem, you recognize them, you
give them a platform, you givethem a stage.
A lot of the championprogramming is about up leveling
people's careers, right?
So you, you show that they area leader in innovation and that

(15:43):
they're be.
By becoming a champion of yourproduct, they're able to
transform, you know, thebusiness and and therefore they
get promoted.
They, you know, they take onmore, and so we like to kind of
give them a platform to stand onand we invite them to all of
our conferences, we invite themto speak, and then you can see
how this kind of really nicelyjoins with our marketing

(16:04):
programs as well.
So a lot of, like you know, thethe work that we were doing
within the Champion program.
We were able to identify, likewonderful resources for case
studies and references, all thatgood stuff.
So customer marketing.
We had a wonderfulcollaboration with them, so they
loved working with us as well.

So yeah, yeah, and you know it's cool to do
that within an organization likeAirtable and I guess Slack as
well where it's a platform andit's a skill set behind that
platform that is unique to thatplatform and so, by that nature,
enabling those folks to takeownership of these things helps

(16:47):
them to be more successfulwithin the business, helps them
to grow their careers andwhatnot, and helps you guys just
be sticky as hell.
So yeah, and you talked about.

You know it's a big investment.
I actually don't know if Itotally agree.
I think that you need like onededicated person to focus on it.
Yeah, and so at slack,christina mang she was.
She's now the the champion ofchampions, that's what she calls
herself.
She's great, you should.
Yeah, on building the program,keeping folks engaged.
You know she owned theworkspace and all the events.

(17:29):
We did a lot of gamification of, you know, competitions across
our champions and things likethat, sharing of stories.
So so I think you know, if youfocus on it and you have a
dedicated I think it does take adedicated resource or a part of
your community team to reallyfocus on it then I think that
you can be successful.
But you'll see just the amountof scale that you're able to

(17:52):
bring to your program throughsomething like this is
incredibly valuable Ourcommunity program at Airtable.
I was so excited about thisbecause you know, like I said,
we I started the program in May.
It's been a little over a year.
You reached out to me, I think,like in January.
You're like hey, can you comeon the pod?

And I was like oh , Early, early Right.

Yes, I'm not quite ready yet because our
lagging indicators.
I want to get our laggingindicators up right.
Like.
As you know, it takes a whilefor things to feel like are we
driving an impact?
Are we driving an impact?
You know you're doingeverything every single day, but
ultimately everyone's on anannual contract and so you're
waiting to see you know, a yearfrom now what is going to be the
impact?

(18:36):
But it was so exciting I think Iemailed you immediately after I
got the results of theselagging indicators like, oh my
God, we got it when,specifically for community, our
community program we saw a 20%difference in NDR for customers
that were in our communityversus customers that weren't,
and I was just like this is whatI've been waiting for.

(18:58):
I knew that what we were doingis driving impact.
But then, seeing that, I waslike, yes, this is awesome.
And so we're going to do thesame thing for the other
programs that I own as well, andhopefully we can share that
again.

Yeah.
So let's talk about that alittle bit, because you know
you're, you're, you essentiallyown.
If I remember correctly,community education.
I think onboarding was part ofthat and just in general digital
yes.

Yeah, so my purview is Scale CSM, which we
provide onboarding services forsubset of our scaled segment.
So at Airtable I own a segment,right, but it's also our.
Our programs touch everycustomer, right?
So and strategy it is segmentand strategy.
So yes, and the segment hasgrown as we've become more

(19:49):
successful.
So that's been exciting to seeas well that we can actually
take a little bit of the youknow the gas off needing as many
dedicated one-to-one, or we canactually reallocate those
resources in dedicated CS uphigher right so they can have
smaller books of business right.
So the ratios now are feeling alot nicer on the high touch

(20:11):
side because we can take on moreright.
So, um, yes, so my team is ascale CSM, digital CS.
So your typical emailautomation journeys.
Community education and AI AIprograms for CS.
Ooh Ooh, we can talk about that, so it's an amazing team.

(20:33):
I feel extremely fortunate thatI have all of these pillars.

