January 7, 2025 • 45 mins
To participate in Irwin's research project, go to https://repetitos.com/research. The first 20 respondents will get a free one-hour session with Irwin!
Irwin Hipsman, Founder at Repetitos, chats with Alex about the importance of data hygiene and how tracking customer movement impacts digital customer success initiatives. The two discuss the challenges of maintaining accurate account health scores, managing segmentation errors, and fostering alignment across teams to optimize customer experiences in an evolving digital landscape.
Chapters:
- 00:00 - Intro
- 04:11 - Digital CS maturity and predictive insights
- 05:11 - Account vs. individual health scores
- 06:12 - The basics of customer database health
- 08:03 - Challenges in tracking customer movement
- 09:26 - Irwin’s path from radio to digital
- 12:54 - Misaligned languages among teams
- 15:57 - What digital CS should strive for
- 21:47 - Prioritizing data cleanup
- 28:16 - Tracking champions who leave
- 32:12 - Keeping data hygiene ongoing
- 36:11 - Segmentation errors and blunders
Enjoy! I know I sure did…
Irwin's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irwinhipsman/
Repetitos: https://repetitos.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Have you ever seen an org spiff team members for like
data hygiene, like they givethem a gift card or something
like that?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No, probably the opposite, Like why are you
spending so much of your time?
You should be talking tocustomers, not cleaning up the
hygiene.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
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
(00:44):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Greetings, happy new year andwelcome back to the Digital CX
podcast.
I'm Alex Tergovich and I'm soglad you're back with me this
week and every week as we talkabout all things digital in CX.
(01:06):
Today is the first interviewshow of the new year, so welcome
to 2025.
I'm pleased today to present aconversation that I had all back
in November of last year withErwin Hipsman, who is a data guy
, and you know we talk a lotabout data as part of digital,
because it is a foundationalpillar that we've talked about
(01:28):
before and it is one of thosethings that can make or break a
digital program.
Well, Erwin has taken it uponhimself to build a business all
around helping people sort outtheir customer data, which is
super, super cool, and so inthis conversation he talks about
the company he's founded calledRepetitos, and this, you know,
(01:54):
not only the services he offers,but then offers some practical
advice about what you should doto help clean up your own
customer data sets and the kindsof things that you can put in
place to keep that data clean.
So I hope you enjoyed thisconversation today with Erwin
Hipsman, because I sure did.
And happy new year, Mr Erwin.
(02:16):
It's a pleasure to have you onthe show.
Thank you so much for takingthe time out of your day and
welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Super excited being here.
This is a great topic.
I love talking about customersuccess, digital customer
success, customer marketing,customer advocacy, all those
things.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, for sure I actually.
Maybe you can remind me.
I don't remember how weoriginally connected, but as
soon as we did connect, I waselated, because one of the
things that we all talk about interms of CS, and digital CS
specifically, is data and datacleanliness.
And that's your bread andbutter, that's like what you do,
(02:51):
that is your thing, and so I'vebeen excited about this
particular episode for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, it's not the most glamorous work.
And the background as to why Istarted the company is called
Repetitos.
I'll explain why a little bitlater.
But the background why Istarted the company's called
Repetitos I'll explain why alittle bit later.
But the background why Istarted this is I started.
I've been in sales, I've beenin customer success and customer
marketing, so a littletrilingual and at the four
customer marketing practice Istarted at various B2B SaaS
(03:18):
companies.
The one thing they all had incommon was the quality of the
customer contact database wasokay at best.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And then when I left Forrester, I decided I'm not
going to go back for full-timework.
But what was the one thing that?
What could I add that nobodyelse is doing?
Because I could hang my shingleout there so I can do
everything for you from acustomer advocacy perspective
run your cab, do your casestudies but what's the one thing
that nobody does, which is thedata health.
(03:48):
I said let me start a practicethat focuses on the customer
contact database, health andeverybody I talk to and the data
.
I see everyone says that thesecond biggest challenge in
customer marketing, when youwant to communicate with
customers, is the health.
First is resources.
You've got your maturity index.
Challenge in customer marketing, when you want to communicate
with customers to health Firstis resources.
You've got your maturity index.
(04:08):
Is that in line with whatyou're seeing?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I'll put it a slightlydifferent way in that I think
what a lot of CS orgs that I'mseeing kind of go through this
digital CS maturity assessmentthat I've put up a lot of.
What they're after ispredictive analytics versus just
reactive stuff.
(04:31):
I mean it's relatively easy to,you know, be reactive to certain
things that have happened.
But I think the real trick isbeing predictive around things
and that's where the clean datacomes in.
And I think, a health score.
You know health scores are atricky subject because we've all
built these rules-basedscorecards and we all know the
(04:52):
intricacies of buildingrules-based scorecards and how
it takes.
A lot of times folks just goset it and forget it.
They build the scorecard, it'sthere.
They went through a lot to doit, but then they don't go back
and test the score against theirchurned accounts, for instance,
or accounts that have donereally well.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
The biggest concern I have with health scores is that
they're all account-basedhealth.
Very few people do theindividual health score Right.
Yeah, a huge leap to make one,but if you think of accounts as
a series of individual people,that one piece of data doesn't
really speak to the larger group, particularly your admins, your
(05:33):
influencers, your economicbuyers.
Those people's health score isreally important and I'd love to
see folks start thinking aboutthe health score of individuals,
not just accounts.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
For sure, and kudos to those of you out there who
are doing separate NPS scores,for instance for your executives
versus your users, because alot of times those aren't
aligned.
But it goes into that kind oflevel of maturity, which is to
say, are your executivesgenerally aligned and are they
(06:04):
prepped for the renewal?
Is that going to be a smoothtransition?
Versus your users, are theyactively using the thing?
And the two correlate for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And I think of the predictive as sort of level
three customer database.
Health Level one would be nooffense, just the freaking
basics.
Do we have the right title forthe person?
Because when we first foundthem three years ago they were
director, now they're VP.
And then how do you dosegmentation if you have the
(06:33):
wrong title?
Second is their location.
Over the past few years peoplemoved everywhere.
You've got field marketing whowould love to know where people
are located.
You've got legal who wants tomake sure you're being compliant
.
And the third is do they stilleven work for the company that
you think they work for?
And that's the name Repetitos.
It's all about, once you get itclean, all this, people leave
all the time, and how do younurture those leads as they move
(06:57):
away from one company and moveto another company?
So that's the foundation is thebasics to another company.
So that's the foundation, isthe basics.
The second level is what datalike, and this never happens.
If, let's say, the demand genor the CRM team came to you and
said, hey, what fields could weput in there to make your life
easier?
Never had that question.
I've never had a question froman executive saying what's the
(07:19):
health of our database either.
But we can talk about that in asecond.
But if and but.
If they did, I would say I comeup with a list of five or six,
but the two I would work onwould be I need a feel for
people's LinkedIn profile so Ican more easily track them as
they move, change their titles.
Second is I want to know whenwe did the last update of their
title.
Yeah, because that would sayhere are some people we haven't
(07:42):
updated their title in threeyears.
Maybe it's time to look.
And everyone says that, oh,it's the CSMs who keep the data
up to date.
And they can't at that scale.
Maybe that top contact they cankeep up to date, but all the
users they don't have the timeto keep them up to date.
So people think the CSMs,that's their job and it's not.
It's not.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And people work in digital CSM, because there's
often not a CSM yeah exactly.
I mean, look, there's a time anda place for humans to do a gut
check on things, For your CSMsto maybe do a gut check on a
report that comes out every oncein a while that says, hey, we
have these people listed aschampion.
Does that ring true with whatyou think?
Totally Like a validationexercise?
(08:26):
Absolutely.
But like keeping contact listsup to date is nasty and to your
point, especially in digital,where you may have thousands of
accounts that you've got totrack and it's so interesting
because LinkedIn is where allthat data lives and I think the
vast majority of organizationsaren't really leveraging that as
(08:47):
well as they could be.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
There's two ways to do it.
I've done this a lot over theyears.
Okay, I'll pick the main pointof contact.
It all comes in our 2,000accounts and every quarter I do
500 of them.
Just spend the day on LinkedIndouble checking making sure
we're right.
You'd be amazed what you findout Now.
That doesn't scale well, andthere's technology out there
that helps a little bit, but thetechnology isn't perfect.
(09:09):
Finish two engagements withclients one with 900 advocates,
one with 30,000 contacts and youcan't do it all with technology
.
They'll get you 80% of the waythere, but there's 20% that
you've got to do.
That it's still the hard workof trying to find them and,
obviously, update the data.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
The old Pareto principle at work.
Hey look, we jumped right in,which is awesome.
I definitely want to dig in ona lot of this stuff, but I do
want to go back to you for justa second and I want to
understand a little bit aboutwho you are, what got you to
where you are today, what yourjourney was.
But really primarily myinterest is what was it like
(09:49):
working in community televisionin the nineties?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
All right, Actually my career started in radio.
So that's.
This is why I love podcasting.
I, frankly, go to bed at nightand listen to podcasts because
they tend to put me to sleep,but that's a separate issue.
But I started my career inradio and public radio in a
small town in Yellow Springs,ohio for those people who know
it, I don't know what I'mtalking about and then did work
in video documentary and thengot involved in video
(10:15):
conferencing.
