Driving Customer Outcomes at Scale with CS Legend Greg Daines (a.k.a The Churn Doctor) of ChurnRX | Episode 025 - The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.

Episode Transcript
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Greg Daines (00:03):
When I say identify your customer's key results, it
sounds like, well, go find out.
No, it's really not like that.
The fact is that thevariability in their
understanding is the source ofthe problem, and in the vast
majority of cases, we shouldactually be telling customers
what their key results are andhow they'll know what they've
achieved them.

Alex Turkovic (00:22):
And once again, welcome to the Digital Customer
Success Podcast with me.
Alex Turgovich.
So glad you could join us heretoday and every week as I seek
out and interview leaders andpractitioners who are innovating
and building great scaled CSprograms.
My goal is to share what I'velearned and to bring you along
with me for the ride so that youget the insights that you need

(00:42):
to build and evolve your owndigital CS program.
If you'd like more info, wantto get in touch or sign up for
the latest updates, go todigitalcustomersuccesscom, and
if you have a question orcommentary to be used in an
upcoming episode, call us andleave a message at 512-222-7381.
For now, let's get started.

(01:05):
Greetings and welcome to episode25 of the Digital Customer
Success Podcast.
Can't believe we're a quartercentury in.
It's been pretty awesome.
So thanks for listening everyweek and if we're new here,
welcome to the show.
Today I've got a real treat foryou.
We've got none other than thechurn doctor himself, greg Danes

(01:27):
from churnrx.
Now you'll know Greg because heconstantly puts out these
amazing statistics and insightsinto the current state of CS in
general, and what I really lovedabout this conversation is he
puts the digital spin on it andgives us some wonderful insights
about his takes on digital CS.

(01:48):
He's a legend and I reallyenjoyed this conversation with
Greg Danes, and I hope you dotoo.
Mr Greg Danes, I would like towelcome you to the Digital
Customer Success Podcast.

Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here.

Yeah it's.
You know, I've been wanting tospeak with you for a little bit
now because everybody is likehey, you need to go talk to Greg
, hey, you need to go talk toGreg.
Greg's got cool numbers, greg'sgot great things to talk about.
So I'm happy to finally chatwith you because, you know, not
only are you, you know withchurnrx and the content that you

(02:26):
put out as part of that isabsolutely fantastic.
You're a frequent speaker.
You know the eBooks you've putout are wonderfully metrics
driven, and so I can't wait toget into some of kind of put a
digital lens on some of thecontent that you've put out and

(02:48):
start to talk through that alittle bit.
But before we get into that, I'dlike to wind back the clock
perhaps a little bit and talkabout MIT and what that was all
about back in the day.
Like you know what was thatexperience?
Because I think you're fromUtah, is that correct?

(03:10):
Originally, yeah, originally,yeah.
And then you trekked, you know,to the East Coast, went to MIT
for a little bit and then cameback home, right, what was that
all about?

Well, we yeah, we went out to MIT and ended up
staying for 10 years out there,so amazing yeah.
Well, the story that was waskind of interesting because I
was, of course, deep in mycareer, had no intention of
getting an MBA or anything, butI was doing as I often find
myself doing.
I was doing research, I wasstudying data.

(03:43):
My background is actuallyeconomics I have a couple of
degrees in economics before thatand so I'm a real data, data
oriented guys, you could tell.
And I was.
I was looking at something thatwas actually very interesting
at the time.
It's not worth going too muchinto, but, but there was a.
There were a couple of people,but one person in particular on

(04:03):
the faculty there, who I hadstarted to interact with over
this research and we starteddoing it together and then she
encouraged me to come out therefor a year and work with her and
they they have this thingcalled the Sloan Fellow Program
out there, so it's basically midcareer people and it was an
excuse to go out and do thisstuff.
So, you know, I played, I, I Idid double duty, where I worked

(04:25):
full time and also did all thisstuff.
But it was super fun andinteresting and engaging and and
great experience and, like Isaid, we ended up liking it out
there, so much.
We stayed for a decade.

So yeah, Boston's a great town, Um, I, I, I spent
my college career in Boston aswell.
I haven't been back since, Um,but it's such a such a cool town
and so many yeah, such a youknow it's so many universities.
Obviously, there's a diversityof people.
That's just insane.
I love it there.
Yeah, it's a.

(04:56):
It's a, it's a cool town.
But you, I went to music school, Um, you were with the smart
kids.
So um we, we, we just messedaround in college.

I had probably had the most fun.

Yeah, Perhaps I don't know, Um, so, uh, you know
what's from there.
Talk to us a little bit aboutyour, I guess, CS origin story,
like where, what, what led youdown this path?
That that puts you in aposition today to really be a
thought leader in CS?

Well, so I love the CS origin story concept because
nobody studied it in college,right?
It's not like everybody has aCS origin story.

And it's just not when CS.

Right, right, so, um.
So I actually started my careeras a founder CEO, um, of a tech
company, sas, b2b, um, beforethose two terms existed, but I'm
dating myself a little bit.
But um did that actually forthe bulk of my career.

(06:02):
And then, a few years ago,after my last exit, I was
thinking about, well, what willI do next?
And and um, I did actually, youknow, work for one of the
companies that I rolled into andthen another one, because I had
already figured out that themost interesting problem in SAS
is how to make customerssuccessful at scale.