When I joined.

This was not the story actually.
It was a much smaller team, butI made the case to our
marketing team, so we haveeducation and community actually
in marketing prior.
Yeah, but I made the case tobring them over to scale just
because I felt like what weneeded to do for our customers

(21:01):
was not tell them why theyshould be using air table,
because they're already buyingair tableable.
They've already purchased it.
We need to teach them how touse Airtable and how to get the
most value out of it.
So, in the case where, hey,let's focus our education less
on you know, pitching and lesson like why Airtable is great
because our customers know thatthey already bought the product.

(21:23):
We need to actually go deep anddo some really deep curriculum
for persona-based learning, andso I kind of made that pitch to
bring the team over.
So that's kind of how teamassembled into what we have
today and I honestly think thisis the perfect, perfect scaled
setup to have this fullecosystem of programs.

It's cool.
I like how you've segmented theteam, and so the AI component.
Is that like one or two peoplelooking after your AI strategy?
What does that look like?

Yes, great question.
So I have the most incredibleemployee.
She actually was in support andthen she was in product and
then she was in education andshe started getting just so into
AI.
You know, paying out of pocketto go to all these AI

(22:15):
conferences on her own, which isvery expensive, it's super
expensive.
You can talk about yeah, justvery passionate about the
subject.
And so Michaela her name, she'samazing she really wanted to
focus on AI.
Michaela her name, she'samazing.
She really wanted to focus onAI and I really wanted to have a
full-time dedicated resource,because this industry is
changing so quickly that I needsomeone to understand what's

(22:39):
going on in AI and all of thevarious programs that we should
be leveraging within CS.
And when we started theorganization the scaled org my
vision was actually, on thedigital side, to actually have
more of like an AI agent thatwas helping you through your
entire journey of Airtable,where you have kind of a chatbot

(23:03):
that knows you, your use case,you know what you're trying to
do with the product, andproviding you with the tailored
education experience to get youstarted and then connected back
to the product to say like ohyou, you haven't quite gotten it
yet.
Like let's keep you know, trythis.
And as if you had like aone-to-one CSM sitting next to

(23:24):
you.
That's kind of the vision thatwe we painted, and there's a few
products that are like startingto get there.
I've been keeping my eye on afew of them and we've been
testing out a bunch of them, butMichaela's main role is really
to one keep tabs on what's goingon in the industry.
We're testing out some reallycool new technologies like

(23:44):
Staircase I don't know if you'veheard of Gainsight Staircase,
ai, reef as well for basicallyidentifying health signals early
and predicting churn, etc.
So there's lots of really coolstuff happening there.
So we're trying out newtechnology.
And then we're doing a lot ofinnovation on our side to

(24:05):
improve the efficiencyinternally of the entire CSG org
.
So we have a pretty lofty goalof a 10% improvement of
efficiency through AI programswithin within our OKRs this year
, and the way that we do that isactually through implement
through our own product.
So Airtable has AI built intoit and so we can actually use

(24:29):
our own product to build outaccount plans and to do handoffs
with AEs, et cetera, and toprepare for meetings, prepare
our decks, do all kinds ofthings like that of all of our
newsletters that the digital CSteam produces, all the first

(24:49):
drafts of our newsletters, allthe first drafts of our product
go-to-market motion.
So what's really nice aboutAirtable is that we have all of
our data Within Airtable.
You have a golden data set likeyour product roadmap, for
example, and now with AI in theproduct, we actually can take
the products that are in youknow, that are coming down the

(25:10):
pipe and understand exactly whatthose are.
And a big you know challengethat we've had on the education
side is actually going into JIRAand figuring out like what
actually is this product doingRight.
What is it?
I don't understand it.
Right, it's you know, anengineer wrote the description
and we actually have AI sittingon top of the description to

(25:33):
write it in customer facing kindof layman's terms.
We're like oh, okay, I get it.
So we have AI on that, and thenwe actually have AI to help
draft the first comms for ourvarious personas.
So we have different personasand different people that care
about the updates in our product, and so all of that's kind of
automated, and so we've saved somuch time.