So the early days of videoconferencing, where you needed
pretty heavy equipment to domulti-point video conferencing,
satellite conferencing I got mymaster's through online learning
.
I was one of the first peoplein the country to get a master's
degree through online throughGeorge Washington University.
And then at that point Ipivoted and started working for
B2B SaaS companies and that'swhere I had roles in sales early
(10:40):
on.
Customer success has thatevolved?
Customer marketing has thatevolved?
Yeah, and in the middle of thatI ran two public access cable
TV stations in Boston.
So I started up SomervilleMassachusetts and Cambridge
Massachusetts public access TVstation.
So basically, the cable companygave us a boatload of money as
part of the franchise fee 3% ofrevenues and we built TV studios
(11:05):
and to this day, both of thoseorganizations exist and there
are many public access cable TVstations around the country.
We trained folks on how tocreate video, whatever it might
be.
I have a studio for liveproduction and we also had
channels that we had to fill up.
So the ones I worked at werenonprofits.
So I was also the executivedirector of a non-profit
(11:27):
organization, with all of itspros and cons and challenges,
but the great thing was watchingthese people who have something
to say.
Here are the tools, here's thetraining.
First amendment to the extremeI can tell stories.
I mean we had police protectiona few times.
We did live shows because thereare people not happy with what
(11:47):
we're doing, particularlyelected officials.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
We're not happy.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And the First Amendment.
It's a beautiful thing whenused properly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
That's fascinating to me, especially in that market
in the Northeast, because it'sjust an amazing melting pot of
different cultures and differentpeople and all that kind of
stuff.
So you've had all theseexperiences in marketing and
sales and post-sale or customersuccess and whatnot.
(12:17):
I guess because of that therearen't a lot of people who have
that kind of trifecta and I callit a trifecta because those
things ideally should be workingin tandem or in alignment with
the customer journey but we getit wrong, like so many different
, so many times.
There a common thread that youoften pull on when you're maybe
(12:48):
advising some of your clients orwhen you're just observing
organizations and how theyfunction.
Is there a common thread thatyou recommend they pull on?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, I mean I think it's language in some ways, that
people don't understand thelanguage of each other.
I mean, we all speak English,but you've got different, very
heavy accents and things getlost in translation.
I mean, sales talks onelanguage and Customer success
talks another and customermarketing talks another, and you
(13:16):
have to know when to have theseconversations.
So the last week of the quarteris probably not a good time to
talk to sales people about yourgreat idea, and so it's
understanding the ebbs and flowsof their year.
Csms classic CSMs really focusaround the QBR.
Salespeople focus aroundclosing.
(13:37):
Customer marketing doesn't havethose sort of guideposts like
they do, and so in customermarketing, you sort of need to
understand what their guidepostsare, what an individual
salesperson, csm, is able to doon their own without having to
ask a lot of permission and whatare you asking?
That you know what.
They're not going to do thisbecause their boss has to tell
(13:59):
them, and you've got to convincetheir boss that we need
everyone's LinkedIn profile andhere's why we need it.
If you just ask them, they'renever going to do it for you.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, yeah, so spot on that language and
communication style is sodifferent between those orgs.
One of the things that I preachquite a bit for folks that I'm
working with is this notion ofin order to really work
cross-functionally effectively,you need to know what other
(14:30):
organizations are drivingtowards, and it can be as simple
as spending a little bit oftime with an executive on a
regular basis in that other orgto really understand what their
goals are, what their KPIs are,what are they driving towards,
and then putting in the effortto really examine how the things
that you're doing within yourown function potentially impact
(14:53):
those KPIs that those otherleaders are working towards,
because, ultimately, everybodyhas their thing and it can be
very easy to just wrap your armsaround your thing and forget
about everybody else, but ifyou're really truly trying to
build something cross-functionalwhich, let's be honest, in
digital, we have to operatecross-functionally you got to
(15:14):
know what the drivers are on theother sides so that you can
then demonstrate how this iswhat you're going to see out of
it.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and even sitting like strongly.
It's just people sitting onQBRs, people sitting on a sales
call.
I mean not with tools like Gong, you don't have to sit on it,
you can just listen to the salescall and understand what's it
like being in the shoes of asalesperson with a customer in
early stage and late stage.
If you're doing user groups, Imean to me that's when I think
of digital customer success, mytendency is like, well, now
(15:44):
there's no human involvedanymore with those customers
that get the digital customersuccess that are assigned to
that.
But what are those human thingsyou can start doing?
You can start doing user groupsin your key cities.
So the interaction is notpurely digital, there's that
human interaction.
But what are those human thingsyou can start doing?
You can start?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
doing user groups in your key cities.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, so the interaction is not purely
digital.
There's that human interaction.
You get to see each other andnot just send things all day to
people and hope the open rateexceeds 30%.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, look, ultimatelydigital is a digital CS as a
whole.
A lot of people like to put itinto this box.
That's like, okay, yeah, thisis just a tech touch customer
and this is like we're justgoing to send emails to these
folks and be done with it.
But ultimately, if you're ofthat mindset, you're missing the
primary point, which is thatyour digital CS function should
(16:31):
enable your humans to beeffective.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
But enable your humans to be effective and you
know whether it's yeah, goodquestion for you as core
organizations start pivoting todigital customer success.
I think that there's one of tworeasons why.
One is well, it's cheaper andwe can reduce headcount.
Second is oh, we've got thesetools.
Now they're these digital tools.
(16:54):
Yes, we're going to reapportionpeople.
We're not going to lowerheadcount, but we're going to
put two of those CSMs intocustomer marketing.
We're going to put three ofthem into digital customer
success.
So we're not lowering our costs, we're just moving things
around.
What's your take as to whyorganizations pivot to digital
success?
Is it, oh, we can save moneyand just use all these tools?
(17:15):
Or is it we could just be withthe same money?
We can be that much moreimpactful.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I mean you hope the latter but I wonder what's the
real take?
You do hope the latter.
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(17:42):
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(18:05):
Now back to the show.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's nosecret right that the state of,
let's just say, the SaaSindustry has changed
dramatically over the years andwhere, in the past, we've thrown
headcount at CS and those kindsof things.
That isn't the reality that welive in anymore.
I'm not a hundred percentconvinced that it's entirely
(18:30):
budget, that the reason forswitching to digital is entirely
budget driven, although,although that is undeniably a
massive part of it, I do thinkthere's a healthy element of
look, we want to leverage AI, wewant to leverage these tools.
It's become incredibly easy forpractically anyone to go and
integrate tools and to get twotools talking to each other and
(18:53):
to build some basic automations,and to get two tools talking to
each other and to build somebasic automations.
I mean, the accessibility ofthis stuff, I think, has also
been a massive driver toadopting digital, just because
it's way easier these days thanit has been in the past.
The really mature organizations,I think, are coming at it from
a different lens.
They're looking at it from acustomer experience lens and
(19:14):
they're also looking at it froma customer experience lens and
they're also looking at it froman employee experience lens,
because your customer experience.
I mean it goes without saying,right, and in fact there's a lot
of, there's a lot of surveysout there I think Gartner and
Forrester, maybe one of the twowhere they've said that most,
the majority of customersactually prefer a digital
(19:37):
engagement when they go and whenthey need help with something,
and I get it.
I'm right there.
I'm about as antisocial as itgets sometimes.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And so.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I would prefer an AI chatbot over talking to a human
not any day, so I think thatgoes without saying.
But the employee experience ofit is often kind of overlooked a
little bit because, hey look,you've got these CSMs that are
being asked to do quote, unquotemore with less.
What the hell does that reallymean?
(20:11):
But, fundamentally speaking,these folks are doing things
that, honestly, are mind-numbing, overly repetitious and are
things that could either beautomated or worked on in some
other way, and specificallyaround AI assistance and those
(20:34):
kinds of things, I think that'sall coming together to to help a
CSM specifically be asefficient as possible without
having to, like rip their hairout, spending four hours making
a QBR deck and all that kind ofstuff.
I think that's where the goldin digital really lies is making
your team as efficient aspossible.
(20:54):
That was a stupid long answer toan easy question.
But yeah, I mean what'spivoting a little bit to the
data element of things, becausethat's your bread and butter and
that's what you do.
To do any of this stuff, you'regoing to need the data to
support that stuff, and data canmean any number of things.
But I'm curious, as part ofwhat you do with your clients.
(21:18):
You're going in and you'redoing essentially data hygiene
exercises and you're doing someof the work for them on behalf
of the customer, but then you'realso likely advising your
customers on how to keep up thehygiene and those kinds of
things.
Like if you go in and it's justdata chaos and you need to
(21:40):
start advising them on where tostart, where to look first.
What are you advising yourclients on?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, so the first thing I'll do with a customer, I
mean I'll do a healthassessment.
This is what you do.
Well, this is what you don't do.
Well, this is what you can fixon your own.
This is what I can fix for you.
Well, this is what you don't do.
Well, this is what you can fixon your own, this is what I can
fix for you.
And then, pretty quickly, weget into okay, how are you going
to clean up our database?
So I've got 10,000 customers.
We need that cleaned up.
So I need to see the database.
(22:09):
Some clients that I can't workwith, like government, for
example, or even cybersecurity,they're not going to give their
account list to me.
I say, well, here's how you cando it yourself, but it's going
to be.
You're gonna have to hiresomebody to, or get some summer
intern or the kid of the CEO tocome in here and spend a lot of
time.