(06:24):
That's the interesting problem.
Everything you do as a founderCEO is hard, right, it's like
figuring out how to build aproduct.
But to find a market, hirepeople, build a culture, build
technology, sell I meaneverything's hard.
But actually I think thehardest thing meaning the one
that's the most slippery, that'sthe hardest to nail down and

(06:46):
solve is this making customerssuccessful at scale.
And the hardest problems arethe interesting ones.
So I decided, you know if Iwasn't going to keep doing the
CEO founder thing, I wanted towork on what was the most
interesting, and this, to me, isthe most interesting thing in
all of business.
Yeah, so so I settled on thisand I I did some, some work for
a few years, scaling theseorganizations and trying some

(07:06):
things and doing some things andand and then broke off and did
it on my own.
I've got my own company, we doconsulting and we also do our
technology side.
So I love it.
I've never been more engaged inmy career.
I think this stuff is justendlessly fascinating, partly
because it's really it's reallyhard right, really really
complicated.
So you know, that's, that's whythat's how I got here, yeah

(07:28):
gravitated.

You gravitated towards, towards the suck, as
they say.
Well, you know it's interestingbecause I'm sure you'll you'll
back me up on this, but I thinkit takes a special breed to be
in CS and you've got to have,you know, a little bit of
resiliency.
You've got to be slightly crazytoo, maybe, but you know, I
think there's a human element inCS that that that you see a lot

(07:55):
, especially in therelationships that that exists
in the CS community, which isrelatively tight knit.
You said something interesting,though, and I quote the hardest
part is keeping customers atscale.
We all know the challenges,especially in SaaS, that we face

(08:16):
and keeping customers, and weknow we like to spend a lot of
time pre-sale and all that kindof stuff, and pre-sale to
post-sale can be broken quite abit.
But what, in your opinion?
What would be like your topthree list of stuff?
That makes it hard?

Okay.

I don't know if I can only keep it for a loop or
a read.

No, I love it.
So here's the thing thatbothered me as a founder CEO
before I kind of latched ontothis as the interesting
challenge, and the thing thatbothered me was the variability.
So you know, one customer wouldcome in, take on our technology
, do really well, you know, bragabout us like stand on stage.

(08:59):
Another customer would come in,look very similar, and it just
wouldn't.
Something wouldn't happen,right, and they'd go sideways
and eventually churn out.
That drove me crazy, Because ifyou look at the variability,
it's insane, right, it's notlike we have a, you know, kind
of poor results to mediumresults to good results.
No, we have everything fromnothing to phenomenal, and

(09:22):
that's at every company, right.
If you look at, likevariabilities, what drives
engineers crazy?
Right, Because what it means isthat we really don't understand
all the factors in the systemand so and certainly don't
control them.
And so that variability was thething that kind of triggered my
thinking and I'm getting to ananswer to your question, but no,

(09:43):
you're good yeah, where thatled me was well, what could be
the source of that variability?
right?
So I'm giving the same softwareto all my customers, right?
Maybe it varies a little bitbased on addition or something,
but it's not like it's there'sworthless all the way to
phenomenal, right.
It's pretty okay.
So that's consistent.

(10:03):
Our services, whatever theywere, were consistent.
Sometimes they were garbage andsometimes they were pretty good
.
They were never phenomenal.
It's really hard to do that,right, but let's just say they
were the same for every customer, so that can't be the source of
this huge variability right,that's not the variable, yeah.
What's the possible source?
And the answer is almostimpossible to avoid, which is

(10:25):
the customer.
The customer is the variableyou don't control, and that is
all over the place.
Well, what's all over the placeabout our customers?
It's not like they're alllosers, right.
They're anywhere from not sogreat at their business to
phenomenal it's not zero tophenomenal, right.
So there's something aboutcustomers that varies to that

(10:50):
degree, and what I realized whenI seized on that idea was that
that's the source of thechallenge.
The reality is, customers cometo us and I'm speaking from the
perspective of kind of SAS B2B,right, because that's my home
base, but I don't know that thisdoesn't apply as well in lots
of other spaces.
People listening might bethinking about how it applies in

(11:11):
their space, but they come tous usually because they need to
improve something that they'renot doing as well as they could
do, and the technology andwhatever else comes with it
could get them to a better,higher performance, right.
So well, okay, that'sinteresting, because now that

(11:31):
focuses me on what mightactually be the dimension of
variability.
So you may know, people wholistening may have heard of
Jeffrey Moore and the adoptioncycle, right, and this idea that
some customers.
A very small number areinnovators and they totally get
what you're doing and they jumpon it and, in fact, in their

(11:51):
case, they were probably doingit already using off-the-shelf
technology, right.
So, it's not like you have toconvince them that this is a
better way.
They get it right, and there'sa group that gets it.
They may not have already beendoing it, but they understand it
.
They've foreseen the future,right, but past that you start
to get into people who you haveto explain it to, right, okay,

(12:11):
and there's a group there calledEarly Adopters that they can
get it.
Like, if you explain it to themand they see the value, they'll
get it.
But they're very different thanthe first two groups.
What makes them different?
Well, what makes them differentis that they haven't actually
thought it through all theimplications, how it will change
how they work, what they do.
So now I've convinced them tobuy, but now they have to go

(12:37):
through the whole process fromscratch pretty much of how this
is actually going to changetheir life.
Yeah, okay, yeah, and you cansee the further you go along
this dimension and the wayJeffrey Moore characterized it
was the.
It was he called it theadoption cycle, because it was
sort of like people's prickPensity and the thing could be

(12:58):
applied to a company, acompany's propensity or Capacity
to adopt and do somethingdifferent, new, right, yeah, and
, and that's not a terrible wayto characterize it, so we can
think of it as the ability of acompany to change in ways that
produce better results.
Now that's what's interesting,right?
So here's my technology.