(25:54):
So we're tracking all the timesavings that we are able to
deliver and all the processesthat Michaela is helping us kind
of project manage.

that hey, I want to have a brief chat with you
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(26:42):
Now back to the show.
So that's fascinating to me onmultiple levels, and I think we
could go any number of ways onthis.
But the fact of the matter isis it seems like you are well,
you know, we talked about thisbriefly, but essentially you're
operating outside of a CSP, anddoing so because you have

(27:03):
Airtable, doing all thesefantastic things that, honestly,
I don't know if you could get aCSP to do, you know like in
terms of drafting certain thingsor taking certain information
from other areas of the business, just because you, you have the
luxury of having multipleinternal teams.
You know feeding all this datainto the same tool, which I

(27:24):
think is awesome, and soobviously you can, you know,
train AI to interpret thosethings in certain ways and do
things.
I guess, from a metricsstandpoint and an OKR standpoint
you talked about, you knowinternal efficiency and whatnot.
What other things are youtracking in terms of perhaps

(27:47):
leading indicators of?
You know the efficacy of someof the digital motions that you
put in place?

Yeah, definitely I mean.
So each pillar is going to haveits own you know, leading
indicators.
Right, so you know.
From a community standpoint, Iwas so excited about that
lagging indicator that showedyou know NDR right Totally yeah,
but some of the leadingindicators that we are tracking
on a monthly basis.
So I set this up with my team.
We have an MBR.

(28:15):
We go through this on a monthlybasis.
We look at kind of the trendsand where we're going.
You know you have engagementrate, you have members, right,
so we look at membership growth,right.
And then we really care mostlyabout the engagement of those
members.
So who's coming back and who'sactually, you know, asking
questions and sharing, right.
So we have a community forum,we have a public forum.

(28:37):
Everyone can go there, go tocommunityairtablecom and you can
start to ask questions of yourpeers, et cetera.
And then one of the earlierprograms that I built when
community came over was actuallybuilding out that enterprise
only community as well.
So kind of taking somelearnings from the Slack.
You know champions, right, andnow we have an enterprise closed

(29:00):
community, so we have an openone for everybody.
And then we have that closed onewhere it's a little bit smaller
and a little safe space to askyour questions and also tailored
to like different businessmodels and whatnot.
yeah, it's exactly exactly so.
We're looking at, you know, theengagement we look at also,
like who's coming to our eventsand event uh, attendance rates,

(29:21):
stuff, like that sentiment score, and then education.
So you, we'll, let's talk alittle bit about education,
because that was the biggest,that was the biggest rock for me
.
So when I came in and assessedwhat we needed to do to scale,
to create a scaled program atAirtable the biggest challenge

(29:44):
that our CSMs were facing andour customers were facing I did
30 interviews right when Ilanded and was like what's going
on here.
What is the?
What do we need to fix?
First, right, and it was superclear that not having a formal
education program and acertification program where
customers can go and self-serveand do self-paced learning for
their particular persona wasreally dragging down them and

(30:09):
our entire CS organization.
So, the CS team was justspending time training
individuals on accounts like noteven an entire teams, but like
they would do the team and theywould do individuals and they
would build all these customtrainings.
And they were just completelyunder water Scale at all.
Exactly.
And so you know, going back tokind of the you know why did we

(30:32):
do this?
I mean, that doesn't scale atall.
We need to know who is takingour education content and all
the courses.
And then we need to certifypeople, because you know what
People actually want to becertified on Airtable.
They want to add it to theirresume and then once they are a

(30:57):
certified builder of Airtable,they can actually take that
skill set elsewhere and theyhave that badge of honor et
cetera.
So I know we're kind of goingdown a tangent here.

It's fine.
I love tangents.

Well, I swear we'll get back to the leading
indicators.
Yeah, so last fall went throughthe whole kind of process of
procurement.
But the thing is that peopleneed to understand about scale
and digital programs is justbecause you're not, you don't
have as many, you know headcount right, so you're you don't
have as many CSMs on the groundservicing customers.

