November 12, 2024 • 55 mins
Nat Onions, CX leader at Customer.io, dives into the importance of data and automation in driving effective customer support and engagement. She shares her experiences from building a customer success program, experimenting with AI tools, and leveraging SMS to scale interactions, while also discussing the significance of diversity and attention to detail in creating impactful digital experiences.
Chapters:
00:02:29 - An early career in design and printing
00:04:14 - Chaos management learned from beer
00:05:23 - Design and attention to detail in CX
00:06:39 - Superman fandom and collecting rare items
00:08:24 - Nat's transition to customer experience leadership
00:10:21 - Building a customer success program at Customer.io
00:15:05 - Defining digital in the CX world
00:18:29 - Launching a virtual assistant for customer support
00:19:44 - The power of automation in summarizing support tickets
00:25:31 - Experimenting with AI and automation tools
00:29:22 - Maximizing SMS for customer engagement
00:35:41 - Strategies to overcome champion change challenges
00:44:25 - Gender diversity in tech and leadership
Enjoy! I know I sure did…
Nat's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-onions/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nat Onions (00:03):
You got to get the data.
You can't just go to someoneand say we should make this
change with no base for that.
All of these tools that areworking in the background to
actually present that to us.
It makes my job as a leader alot easier, because I can say
this is what I need.
Here's the data that backs that.
Here's the upside, here's thedownside.
Alex Turkovic (00:24):
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
(00:47):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Greetings and welcome back tothe Digital CX Podcast.
I'm so glad that you could joinme today and every week as we
talk about all things digital inCS.
This would be episode 78.
(01:09):
And we are joined today by NatOnions, who is VP of CX at
Customerio, which is a platformyou're probably aware of or may
have heard of in passing, butthey're really focused on kind
of email, push notifications,text messages, in-app messaging,
(01:30):
automation and webhooks forcustomer facing motions.
So very, very relevant.
Obviously we definitely talkabout that in the show.
We talk about maybe some youknow.
We get into some specificsabout SMS specifically, because
that's a topic that I've beenresearching for my own usage
(01:52):
recently.
We also talk a little bit aboutchampion changes and the
impacts of those.
We spend some time also delvinginto gender equity as well,
because that's a topic that youknow.
Just equity in general is atopic that we've visited several
times on the show, even thoughit has nothing to do with
(02:12):
digital CS, but it haseverything to do with digital CS
.
So, anyway, I hope you enjoythis conversation with Nat
Onions, because I sure did.
Nat, I wanted to welcome you tothe podcast.
It's been a little bit coming,but I'm super excited that
you're here yeah, me too.
Nat Onions (02:29):
Thanks for having me yeah, for sure I've.
Alex Turkovic (02:32):
You know.
I've seen, seen you around,heard you on different places
and I was like you know, let'sgo, let's, let's talk a little
about you, let's talk about alittle bit about customer, which
is where you're at and yourjourney and all that kind of
stuff.
So I think we have some funstuff to get into.
Definitely you know, as you do,you do a little bit of LinkedIn
(02:54):
stalking and a little bit ofresearch and stuff like that and
I noticed that your kind offirst professional initial, your
initial professional life, wasin in like printing and and kind
of project management aroundthat.
What was that all about?
Nat Onions (03:11):
yeah, so that was a touch of nepotism.
My, my father, used to own theone pretty, pretty big design
and print studio in nottinghamcool from the age of six it was.
It was child labor in a lovingway I'm just helping him out
there and I loved it.
I loved being there.
(03:31):
And then, as I got older, I youknow I wanted to still be
involved, but in something thatI was actually interested in and
could potentially turn into acareer.
I never had any interest intaking it over from him.
I was always set that I wasgonna make my own way and carve
my own path but, yeah, it was a.
It was a great resume piece tohave to actually get that
(03:53):
experience and it was far enoughremoved from his job, as, as
running the business that I Igot, I had a boss that wasn't
him, so so that's how it allbegan, really.
Alex Turkovic (04:05):
That's interesting.
That's so cool.
Were there any particularlymemorable projects that came
through or anything kind ofweird that you worked on?
Nat Onions (04:14):
So one of the biggest things that we worked on
there was we did a lot ofprinting for Carlsberg, the beer
company yeah, pretty massive,and they at the time.
It may still be, but at the timethey were sort of official beer
of the world cup and the Eurocup all the football, soccer
stuff, and so I got to do, uh, alot with, with that sort of
(04:37):
stuff, you know, keeping ontrack with what the designers
were up to, and a lot of it wasvery last minute as well of what
the designers were up to, and alot of it was very last minute
as well, of course, because youknow a team wins or loses a
match, and then we've got to getthe posters ready in a you know
three or four day turnaround toget them to the pubs ready for
the next match, so they canstart start promoting it.
(04:58):
So it was a lot.
That's where I think.
That's where I learned tothrive in chaos.
Alex Turkovic (05:03):
Oh yeah, sure Right.
Nat Onions (05:04):
Yeah, we're, we're semi, we're as ready as we can
be to go.
We will wait the words and thatgives us the final instructions
and then it is just go, go, go.
Everything's got to be done inorder and that.
So that was.
That was pretty, pretty fun.
I used to love those.
Usually, evenings would be whenthat was all happening, right?
Alex Turkovic (05:23):
I mean, I would imagine probably barely enough
time to let the ink dry, right?
Nat Onions (05:27):
Yeah, yeah.
So it was fun and I learnedenough about just sort of design
and layout and stuff to just beable to put together really
good professional lookingdocuments together, really good
professional looking documents.
So yeah, I mean no way adesigner, but it kind of taught
(05:53):
me how important it is whenyou're sending a PDF to someone
whether it's confirming theircontract or giving them a
walkthrough of a concept justreally paying attention to
detail there.
So it's I learned a lot ofstuff in that environment that I
still carry forward today soyeah, I would imagine.
Alex Turkovic (06:07):
I mean you know you probably, that was probably
early exposure to you knowcustomer issues and
relationships and early exposureto, like content creation to,
you know, and those kinds ofthings.