And I would do some quicksegmentation.
You probably have fivedifferent levels of contacts
(22:31):
your sort of main point ofcontact.
Your admin heavy user, advocatemain point of contact.
Your admin heavy user advocate.
Your regular user.
Your irregular user.
Your non-users.
Take the top two to reallyreally focus on.
So you may have 10,000 names,but there's only like two or
3,000 you really care about andgo in there and clean up
(22:51):
yourself If you can't give methe list.
But if you can give me the list,then the first thing I do is
just eyeball and say, here'swhat you're doing poorly.
I mean, look at how many peoplehave their first name and last
name reversed.
This is something to clean upthat you can do without me.
But you know the math.
I use costs about $4 a contactto clean, to go into LinkedIn.
You know, cut and paste, update, put into a spreadsheet, have
(23:14):
that someone update it.
If you use technology, it'sabout 40 cents a person to do
that.
And so generally what I found isI can generally find between 80
to 90% of the people thatthey'll give me that with the
data processes I work with andthey're all SOC 2 compliant.
And then there's a smallpercentage that part of my job
is to go in there and find thosepeople.
(23:35):
I could do it.
I'm a little expensive, knowthat, but I could do it really
fast.
Yeah, and there are a lot ofsubtleties that you just can't
hire, like somebody on on fiverrand say they're going to
linkedin to do this for me,because they're going to find
half the people that I find, butthere's gonna be half the group
to miss.
And then I do an analysis.
I go, now that I've looked atyour database, now that I see
(23:56):
you know what, to me, the threemost important pieces of data we
talked about data, but in order, are the employment status of
the person, so if they're nolonger at the company, that is
really important, particularlyif they're a main point of
contact, because when I was insales, the number one reason why
the accounts renewed is we lostour champion.
You want to find that out sixmonths in advance, not six weeks
(24:17):
in advance.
Second is the second mostimportant is location, because
I'm sorry, is the title, becauseif you think about cross-sell,
if somebody was a manager nowthey're a VP you probably don't
cross-sell to managers, but youprobably do cross-sell to VPs.
And the third is location,which is important, but in the
scheme of things, the least ofthe three.
And the third is location,which is important, but in the
(24:38):
scheme of things, at least tothe three.
And so then I would be able tosay, okay, for your top tier of
accounts, those main point ofcontacts and admins, you've got
20% of your people who are nolonger at the company.
We've got to figure out a wayto keep better track of folks.
Or your admins.
You're really good on theirtitle, but you don't know where
the hell they live.
So, as you want to do usergroups, you don't even know
(24:58):
where to invite them.
So that's the analysis that youdo.
So it's more than just give meyour list, I'll give it back to
you.
I mean, there are companiesthat will do that for you.
But let's dig into it deeperand say, okay, moving forward,
here are the things that youneed to focus on.
And now you can go to the CSMsand say we've done the analysis.
This is what's hurting us.
My math says that around 3% to5% of ACV is at risk due to bad
(25:22):
data, based upon the companiesI've worked with and scenarios
I've worked out.
Well, you're never going to getdown to zero.
But if you could clean up themain point of contacts and the
admins and maybe their title andwhere they're working, you're
going to reduce that projectedeconomic impact to 1% and you're
never going to get down to zero.
I mean, think about retailstores.
They never get theft down tozero, but they do things to get
(25:45):
it down to an acceptable level.
And that's what it's all aboutis how much risk is a company
willing to take with their data?
And if I were a CEO of a companyand I were to ask the head of
CES or my head of customermarketing or demand gen, hey,
how's the health of our database?
I would not be able to get ananswer.
They'd say, oh, it's prettygood.
If I was CEO, I'd go what doyou mean it's pretty good?
Yeah, well, we don't reallyhave any numbers, but we think
(26:06):
it's sort of okay.
It's like wait a second.
These are our customers.
That an acceptable answer.
So one of the things I want todo with any of my customers at
the end of this is so they canhave a number and they can say
our data is 92% correct andthat's an risk we're willing to
(26:26):
take, but that's not too bad.
And then, as we move forward,maybe we can get up to 95%.
Certainly, for the main pointof contact you want that at 99%,
your admin's 95%, your activeuser's 88% on.
So where do we want to reallyzero in on in order to keep that
database so it doesn't continueto decay 2% every month?
It only decays 0.2% every month, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, it's so critical and, to your point,
this isn't a one and done thingright, it's an amoebic thing.
It changes all the time.
One of the things that I'm keento dig in, maybe a little bit
deeper on, is an example thatyou pointed out, which is the
classic one of hey, you'rechampion left.
(27:07):
I think by any measure, thatshould send alarm bells ringing
throughout your organizationyour health scores should tank,
your CSM should be alerted, youraccount team should be alerted.
The renewal, like everybodyshould know.
Okay, champion left.
What's the playbook that wefollow, all of that kind of
(27:28):
stuff, but you got to know firstthat your champion left, and
that's probably the number onething that we just miss until we
actually talk to the customeror until we actually have the
next conversation with thecustomer and let's hope it's not
at renewal time that you findthis stuff out right.
So I think, to your point,there's any number of tools out
(27:52):
there that can help you to tryto identify that.
But, in your experience, whatkind of what's the mix of action
that you would want to take ona regular basis to get ahead of
that information?
Is it digital, something likeChampify?
Is it looking at it on aregular basis via your CSMs.
(28:13):
Is it a little bit of both?
What's your take on those?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I think there's a combination of manual and
technology.
So manual are things likebounce backs, things like an
account manager or CSM, knowingthat the person has left and
checking it off and no longer atcompany.
The other really tricky part isthose champions who are still
at the company.
They haven't left the companybut they no longer are involved
(28:36):
in your product.
So and that could take a longtime to figure that out They'll
tell you eventually, but thatcould take a while to do that.
The playbook is one we need tofind a replacement for that
person that's on the accountteam, this customer success team
, on the customer marketing team, that person, if they've left
(28:57):
and have landed at a new company, the people who left and
haven't landed I would arguethat those people should be
nurtured in a very different way.
But if they've left and landeda new company, that becomes a
marketing qualified lead at thatpoint.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
That was the project.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
The last project I did at Forrester before I left
was setting up a repeat sales byformer customer contact.
We found that we were able tofind about 200, about half of
the people manually bounce backswhatever.
About half of the people haveleft their company in the past,
let's say, 90 days throughtechnology.
So it was a combination andwhat happens?
(29:31):
About half of those leads gotaccepted by sales.
The person went to work forgovernment we don't sell to
government, so wasn't acceptedlead and then we were able to
get of the ones that wereaccepted within the first 90
days of the project.
There was a 10 close rate.
So typically in in regularmarketing qualified leads you
see about a two percent.
A close one rate here was 10.
(29:54):
So yeah what most companies dotoday is they go, well, that
person will.
Just when they're ready to buy,they'll call us.
You spend all this timeprospecting to people who are
never going to buy.
And there's a warm prospectwho've gone to an ideal customer
profile and you say we're goingto wait.
Well, because that salespersonsays that person's not in my
patch anymore.
(30:14):
I sell, I support high tech,and they went to insurance, so I
don't sell to insurance, so I'mnot going to follow up with the
person and that lead just goesaway.
Why are companies not nurturingthose warm leads, incentivizing
them?
There are a lot of things youcan do and not just put them in
the prospect queue because theyknow you, and it's a different
(30:35):
sort of nurture flow that youwould have with those warm leads
that landed at an idealcustomer profile.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, I mean to your point.
If you have a champion thatleft to another company that's
within your ICP and you knowabout it, send them some
congratulatory cookies.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, depending on what your product is like.
At Forrester our product wascontent we could give people
yeah, hey, here's your first 90days on your new job.
Yeah, documentation.
If you're a sales force, youcan give.
Hey, here's a ticket toDreamforce.
There are things that you haveand not just like a 10% discount
on your next sale.
Things you have that are coreto your organization.
Well, we have a community.
We normally kick people offwhen they leave, but you know
(31:15):
you can stay the community, alot of things you can do to keep
those people.
So when they are ready to buythey think of you first, they
don't start looking at all theother competitors.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, exactly that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And the advantage of what I do is that you mentioned
there are a bunch of companiesout there that will clean up
databases, track them, but theyall want the success.
So they all want one-year,two-year, multi-year contracts.
Yes, what I do is the dataprocess I work with.
Is I can do a one-off, so for Iuse their 40 cents, a name
whatever it is a name we canclean it up once without the
(31:47):
company having to purchase alicense, go through procurement,
legal I mean.
I can get things done in weekswhere it'll take six months to
bring software into the companyand then you can try and then,
if you like it, now you'vealready have your building case,
your business case, and thenyou can say now we want to
purchase this product, whetherit's from the company I work
with or another one to help uson throughout the year.
(32:09):
But in a sense, I'm your pilot.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Well, and that brings me tokind of my next question, which
is look, you've gone through aninitial round of data cleanup,
you've gotten yourself to apretty decent point, but, as we
talked about earlier, the clockstarts ticking, that data starts
changing in drips and drabshere and there.
What kind of hygiene practicesdo you recommend your customers
(32:32):
engage in?
I mean, there's the obviousstuff of hey, look, you
mentioned it earlier when a CSMnotices their champions leaving,
like mark that contact as left.