(31:29):
It is not a free program.
It you still.
It still costs money and themoney comes from procuring
software.
So getting good software, your,your digital program is going to
run on data and technologyright, and you want to get the
and you want to get the goodstuff.
So I was like I wanted the besteducation program that we can

(31:51):
possibly have Was able to hirean amazing leader who came from
HubSpot, kevin Dunn he's amazingCame over and helped to stand
up the program.
So we brought over Skilljarstand up the program.
So we brought over SkillJar andsince launching so apparently
SkillJar said that we had one ofthe most successful launches

(32:12):
they've ever seen and that justgoes to show that there was a
huge demand for that.
Yeah, people wanted to getcertified, they wanted to show
their skills, they wanted toup-level.
They don't actually probablyeven want to wait for a training
from their CSM.

Right, right and get in there and get it done.

Just get in there and do it on your own.
Yeah that's why I think, from ascale, you know what the scaled
ecosystem if you have all theirprograms in place, it actually
services your customers, youknow, providing them the best
resource at the best time in theformat that they desire, right?
Sometimes that format could beself-serve education, sometimes

(32:52):
it could be an email, right?
Sometimes it could be acommunity meetup and sometimes
it could be your CSM, sometimesit could be an AI chat bot.
You're just like I'm locked out.
What do I need to do?
You don't want to talk to ahuman, one of the you know
things that we did from aiprograms.
We brought on a chat bot so youcan, you know, ask those

(33:13):
questions.
You can ask questions about theproduct basics, so you need to
have various ways that peoplecan get what they need and
therefore the csms can actuallydo what they do, which is create
value and build relationshipsand go on site with customers.
They shouldn't betroubleshooting and asking.
You know, helping people answerrandom questions.

Totally.

So roundabout way of getting to leading
indicators, but we're back.

Yeah, we're back.
I think one of the mostimpressive things about your
approach just in hearing youtalk about it is just the fact
that you went in and justlistened for a while, which I
think a lot of people don'treally spend a lot of time doing
.
But you went in, you listened,you're like, okay, where's the

(34:00):
problem, let's go solve.
You know.
And so there are others who areprobably in your shoes where
you were last May, jumping intokind of this new world and this
new program, and you know eitherbuilding it from the ground up
or, you know, taking theexisting program to the next
level.
Things did you learn aboutduring this process that you

(34:27):
might share with others in termsof how to approach?
You know how to approachprioritizing, setting the
strategy, pulling the teamstogether, all of that kind of
stuff.

Yes, yes, definitely so, came in, listened
for a few weeks.
I did my tour.
Right From there I was able tokind of build a list.
I think I had 10 items on thatlist.
At this point in time I onlyhad two program managers
reporting to me, so very smallteam, so we weren't going to be
able to solve everything right.

(34:56):
So it was prioritization, impactright, assessing a level of
effort and the impact that wewere going to get from these
programs.
So I listed everything out.
I kind of said, hey, here'skind of what I think matters the
most.
Here's the high, here are somequick wins, here are some big
bets.
Do you agree?
I had, you know, all the CSleadership team and sales

(35:16):
leadership team kind of vote on.
You know what rose to the top.
So that kind of became clearwhat we wanted to tackle first,
yeah, and then shopped aroundthe ideas, of course, to head of
product.
I had a meeting with our CEO aswell and just said, hey, all
right, here's kind of wherewe're at.
These are the things that we'regoing to tackle right now
because they're easy to do.

(35:36):
But here's actually those bigbets that these are going to
require.
You know, collaboration withcross-functional teams.
This is going to be expensive,this is going to be.
You know I need help from dataengineering and analytics, and
you know legal procurement, etcetera.
So made those asks as a part ofthat.
So the quick wins that we wereable to do, though, because you

(35:59):
know when you're starting outthis program.
There are some low hangingfruit items that you can
probably just do right off thebat and there's those are the
things that people are just kindof like procrastinating on,
which is standard.
I would say start with what yourCSMs are doing.