So that's a cool trainingground.
Nat Onions (06:22):
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Turkovic (06:24):
But physical instead of digital.
Nat Onions (06:26):
Yes, yes, I mean, it was a long time ago as well.
So yeah, the digital tools andproducing a physical product as
well.
It was just limited.
Alex Turkovic (06:39):
Yeah, for sure, Sure, and I gather from your
background that you are and alsothe embroidery on your chair
that you're slightly a Supermanfan.
Nat Onions (06:56):
Just a little bit.
Yeah, I think people always askme what made you get into it,
and the genuine truth is Icannot remember a time in my
life when I was not intoSuperman.
It's just always been somethingthat I thought was really cool
and got really excited about.
Alex Turkovic (07:11):
So did you watch the Christopher Reeve movies as
a kid and all that kind of stuff.
Nat Onions (07:18):
Yeah, he still is my favorite Superman.
I think he did a great job andas as I've as I've gotten older
and had grown-up jobs that thatpay grown-up salaries, I've been
able to build out a really bigcollection.
I've got a lot of stuff from1939, when superman first was
launched.
(07:38):
So yeah, it's, it's a pretty Iguess it's a pretty niche thing,
but.
But I think everyone knows ofSuperman.
But that kind of collecting andcataloging is pretty dorky, but
I mean, that's what we're all.
Alex Turkovic (07:52):
I disagree, I disagree.
I think it's.
You know I've actually workedwith.
There's one person inparticular.
We actually used to call himSuperman, yeah.
Nat Onions (08:01):
Because he's worse.
My nickname is Super Nat.
That's kind of what they callme yeah, there you go.
Alex Turkovic (08:08):
Cool, that's cool .
Well, I guess you know, fastforward to today, you're
currently leading customerexperience at Customerio a lot
of customer in there, I guess.
Talk to us a little bit aboutthat transition and that journey
for you and what led you intothat role today.
Nat Onions (08:24):
Yeah, yeah, sure.
So I actually startedCustomerio in the customer
success team.
I applied for a completelydifferent job I think it was on
that, you know when they werelaunching their partnership team
a very small company at thattime.
I didn't get the job, but Iloved the interview process so
much and I had like with thosepeople and I had gotten to know
(08:45):
the products as I was goingthrough that process, that I was
just like I'm not ready to giveup on this company.
So I said to the recruiter whatlike, where do you think I could
fit in this in this company?
You know what, what, what, whatcan I maybe work on and come
back to in the future?
And she actually said well, youknow, I think I think you might
be a good fit for customersuccess.
(09:07):
It's a brand new thing, we'venever done it before.
So you'd be one of one of thefirst, but if you wanted to give
it a shot.
So I went through that process.
Turns out it was the right fitbecause they hired me for that
one um and so I started as oneof three csms.
We were the first, first onesin the door and essentially kind
(09:29):
of built out this cs program.
Um, I was, I was.
I was a 35th person when Ijoined and now we're 275 people.
So yeah, it was it was I arelatively quick journey into
management from being anindividual contributor yeah,
just sort of went through theleadership and management ranks
(09:52):
on the customer success team andthen eventually took over the
technical support team as well.
As our customer base grew andthe company's goals pivoted and
became more ambitious as well,we built out what is today an
account management function.
So those are the three sort ofmain branches that report into
(10:15):
me, and I'm also responsible forour email deliverability
program.
Alex Turkovic (10:20):
Jeez, okay, yeah, that's a lot.
Nat Onions (10:27):
That's enough, that's a it's a that's enough I
have a really great group ofleaders, directors and managers
that support me and keep me sane, so I'm well taken care of on
that front yeah, yeah.
Alex Turkovic (10:40):
Well, you have to , you have to, you have to.
I've had conversations on thisshow with other, I guess,
customer-facing leaders ofcustomer success platforms, or
CX platforms or whatever youwant to call it Platforms that
serve the customer experience,and most of them have expressed
(11:03):
both gratitude but also addedpressure for having to
essentially kind of be a rolemodel for your customers on how
to run a customer.
Nat Onions (11:17):
Or do you feel that?
Yeah, I do feel that, that Ithink it's always in the back of
my mind that you know we've gotteams that are going out into
the world and they're talking toour customers about here's the
right strategy to get yourcustomers talking to you, and
here's why we would recommendnot over emailing them.
Here's our recommended timelinefor that type of campaign and
(11:41):
you know, I know that at thesame time campaign and you know,
I know that at the same timewe're using our own, our own
tool, but we've got our ownprogram that has timelines and
you know volumes and stuff andit's kind of we have to get that
spot on, otherwise ourcredibility can just plummet
because the customers will be.
Well, you know I'm not enjoyingthe, the journey that I'm
(12:04):
getting from you, so I don'treally feel like you're in a
position to tell the advising me.
Alex Turkovic (12:12):
It's always.
Nat Onions (12:12):
It is always a small thing that runs through my mind
, but I think I think it's alsowhere we thrive and that's from,
you know, from management allthe way down to our individual
contributors, because they takeso much pride in everything.
You know it's.
Our customers ask us a lot andyou know we want to know the
(12:35):
same.
What, what are other people andother businesses like mine
doing?
It's great when we can helppeople make those connections.
But when a customer says Ireally like these messages I'm
getting from you, tell me, tellme what you've built there, that
is when I see people just kindof like pop out their chest and
(12:55):
they're like glowing becausethey know they, they had a hand
in building that and it's reallyresonating.
So I try to lean more into thethe positive of yeah, we, we
feel really confident that we'redoing something good and we're
continually iterating on it andmaking sure that it's still
hitting the mark, and so we getto be really proud when somebody
(13:16):
asks us for advice or, you know, points out something that
they've enjoyed in the contentthat we're delivering.
Alex Turkovic (13:22):
Yeah, yeah, and I would imagine you've probably
learned some things from yourcustomers on cool things that
they're doing that you'veimplemented as a turnaround
there.