But what are some maybe not soobvious things that you might
recommend a customer do?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Some of it's eyeballing.
The one thing and this is all alittle silly, but the one thing
that drives me crazy is you'lllook at a customer contact list
let's say it's 2,000 names andyou'll find that 10% of them,
the first initial, their firstname, is not capitalized.
It's like, guys, come on, weshould be able to fix that on
our own and just do that right.
(33:06):
So I think there's some ongoingbasic once a quarter CSM.
Go through your list, justeyeball it, clean it up, because
we've done the hard work andwe'll continue to do the hard
work.
And then one thing thatsurprised me.
I thought my clients would wantokay, erwin, thanks, we're done
, we're going to keep it cleanfrom here.
They basically want me to goback once a quarter, go back
(33:27):
through their database and justit'll be a lot easier the second
time and obviously a lotcheaper.
But once a quarter I prefer touse somebody, a service, to keep
an eye on it, because noteveryone's going to keep it all
updated and there's some hardstuff of that, like location or
title, that you can't ask anyoneto keep track of.
That.
And that's where technologycomes in.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, that's huge.
That's huge.
How do you?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
deal with dupes.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Delete them, I guess.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Tricky part is which one to delete.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, exactly Like cause I can.
So in my current organizationwe just went through a pretty
massive Gainsight migrationwhere we basically migrated one
instance into another existinginstance and just the amount of
duplication that's inherent inwhenever you do that kind of
(34:21):
stuff is just massive, justmassive.
And it can be like a supertricky thing to figure out which
one to merge into which otherone or which one to delete and
all that kind of stuff and andI'm sure that's something that
you face all the time andultimately it's probably not
even your call, it's your callto like highlight that's more
the the demand gen.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
When you think about you know well, when you talk to
companies they'll say that'severyone's responsibility is to
clean up the database.
Well, whenever you heareverybody means nobody.
But the part of theresponsibility that, like the
demand gen team owns is theduplicates.
I would say the accuracy of thedata itself, like their title
location.
I don't think that's a demandgen responsibility because
(35:03):
they're not close enough to theclient to do that.
That's what falls upon customersuccess, cs, ops, customer
marketing, if there's that groupin the organization.
So everyone should know theirlane, what they're responsible
for cleaning up the database.
But the CRM team, I think, isresponsible for the database.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Have you ever seen an org, spf, team members for data
hygiene If they see one persondoing a huge amount of it, like
they give them a gift card orsomething like that?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
no, probably the opposite.
Like where are you spending somuch of your time?
You should be talking tocustomers, not cleaning up the
hygiene.
I would argue against againstthat okay I think there's now
with technology.
I think, like I said at thebeginning, if you could do the
hard work, like customermarketing or CS ops whoever's
best positioned to do this we'vejust done the hard work.
(35:53):
We've hired this guy, erwin, wespent the money, we've got it
clean.
It's at 92%.
Now we need you to do thislittle part, like, okay, they
stepped up as opposed to ourdata is no good Guys, you've got
to clean up.
So if you do, 90% of peoplethey'll say, oh, we'll take care
of the 10%.
We get it.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, that's cool.
I love it.
One of the things that I liketo ask quite frequently is just
around any huge blunders ormissteps that you've seen,
either in action with yourcustomers, or ones that you've
been part of yourself, whereyou've learned something.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
You know, I want to say, yeah, it's like it's a
tricky one.
So we all believe incollaboration and I collaborated
hugely with the digitalcustomer success team and it's
like, okay, we don't need youanymore Because you basically
told us everything you do, andso that was a case where I
probably should not havecollaborated so much, because I
(36:54):
probably still would have had myjob.
On the other hand, it gave methis opportunity to both babysit
my granddaughter, nine to five,for the next three months, and
it also gave me the opportunityto start my own company.
So maybe it was a blessing indisguise, I think from a blunder
perspective.
It seems like everyone thinkseveryone else is doing that part
(37:16):
of it.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Getting back to that, if everyone does it, nobody
does it, and then you startgetting embarrassing because you
start sending the wrong type ofemail to the wrong type of
person.
Right, it gets into likesegmentation.
You can't do that unless thingsare really up to date and
people understand the types andthe personas.
Yeah, so I think it's themistakes that get made.
(37:38):
It's really the plunder.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
And by sending the CEO of a big company your
product update.
They don't really care aboutthat.
Yeah, so it's poor segmentation.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I think, yeah, it makes sense.
One of the things I'm seeingmore and more of are and what
you just said reminded me ofthis are SaaS platforms that are
asking their users in-app toself-identify what role they
play within an organization,because it's one thing to go
(38:09):
grab titles from LinkedIn orwhatever, but they may or may
not have a direct correlationwith what an actual person does
within the platform.
So I love it when I go into aplatform and they ask me who I
am and what I do, because I knowwhat they're after is trying to
target me with very specificinformation that I may need in a
(38:29):
timely manner based on my role.
And the thing is like there arecertain platforms that do that
really well and they ask me andthen, oh lo and behold, I start
getting emails that are kind ofcrafted towards me and then
there are others who are askingit, but then don't do anything
with that.
Well, that's a separate issue.
That's a separate issue.
That's a separate issue.
But have you seen like othercool things where there's like
(38:51):
digital motions supported bysome of the data?
In that way?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
But it's just confluence of sort of a title
and role.
Because somebody, for example,from a health score perspective,
you might think, oh well,they're doing poorly because
they don't log in as much assomebody else does, whereas no,
they're super happy, but theyonly need to log in once a month
because that's the way they useyour product.
Or a C-level person, you mightthink they're the main point of
(39:18):
contact, but they're really not.
Who's truly that main point ofcontact?
when you've got some sort ofissue.
So to me it's pulling togethera few different pieces of data
title, role, utilization of theplatform, other sorts of
activity, email open rates,webinar registration rates.
So you begin to get that fullpicture of the customer.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, it's super smart.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
It's hard.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
It's super hard, yeah , and it's different for every
industry, right, which adds alayer of complexity because you
can't necessarily take one onetheory and apply it to the other
.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
so yeah, yeah, banking finance is very
different than technology.
Oh, yeah, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
As we kind of start to round down this combo, which
I've super enjoyed and it Ithink it's going to bring a lot
of value to the audience, I'mcurious what are what?
What do you consume from acontent perspective to keep
yourself up to date?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, at the beginning I talked about how I'm
a radio guy, so I'm a bigpodcast listener.
I love Derek Thomas.
Derek Thompson does plainEnglish.
He writes for the Atlantic.
Very eclectic but super wellproduced.
Big fan of Scott Galloway's andwhat he talks about vis-a-vis
even though I have allgranddaughters and daughters and
granddaughters just what'shappening to men out there, I
(40:30):
mean as a guy, it's like really,really bothersome and he talks
about that a lot and I reallyappreciate him raising this
issue.
Oh, and one thing I stronglysuggest to my customer marketing
friends because that's my worldand I would suggest our CS
friends as well as I listen toRevOps and MarketingOps podcasts
.
Podcasts yeah, Because I want tounderstand their language.
(40:53):
I'm not a demand gen guy, I'mnot a MarketingOps guy.
I've worked with them but Iwant to know like and they have
the same issues that we havewhen should MarketingOps live?
Should live in sales?
Should live in with CS?
How do we automate it?
Ai, all these little sub-nicheswith the organization have the
exact same conversations andit's really it's interesting to
hear what's on the mind ofmarketing ops versus RedVal ops
(41:14):
versus CS ops.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
So those are the things.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
I tend to listen to.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, that's great.
I love that.
Yeah, I've started to like notlisten to as many CS podcasts,
just because like like I'm here,I get it.
Let's start to diversify alittle bit.
That's super smart.
Are there any kudos that youwant to give to anyone while
you're here?
Either people that are doinggreat stuff in digital or
(41:37):
otherwise data related or reallyanything.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
No, I heard that when I was listening to the cat
webinar with the podcast I don'tsay webinar with cat and so I
heard that question.
Oh, I got to be prepared.
So I thought about two things.
One is there are people thatwe've worked for that we will
never work for again.
They can call us up and sayErwin, come work for me.
What did we pay you before?
50% more.
Sorry, I'm going to pass.
There are also people who I'veworked for in my life who, if
(42:05):
they called me tomorrow and said, erwin, I can't tell you what
the job is, you've got to startMonday.
I can't tell you the salary,I'd say I'm in.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Let's go.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
And those are the people I love, and unfortunately
they're more of the formerpeople you'll never work for
again.
Yes, the people that you wouldyou drop everything because you
trust them.
They trust you and you go workfor them.
But the kudos I want to giveare really to my two daughters.
I never tell them enough howproud I am of them, but my
parents are war refugees and I'mthe first American born in my
(42:37):
family.
One of my daughters is theAssistant Attorney General for
the state of Wisconsin.
The other one is a VP ofCustomer Experience sort of the
family business at a largeinternational bank.
Wow, those are people I give mykudos to.
I'm so freaking proud of them.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Because they won't listen to the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Kudos to you.
You've raised some incrediblehuman beings, so there you go.
Lastly, where can people findyou, engage with you, ask you
about their data problems andall that kind of fun stuff?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
yeah, I'm a solopreneur, so I'm not the
strongest on marketing becausethat's that's a full-time job.
Yes, uh, so I do everything onlinkedin.
So the company's name isrepetitos, repeat sales by
former customer contacts.