(13:19):
It does this thing better, butas long as it requires my
customer to do somethingdifferent.
That's the source ofvariability.
So the number one thing I don'tremember how you phrased it,
but the number one thing thatsort of supplies this, this
challenge that supports thechallenge is the massive
variability across yourcustomers of the, of the

(13:41):
Capacity to adopt and change howthey work to improve their
results.
And and this is a this is thething that I like to say a lot
because it's really importantwhich is all this variability
proof, something where we'rekind of hesitant to accept.
Especially as a founder CEO whohad created my own technology,
it was really hard to accept thefollowing truth, which is that

(14:01):
your technology doesn't actuallyimprove your customers business
.
It's not the technology, andthe proof of that is that if you
give the same technology toeverybody, why are there such
variable results?
They all got the sametechnology.
You got zero to nominal.
The answer is what's improvingtheir results is their change in
behavior, to their operating ina new way.

(14:22):
Now.
The technology can be veryimportant, critical even in
enabling that change and makingit scalable and repeatable, but
it's not the technology thatimproves companies.
It's the change in how theyoperate that improves companies.
And so, okay, now we'veidentified the problem here.
There's all this variabilitybecause this thing is very hard

(14:43):
to come by which is within acompany, even within a person,
but we'll think about it interms of a client.
That's a company that there'sthere's massive variation in
their ability to adapt to andchange how they operate.
Yeah, that is the fundamentalsource of the problem.
So that's that's what I findlike endlessly fascinating.

(15:05):
How do we, you know, how do weengage with that?

Yeah, I mean you know it's.
It is interesting because whenyou at the face of it, you know
it's like oh, we bought thistool, we bought this technology
looks great on paper, thebusiness case says is going to
do XYZ, and then you go toimplement it and hey, guess what
?
There's a whole different teaminvolved in the implementation
and you kind of have to resellit a little bit.

(15:29):
And then you know the thingthat goes by the wayside to your
point is that element of changemanagement where you know
you're the people on your sidewho are implementing it, the
people on the customer side whoare implementing it.
You might be project managers,they might be somebody who does
something else, who's taskedwith implementing this thing,
but guess what?

(15:49):
The primary goal is changemanagement.
It's like you know where's theenablement, the training and all
that kind of stuff.
I love that and I love that youjust went on a lovely dive
tribe about it, because I mean,that's the reason why Jan Young
spent, you know, two months ofher office hours this this
summer Talking about change,because it is massively

(16:10):
important, I think.

Yeah, well, it connects to another thing that.
So, in the process of doing allthis and I said I'm a data guy
We've been doing a new kind ofof churn analysis that I
developed to address a coupleproblems I won't go into, but
problems related to churn ratesand retention rates that make
them essentially useless,actually, as as metric.
So what do you do instead?

(16:34):
We do this.
This.
It's a type of cohort analysiscalled survival curve analysis,
but essentially what it does isit fixes that problem, and one
of the things that's interestingis we've now done hundreds of
these analyses and we'veaccumulated all this data in a
benchmark database and so we canask really interesting
questions.
Right, that I've always wantedto know and like okay, well then

(16:54):
, you know what kinds of thingspredict long-term retention?
Well, by far, there's no secondplace.
There's no third place.
By far the best predictor oflong-term retention is customers
getting measurable results.
Customer satisfaction does notpredicts, not even correlated
with long-term retention, it'sresults.
Well, that just raises thequestion okay, customers stay

(17:17):
for results.
Then that's basically what thedata consistently shows over and
over again.
Then again, the source ofvariability is their ability to
get results.
That's what brings you back tothis behavior change.
It turns out the customers whoget results are the ones who
change how they work to takeadvantage of the way your
technology produces value.
That is a big deal.

(17:37):
So then what does that tell us?
Well, it tells us that thepurpose of CS is to ensure
customers get results.
I think very few people wouldstruggle to agree with me on
that.
But that's the purpose, butthat's not our function.
That's not our function.
That's our purpose Exactly.

(17:57):
The function is to getcustomers to change behavior.

I love the post that you had on LinkedIn very
recently about it.
Related to it, the fact thatone of them was around, just the
fact that QBRs don't work, butI forget the exact post that you
had that basically, oh, stoptouching your customers, which

(18:21):
is great.
It's like no high touch, no lowtouch, just results.

Yeah, if we focus on results, it will always
inevitably lead us back to well,why is this customer not
getting results Every time?
They're not doing somethingessential to get results, so
it's in the end.
Results are our purpose, butour function is behavior change,
that's what we do for it.

Yeah, I love it.
So just to reel in a little bit, this is the Digital CS podcast
and if you've listened to theshow, you know that one question
that I ask every single one ofmy guests that I compile on the
website is their elevator pitchof Digital CS, because it
changes depending on who you'retalking to background, what they
do for a day gig and all thatkind of stuff.

(19:09):
So I would love from you your10 to 30 second elevator pitch
of Digital CS.

Okay.
So if customer results are whatdrive long term retention and
variabilities the enemy of thatoutcome, then Digital CS is the
ultimate and most scalablemethodology for driving
consistent, standardizedcustomer behavior.

(19:37):
Change at scale Love it.

That's beautiful, Very concise and to the point,
and I couldn't agree more.
One of the eBooks that you haveout and I think it's available
on your site is basically, Ithink it's like the 23 ways to
reduce your might be 24, mightbe 22.
23?
How'd you land at 23?

Because it's 2023 and I thought that would be cute
.