Nat Onions (13:34):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we've worked with somereally really smart people,
whether that's on sort of agrowth marketing role, a content
role, even the more techengineer type roles, the more
you know tech engineer typeroles, the questions that they
ask sometimes, or when we, whenwe go into their accounts and
see what they've built,sometimes it's just this really
mind-blowing wow, like they,they did that on their own.
(13:57):
We didn't.
We didn't tell that theyfigured out this really cool
thing that they could have built.
So, yeah, having having ourcustomers create great things
and share them with us, but alsochallenge us, say, hey, I've
got this great idea.
I'm not sure how to do it inthe best way.
Can you help me?
There's a couple of missingpieces that we we need to slide
(14:19):
into place to make that possible.
It's so motivating to to go toa product team and say, hey, if
we can make these small changes,this is the kind of use case it
would unlock.
That's what the product teamloves to hear and it's the kind
of thing that gets CX reallyexcited as well.
Alex Turkovic (14:37):
Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's so cool.
Well, I do want to get intosome of the specifics of what
you guys are doing digitally,but, as you know, one of the
things that I ask pretty muchall of my guests is if they had
to describe what digital is tosomebody that doesn't know
anything about CX or CS orwhatever, I'd be curious to know
(15:02):
how you would describe it.
Nat Onions (15:04):
Yeah, so I'd probably position it as the the
using this ever-evolving toolboxof technologies that allow you
to create a scalable experiencefor customers that's predictable
and repeatable.
And it's not about replacinghumans.
It's about creating a situationwhere you can apply the human
(15:27):
touch at the time and placewhere the most value can be
created, and to get there, youneed to create some operational
efficiency with the help ofdigital tooling for that lower
hanging fruit totally.
Alex Turkovic (15:41):
I love that and and you're absolutely right like
you, you don't want your humancapital wasting cycles on stupid
stuff that can be automated orthings that are repeated over
and over and over again.
Exactly.
Nat Onions (15:55):
You want them focused on driving value.
Right, and it can make thecustomer experience so much
better as well and asking forsomething that is you know?
The answer is just.
Here is the link to thisdocument.
There is nothing that they gainfrom sitting in a support queue
(16:16):
waiting for a human to addressthat.
If it can be automated anddelivered to them.
Based on you know some keywordsor some intelligent doc search,
it unlocks them instantly.
And you know, I think that'swhere.
That's where I think from thefrom folks maybe on the outside
looking in that are a bit moreskeptical about some of these
automations, that they'rereceiving them all the time, and
(16:39):
it does make for a betterexperience.
Alex Turkovic (16:42):
It's.
It's so interesting that youit's not interesting.
It it's, I think, a normalthing that you put the qualifier
of it's not here to replacehumans in with that definition,
because I do it too mosteverybody I ask does it and and
there's this kind of like humannature element of digital that
(17:03):
makes us as a species, I think,immediately go towards this is
going to replace me and blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
And it's so interesting becauseall these tools are here to do
is to make you, the individual,more efficient and give you the
tools that you need so thatyou're not pulling your hair out
getting ready for a QBR oryou're not pulling your hair out
(17:26):
trying to get the context ofthe account when you're trying
to solve a difficult support youknow case and those kinds of
things yeah, I mean, you knownobody.
Nat Onions (17:34):
Nobody went through, you know, years of of training
and climbing a career ladder anddoing all of this extra
learning to be solving veryentry-level questions that are
rooted sometimes in laziness.
You know they want to be usingtheir brains to to solve complex
problems and give real,tangible value back to customers
(17:59):
, and I think that's that's theway that I've been positioning
things.
A lot with our team is.
This is all going to make yourjob a lot more fun right, nobody
.
Alex Turkovic (18:09):
Nobody is saying man, I really wish I could use a
slide rule for this.
Like the computer, you know,it's the same.
It's the same shit thathappened a few years ago.
Like the computer, right?
So so what?
What is the?
What are you doing digitally?
Like what?
How are you putting thosethings into practice?
Nat Onions (18:28):
Yeah.
So I say, the biggest thingthat we've done this year,
that's customer-facing, isactually to launch a virtual
assistant in our app.
So it's powered by Zendesk.
That's who we use for ourticketing system, but we've
actually connected it to abackend AI called MyAskAI
(18:50):
Absolutely fantastic team.
I have to give them a shout outwherever I can because they are
phenomenal, did you say MyAsk?
Yeah, myaskai yeah, and soessentially what this does?
It's there essentially as an AIpowered doc search.
So if you're in the custom IOUI, you can open it up, you can
(19:12):
ask it a question.
It will search through our docs, it'll give you the response,
it'll link you to the relevantdocs and if you still are
struggling or if you need to aska question that's very specific
to your account, we're carefulthe AI does not look at it,
doesn't have access to youraccount data.
So if that's where yourquestion is rooted, you can ask
(19:32):
to be passed through to a human,but it is.
It's solving 54% of thequestions that it's being asked,
which is you know.
We're really pleased with thatas an initial result Massive,
massive, and it's unblockingcustomers in 20 seconds versus
having them wait in a queue fora couple of hours to be sent a
(19:53):
doc link because that's assimple as their question was.
So that's been the big one.
The second half of this year isjust focused on improving that,
training the model and thenworking with our marketing team
to boost adoption there.
So that's the really big onethat we've been the most proud
of.
Then, behind the scenes, we'reworking on a lot of those
(20:16):
operational efficiency, qualityof life improvements.
So we're going to be working ona ticket summary project.
So if you imagine some of oursupport threads, they are many,
many replies long.
There's been a lot of back andforth, or sometimes we'll have
customers that they alwaysrespond to the same email
(20:38):
because they just search theirinbox and they respond to the
thread that they opened a yearago.
So what we're implementing isan automation that will actually
pull all of the conversationhistory and give you a summary.
So this is who it is, this iswhat's going on, this is what
you said last time and you knowthis is our score on the tone so
(20:58):
far.
So I think that one's going tobe a good time saver.
I think our estimation is thatit will save us probably about
80 hours a week of human timewhen we're looking at the kind
of insights that it's going tobe able to to pull together
right and and gather.