On my profile, er Erwin Hipsmanis where you find me.
A lot of my content is there.
The website repetitoscom has alot of content.
(43:32):
It really explains what thecompany does.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Amazing, amazing.
Well, I am so thankful that youjoined us today, shared your
insights.
I think it'll be really usefulfor the audience and, yeah,
looking forward to getting thisone live.
But Erwin really appreciate thetime.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, matt, appreciateit.
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
(43:56):
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 word
map 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
(44:18):
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.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
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So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
(44:40):
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Trikovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
Have you ever seen an org spiff team members for like
data hygiene, like they givethem a gift card or something
like that?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No, probably the opposite, Like why are you
spending so much of your time?
You should be talking tocustomers, not cleaning up the
hygiene.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
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
(00:44):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Greetings, happy new year andwelcome back to the Digital CX
podcast.
I'm Alex Tergovich and I'm soglad you're back with me this
week and every week as we talkabout all things digital in CX.
(01:06):
Today is the first interviewshow of the new year, so welcome
to 2025.
I'm pleased today to present aconversation that I had all back
in November of last year withErwin Hipsman, who is a data guy
, and you know we talk a lotabout data as part of digital,
because it is a foundationalpillar that we've talked about
(01:28):
before and it is one of thosethings that can make or break a
digital program.
Well, Erwin has taken it uponhimself to build a business all
around helping people sort outtheir customer data, which is
super, super cool, and so inthis conversation he talks about
the company he's founded calledRepetitos, and this, you know,
(01:54):
not only the services he offers,but then offers some practical
advice about what you should doto help clean up your own
customer data sets and the kindsof things that you can put in
place to keep that data clean.
So I hope you enjoyed thisconversation today with Erwin
Hipsman, because I sure did.
And happy new year, Mr Erwin.
(02:16):
It's a pleasure to have you onthe show.
Thank you so much for takingthe time out of your day and
welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Super excited being here.
This is a great topic.
I love talking about customersuccess, digital customer
success, customer marketing,customer advocacy, all those
things.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, for sure I actually.
Maybe you can remind me.
I don't remember how weoriginally connected, but as
soon as we did connect, I waselated, because one of the
things that we all talk about interms of CS, and digital CS
specifically, is data and datacleanliness.
And that's your bread andbutter, that's like what you do,
(02:51):
that is your thing, and so I'vebeen excited about this
particular episode for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, it's not the most glamorous work.
And the background as to why Istarted the company is called
Repetitos.
I'll explain why a little bitlater.
But the background why Istarted the company's called
Repetitos I'll explain why alittle bit later.
But the background why Istarted this is I started.
I've been in sales, I've beenin customer success and customer
marketing, so a littletrilingual and at the four
customer marketing practice Istarted at various B2B SaaS
(03:18):
companies.
The one thing they all had incommon was the quality of the
customer contact database wasokay at best.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And then when I left Forrester, I decided I'm not
going to go back for full-timework.
But what was the one thing that?
What could I add that nobodyelse is doing?
Because I could hang my shingleout there so I can do
everything for you from acustomer advocacy perspective
run your cab, do your casestudies but what's the one thing
that nobody does, which is thedata health.
(03:48):
I said let me start a practicethat focuses on the customer
contact database, health andeverybody I talk to and the data
.
I see everyone says that thesecond biggest challenge in
customer marketing, when youwant to communicate with
customers, is the health.
First is resources.
You've got your maturity index.
Challenge in customer marketing, when you want to communicate
with customers to health Firstis resources.
You've got your maturity index.
(04:08):
Is that in line with whatyou're seeing?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I'll put it a slightlydifferent way in that I think
what a lot of CS orgs that I'mseeing kind of go through this
digital CS maturity assessmentthat I've put up a lot of.
What they're after ispredictive analytics versus just
reactive stuff.
(04:31):
I mean it's relatively easy to,you know, be reactive to certain
things that have happened.
But I think the real trick isbeing predictive around things
and that's where the clean datacomes in.
And I think, a health score.
You know health scores are atricky subject because we've all
built these rules-basedscorecards and we all know the
(04:52):
intricacies of buildingrules-based scorecards and how
it takes.
A lot of times folks just goset it and forget it.
They build the scorecard, it'sthere.
They went through a lot to doit, but then they don't go back
and test the score against theirchurned accounts, for instance,
or accounts that have donereally well.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
The biggest concern I have with health scores is that
they're all account-basedhealth.
Very few people do theindividual health score Right.
Yeah, a huge leap to make one,but if you think of accounts as
a series of individual people,that one piece of data doesn't
really speak to the larger group, particularly your admins, your
(05:33):
influencers, your economicbuyers.
Those people's health score isreally important and I'd love to
see folks start thinking aboutthe health score of individuals,
not just accounts.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
For sure, and kudos to those of you out there who
are doing separate NPS scores,for instance for your executives
versus your users, because alot of times those aren't
aligned.
But it goes into that kind oflevel of maturity, which is to
say, are your executivesgenerally aligned and are they
(06:04):
prepped for the renewal?
Is that going to be a smoothtransition?
Versus your users, are theyactively using the thing?
And the two correlate for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And I think of the predictive as sort of level
three customer database.
Health Level one would be nooffense, just the freaking
basics.
Do we have the right title forthe person?
Because when we first foundthem three years ago they were
director, now they're VP.
And then how do you dosegmentation if you have the
(06:33):
wrong title?
Second is their location.
Over the past few years peoplemoved everywhere.
You've got field marketing whowould love to know where people
are located.
You've got legal who wants tomake sure you're being compliant
.
And the third is do they stilleven work for the company that
you think they work for?
And that's the name Repetitos.
It's all about, once you get itclean, all this, people leave
all the time, and how do younurture those leads as they move
(06:57):
away from one company and moveto another company?
So that's the foundation is thebasics to another company.
So that's the foundation, isthe basics.
The second level is what datalike, and this never happens.
If, let's say, the demand genor the CRM team came to you and
said, hey, what fields could weput in there to make your life
easier?
Never had that question.
I've never had a question froman executive saying what's the
(07:19):
health of our database either.
But we can talk about that in asecond.
But if and but.
If they did, I would say I comeup with a list of five or six,
but the two I would work onwould be I need a feel for
people's LinkedIn profile so Ican more easily track them as
they move, change their titles.
Second is I want to know whenwe did the last update of their
title.
Yeah, because that would sayhere are some people we haven't
(07:42):
updated their title in threeyears.
Maybe it's time to look.
And everyone says that, oh,it's the CSMs who keep the data
up to date.
And they can't at that scale.
Maybe that top contact they cankeep up to date, but all the
users they don't have the timeto keep them up to date.
So people think the CSMs,that's their job and it's not.
It's not.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And people work in digital CSM, because there's
often not a CSM yeah exactly.
I mean, look, there's a time anda place for humans to do a gut
check on things, For your CSMsto maybe do a gut check on a
report that comes out every oncein a while that says, hey, we
have these people listed aschampion.
Does that ring true with whatyou think?
Totally Like a validationexercise?
(08:26):
Absolutely.
But like keeping contact listsup to date is nasty and to your
point, especially in digital,where you may have thousands of
accounts that you've got totrack and it's so interesting
because LinkedIn is where allthat data lives and I think the
vast majority of organizationsaren't really leveraging that as
(08:47):
well as they could be.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
There's two ways to do it.
I've done this a lot over theyears.
Okay, I'll pick the main pointof contact.
It all comes in our 2,000accounts and every quarter I do
500 of them.
Just spend the day on LinkedIndouble checking making sure
we're right.
You'd be amazed what you findout Now.
That doesn't scale well, andthere's technology out there
that helps a little bit, but thetechnology isn't perfect.
(09:09):
Finish two engagements withclients one with 900 advocates,
one with 30,000 contacts and youcan't do it all with technology
.
They'll get you 80% of the waythere, but there's 20% that
you've got to do.
That it's still the hard workof trying to find them and,
obviously, update the data.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
The old Pareto principle at work.
Hey look, we jumped right in,which is awesome.
I definitely want to dig in ona lot of this stuff, but I do
want to go back to you for justa second and I want to
understand a little bit aboutwho you are, what got you to
where you are today, what yourjourney was.
But really primarily myinterest is what was it like
(09:49):
working in community televisionin the nineties?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
All right, Actually my career started in radio.
So that's.
This is why I love podcasting.
I, frankly, go to bed at nightand listen to podcasts because
they tend to put me to sleep,but that's a separate issue.
But I started my career inradio and public radio in a
small town in Yellow Springs,ohio for those people who know
it, I don't know what I'mtalking about and then did work
in video documentary and thengot involved in video
(10:15):
conferencing.
So the early days of videoconferencing, where you needed
pretty heavy equipment to domulti-point video conferencing,
satellite conferencing I got mymaster's through online learning
.
I was one of the first peoplein the country to get a master's
degree through online throughGeorge Washington University.
And then at that point Ipivoted and started working for
B2B SaaS companies and that'swhere I had roles in sales early
(10:40):
on.
Customer success has thatevolved?
Customer marketing has thatevolved?
Yeah, and in the middle of thatI ran two public access cable
TV stations in Boston.
So I started up SomervilleMassachusetts and Cambridge
Massachusetts public access TVstation.