See I'm smart, but in it I find it brilliant
because there's just concrete,practical, data driven advice
for how to reduce and stop churnRight, and it all makes sense.
And, again, it's data driven,which I find refreshing, because

(20:26):
a lot of us talk about the CSecho chamber and everybody's
kind of posting about the samething, but when you post about
things, I guarantee you there'ssome kind of bell curve behind
it or some kind of chart behindit that actually backs up this
idea.
What I'm getting to, though, isa lot of these motions are kind

(20:48):
of high level ideas that youcan implement in your business,
depending on how you'restructured and who you have on
teams and what tools you haveand all that kind of fun stuff,
but I wonder if any of themparticularly stand out to you as
being particularly adept todigital automated motions.

It's a good question For any listeners who
haven't seen it.
There are things like stopunderselling, right, sell to
good fit customers instead ofbad fit customers, get customers
to engage quickly and integratewith other systems.
So there's a whole bunch ofthem, and so I think there is a

(21:33):
very good answer to yourquestion, because there's a
general theme here that, okay,there's 23 things here, but
actually if you've read throughthem, what you do, what you get
is a sense that actually there'sa pretty consistent kind of
overarching thing, which is thethings that guide customers to

(21:54):
get better results are all inthe do those things category.
Right, and anything that getsin the way of results is in a
don't do those things category.
What's that have to do withwith digital CS?
Well, it's important tounderstand that.
Well, okay, let me put it thisway One of the big mistakes

(22:15):
we've made in CS generally and Ithink it's a, and I'm happy to
engage with people who challengethis, because I really do think
this is important to understandis that we've been inclined to
take the position that allcustomers are different, that
they're all unique and we needto meet them where they are, and
we need to.

(22:35):
Well, they certainly are unique.
In fact, I spent the first partof this podcast arguing that
they're hugely variable.
But you see, that's differentthan saying that that
variability is good right.
In fact quite the opposite, andif we take a highly variable
approach, which is increasinglyimpossible, impractical to do

(23:00):
because the economics don't workwhich I consider a good thing,
because actually I don't thinkit's a healthy way to handle it.
The truth is, at the heart ofthe methodology that I push is
well, start by identifying whatyour customers results are,
otherwise we have zero chance ofgetting them.
But that almost sounds likewell, find out what they expect

(23:24):
and meet that.
But that's actually not true.
The vast majority of customers,if you ask them what they're
trying to do, they'll say I'mtrying to install this software.
They haven't actually thoughtit through Majority.
Now some customers do like theycome and they've got it and
they've thought it throughcorrectly, blah, blah, blah.
But that's like a pretty smallfraction of our customers.
The vast majority of them donot have not thought it through

(23:46):
carefully.
What's the key business resultI expect and how will I know if
I have achieved it?
Very few companies have gottenthere.
So the reality is that it'swhen I say identify your
customers' key results, itsounds like, well, go find out.
No, it's really not like that.
The fact is that thevariability in their
understanding is the source ofthe problem and in the vast

(24:07):
majority of cases, we shouldactually be telling customers
what their key results are andhow they'll know what they've
achieved them.
Think about it this way it's notbecause they're dumb.
They are client preciselybecause they're trying to do
something new that they haven'tdone before.
If they were really good at it,it's arguable they'd even need
us, right.

(24:27):
So they show up to do somethingnew and we ask them what are
you trying to accomplish?
It's a weird signal to send.
It's like well, you guys, onlyit's not like.
Your product does 5,000 things.
I mean, there are very fewproducts like that and people
argue well, greg, you know, buttheir value could be all sorts
of things.
Yes, that's actually the problem, right?

(24:49):
Because I can't materialize allsorts of results to them.
I can only materialize thethings our product is really
good at doing.
So there's only a few of thoseright.
In many cases there's one, butokay, let's say there's two or
three right your product does.
They're clustered around a coretheme.
The client needs to understandthat clearly, otherwise they

(25:09):
won't recognize results whenthey arrive.
Second, how could they possiblybe expected to have a clear and
well articulated understandingof how the metrics will
materialize right.
So this is my long way ofsaying in every, in almost every
case where we talk aboutbuilding a high retention, low

(25:33):
churn process, what we'retalking about is standardizing
what you do.
Standardizing it Don't say, well, it could value, could be
anything.
No, it can't.
Right.
Don't say, well, every customerhas to take their own path.
No, the vast majority of thosepaths are paths to failure.
If you worked for any amount oftime with clients in your

(25:54):
business, what you'll know isthat some of them are phenomenal
at it.
You know what we need to do.
Just go figure out what theydid right, bottle that and then
push our customers through thatprocess.
So I think one of the bigshifts in CS that very much
aligns with digital CS is ashift from being sort of
reactive and supportive toproactive and prescriptive.

(26:15):
Right and well, digital CSforces you to do that in a way
that I actually welcome.
I don't see that as a bug,that's a feature.

Right Yep.

Exactly.

Okay, my brain works in weird ways sometimes
and the analogy that keepscoming up in my brain is the
spaghetti factory menu.
No, sorry, the cheesecakefactory menu, because when you
go to the cheesecake factoryyou're presented with this
massive menu of just stuff anddecision fatigue creeps in and
you can't decide what you wantto get.
And our software doesn't dothat, right, software, generally

(26:54):
speaking, is like your mom andpop shop around the corner that
has like five or six things thatare really really good and you
know you can choose from thosefive or six things.
But it's not like this massivething where you can have, you
know, whatever Italian andChinese in the same city.
Right, so right.

And the other thing is, I like your analogy, but
like it's not even if you think.
Well, our product really islike that.
Maybe you're from some big, youknow, complex company?
Sure, yes, but customers don'tshow up considering both Chinese
and Italian.
They came from the Chinese orthey came from the Italian.
So you still have the narrowscope that you need to push them

(27:35):
down a pathway.