So that's going to be a reallybig one.
Alex Turkovic (21:17):
That's huge because, I mean, there's so many
times where you are made awareof a customer scenario or a
customer situation and you'regiven these incredibly vague
details and you know, I thinkback to a time, you know, before
we had some of thesesummarization tools in place and
(21:37):
those kinds of things.
It's like you'd have to go okay, let's look at their tickets
and let's look at the csm'snotes, and let's look at the
sales notes and let's look atlet's talk to three different
people and by the time you'reready to have a customer
conversation which, by the way,they're waiting for, you're like
a day or two into it and it'snot the best.
So I think that's massivelypowerful.
(21:59):
That's awesome.
Nat Onions (22:00):
Yeah, so I'm excited for that one.
Then we've always been prettyhot on the automations
internally, but kind of reallyleaning into that even harder
this year.
So things just like escalationworkflows.
So you need to get theattention of the right people.
(22:21):
We now have a command thatpulls up a form and that form
gives you these fields that youhave to fill in.
So every escalation that isbeing sent up the chain to you
know our technical leadership,our product leadership,
sometimes financial leadershipif it involves some customer
billing.
Everything is very consistentacross the board because you are
(22:44):
told this is the informationthat you have to put in so that
we can help you out quicker, sothat we can get the customer
issue resolved quicker.
Because I can't tell you howmany times I've seen these
threads and people saying well,what's the account number, how
much are they paying us, whatplan are they on?
And if we just front load thatwith an automation that says
(23:05):
here it is, pull it in, we can.
We can get a lot done a lotquicker.
That's a big one too.
Alex Turkovic (23:11):
Man, that's huge.
One of the things you saidearlier about just summarization
or something related to support.
I ran across this tool recentlywhich is so cool.
I think it's called ArigladA-R-I-G-A-L-A-D.
Have you heard of it.
(23:32):
I've heard of that one.
Yeah, it's interesting becauseit basically looks at your
support cases and suggestsrewrites of knowledge base
articles, or or or a gap inknowledge base articles, which
is huge, because if you've evertried to manage a knowledge base
, you know what an uphill battlethat is.
Nat Onions (23:48):
Oh, yeah, such a battle.
And then you know you've alreadycreated this company tone of
voice and you know you've gotthese marketing boundaries that
you need to adhere to and it canbe hard to kind of cut through
some of that tape.
But when you're actually gettingthis advice of, hey, we're
looking at where people arehaving a bad time, or even going
(24:10):
as far as saying we're lookingat where people are churning,
yeah, this is where you can dobetter, actually having
something quantifiable andsaying this is why I'm making
this change or this is why weneed to reorder things, even
(24:30):
it's super helpful.
I mean, I've learned from beinga very junior person in my
early days to where I am now isthat you got to get the data.
You can't just go to someoneand say we should make this
change with no base for that.
So all of these tools that areworking in the background to
actually present that to us, itmakes my job as a leader for
sure, a lot easier because I cansay this is what I need.
(24:52):
Here's the data that backs that, here's the upside, here's the
downside.
Alex Turkovic (24:56):
And so, yeah, any any kind of digital tooling
that assists with with that sideof things as well, is just gold
dust do you it sounds like youare you as an organization are
fairly open to that kind ofthing like tooling.
You know, it doesn't sound likeyou've run into a lot of like
(25:17):
roadblocks of like, hey, this isa really cool thing that we
should adopt because it'll doxyz and then you don't.
Doesn't seem like you have tobreak like 10 barriers of red
tape to get it in right.
Nat Onions (25:30):
Yeah, yeah.
So for tools like that, wherewe're looking at, you know, the
just creating those efficiencies, especially right now as we're
kind of stepping into the AIworld, the company is very open
to just letting peopleexperiment and pick the tool
that they want to go with.
You know, we've got, we've gotsome criteria that we have for,
(25:52):
you know, assessing and makingsure that we're finding the
right one.
But ultimately, the more we cantest these I mean the market is
crazy saturated with this kindof tooling right now so the more
we actually get to test byhaving a single team launch it,
that's that's better for us as abusiness.
Now, yeah, you know, a fewyears from now, I'm positive, we
(26:14):
will meet a place where we haveto consolidate and shrink up
maybe a list of 20 down to alist of three, but for right now
it's.
It's actually pretty fun to tosee which teams are doing what
and the reasons why they'vechosen what they've chosen.
You know we're all, we'resharing each other's assessments
(26:36):
and and testing and all of thatstuff and it's yeah, it's just
interesting to see why or hearwhy, the tool that I've loved
and chosen is not quite theright fit for a different
department and they've gone withsomething else and another
team's done the same thing.
It's really cool to see howdifferent use cases can be
applied in different ways.
Alex Turkovic (26:58):
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Now back to the show.
Yeah, that's super cool.
I love that.
It's like a testing ground, soto speak.
(27:43):
Yeah, it's been cool to, justover the I don't know year and
change, that we've been doingthis show, just learning of all
the different, you know, toolsthat are out there.
There is a, there's a page onthe website where I keep like a
tech stack it's called the dcstech stack, but it's like a just
a laundry list of tools, whichis great, but also not, because,
(28:07):
like, there's a lot of tools onthere but you still, you know,
still got to do the legwork oflike figuring out what what's
hype, what's not hype and allthat kind of fun stuff.
So, it's cool that you get to dothat.
One of the reasons I wasexcited to talk to you was the
fact that you all have SMScapability in terms of engaging
(28:31):
customers.
And that's something that I havebeen.
I don't know philosophizing isthe right word, but something
I've been thinking a lot aboutrecently in terms of digital
engagement because, especiallyin certain industries, your
customers are on their phones.
You know they're not waiting bytheir inbox, they're not like
(28:52):
you know they.
They they're not chomping atthe bit for your next in-app.
You know pop-up or whateverthey're, they're on their phones
and, especially if you're anexecutive, you're like, you're,
you're whatever.