So basically, the cable companygave us a boatload of money as
part of the franchise fee 3% ofrevenues and we built TV studios
(11:05):
and to this day, both of thoseorganizations exist and there
are many public access cable TVstations around the country.
We trained folks on how tocreate video, whatever it might
be.
I have a studio for liveproduction and we also had
channels that we had to fill up.
So the ones I worked at werenonprofits.
So I was also the executivedirector of a non-profit
(11:27):
organization, with all of itspros and cons and challenges,
but the great thing was watchingthese people who have something
to say.
Here are the tools, here's thetraining.
First amendment to the extremeI can tell stories.
I mean we had police protectiona few times.
We did live shows because thereare people not happy with what
(11:47):
we're doing, particularlyelected officials.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
We're not happy.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And the First Amendment.
It's a beautiful thing whenused properly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
That's fascinating to me, especially in that market
in the Northeast, because it'sjust an amazing melting pot of
different cultures and differentpeople and all that kind of
stuff.
So you've had all theseexperiences in marketing and
sales and post-sale or customersuccess and whatnot.
(12:17):
I guess because of that therearen't a lot of people who have
that kind of trifecta and I callit a trifecta because those
things ideally should be workingin tandem or in alignment with
the customer journey but we getit wrong, like so many different
, so many times.
There a common thread that youoften pull on when you're maybe
(12:48):
advising some of your clients orwhen you're just observing
organizations and how theyfunction.
Is there a common thread thatyou recommend they pull on?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, I mean I think it's language in some ways, that
people don't understand thelanguage of each other.
I mean, we all speak English,but you've got different, very
heavy accents and things getlost in translation.
I mean, sales talks onelanguage and Customer success
talks another and customermarketing talks another, and you
(13:16):
have to know when to have theseconversations.
So the last week of the quarteris probably not a good time to
talk to sales people about yourgreat idea, and so it's
understanding the ebbs and flowsof their year.
Csms classic CSMs really focusaround the QBR.
Salespeople focus aroundclosing.
(13:37):
Customer marketing doesn't havethose sort of guideposts like
they do, and so in customermarketing, you sort of need to
understand what their guidepostsare, what an individual
salesperson, csm, is able to doon their own without having to
ask a lot of permission and whatare you asking?
That you know what.
They're not going to do thisbecause their boss has to tell
(13:59):
them, and you've got to convincetheir boss that we need
everyone's LinkedIn profile andhere's why we need it.
If you just ask them, they'renever going to do it for you.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, yeah, so spot on that language and
communication style is sodifferent between those orgs.
One of the things that I preachquite a bit for folks that I'm
working with is this notion ofin order to really work
cross-functionally effectively,you need to know what other
(14:30):
organizations are drivingtowards, and it can be as simple
as spending a little bit oftime with an executive on a
regular basis in that other orgto really understand what their
goals are, what their KPIs are,what are they driving towards,
and then putting in the effortto really examine how the things
that you're doing within yourown function potentially impact
(14:53):
those KPIs that those otherleaders are working towards,
because, ultimately, everybodyhas their thing and it can be
very easy to just wrap your armsaround your thing and forget
about everybody else, but ifyou're really truly trying to
build something cross-functionalwhich, let's be honest, in
digital, we have to operatecross-functionally you got to
(15:14):
know what the drivers are on theother sides so that you can
then demonstrate how this iswhat you're going to see out of
it.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and even sitting like strongly.
It's just people sitting onQBRs, people sitting on a sales
call.
I mean not with tools like Gong, you don't have to sit on it,
you can just listen to the salescall and understand what's it
like being in the shoes of asalesperson with a customer in
early stage and late stage.
If you're doing user groups, Imean to me that's when I think
of digital customer success, mytendency is like, well, now
(15:44):
there's no human involvedanymore with those customers
that get the digital customersuccess that are assigned to
that.
But what are those human thingsyou can start doing?
You can start doing user groupsin your key cities.
So the interaction is notpurely digital, there's that
human interaction.
But what are those human thingsyou can start doing?
You can start?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
doing user groups in your key cities.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, so the interaction is not purely
digital.
There's that human interaction.
You get to see each other andnot just send things all day to
people and hope the open rateexceeds 30%.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, look, ultimatelydigital is a digital CS as a
whole.
A lot of people like to put itinto this box.
That's like, okay, yeah, thisis just a tech touch customer
and this is like we're justgoing to send emails to these
folks and be done with it.
But ultimately, if you're ofthat mindset, you're missing the
primary point, which is thatyour digital CS function should
(16:31):
enable your humans to beeffective.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
But enable your humans to be effective and you
know whether it's yeah, goodquestion for you as core
organizations start pivoting todigital customer success.
I think that there's one of tworeasons why.
One is well, it's cheaper andwe can reduce headcount.
Second is oh, we've got thesetools.
Now they're these digital tools.
(16:54):
Yes, we're going to reapportionpeople.
We're not going to lowerheadcount, but we're going to
put two of those CSMs intocustomer marketing.
We're going to put three ofthem into digital customer
success.
So we're not lowering our costs, we're just moving things
around.
What's your take as to whyorganizations pivot to digital
success?
Is it, oh, we can save moneyand just use all these tools?
(17:15):
Or is it we could just be withthe same money?
We can be that much moreimpactful.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I mean you hope the latter but I wonder what's the
real take?
You do hope the latter.
Hey, I want to have a briefchat with you about this show.
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(17:42):
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(18:05):
Now back to the show.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's nosecret right that the state of,
let's just say, the SaaSindustry has changed
dramatically over the years andwhere, in the past, we've thrown
headcount at CS and those kindsof things.
That isn't the reality that welive in anymore.
I'm not a hundred percentconvinced that it's entirely
(18:30):
budget, that the reason forswitching to digital is entirely
budget driven, although,although that is undeniably a
massive part of it, I do thinkthere's a healthy element of
look, we want to leverage AI, wewant to leverage these tools.
It's become incredibly easy forpractically anyone to go and
integrate tools and to get twotools talking to each other and
(18:53):
to build some basic automations,and to get two tools talking to
each other and to build somebasic automations.
I mean, the accessibility ofthis stuff, I think, has also
been a massive driver toadopting digital, just because
it's way easier these days thanit has been in the past.
The really mature organizations,I think, are coming at it from
a different lens.
They're looking at it from acustomer experience lens and
(19:14):
they're also looking at it froma customer experience lens and
they're also looking at it froman employee experience lens,
because your customer experience.
I mean it goes without saying,right, and in fact there's a lot
of, there's a lot of surveysout there I think Gartner and
Forrester, maybe one of the twowhere they've said that most,
the majority of customersactually prefer a digital
(19:37):
engagement when they go and whenthey need help with something,
and I get it.
I'm right there.
I'm about as antisocial as itgets sometimes.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And so.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I would prefer an AI chatbot over talking to a human
not any day, so I think thatgoes without saying.
But the employee experience ofit is often kind of overlooked a
little bit because, hey look,you've got these CSMs that are
being asked to do quote, unquotemore with less.
What the hell does that reallymean?
(20:11):
But, fundamentally speaking,these folks are doing things
that, honestly, are mind-numbing, overly repetitious and are
things that could either beautomated or worked on in some
other way, and specificallyaround AI assistance and those
(20:34):
kinds of things, I think that'sall coming together to to help a
CSM specifically be asefficient as possible without
having to, like rip their hairout, spending four hours making
a QBR deck and all that kind ofstuff.
I think that's where the goldin digital really lies is making
your team as efficient aspossible.
(20:54):
That was a stupid long answer toan easy question.
But yeah, I mean what'spivoting a little bit to the
data element of things, becausethat's your bread and butter and
that's what you do.
To do any of this stuff, you'regoing to need the data to
support that stuff, and data canmean any number of things.
But I'm curious, as part ofwhat you do with your clients.
(21:18):
You're going in and you'redoing essentially data hygiene
exercises and you're doing someof the work for them on behalf
of the customer, but then you'realso likely advising your
customers on how to keep up thehygiene and those kinds of
things.
Like if you go in and it's justdata chaos and you need to
(21:40):
start advising them on where tostart, where to look first.
What are you advising yourclients on?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, so the first thing I'll do with a customer, I
mean I'll do a healthassessment.
This is what you do.
Well, this is what you don't do.
Well, this is what you can fixon your own.
This is what I can fix for you.
Well, this is what you don't do.
Well, this is what you can fixon your own, this is what I can
fix for you.
And then, pretty quickly, weget into okay, how are you going
to clean up our database?
So I've got 10,000 customers.
We need that cleaned up.
So I need to see the database.
(22:09):
Some clients that I can't workwith, like government, for
example, or even cybersecurity,they're not going to give their
account list to me.
I say, well, here's how you cando it yourself, but it's going
to be.
You're gonna have to hiresomebody to, or get some summer
intern or the kid of the CEO tocome in here and spend a lot of
time.
And I would do some quicksegmentation.
You probably have fivedifferent levels of contacts
(22:31):
your sort of main point ofcontact.
Your admin heavy user, advocatemain point of contact.
Your admin heavy user advocate.
Your regular user.
Your irregular user.
Your non-users.
Take the top two to reallyreally focus on.
So you may have 10,000 names,but there's only like two or
3,000 you really care about andgo in there and clean up
(22:51):
yourself If you can't give methe list.
But if you can give me the list,then the first thing I do is
just eyeball and say, here'swhat you're doing poorly.