Yeah.

CSMs are, uh, already working with your
customers.
They already have kind of theironboarding, training decks,
their value decks, et cetera.
Hopefully, hopefully, peopleare using the same resources and
if they're not, the first thingto do to scale your
organization is actually toassess and grade and say who's

(36:35):
actually doing this the best onthe team and why.
Great, let's take that as astarting point and actually
package and standardize it.
Then let's actually scale thatto a scaled resource, right, so
you, you can then create a pieceof content, um, that you can
put on your website, even if youdon't have an LMS, that just
says like, here's the best wayto get started using our product

(36:58):
Right.
So those are kind of thequickest things that we did was
standardized playbooks right offthe bat.
It was like everyone needs tobe using the same thing.
The onboarding journey, right.
So that first touch point withyour customer of what do they
need to know right off the bat,that's a pretty quick and easy
one.
If you don't have access to theemail systems, work with your

(37:18):
marketing team.
Make friends, they will helpyou out as well.

I think making friends is one of the most
important skill sets of adigital person.

I think making friends is my number one piece
of advice, because you know, you, this, this role is so
cross-functional and this is whyI love this role, because you
know we are working with product, with procurement, with it,
with, with data, withengineering, with analytics,

(37:49):
right everyone, yeah everyone?
yeah, so I do think you know.
Luckily I'm a social butterfly,so that helps.
But I also just like to hear,like, what's going on?
What is your okrs?
I always compare notes when wego through planning, like what
are you working on?
Do you have feedback for me onmy roadmap?
You know what's coming down thepipe from product perspective.

(38:10):
Okay, great, did you put insome of our product requests?
Great, we're going to help youout by making sure that people
actually use the product thatyou're building through our
education or all of our.
You know all of our touchpoints, et cetera.
So, making friends, right,super important.
But yeah, so kind of wentthrough that prioritization
process.

(38:30):
Identifies those quick wins.
Uh, we, basically we learnedthat there was some pain points
in our onboarding process thatwe really just needed to teach,
you know, record a video of howto do this in our admin panel
and then put that on our website, and that actually saved our
CSMs, like a ton of time,absolutely they were like we
just needed this admin video.

(38:51):
Thank you so much.
So really quick.
You know things like that ourproduct launch comms.
That also is something that Ithink is a pretty easy one to
tackle.
First is that your CSM shouldnot be spending time updating
their customers on what theproduct roadmap is.
You know, unless they, unlessit's very strategic.

Yeah.

Right, but I think that you can really
automate that, especially if youhave air table doing a lot of
this you know, processing whereyou have your product roadmap
information there and then youcan, you know, build it off.

Yeah, like your customers shouldn't be getting
the only communication aboutproduct releases from your CSM.
They should be getting theinformation from the company and
from general distribution andthen if it applies to your
specific use case and your goalsand your outcomes, then
absolutely the CSM should driveit home.
You know Exactly, yeah, that'sawesome.

Yeah.
So then, yeah, put togetherkind of those big bets, those
things that we needed to, youknow, really put some muscle
around and more finances aroundas well.

So that was the.

LMS and standing up the education
program, the community andadvocacy program, kind of that
was where I made the calls LikeI would like community to come
over to scale.
For these reasons, I reallythink that, you know, community
is such, a such a fundamentalpart of scaling success.
So that's where that came in.
And then the AI kind of agentidea that was also part of my

(40:11):
big bets that we're stillfiguring out, but we do have
that chat bot, so that kind ofyou know created the, the, the
plan, and then we started to.
I think the next order ofbusiness is building an amazing
team.
So that was like you know theteam.
I walked in.

(40:32):
They're like who is this, whatare we doing?
And my most important missionwas to make sure that people are
, you know, doing the best workof their lives.
Really, that's what I love todo, and so I'm bringing people
together and building out like amission, our vision and our

(40:52):
values for scaled and show them,hey guys, like this is where
we're going.
We are on a rocket ship.
We are a startup within astartup where we can move very,
very fast.
I was really excited about thisrole because I was giving so
much greenfield.
Really, they were like Allison,you are here, tell us what you
need.
You have funding, you haveresources, you have.