And and a lot of people, I think, sleep on SMS, especially in
B2B.
For some reason, b2c, it's,like you know, become more of a
(29:12):
thing, but I was curious if youhad some insights or thoughts in
general on using SMS as part ofyour customer engagement.
Nat Onions (29:22):
Honestly, the key thing that this comes down to is
just consent and preferencesOffering the customer up front
that choice of how do you wantus to communicate with you.
That's where it's key, becauseyou know I'm going to use myself
.
For an example, love SMS and,like you said, especially if the
(29:46):
service that I'm beingcontacted from is an app on my
phone it's in my hand already Ican click from the SMS.
It opens the app.
I can do whatever I need to.
I think my bank does it verywell.
That's fantastic for me.
If I'm emailed, I'm not goingto act on it, I'm going to read
it.
I'm going to think I'll do thatlater when I'm at my desk, but
(30:09):
I'm never logged into mypersonal email at my desk, so it
gets forgotten.
So I'm a very SMS preferenceheavy person for my personal
stuff, but for anything workrelated, for my entire work tool
stack, I don't want SMS.
I want it to be an email.
My email inbox is my to-do list.
I've got communicationpreferences and when I get asked
(30:34):
what I want my journey to looklike, that's how I really kind
of attribute quality and careover the customer experience,
because it's letting me decide.
It's not somebody on the otherside of it running the tool
saying I know how you want to bespoken to and so I'm going to
(30:55):
choose to build the journey likethis.
I think that's just my corepiece of advice is build a
journey that lets people chooseand that's the advice that we
give to our customers and we areseeing an increasing adoption
in all of our mobile channels,SMS included, and I, you know I
(31:15):
really think it's because peopleare being thoughtful and just
applying that type of engagementopportunity to choose.
Yeah.
Alex Turkovic (31:23):
Yeah, it's super smart.
I mean, yeah, the flip side ofthat is the possibility to
really spam your customer iscrazy high.
Yes, you got to be measured.
(31:44):
Okay, I'm thinking specificsnow.
I think it would be incrediblypowerful to engage your
executive buyer persona with aquarterly SMS that has like
three things in it, likeadoption risk, roi done.
(32:08):
You know it's like super quick,concise.
It's like the mini QBR, so thatmaybe they don't have to have a
QBR and you can reserve the QBRfor, like you know, your admins
and the folks that like needthe engagement to have the
technical engagement to likehelp them unstick some stuff.
I don't know what, like the perpersona engagement on things
(32:33):
like SMS.
Nat Onions (32:33):
I think that's crazy powerful yeah, and I think you
know the.
The one of the ways I wouldthink about it is, you know,
just separating marketing fromthe more action-based or
transactional is not quite thethe right word.
I don't I don't mean in the inthe sense of like a commercial
transaction.
But you know, if your, if yourmarketing team has just gone
(32:57):
through the, the, the QBR, andyou know their results have been
delivered and whatever send,you know the, the exec buyer
getting that follow up SMS.
I think that's a great examplethat you gave of like yeah,
that's, that's a value add,probably just a bit of a quick
win at the exec level so thatthey can run it down.
I love that idea.
(33:18):
I think it's more of themarketing SMS which is where it
gets very risky.
Yeah, it's hairy and it's alsoit's tricky to track engagement
there as well.
So you know we're very goodwith email deliverability.
We have an excellent emaildeliverability program because
(33:39):
it's easy to see who's openingand where are they clicking and
what are they doing with thatemail and setting up all these
filters.
But it gets very difficult onthe mobile front because if
someone has their notificationsilenced, that gives a
completely different engagementstat.
That can be a false read, andso yeah, when you so you don't.
(34:01):
You don't have that same levelof hey, they're not responding
to my marketing emails, they'renot opening my marketing emails,
so the system is set to stopsending.
It's a different game when itcomes to to sms.
So it can be, like you said,easy to go down that spam rabbit
hole, and that's when.
That's when things get annoyingand people get pissed off, and
(34:23):
if you're the exec buyer, you'rejust going to say I don't want
this service anymore like they,they don't, they clearly don't
know what's going on in ourbusiness and who I am, and, yeah
, get rid of it.
So, yeah, the transactionalvalue add, all about it, but
marketing got to be preferencebased.
Alex Turkovic (34:41):
High risk high reward.
High risk low reward Maybe.
Nat Onions (34:45):
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, probably a reward with an
asterisk.
Yeah, like a lot more notesunderneath.
Alex Turkovic (34:52):
Just don't F it up.
An asterisk, yeah, like a lotmore notes underneath, just
don't f it up.
Basically, you were.
You were recently on turnfmwith andrew which is a great
podcast I love.
I love listening to that showand one of the things that you
were talking about on that showwas minimizing the impact of a
(35:13):
champion change on an account,because we all struggle with
that.
I mean, your champion leavesand the red flag immediately
goes up because that's theperson that you've built the
relationship with and all thatkind of stuff.
Nat Onions (35:27):
I was curious you talked a lot on there about some
of the playbooks that you havein place to kind of minimize the
impact of that and whatnot, andI was curious if your digital
strategy informed that at allyeah, I think one of the one of
the things that that really madeus think about it is we, we use
a platform called plan hats asour customer success tool and
(35:50):
they is a picture that, yeah, itallows us to assign a backup
csm in that.
So it's all fully automated.
So if a csm goes on pto, ifthey're unexpectedly off sick,
everything gets forced to theirbackup csm, so that we don't get
in that situation where acustomer's reaching out and the
csm maybe they've.
(36:10):
You know, if they've gone offsick they may not have turned
their out of office.
On those, those communicationsfrom customers don't sit there,
they go straight to the backupCSM and so we'll, we'll call
it's.
It's easy to to do that by.
You know, what we're doing isspreading, spreading the risk.
Basically, we're going fromthis system where there's a
single point of failure in theCSM, to having a backup there.
(36:38):
Obviously, we can't build asystem of backups within a
customer's business, but justthat notion of spreading the
risk is, I think, the move thatwe want to be making, and it's
as simple as making friends withas many people as we can.