I mean, look at how many peoplehave their first name and last
name reversed.
This is something to clean upthat you can do without me.
But you know the math.
I use costs about $4 a contactto clean, to go into LinkedIn.
You know, cut and paste, update, put into a spreadsheet, have
(23:14):
that someone update it.
If you use technology, it'sabout 40 cents a person to do
that.
And so generally what I found isI can generally find between 80
to 90% of the people thatthey'll give me that with the
data processes I work with andthey're all SOC 2 compliant.
And then there's a smallpercentage that part of my job
is to go in there and find thosepeople.
(23:35):
I could do it.
I'm a little expensive, knowthat, but I could do it really
fast.
Yeah, and there are a lot ofsubtleties that you just can't
hire, like somebody on on fiverrand say they're going to
linkedin to do this for me,because they're going to find
half the people that I find, butthere's gonna be half the group
to miss.
And then I do an analysis.
I go, now that I've looked atyour database, now that I see
(23:56):
you know what, to me, the threemost important pieces of data we
talked about data, but in order, are the employment status of
the person, so if they're nolonger at the company, that is
really important, particularlyif they're a main point of
contact, because when I was insales, the number one reason why
the accounts renewed is we lostour champion.
You want to find that out sixmonths in advance, not six weeks
(24:17):
in advance.
Second is the second mostimportant is location, because
I'm sorry, is the title, becauseif you think about cross-sell,
if somebody was a manager nowthey're a VP you probably don't
cross-sell to managers, but youprobably do cross-sell to VPs.
And the third is location,which is important, but in the
scheme of things, the least ofthe three.
And the third is location,which is important, but in the
(24:38):
scheme of things, at least tothe three.
And so then I would be able tosay, okay, for your top tier of
accounts, those main point ofcontacts and admins, you've got
20% of your people who are nolonger at the company.
We've got to figure out a wayto keep better track of folks.
Or your admins.
You're really good on theirtitle, but you don't know where
the hell they live.
So, as you want to do usergroups, you don't even know
(24:58):
where to invite them.
So that's the analysis that youdo.
So it's more than just give meyour list, I'll give it back to
you.
I mean, there are companiesthat will do that for you.
But let's dig into it deeperand say, okay, moving forward,
here are the things that youneed to focus on.
And now you can go to the CSMsand say we've done the analysis.
This is what's hurting us.
My math says that around 3% to5% of ACV is at risk due to bad
(25:22):
data, based upon the companiesI've worked with and scenarios
I've worked out.
Well, you're never going to getdown to zero.
But if you could clean up themain point of contacts and the
admins and maybe their title andwhere they're working, you're
going to reduce that projectedeconomic impact to 1% and you're
never going to get down to zero.
I mean, think about retailstores.
They never get theft down tozero, but they do things to get
(25:45):
it down to an acceptable level.
And that's what it's all aboutis how much risk is a company
willing to take with their data?
And if I were a CEO of a companyand I were to ask the head of
CES or my head of customermarketing or demand gen, hey,
how's the health of our database?
I would not be able to get ananswer.
They'd say, oh, it's prettygood.
If I was CEO, I'd go what doyou mean it's pretty good?
Yeah, well, we don't reallyhave any numbers, but we think
(26:06):
it's sort of okay.
It's like wait a second.
These are our customers.
That an acceptable answer.
So one of the things I want todo with any of my customers at
the end of this is so they canhave a number and they can say
our data is 92% correct andthat's an risk we're willing to
(26:26):
take, but that's not too bad.
And then, as we move forward,maybe we can get up to 95%.
Certainly, for the main pointof contact you want that at 99%,
your admin's 95%, your activeuser's 88% on.
So where do we want to reallyzero in on in order to keep that
database so it doesn't continueto decay 2% every month?
It only decays 0.2% every month, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, it's so critical and, to your point,
this isn't a one and done thingright, it's an amoebic thing.
It changes all the time.
One of the things that I'm keento dig in, maybe a little bit
deeper on, is an example thatyou pointed out, which is the
classic one of hey, you'rechampion left.
(27:07):
I think by any measure, thatshould send alarm bells ringing
throughout your organizationyour health scores should tank,
your CSM should be alerted, youraccount team should be alerted.
The renewal, like everybodyshould know.
Okay, champion left.
What's the playbook that wefollow, all of that kind of
(27:28):
stuff, but you got to know firstthat your champion left, and
that's probably the number onething that we just miss until we
actually talk to the customeror until we actually have the
next conversation with thecustomer and let's hope it's not
at renewal time that you findthis stuff out right.
So I think, to your point,there's any number of tools out
(27:52):
there that can help you to tryto identify that.
But, in your experience, whatkind of what's the mix of action
that you would want to take ona regular basis to get ahead of
that information?
Is it digital, something likeChampify?
Is it looking at it on aregular basis via your CSMs.
(28:13):
Is it a little bit of both?
What's your take on those?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I think there's a combination of manual and
technology.
So manual are things likebounce backs, things like an
account manager or CSM, knowingthat the person has left and
checking it off and no longer atcompany.
The other really tricky part isthose champions who are still
at the company.
They haven't left the companybut they no longer are involved
(28:36):
in your product.
So and that could take a longtime to figure that out They'll
tell you eventually, but thatcould take a while to do that.
The playbook is one we need tofind a replacement for that
person that's on the accountteam, this customer success team
, on the customer marketing team, that person, if they've left
(28:57):
and have landed at a new company, the people who left and
haven't landed I would arguethat those people should be
nurtured in a very different way.
But if they've left and landeda new company, that becomes a
marketing qualified lead at thatpoint.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
That was the project.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
The last project I did at Forrester before I left
was setting up a repeat sales byformer customer contact.
We found that we were able tofind about 200, about half of
the people manually bounce backswhatever.
About half of the people haveleft their company in the past,
let's say, 90 days throughtechnology.
So it was a combination andwhat happens?
(29:31):
About half of those leads gotaccepted by sales.
The person went to work forgovernment we don't sell to
government, so wasn't acceptedlead and then we were able to
get of the ones that wereaccepted within the first 90
days of the project.
There was a 10 close rate.
So typically in in regularmarketing qualified leads you
see about a two percent.
A close one rate here was 10.
(29:54):
So yeah what most companies dotoday is they go, well, that
person will.
Just when they're ready to buy,they'll call us.
You spend all this timeprospecting to people who are
never going to buy.
And there's a warm prospectwho've gone to an ideal customer
profile and you say we're goingto wait.
Well, because that salespersonsays that person's not in my
patch anymore.
(30:14):
I sell, I support high tech,and they went to insurance, so I
don't sell to insurance, so I'mnot going to follow up with the
person and that lead just goesaway.
Why are companies not nurturingthose warm leads, incentivizing
them?
There are a lot of things youcan do and not just put them in
the prospect queue because theyknow you, and it's a different
(30:35):
sort of nurture flow that youwould have with those warm leads
that landed at an idealcustomer profile.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, I mean to your point.
If you have a champion thatleft to another company that's
within your ICP and you knowabout it, send them some
congratulatory cookies.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, depending on what your product is like.
At Forrester our product wascontent we could give people
yeah, hey, here's your first 90days on your new job.
Yeah, documentation.
If you're a sales force, youcan give.
Hey, here's a ticket toDreamforce.
There are things that you haveand not just like a 10% discount
on your next sale.
Things you have that are coreto your organization.
Well, we have a community.
We normally kick people offwhen they leave, but you know
(31:15):
you can stay the community, alot of things you can do to keep
those people.
So when they are ready to buythey think of you first, they
don't start looking at all theother competitors.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, exactly that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And the advantage of what I do is that you mentioned
there are a bunch of companiesout there that will clean up
databases, track them, but theyall want the success.
So they all want one-year,two-year, multi-year contracts.
Yes, what I do is the dataprocess I work with.
Is I can do a one-off, so for Iuse their 40 cents, a name
whatever it is a name we canclean it up once without the
(31:47):
company having to purchase alicense, go through procurement,
legal I mean.
I can get things done in weekswhere it'll take six months to
bring software into the companyand then you can try and then,
if you like it, now you'vealready have your building case,
your business case, and thenyou can say now we want to
purchase this product, whetherit's from the company I work
with or another one to help uson throughout the year.
(32:09):
But in a sense, I'm your pilot.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Well, and that brings me tokind of my next question, which
is look, you've gone through aninitial round of data cleanup,
you've gotten yourself to apretty decent point, but, as we
talked about earlier, the clockstarts ticking, that data starts
changing in drips and drabshere and there.
What kind of hygiene practicesdo you recommend your customers
(32:32):
engage in?
I mean, there's the obviousstuff of hey, look, you
mentioned it earlier when a CSMnotices their champions leaving,
like mark that contact as left.
But what are some maybe not soobvious things that you might
recommend a customer do?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Some of it's eyeballing.
The one thing and this is all alittle silly, but the one thing
that drives me crazy is you'lllook at a customer contact list
let's say it's 2,000 names andyou'll find that 10% of them,
the first initial, their firstname, is not capitalized.
It's like, guys, come on, weshould be able to fix that on
our own and just do that right.
(33:06):
So I think there's some ongoingbasic once a quarter CSM.
Go through your list, justeyeball it, clean it up, because
we've done the hard work andwe'll continue to do the hard
work.