(41:15):
I had a small team.
Now I have a larger, a littlebit larger team, and so it was
like go, just go, tell us whatyour plan is and go, and so that
was a huge blessing.
It was really fun to beoperating that way, and so I
needed my team to also be onboard.
That like guys, we are going tomove fast Are you ready Like
let's go, and so got the teamexcited.

(41:35):
You know the things that arereally important, I think when
you're building out a new teamand especially if you're coming
in as a, as a new leader, waskind of to set the vision,
values, document what the careermatrix looks like, right.
So for this program's role likehow are you going to, what are
the expectations and how are wegoing to achieve greatness, and
why do you want to be on thisteam?

Right.

I think my biggest accomplishment outside
of you know, like the businessmetrics at Airtable, was seeing
the EVS scores a year later.
After you know we I joined andthen we did it again and a year
later, evs being our employeevoice survey but the highest you
know change in the highestemployee voice of part of the

(42:15):
team, and so it was just reallyfun to see that, and the reason
why is because these people aremy team is amazing.
They're working so hard,they're working so hard, but I'm
not asking them to work hard.

They're doing it because they love it.
Yeah, exactly.

They love it.
They love what we're doing.
It's so innovative, it's fresh,it's new.
We're failing fast, we'relearning, we're putting out new
programs, and what's really fun,too, is just the celebration
that comes along with it,because everything that we do is
taking something off of theplate of the high touch team
where they're like, oh my gosh,thank you so much.
So they get a lot of that and alot of like standing ovations,

(42:51):
you know, through Slack, and soit's, it's been, it's been a
blast.
So we've been celebrating ourwins and we've been sharing what
we're.
You know what we're working on.
I'm a huge proponent of an openroadmap, right, right.
So we did like our virtual roadshow where I got everybody.
You know, we're all over thecountry, and so yeah we do a
virtual road show in slack,which is kind of fun.

(43:13):
We did that at slack too, whereyou kind of you do like a clip,
a video clip, two-minute clipof like hey, I'm allison, this
is what I'm working on, blahblah, and we posted in, you know
, the all CSG channel.

People go that's great.

Um, yeah, so we I share a roadmap we get.
We get feedback on what we'reworking on.
But we have just been.
When I say that we have beenlike pedal to the metal jamming.
The amount of programs that wehave built in the last year is
pretty astounding.
I mean, it just is because Ihave an amazing team, so it's
been a lot of fun.

That's so cool.
I mean, yeah, just to thinkthat you started a year and
change ago and the amount ofchange, that that's a ton of
work.
And what I was going to circleback on from a comment you made
is around establishing visionmission, all that kind of stuff.

(44:10):
It's like you know, that's thestuff that makes like the.
Those words, those individualwords, make me physically cringe
because I've been part of somany different like vision
mission exercises that have beencompletely misguided and
whatever.
But every time, you know, I'vepulled together teams around

(44:31):
this kind of stuff and alsogiven them ownership in part of
that mission and vision anddefining what that is and
defining what people not onlyyou know want to achieve, you
know as part of the team, butwhat they personally need out of
their employee experience.
It is so fundamentallygrounding that you remove this

(44:55):
layer of just kind of secondguessing or you remove this
layer of just questioning and itallows you to just like,
literally just pick a point andgo and execute on that stuff
with clarity.
So kudos to you for pullingthat together and the the
follow-on question I was goingto ask okay, I'm not going to.

(45:15):
I'm going to pivot to adifferent question.
I was going to ask what your,what your strategy around
executive alignment is, but I'mnot even going to ask because
you are like all over, likecommunicating and going.
You mentioned going to the CEOpresenting what you're going to
do, you know, and really settingthe tone for what the program

(45:36):
is, what the program can achieve, and doing that in a very open
manner.
And I think, ultimately, whenit comes to executive buy-in
manner, and I think ultimatelywhen it comes to executive
buy-in, that's the key.
Like you're presenting on, youknow what it is that you're here
to do, what your plans are, howthose will impact the business,
you know, and giving thoseprogress reports over time.