So we have our primary user, wehave our champion, our power
user.
But hey, we'd love to see yourhead of product.
Would you mind bringing themalong to the QBR?
You know we'd love to get theirtake on what we're doing.
(37:01):
Or, you know, product person toproduct person, I'll bring my
PM, you bring yours.
Let's make some connectionsthere.
And then for our higher valueaccounts as well, we've we're
really learning the the value inadding an exec sponsor, and not
just not just when things aregetting a bit, a bit hairy, I
think one right from thebeginning, because there is a
(37:23):
lot of power among the c-suite.
And so, you know, if I championsomeone that's, you know, maybe
a marketing director leaves andwe're struggling to find the,
the next, the next person thatwe can work with, then our cmo,
who's the exec sponsor, canreach out to the cmo at the
customer's company, say, hey,like really sorry to hear that
(37:47):
so and so had left.
We'd really appreciate it ifyou could introduce us to the
rest of the team.
So, yeah, risk mitigation bymaking friends as possible exec
sponsors.
And, um, something that we'rewe're working on in the account
management front is getting arelationship with the
procurement team it's not goingto be frequent where you know
(38:09):
it's not something that is goingto come up on, like you know, a
day-to-day type relationship,but we'd love to get the
procurement contact into a qbr.
Let them see firsthand what thevalue is so that when that
conversation occurs at therenewal time they're familiar
with the tool.
They've gotten to know the team.
We do really fun qbrs so theyare probably already pretty
(38:32):
warmed up to us.
So, yeah, not always an easynut to crack on the procurement
side, but it's there's just ifyou can, if you can get them on
side early, yeah, it's massive.
Alex Turkovic (38:43):
I mean as a, as a champion of a platform myself,
like I can't tell you howpainful it is to have, come
renewal time, to have tointernally sell the tool to, you
know, the finance team and theprocurement team and the support
team and the security teams.
(39:04):
Like every.
There's this whole freakingcycle of sales meetings
internally, and so I love thatyou're trying to make that bit a
little bit easier by like beinga known quantity.
I love the notion of crashingteam meetings as a as a.
CSM or as a customer facing teamand I know you know quite a few
(39:24):
people who've started doingthat a lot more of like hey, can
it, you know?
Can I be a fly on the wall inyour meeting?
Or can I have 10 minutes orsomething like that to talk
about the new feature release?
Or can I give you these threeslides that you can use in your
all hands or something like that, like that's, that's so cool
because it it does, you know,minimize risk, expose you to
more people so that invariably,when your champion goes and gets
(39:47):
a promotion or moves on to youknow another company or whatever
, you still have that contactwith the others.
Nat Onions (39:53):
Yeah, and that's something low lift that we can
do as well.
We have a template for some ofour onboarding, some of our
pitch decks, and we've actuallygot an automation that drops the
customer's name in it, dropstheir account number in their
logo, so it very quickly andeasily personalizes that.
So, again, tying it back to someof that digital experience and
(40:16):
automation, yeah it doesn'talways have to be approached as
something that's manual and thenit gets shut down because it's
not scalable.
Just think about that from thestart.
Just just what can I do tooperationalize this?
Alex Turkovic (40:32):
okay, I'm gonna bite, because you mentioned um
the word qbr and fun in the samesentence.
Um, so what's that all about?
How are you?
Nat Onions (40:43):
well, okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be
honest, we don't.
We actually call them qscs.
We've, we've tried to rein theterm.
It's a QBR for all intents andpurposes, but we call it a
quarter success check-in.
Alex Turkovic (40:57):
Awesome Love it, yep.
Nat Onions (40:58):
So we've tried to shed that long-held kind of like
.
Oh no, qbr, that's a lot, butsomething that is an absolute
staple in this.
Every single time we have somekind of product sneak peek, and
sometimes that's an exercisewhere we'll take customers
through a series of you knowwireframes or designs and say
(41:21):
what resonates with you the most, tell us about it.
Let's do a little workshop for10 minutes.
Sometimes it is, hey, here's afeature that we're launching in
a couple of weeks time andyou're going to be the like,
among the first to see it.
Like, let me just take youthrough it and let you click
around.
But it's not just.
It's not just about, hey, lookhow great we are and look how
(41:44):
great you are because we helpedyou.
You know, we don't need to beleaning into that.
We want it to be exciting.
We want people to see what thecontent that call is going to be
and say, oh, hell, yeah, I wantit to be exciting.
We want people to see what thecontent that call is going to be
and say, hell, yeah, I'm goingto be there and hopefully I'm
going to bring some other peoplefrom my team too.
That's one of the staples isjust that product sneak peek.
(42:06):
And I think you know thecustomer success team that we've
built.
I'm just really proud of all ofthem.
They've got such a sunnydisposition and they are
genuinely good at building thesereally good connections with
their customers, and so Iwatched some of them going into
these calls and it's very clearthat there's a great personal
(42:27):
connection there, that they knoweach other.
So you know they arecontinually and consistently
just building up to this feelingof I want people to enjoy this
QSC and they do.
They're excited to get to hangout with their CSM for, you know
, 45 to 60 minutes.
Alex Turkovic (42:49):
I dig it, I love it.
I mean, you know it's, youdon't.
I'm not saying you should makelike you know it's, I'm, you
don't you?
I'm not saying you should makelike you know your QSC or QBR or
whatever you want to call itlike an entertainment show or
whatever, but it needs, it needsto have a.
There needs to be a draw Like Idon't.
I don't want to come to yourmeeting and talk about how many
support tickets I've put in overthe last quarter, or like what
(43:10):
bugs you fix.
I don't care, your bugs are notmy concern.
I want to know what thisrelationship is going to look
like going forward and whatwe're going to do and all that
kind of stuff.
So I love that you guys arefocused on that.
That's great.