Yeah, and I think this notion of self selection
is pretty powerful in digitalLike.
I've seen a few instances whereyou know you may have a pretty
large segment of your customerbase that maybe don't have an
assigned CSM and you knowthey're kind of trundling
through and they're using yourself help here and there, either

(27:58):
successfully or notsuccessfully.
But still the thing that'slacking a lot of times is that
clarity around what it is, what,what are the?
You know what are the positivebusiness outcomes that you're
trying to achieve as a businessas a result of purchasing the
software.
And I feel like you knowthere's a massive opportunity
digitally to have a customerkind of self select on that and

(28:19):
self kind of track towards thoseobjectives.
But even deeper than that, on apersona level, your admins to
your point earlier are going tojust care about hey, is this
thing installed, is it working,is the data flowing properly?
But also, in some instances Ithink it's the vendor's
responsibility to educate theadmin how their actions are

(28:43):
impacting the overall goal thatthe software is purchased for.
To begin with right.

Very strongly agree with that.
The idea that not only did Isuggest that the customer isn't
always clear on what they expect, then they hand it down,
because there's no handoffs incustomers, there's only hand
downs right.
Then they hand it down to anadmin, a project manager or
somebody, and the expectationthat that person has a clear
understanding of how to connectthe dots between this all the

(29:11):
way back to business value isabsurd.
So we really have to.
This is the winning play, thewinning move in this game.

Let's go wait, hold on you're getting my pen
out.

It's not to follow the customer anywhere but to
lead them.
And in digital CS we have to dothat because I know there's a
fantasy that exists out there tosome degree about the kind of
choose your own adventure kindof thing where there's lots of
options.
And because of this and thisand this, I go down a totally
different path.

Yeah.

I just don't think that's founded on reality.
Again, your product doesn't dothat many things, and even if it
did a couple of things, themost important thing to
understand is that there aren'tthat many pathways to success.
I mean, what if there wereseven choices as to what I was
trying to achieve?
Right, save time, make money,save money, something like that.

right, and there were seven and I chose.

But how many variations are there of how you
actually get to those results?
You still have to install thething, you have to connect it to
something else, you have tochange how you manage something,
you have to change a processsomewhere else, and the reality
is it's possible that, no matterwhich of the seven I chose,
it's almost certain that thepathways the same anyway.
Right, and we have to be verycareful.

(30:25):
Right, because one thing I saidwas go look at your most
successful customers, the reallysophisticated ones.
They'll show you how to do it.
But there's one caveat to thatit's very important.
That is to understand that whenI look at a highly successful
customer now, I can see hundredsof things that they're doing
that are better than my lowsophistication customers.

Right.

So which ones are we talking about?
It can't be hundreds of things,and that's right.
That's that's actually animportant thing to understand.
The things that matter most tothe rest of my customers are the
things that those sophisticated, successful customers did first
.
Yeah, it's not all the thingsthey're doing now, because
they're way down the pathway.
Good for them.
Yeah, they're freaking high,hanging fruit off the tree.

(31:06):
What I want to know is what didthey do to get to their first
results?
And that allows me to collapsethe scope down again.
Right, I'm not solving forsophisticated customers because
they're already going to succeed, and they don't turn, I'm
solving for the ones who aregoing to fail, who don't know
what they're doing.
So I'm going to solve that.
I'm going to show them whatthey're doing, why they're doing

(31:27):
it, how to measure it, and thenI'm going to show them what to
do first, second, third.
So one thing that that I thinkis a trap in the digital CS kind
of pathway that you can getdown is to say well, robots are
good at everything.
They could give me 25 options,and then they, could you know.
You match that with.
You know 75 pathways, and thenAI, could you know.

(31:49):
I mean no.

And make me popcorn along the way too.
No.

There are only so many things you're doing and
there are even fewer ways thatyour customers have to operate
to get there.
Once you understand that, thisbecomes an extraordinarily
powerful tool set, because itreally does allow me to
standardize.
I mean, even if so, take thealternative.
I'm working with humans.
I've got a team of CSMs thatare all named account CSMs,

(32:13):
right, and I want to standardizewhat they do.
Do you know how hard that is toget them all to do the same
thing the same way over the sameperiod of time for every
customer?
I mean, it's justextraordinarily challenging.
It is, but with a robot, thatis something I can do.
That's something the computer,the system, the technology will
do what I tell them every time,following these rules.

(32:34):
Now the challenge then shiftsupstream.
The challenge isn't to get theconsistency and standardization
in the system.
The challenge is to decide whatshould do.
What are the rules then, right?
What should we force customersto do?

It's the curation of the experience yeah.

Do we really know why customers succeed, what they
do first, second, third, whatare those things that, if I
guide my, so you could ask your,I have, I have this, this, this
question that I think helpsguide people's thinking through
this, which is, if I came to you, I'm a customer, and I came to
you and I said, look, you know,alex, way more than I'll ever

(33:16):
know about this.
You guys do this every day forthousands of customers.
You're the experts.
I will do whatever you tell meto do, if it's in my power to do
it, would you think that I waslikely to succeed?
Well, yeah, right, even if Iadmit we're not a very
sophisticated organization.
We've failed at a lot of things.
But I promise to do, if it's inmy power, what you tell me to

(33:39):
do.
I would say that thatcustomer's chances of success
are pretty dang high.
So, instead of waiting forsomeone to do that because that
never happens, or so rarely thatit's you know instead of doing
that, just operate that way.
Just build the machine thatsays here's what you're going to
do, here's the result youshould be motivated by.
Here's the right way to know ifit's coming in.