So yeah, I mean , I think if I could offer one
piece of advice for anybodythat's listening document your
work.
I am a huge fan of puttingtogether a walking deck.
I don't know if you've heardthat term but, yeah, so I think
it's a Salesforce term, but I'veadopted it and I love it.
So walking deck is where youdocument the scope of what your

(46:20):
team owns and what you'reworking on, and it is a living,
breathing document thatbasically shows you know the,
what you're currently working on, what your roadmap looks like
in the future and what you'vedone in the past.
And so that was one of theother first things that I did
was like okay, let's definescale.
I think I had a few kind ofdefining meetings when I joined.

(46:42):
That was like what is scale?
Why are we here, you know, andsometimes people hear scale.
They're like you know, am I,you know, is what I'm doing not
going to be as important as ahigh touch CSM?
No, the answer is absolutelynot.
Like we work together and youhave your superpower, which is
going in person with customersand driving value, and our
superpower is helping you bemore successful through all

(47:02):
these other programs.
Right, so, really defining whatthat looks like, but so
documenting my walking deck,it's something that I always
have ready to go.
I found it was reallyinteresting and you got to be
audible, ready at all times,understanding you know where
you're leading.
The indicators are kind of backto that leading indicator.
You know, I have a documentthat we talk about.
Every other team meeting wherewe go through for education,

(47:26):
OCSM, digital, CS, AI community,we basically show like here are
the numbers, here's where we'reat right now so we always have
that ready and then we do ourQBRs right.
So the QBR is a greatopportunity for me to show off
the great work that the team hasbeen doing.
But yes, so back to the walkingdeck.
I recently got a request on aMonday by our CFO to say hey, do

(47:49):
you think you could share whatyou and your team are doing on
at my all hands on Wednesday?
And I was like, and she waslike I'm so sorry.
Usually we give people twoweeks to prepare and I was like
don't need it, Like we're ready.
We're coming in.
That was a.
When you talk about executive,you know presentations.
That was the perfect opportunityfor me to go into that meeting

(48:12):
because she owns finance team,as you know, finance, legal, it
data and, like the procurementarm right and so yeah I was in
the process of procuring moresoftware and I had a lot of asks
of from the data engineeringside to make the software work,
and so it was actually myopportunity to connect the work

(48:33):
that they're doing to support meto the actual business.
And it was the first time thatthey were like oh my gosh, I get
it now, like I understand whyyou need the software and you
need our, our team to help, andI was like everything that you
guys are doing is actuallysupporting our customers in this
direct way, right.
And so they they really feltempowered by that.

(48:53):
They were like this is reallycool.
And so I really take thecross-functional executive
alignment meetings.
I try to do those with each coreteam.
You know if I, if I can, once aquarter right Product is
another one right when we needto be very tied attached to the
hip as well as marketing.
So the marketing team we have alot of cross-functional

(49:14):
collaboration there, cross-eventstrategy and lifecycle
marketing, and so, yeah, stayingup to date with you know what
we're doing, what they're doing,providing each other feedback.
And then I have that constantly.
We have our roadmap in Airtableof everything that we're
currently working on that peoplecan kind of go in and request
new things, new pieces ofcontent, new programs, but

(49:37):
that's also like a living,breathing kind of area where
they can go and check out.

That's amazing.
That's amazing.
Well, look, we are woefully outof time and I feel like, I feel
like we could like keep goingon this forever, because you
have so much you know wealth tobring, and I think I can
probably speak for your teamwhen I say that you know they're
lucky to have you as a leader,because you're obviously very

(50:01):
thoughtful and and forward withall of this stuff, which is
great, just rapid fire.
A couple of quick questions thatI always ask which is first off
, what's in your content, dietthat others can benefit from?