I've had the great fortune ofinterviewing a fair amount of
(43:31):
women on the show who holdexecutive positions within
companies, you being one ofthose, and you know it's.
this isn't this is not digitalCS related at all, but I always,
I always am curious to get youknow these leaders opinions on
you know the current state intheir opinion of you know
(43:53):
diversity, especially genderdiversity in tech, because in CS
, I mean in general, there seemto be more women in CS, but more
on the IC level and still noton the leadership level.
So you know, I'd love to getkind of your read on you know
what that looks like for youtoday and also on what that
looks like for you today andalso what you see kind of going
(44:15):
forward, how the industry andhow maybe young women or young
men in the industry can help tolevel the playing field.
Nat Onions (44:25):
Yeah, that's great, and I love talking about this
topic, especially because I dothink that across the board,
we've we've got work to do, um,to get to that point of equality
where, where people do lookaround a room and they, you know
, they see people that look likethem, people multiple that look
(44:46):
like them.
And you know there's I thinkwe've we've we have made
progress, but there's still.
You know there's, I think we'vewe have made progress, but
there's still there's a long wayto go.
And I think you know it'simportant for people in your
position to be really drivingthat with the people that you
choose to give a platform to.
You know I feel very, you know,very fortunate to you know I've
(45:11):
got Savannah, who works on ourpr.
She's fantastic at seeking outopportunities savannah is
amazing.
She's amazing, by the way, yeahshe's fantastic and but you know
she's she's reaching out topeople like you and saying, like
I want to give nat a platformand for people in your position
to say, yeah, let's, let's,let's do it.
(45:33):
You know that is how more femalevoices get heard and more
diverse voices is.
You know, being on the's, theic level, making referrals to
people in their network to comeand work in in your business,
(46:01):
and I think you know this.
This can be a controversial wayto look at things as well, but
if you, if you look around yourbusiness and you see that you
know there are not people ofcolor in your business, if
you're hiring for a role, theninterview the people of people
of color.
If you don't see enough women,interview the women.
(46:24):
You know, I think we're allstriving to build a diverse
hiring pool, but you know, ifyou, if you know you need more,
more women in your business,seek out the women and make that
the hiring pool.
That's a great way to make surethat you're bringing women into
the, into the story and givingthem that opportunity.
So yeah yeah, I think it's.
(46:45):
It's all just about beingwilling to step out and say, hey
, I've, I've got a voice and I'mgoing to use it for change and
and not sort of saying, well,there's nothing that I can
really do about it.
There's always something.
Alex Turkovic (47:05):
There's nothing worse than like.
Complacency in this stuff islike oh, it's just the way it is
.
It's like no, no, it's no, no,it's not at all.
And I mean some of the bestteams I've been on have been the
most diverse teams, becauseyou're getting viewpoints from
different places, you're gettingdifferent walks of life
(47:25):
together that bring kind of thecollective emotional
intelligence and the collectivelife experience of the team up.
It raises the bar of theconversations that you have in
your day-to-day work life andit's so fulfilling those
(47:48):
experiences.
So I definitely hear you onthat.
And that brings us to the pointin our conversation where we
are woefully short on timebecause we've covered a lot.
We covered a lot of territory,yeah, but you know, to close out
, I mean a couple of things thatI always like to ask is first
(48:08):
off, I'd love to know what's inyour content, diet, like what
are you paying attention to?
Books, podcasts, shows, blah,blah, blah.
Nat Onions (48:15):
Yeah.
So from sort of a personaldevelopment standpoint, I love
the CCO human duct tape show.
Alex Turkovic (48:22):
Yeah.
Nat Onions (48:22):
You know, that's where I want to be.
One day I'd love to get thatCCO title.
So it's great and it'sentertaining as well because of
the industry that that our toolsits in and what you know, our
primary bread and butter, thatwe were built on.
The email geeks communityphenomenal really, really
helpful people, yeah, um, and Ilove the the crack the customer
(48:45):
code podcast as well.
I think that's that's a reallyfun one.
And then a, a book that Irevisit probably like every 18
months or so.
I'll read Five Dysfunctions ofa Team.
Alex Turkovic (48:56):
Cool yeah.
Nat Onions (48:57):
It's an oldie but a goodie, and every time I sort of
just need to be reminded of youknow, everyone is facing very
similar challenges and just alittle bit of a reminder of how
to best tackle those.
It's just a good read.
Reminder of how how to besttackle those.
It's just, it's just a goodread and I love, I love business
(49:19):
books and business theory thatare written as an actual, not
like a story.
Alex Turkovic (49:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's the fun one yeah I love that
book because for me anyway, um,that was kind of the first
business book that I read thathumanized being not quite okay
at everything it's like yes, yesexactly this is gonna suck over
here and that's okay, but thisis how we move through that and
(49:45):
this is how we embrace it.
Nat Onions (49:46):
Yeah, I love that exactly and and it's written
around you know, a female ceobeing pulled in to come save the
day.
So I think it's written aroundyou know, a female CEO being
pulled in to come save the day.
So I think it was written like20 years ago or something.
Alex Turkovic (49:57):
It was a while ago.
Is that Lencioni?
That's Lencioni, right?
Yes, yes, yeah.
Nat Onions (50:06):
So that's a good one in today's climate.
But I can imagine when it cameout it's like oh okay, this is
new.
Alex Turkovic (50:11):
A little edgy maybe, but why?
I don.
It came out.
It's like, oh okay, this is new, a little edgy maybe, but why?
I don't know cool any shoutouts you want to give that are
doing.
You know people that are doingcool things in digital or cx
yeah, I think I I already calledout my ski.
Nat Onions (50:25):
I think they're they're my superheroes of the
year.
They've been so collaborative,they're building something
really exciting and they'resuper humble guys as well.
Yeah, just just really greatteam to work with.
So I've got to give them theshout out, and that they're a
smaller company as well.
So whenever I can give them aplatform, I always want to, and
I think something that reallysurprised me not that they need
(50:48):
the marketing or anything butdisney.
I was I've got I've got youngnephews and I was just
arbitrarily like you know, whatwould it look like to to take
them to disney?
And so I I went on the websiteand I was just kind of clicking
around it.