(34:00):
Do these three things quicklyand we'll get you to those first
results that prove you'reLiterally using the language.

our most successful customers, by day 50
of their journey with us, havedone X Y, z.
Where are you on that list?

You know, like, like totally, by the way, that
competition.
Yes, well, what you've justsaid is actually magic words.
Now, there aren't that manymagic words in in in the world
of customers and customers, orin the world of business, but
one of the most powerful magicwords are our most successful
customers do X.

Totally.

Why is that so powerful?
It took me years to figure outwhy that, of all the things I
was saying, why was that?
That grabbed people's attention?
And suddenly they were payingattention.
They were looking at me again,right?
They looked up from their phoneand the answer is because
actually, your customers knowthey're not very good.
To a degree, they know theysuck.

(34:58):
Right Now it's not like theytalk about it.
We don't need to talk about it.
But just because we're nottalking about it doesn't mean
that's not the real conversation.
They know your stuff's good.
They know that such and suchcool company made millions off
your technology.
You know what they're thinking.
They're thinking.
But will it work for us?
Because we're not cool likethose guys, we're sucky.

(35:19):
The last five things we triedto do all failed, right?
That's actually the subtext,the unspoken dialogue, right?
So when you say the magic words, our best customers or our most
successful customers do X boom.
You get their attention reallyquickly.

Totally, and it's kind of like.
Another analogy might be like Idon't know a sports broadcaster
or whatever.
They may see 10 differentfootball games in a season.
Whatever it is all differentteams.
They've experienced all thedifferent teams and what makes

(35:57):
one team successful over anotherteam, which is a perspective
that the individual playersdon't have, because they're in
the trenches, within their owntribe, within their ecosystem,
right, and so when you say thosemagic words as well, it's just
like you're putting yourself inthe position of hey, I've seen

(36:18):
other people do exactly whatyou're trying to do, so listen
up, I can tell you how to do it.

Yeah, exactly, look , I love your analogy.
It's probably better than theone I always use, but the one I
always use is we sit on MountOlympus and we look down and we
see what everybody's doing thegood, the bad and the ugly.
And so when we say the bestcompanies do X, people take it
seriously.
They can't see it from theirseat where they're sitting, but
they know we can.

(36:44):
And actually this is reallyinteresting because I would
argue this is more importantthan our product as something we
sell to our guests.
Yeah, absolutely Right.
I mean, you could play the gameof which product has more
features and go blue in the face.
As of today, there are almostno spaces left where you can

(37:07):
legitimately argue in favor ofone vendor over another based on
what's really hard to do right.
And getting harder by the day.
So what are they really comingfor then?
What's the differentiator?
My argument is, thedifferentiator is what I call
expertise, the ability, theknowledge of how customers get
results.
And when you say, well, we'vedone this for hundreds or dozens

(37:31):
or thousands of customers, weknow how the best get results,
yeah, honestly, that's the thingthat is compelling.
And if they think you're goingto give it to them right, either
through a human interactingwith them or, even better,
through consistent, digitallydelivered Intel, that they can
get on demand when they need itor, even better, delivered to

(37:53):
them before they realize theyneed it, then that's compelling.
Like I would argue thatexpertise is more important than
the product.
Yeah, I agree, I agree.

Speaking of those digital deliveries of kind of
compelling information or justdigital motions in general,
we're all customers, right?
We all have 80 differentsoftware solutions that we log
into on a daily basis.
What are some of the reallycool things that you've seen

(38:25):
done where you're like, ohthat's cool, Like I'm really
glad they're paying attention tothis or this surprised me.
Are there things that stand outto you?

Little bits here and there.
I think we have yet to reallymake this transition and
sometimes I'll see them inreally like oblique, off the
beaten path type places.
So one of the interestingthings that I see is I'm not a
big languages person, but peoplewho've adopted technology like

(39:00):
Duolingo and some of theseothers?
what are the things that theyhave?
That they have gone?
As about as far as you can gowith and I love it is to assume
that they know where you'regoing much better than you do.
Right, right, that's certainlytrue, right?
If you're learning a language,absolutely, and what they do is

(39:20):
they just prescribe the exactpathway through and then show
you, at each stage, preciselyhow to think about what you've
accomplished, even to the pointof batching it in prizes and a
pathway.

I'm sorry, but Game of finding it yeah.

Yes, we really should take that more seriously
in the world of sort of moreadvanced, complicated
technologies.
And one of the gosh, one of thethings that's really
interesting, back to theadoption cycle, right?
Something like 6% of customers,according to Jeffrey Moore and
I, by the way, my experience isthat's pretty solid Sure, have

(39:59):
an idea from the beginning wherethis is all going.
Pretty much everyone else issomewhere on the spectrum of
either not knowing, or even tothe point of being incapable of
knowing, right?
So they're somewhere past that,right?
Well, you know, isn't it?
Isn't that all the morejustification for us to play

(40:23):
that role for them, right?
So I've actually I haven't had achance to really say this often
in public, but I have a theoryabout this that I think is
really interesting, which is thefirst, and I'm old enough to
have seen this play out but thefirst wave of technology
computers doing things inapplication form that solved

(40:46):
business problems or real-lifeproblems the first wave of it
was really technologies directedat people who already knew what
they were doing and just neededtooling.
Sure, so I call that the wave ofwhat that technology did was to
provide a place to do your work, right.
So it's an extreme example, butlike Excel, it doesn't have any

(41:08):
presumption as to what you'redoing.
It assumes you know what you'redoing right and it gives you
endlessly cool technology.
It's a Swiss Army knife, right?
Sure, that was a whole wave oftechnology.
For many years, for decades,you couldn't really buy an
advanced business applicationwithout being about as advanced
in that business category as youcould be, and anyone who wasn't

(41:30):
couldn't consume it.
And it was that simple right.
And think of some of those moretraditional systems from Wang
and IBM and SAP and all thatstuff.
So, I think we're in the middleof a massive transformation,
from that to a new station, fromthere to a new place.
And where is that new?
What is that new place?
It's fundamentally about goingfrom a place to do your work to

(41:54):
tools that tell you what work todo.
Now we can have where weenfranchise the rest of the
world.
Right, cause there's an app foreverything.
And that's reality.
I believe software istransformative to the world.
I think it's the most importanttechnological transformation in
history.
We just haven't seen it playout yet.
Why?
Because there is technology inan app for everything.