Other than this podcast.
I mean this podcast for sure.
Honestly, it's going to bepretty boring, but I'm a huge
fan of all in.
I love yeah, I love listeningevery week.
I I love the variousperspectives that they bring and
you know it's always as currentevents, but also the tech world
, how that's going to impact usand what we're working on, and

(50:37):
it's always so current andexactly what I'm thinking about
from like ai, and I love, I lovethat podcast.
Other than that I, I have afour-year.
Than that I, I have afour-year-old who I'm just in a
two-year-old, and so I'm a lotof a mom.

So you're watching Bluey.

There's well, yes, a little bit of Bluey but a
lot of Dr Becky good inside,because you know we're trying to
figure out big feelings and allthat stuff.
So, like being a mom is actuallymy number one, like that is the
, that is the job, that is thejob and this is actually like my
side.
You know fun job that you knowI go and work with adults and
then I have like my number onejob, which is at home, and so a

(51:15):
lot of my content is aroundparenting and figuring out you
know how to do this right, andthat's mostly what I think about
to be honest, that's great.

Yeah, no, I sympathize greatly.
Are there any shout outs thatyou want to give out too?

Oh, yes, thank you for asking.
Yeah, so I mean, I talked aboutSlack, my mentors there.
Kelly Bray I don't know ifyou've met her, she is a.
She is really a visionary whenit comes to digital CS and scale
.
I learned really everythingfrom Kelly and I am just so
grateful for being able to workwith her for four years.

(51:52):
Kelly Bray, christina Kosmowskishe also led CS at Slack and
brought me on to do the championprogram.
She kind of was the one thatenvisioned it.
And Allison McPhail she'samazing as well.
She leads scale now at OpenAI.
We're always like texting andsharing ideas and things that
we're doing, so thoserelationships have been

(52:15):
wonderful.
Scott Kubicki has been a hugementor and proponent of helping
me bring this multi-pillarprogram into the scaled under
one roof, so huge shout out tohim.
I'm sure I'm missing more, alot, but also I think, like the,
the CS meetup, um, is a greatone that the folks are bringing

(52:37):
to San Francisco.
I think there was one in NewYork last couple of weeks ago,
which, so just getting peopletogether.
Nick Mehta does an amazing job.
I love going to the Gainsightevents too, so the folks that
are getting us all in one room.
It always feels like a fun highschool reunion in some ways,
yeah, totally.
Just seeing everyone you've everworked with and if I had more

(53:00):
time, I would love to just spendmore time in the community, out
there and chatting with friends, because that's what it feels
like.
So thanks to all those, to youand everyone that's kind of
bringing this community together.

Yeah, for sure, that's awesome.
Well, where can people find youengage with you?
I mean LinkedIn, probably,right.

Yeah, yeah, I would say LinkedIn, definitely
that's kind of the main placeyou can find me.
Yeah, I get lots of questions.
I'm happy to answer.
I feel like, you know,hopefully today people walked
away with a little bit of atoolkit of you know how to get
started and it's it can be superdaunting when you're, you know,
just getting going, and I feltthat way a year ago too and I

(53:38):
was like, oh my gosh, there's somuch to do.
And then it's just like, brickby brick, little by little,
every single thing is a win andthen you fast forward a year and
then you have a real programthat works.
And a year goes by so fast,obviously in startup world.
So you know I think anyonethat's listening just start

(53:59):
small, take those quick winsright, start documenting you
know your your it budget and youknow and start to build those
relationships internally withall of the various
cross-functional teams.
Motivate your team, tell themit's going to be awesome,
they're going to have the rideof their life.
You know those types of things.
But, yeah, if people havequestions about specifics, feel

(54:20):
free to reach out.
Happy to answer.

Amazing, wise words from none other than
Alison Barrett.
Thank you so much for being onthe show.
It was a blast.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition

(54:53):
Wordmap and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, dylan
Young.
Lifetime Value aims to servethe content, video, audio
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.

(55:15):
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
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So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
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I'm Alex Trukovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.

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Airtable’s Journey to Scalable Customer Success with Alison Barrett | Episode 083

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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;}Airtable’s Journey to Scalable Customer Success with Alison Barrett | Episode 083