And then one thing thatsurprised me.
I thought my clients would wantokay, erwin, thanks, we're done
, we're going to keep it cleanfrom here.
They basically want me to goback once a quarter, go back
(33:27):
through their database and justit'll be a lot easier the second
time and obviously a lotcheaper.
But once a quarter I prefer touse somebody, a service, to keep
an eye on it, because noteveryone's going to keep it all
updated and there's some hardstuff of that, like location or
title, that you can't ask anyoneto keep track of.
That.
And that's where technologycomes in.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, that's huge.
That's huge.
How do you?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
deal with dupes.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Delete them, I guess.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Tricky part is which one to delete.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, exactly Like cause I can.
So in my current organizationwe just went through a pretty
massive Gainsight migrationwhere we basically migrated one
instance into another existinginstance and just the amount of
duplication that's inherent inwhenever you do that kind of
(34:21):
stuff is just massive, justmassive.
And it can be like a supertricky thing to figure out which
one to merge into which otherone or which one to delete and
all that kind of stuff and andI'm sure that's something that
you face all the time andultimately it's probably not
even your call, it's your callto like highlight that's more
the the demand gen.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
When you think about you know well, when you talk to
companies they'll say that'severyone's responsibility is to
clean up the database.
Well, whenever you heareverybody means nobody.
But the part of theresponsibility that, like the
demand gen team owns is theduplicates.
I would say the accuracy of thedata itself, like their title
location.
I don't think that's a demandgen responsibility because
(35:03):
they're not close enough to theclient to do that.
That's what falls upon customersuccess, cs, ops, customer
marketing, if there's that groupin the organization.
So everyone should know theirlane, what they're responsible
for cleaning up the database.
But the CRM team, I think, isresponsible for the database.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Have you ever seen an org, spf, team members for data
hygiene If they see one persondoing a huge amount of it, like
they give them a gift card orsomething like that?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
no, probably the opposite.
Like where are you spending somuch of your time?
You should be talking tocustomers, not cleaning up the
hygiene.
I would argue against againstthat okay I think there's now
with technology.
I think, like I said at thebeginning, if you could do the
hard work, like customermarketing or CS ops whoever's
best positioned to do this we'vejust done the hard work.
(35:53):
We've hired this guy, erwin, wespent the money, we've got it
clean.
It's at 92%.
Now we need you to do thislittle part, like, okay, they
stepped up as opposed to ourdata is no good Guys, you've got
to clean up.
So if you do, 90% of peoplethey'll say, oh, we'll take care
of the 10%.
We get it.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, that's cool.
I love it.
One of the things that I liketo ask quite frequently is just
around any huge blunders ormissteps that you've seen,
either in action with yourcustomers, or ones that you've
been part of yourself, whereyou've learned something.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
You know, I want to say, yeah, it's like it's a
tricky one.
So we all believe incollaboration and I collaborated
hugely with the digitalcustomer success team and it's
like, okay, we don't need youanymore Because you basically
told us everything you do, andso that was a case where I
probably should not havecollaborated so much, because I
(36:54):
probably still would have had myjob.
On the other hand, it gave methis opportunity to both babysit
my granddaughter, nine to five,for the next three months, and
it also gave me the opportunityto start my own company.
So maybe it was a blessing indisguise, I think from a blunder
perspective.
It seems like everyone thinkseveryone else is doing that part
(37:16):
of it.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Getting back to that, if everyone does it, nobody
does it, and then you startgetting embarrassing because you
start sending the wrong type ofemail to the wrong type of
person.
Right, it gets into likesegmentation.
You can't do that unless thingsare really up to date and
people understand the types andthe personas.
Yeah, so I think it's themistakes that get made.
(37:38):
It's really the plunder.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
And by sending the CEO of a big company your
product update.
They don't really care aboutthat.
Yeah, so it's poor segmentation.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I think, yeah, it makes sense.
One of the things I'm seeingmore and more of are and what
you just said reminded me ofthis are SaaS platforms that are
asking their users in-app toself-identify what role they
play within an organization,because it's one thing to go
(38:09):
grab titles from LinkedIn orwhatever, but they may or may
not have a direct correlationwith what an actual person does
within the platform.
So I love it when I go into aplatform and they ask me who I
am and what I do, because I knowwhat they're after is trying to
target me with very specificinformation that I may need in a
(38:29):
timely manner based on my role.
And the thing is like there arecertain platforms that do that
really well and they ask me andthen, oh lo and behold, I start
getting emails that are kind ofcrafted towards me and then
there are others who are askingit, but then don't do anything
with that.
Well, that's a separate issue.
That's a separate issue.
That's a separate issue.
But have you seen like othercool things where there's like
(38:51):
digital motions supported bysome of the data?
In that way?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
But it's just confluence of sort of a title
and role.
Because somebody, for example,from a health score perspective,
you might think, oh well,they're doing poorly because
they don't log in as much assomebody else does, whereas no,
they're super happy, but theyonly need to log in once a month
because that's the way they useyour product.
Or a C-level person, you mightthink they're the main point of
(39:18):
contact, but they're really not.
Who's truly that main point ofcontact?
when you've got some sort ofissue.
So to me it's pulling togethera few different pieces of data
title, role, utilization of theplatform, other sorts of
activity, email open rates,webinar registration rates.
So you begin to get that fullpicture of the customer.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, it's super smart.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
It's hard.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
It's super hard, yeah , and it's different for every
industry, right, which adds alayer of complexity because you
can't necessarily take one onetheory and apply it to the other
.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
so yeah, yeah, banking finance is very
different than technology.
Oh, yeah, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
As we kind of start to round down this combo, which
I've super enjoyed and it Ithink it's going to bring a lot
of value to the audience, I'mcurious what are what?
What do you consume from acontent perspective to keep
yourself up to date?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, at the beginning I talked about how I'm
a radio guy, so I'm a bigpodcast listener.
I love Derek Thomas.
Derek Thompson does plainEnglish.
He writes for the Atlantic.
Very eclectic but super wellproduced.
Big fan of Scott Galloway's andwhat he talks about vis-a-vis
even though I have allgranddaughters and daughters and
granddaughters just what'shappening to men out there, I
(40:30):
mean as a guy, it's like really,really bothersome and he talks
about that a lot and I reallyappreciate him raising this
issue.
Oh, and one thing I stronglysuggest to my customer marketing
friends because that's my worldand I would suggest our CS
friends as well as I listen toRevOps and MarketingOps podcasts
.
Podcasts yeah, Because I want tounderstand their language.
(40:53):
I'm not a demand gen guy, I'mnot a MarketingOps guy.
I've worked with them but Iwant to know like and they have
the same issues that we havewhen should MarketingOps live?
Should live in sales?
Should live in with CS?
How do we automate it?
Ai, all these little sub-nicheswith the organization have the
exact same conversations andit's really it's interesting to
hear what's on the mind ofmarketing ops versus RedVal ops
(41:14):
versus CS ops.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
So those are the things.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
I tend to listen to.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, that's great.
I love that.
Yeah, I've started to like notlisten to as many CS podcasts,
just because like like I'm here,I get it.
Let's start to diversify alittle bit.
That's super smart.
Are there any kudos that youwant to give to anyone while
you're here?
Either people that are doinggreat stuff in digital or
(41:37):
otherwise data related or reallyanything.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
No, I heard that when I was listening to the cat
webinar with the podcast I don'tsay webinar with cat and so I
heard that question.
Oh, I got to be prepared.
So I thought about two things.
One is there are people thatwe've worked for that we will
never work for again.
They can call us up and sayErwin, come work for me.
What did we pay you before?
50% more.
Sorry, I'm going to pass.
There are also people who I'veworked for in my life who, if
(42:05):
they called me tomorrow and said, erwin, I can't tell you what
the job is, you've got to startMonday.
I can't tell you the salary,I'd say I'm in.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Let's go.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
And those are the people I love, and unfortunately
they're more of the formerpeople you'll never work for
again.
Yes, the people that you wouldyou drop everything because you
trust them.
They trust you and you go workfor them.
But the kudos I want to giveare really to my two daughters.
I never tell them enough howproud I am of them, but my
parents are war refugees and I'mthe first American born in my
(42:37):
family.
One of my daughters is theAssistant Attorney General for
the state of Wisconsin.
The other one is a VP ofCustomer Experience sort of the
family business at a largeinternational bank.
Wow, those are people I give mykudos to.
I'm so freaking proud of them.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Because they won't listen to the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Kudos to you.
You've raised some incrediblehuman beings, so there you go.
Lastly, where can people findyou, engage with you, ask you
about their data problems andall that kind of fun stuff?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
yeah, I'm a solopreneur, so I'm not the
strongest on marketing becausethat's that's a full-time job.
Yes, uh, so I do everything onlinkedin.
So the company's name isrepetitos, repeat sales by
former customer contacts.
On my profile, er Erwin Hipsmanis where you find me.
A lot of my content is there.
The website repetitoscom has alot of content.
(43:32):
It really explains what thecompany does.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Amazing, amazing.
Well, I am so thankful that youjoined us today, shared your
insights.
I think it'll be really usefulfor the audience and, yeah,
looking forward to getting thisone live.
But Erwin really appreciate thetime.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, matt, appreciateit.
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
(43:56):
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 word
map 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
(44:18):
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.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
(44:40):
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Trikovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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