(42:16):
Now the only problem is wecan't win if only three or four
or five or 6% of the world canconsume it.
It means that tools have totell you, not just not just give
you a place to do your work,but tell you what work to do and
how to do it.
That's the interesting thing.
So now, rolling that all theway back to CS and SAS, b2b and
digital CS that's our mission.

(42:40):
That's why the old method of CSwas to be responsive,
supportive and helpful.
The presumption baked into allthat was that the customer knew
what they were doing.

Knew exactly what they were doing.
So what if the customer doesn'tknow?

what they're doing, then we have a completely
different mission.

Our mission is to show them what to do, to teach
them what and I still feel likethere is a hesitancy among CSMs
in general to be that right.
I think it's still kind of thisworld of almost at the mercy of
the customer a little bit,versus being like super, super,
hyper prescriptive and then youknow, yeah well, there's a

(43:16):
problem.

There's a real reason why they're hesitant, and
that's because you have to knowwhat the answer is.
If you're going to beprescriptive, now that sounds
worse than it is.
We have a solution for thatthat every company listening to
this podcast or not, can deploy,and the answer is well, if I
have a team of 10 or 50 or 150CSMs, I can't rely on whether

(43:40):
they know things.
Yeah, this brings us all theway back to standardization.
In the case of standardization,we only have to know it as a
company, and because we sit onthe top of Mount Olympus, if we
don't know it, shame on us fornot having paid attention.
That's actually one of ourfundamental, I would say,
obligations.

(44:00):
Sure, in owning the customerrelationship is that we're the
ones who should be carefullyobserving what works and
codifying it.
And once you've done thatthat's why I said the challenge
shifts upstream Do we even know?
Because it's not like aboutit's not being an encyclopedia
of knowledge in the domain.
Because, by the way, that's notrelevant.
It's cool.
It's not relevant why?

(44:20):
Because the vast majority ofcustomers fail in the first one
or two steps.
I only need to know that muchand we only need to build that
much into a process.
But if we have a longerknowledge, if we can see it
going all the way to 11, then wecan capture that knowledge and
codify it into our process.

(44:41):
I don't need a room full ofexperts, but I do need the
expertise that's embedded inthat understanding of the
success pathway.

What you're saying is very interesting and I
wanna tie a couple of thingstogether here that you've talked
about.
One is I loved your Duolingoexample of it's very
prescriptive, it follows a pathand in essence I mean it's B2C
right, and you could argue thatB2C has had this stuff figured

(45:12):
out for a very long time.
I mean, even you think ofretail and retail rewards
programs and all this kind ofstuff, like they've gamified the
behaviors that they wanna drivein their customers.
And perhaps there's a hesitancyto do that in B2B because maybe
it seems a little childish orit's too prescriptive or

(45:34):
whatever, and I think thathesitancy has hurt us.
If you ask me.

Oh, absolutely, you're absolutely right.

Why not have a little fun with it?
I mean, come on.

So I have a great example of this that I think
helps kind of think this through.
So I was working with a client.
Their customers were dentists,right, and they were selling a
solution that helps dentistsessentially optimize their
business, make more money, right, okay?
So the CSMs were very hesitantto push one very specific thing

(46:09):
that essentially made dentistschange away.
They operate right, okay.
And why?
Well, because it's not rare atall for them to snap back and
say stay out of my business,that's not how I operate.

You're not a dentist.
Happened all the time.

So I got on.
I actually got on a call withthis young girl, very sweet,
very good at what she did butvery hesitant to challenge
customers, and I gave her anexact script.
And here's another set of magicwords.

Did it say you're most successful dentists?

So she said you're going to change, you're going to
do this.
I'm even going to send you it'sa sign.
You're going to put it up inyour waiting room, right here it
is.
I'm going to send it to you aPDF.
Print it out.
I don't operate that way.
I've never operated that wayand I've been in this business
30 years.
She I could see her, you know,virtually wanting to.
You know, hang up the phone.
But she reacted.

(47:03):
She gave the script, which shesaid oh, I understand that you
know more about dentistry thanI'll ever know, but we know more
about this, and the mostsuccessful dentist, the ones who
make the most money, do this.
And you know what he said,cause he was, he was really
gruff with her.

He said oh, okay, oh, I get it For more money.

Yes, I like more money, so you get the idea.

You're not challenging my ego as a dentist.

Right, no, exactly right, it's like yeah so so your
point is, I think, a reallyimportant one, which is there's
a cultural foundation incustomer success that could use
a little bit of a revision here,and it's the I'm super helpful,
I'm Johnny, on the spot whenyou need help.
Blah, blah, blah to no, I'mactually not here to help you.

(47:52):
I'm here to make you money.
I'm not here to make you happy,I'm here to make you money, and
because of that, I'm actuallynot going to just let just walk
away from you saying I won't doX.
It's one of the three thingsyou need to do to make more
money and that's all I exist forRight Now.
That you can say it in a niceway.
What I love about people in CSis that they're actually very

(48:15):
good with people.
Right, they're very diplomaticand they're very civil.
Sure, they're the perfectpeople Like.
There are some people I'm notsure I would want to teach this
to them.
They just get too much joy outof poking people in the eye,
like engineers or people likethat.
But the point is in CS, I canshow a person like her, who
brings so much human kind ofqualities to the and talents to

(48:39):
this.
I can show her a way to do thisthat's actually demonstrates to
the client it's in their owninterest.
Now, can you do this at scale?
Can you do it with technology,of course, because it's the same
script, it's the same processand in fact the cool thing about
the technology is it's notafraid of getting yelled at.

All right, exactly Like.
You can just close the pop up.

And before it closes it'll pop another thing
and say it's like, are you sure?
Just be aware that if you don'tdo this, you'll make less money
.

That's right, I love it.
I mean, we might as well beblunt with it, right?

No, the thing is not to be blunt with that person
would have been a disservice tohim.

It's a disservice yeah.

Right, that's not what we're for.
We're not here to be nice andwe're not here to make you happy
.
We're here to make you money.
Yeah, I know, maybe that, likeI know, there's people in CS and
I like to say it that waybecause it's a little
provocative but there's peoplein CS who just oh, cringe when I
say that.
I'm not going to stop saying itbecause it reminds us that what

(49:42):
we do is actually a high art.
I consider it a calling, like Igenuinely do.
I know I'm a little cringy orgoofy about this, but I think
what we do really matters, butnot because it makes a person
feel better about themselves inthe moment, but because it's
going to make their businesssuccessful, which they've poured
their life into.
It's going to make their careergo better, which, you know,

(50:03):
their family depends on.
I like, to me, making themsuccessful is the highest good
that we can appeal to and attachour meaning to and, as a result
, it makes, I think, customersuccess absolutely satisfying
and fascinating.

Yeah, the reach is pretty spectacular,
especially when you think aboutthat, because then you know that
extends into employees andfamilies of employees and you
know that whole ecosystem whichis cool.
It's cool to think about.
We are painfully getting closeto being out of time because I
don't want to swallow up toomuch of your valuable time and I

(50:42):
feel like we could go onforever, but there are a couple
of just things that I want tomake sure that we spread to the
community, which is, first andforemost, I want to understand
what's kind of in your contentdiet, what do you pay attention
to and how do you keep yourselfabreast of things?

Well, I'm a bit of a nerd, so I already told you
I'm an economist.
I'm hard and oriented.
So I read lots of nerdy thingsand I have been on a kick for a
while about nerds.
I've been on a kick for a whileabout neurology.
I just there's just so muchabout the human brain and the
way we think.
That's endlessly fascinating.

(51:22):
So lately I've been studyingthe difference between the left
and right brain hemispheres andwhat's the science teaches about
that, and how do those not justwork together to create the way
we think and the way we operate, but actually conflict in many
ways?
Very fascinating stuff.

Cool.

That's something I've been into.

I dig it.
Yeah, I mean there'simplications to that right and
helping you understand whoyou're talking to.
That's huge.
Are there folks within the CScommunity that you see doing
great things digitally that youmight want to call out and give
a shout out to?

Well, probably too many for this context, but I
love what I'm seeing certaincompanies do I mean, HubSpot's
been really charging down thisroad to figure this thing out.
I just I like people who arebreaking their kneecaps trying
to figure out how to make thiswork, and it's not easy, but the
more you do it, the more itlights the way in front of you.

(52:23):
So I love, I just love seeingthat kind of thing.

Yeah, people are grinding to make it happen.
Where can people find you,engage with you?
What have you been up to?
Are there things that you wantto make sure that people go
check out that we can link downbelow in the show notes.

Well, sure, you can check me out on LinkedIn.
I post a lot of stuff, but Iactually have a weekly
newsletter.
You can go to gregnankscom, butI also have everything I've
ever written there my ebooks arethere, videos of all my
speeches, I mean that I can geta hold of.
So it's a great resource tojust find all this stuff.
And then there's links,obviously, over to churnorexcom,

(53:01):
our company, and you can findout about what we do there, and
there's a.

There's a couple of free resources there that I
think are helpful to all thecontent on your website, the one
that I had the most fun lookingat is just the page of quotes.
Oh, it's like it's.
It's cool you could spend.
You can spend a few minutesjust going through the quotes
and not just reading them, butlike thinking about them for a
second.
It's really cool.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that.
I encourage anyone to go thereand and subscribe to that.
But also link in with me.
I love meeting people.
I in the CS world.
I just I feel like I want tomeet everybody.
It's not possible, but please,please, decide to opt into that,
because I'd love to meet youand learn from you.

Cool, that sounds good.
I want to thank you very muchfor your time.
I would very much love to do anepisode two of this
conversation where we dig in alittle bit deeper perhaps.
But yeah, thanks for your timeand really appreciate it.

My pleasure.
Thanks, Alex.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of
the Digital Customer Successpodcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
It really helps us to grow andto provide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success definition word
map and get more details aboutthe show at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.
My name is Alex Turkovich.

(54:21):
Thanks again for joining andwe'll see you next time.

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Driving Customer Outcomes at Scale with CS Legend Greg Daines (a.k.a The Churn Doctor) of ChurnRX | Episode 025

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Driving Customer Outcomes at Scale with CS Legend Greg Daines (a.k.a The Churn Doctor) of ChurnRX | Episode 025