You know, building, building atrip, basically and it's it's
really cool their digitalexperience of how they guide you
(51:11):
through that and tell you tothink about it and personalize
it.
Yeah, it was.
It was surprising.
So that was that was.
It was just one that was likewow, I didn't realize that they
were quite as in tune on thatside of things.
I mean, probably shouldn'tsurprise me that they're giants.
Alex Turkovic (51:26):
I mean, they probably had a little bit of a
budget for that that.
That that's awesome.
Yeah, that's cool.
I love it.
Nat Onions (51:41):
Where can people find you and reach out to you
and chat with you and all thatfun stuff.
Linkedin is probably my go-to.
I'm pretty active in messageson there.
I love to connect with newpeople.
I know I'm.
I'm also very open to jumpingon a call and saying hello and
exchanging some ideas withpeople as well.
I've people have been very thanwilling to just give me their
(52:02):
thoughts and perspective.
They didn't have to do that,and so I want to try and pay it
forward and give back as well.
(52:22):
So, yeah, linkedin is probablythe best way and yeah, any kind
of Superman auction online.
I'm usually there lurking tosee if there's any hidden gems
are you so?
Alex Turkovic (52:38):
are you on the superman front?
Are you like into, like themovie memorabilia or the comic
books or the you know like?
Do you have a favorite genrearea?
Nat Onions (52:49):
the.
I think like the, the comicbooks mostly and the the earlier
christopher reeve stuff I'vegot.
I've got this site couple ofsigned christopher reeve things.
Oh, that's cool, yeah.
So I got a signed piece ofkryptonite and a photo there.
I've got a couple ofstoryboards.
I've got a piece of his cape soI've got nifty things yeah
(53:12):
that's really cool.
Alex Turkovic (53:14):
Yeah, christopher reeve was the man I mean he was
, he was like, he was it, he wasit.
Those movies I mean I haven't.
Do they hold up?
Nat Onions (53:24):
I haven't watched one recently I mean, they do
that, they're.
It's a little.
It's a little cheesy, I guess,if you were to compare it to
today's yeah, I mean the specialeffects.
For sure it's all like apractical effects, like the
effects and the destruction andthe explosion.
It was this, this wholesome guyjust doing, doing good and,
(53:47):
yeah, the challenge of, of youknow, having having two separate
identities.
Alex Turkovic (53:52):
That's right.
Yeah, well, supernat, we'vegone over time, but I've very
much appreciated the convo issuper fun and super fun and yeah
, yeah, I can't wait to sharethis one with the audience.
Thank you so much for joiningand and you you know you brought
a ton of ton of knowledge andton of wealth.
(54:13):
So thank you, cool thanks, alex.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
(54:34):
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You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition
Wordmap and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, dylan
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Lifetime Value aims to servethe content video, audio
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They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
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So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
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I'm Alex Trukovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
You got to get the data.
You can't just go to someoneand say we should make this
change with no base for that.
All of these tools that areworking in the background to
actually present that to us.
It makes my job as a leader alot easier, because I can say
this is what I need.
Here's the data that backs that.
Here's the upside, here's thedownside.
Alex Turkovic (00:24):
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
(00:47):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Greetings and welcome back tothe Digital CX Podcast.
I'm so glad that you could joinme today and every week as we
talk about all things digital inCS.
This would be episode 78.
(01:09):
And we are joined today by NatOnions, who is VP of CX at
Customerio, which is a platformyou're probably aware of or may
have heard of in passing, butthey're really focused on kind
of email, push notifications,text messages, in-app messaging,
(01:30):
automation and webhooks forcustomer facing motions.
So very, very relevant.
Obviously we definitely talkabout that in the show.
We talk about maybe some youknow.
We get into some specificsabout SMS specifically, because
that's a topic that I've beenresearching for my own usage
(01:52):
recently.
We also talk a little bit aboutchampion changes and the
impacts of those.
We spend some time also delvinginto gender equity as well,
because that's a topic that youknow.
Just equity in general is atopic that we've visited several
times on the show, even thoughit has nothing to do with
(02:12):
digital CS, but it haseverything to do with digital CS
.
So, anyway, I hope you enjoythis conversation with Nat
Onions, because I sure did.
Nat, I wanted to welcome you tothe podcast.
It's been a little bit coming,but I'm super excited that
you're here yeah, me too.
Nat Onions (02:29):
Thanks for having me yeah, for sure I've.
Alex Turkovic (02:32):
You know.
I've seen, seen you around,heard you on different places
and I was like you know, let'sgo, let's, let's talk a little
about you, let's talk about alittle bit about customer, which
is where you're at and yourjourney and all that kind of
stuff.
So I think we have some funstuff to get into.
Definitely you know, as you do,you do a little bit of LinkedIn
(02:54):
stalking and a little bit ofresearch and stuff like that and
I noticed that your kind offirst professional initial, your
initial professional life, wasin in like printing and and kind
of project management aroundthat.
What was that all about?
Nat Onions (03:11):
yeah, so that was a touch of nepotism.
My, my father, used to own theone pretty, pretty big design
and print studio in nottinghamcool from the age of six it was.
It was child labor in a lovingway I'm just helping him out
there and I loved it.
I loved being there.
(03:31):
And then, as I got older, I youknow I wanted to still be
involved, but in something thatI was actually interested in and
could potentially turn into acareer.
I never had any interest intaking it over from him.
I was always set that I wasgonna make my own way and carve
my own path but, yeah, it was a.
It was a great resume piece tohave to actually get that
(03:53):
experience and it was far enoughremoved from his job, as, as
running the business that I Igot, I had a boss that wasn't
him, so so that's how it allbegan, really.
Alex Turkovic (04:05):
That's interesting.
That's so cool.
Were there any particularlymemorable projects that came
through or anything kind ofweird that you worked on?
Nat Onions (04:14):
So one of the biggest things that we worked on
there was we did a lot ofprinting for Carlsberg, the beer
company yeah, pretty massive,and they at the time.
It may still be, but at the timethey were sort of official beer
of the world cup and the Eurocup all the football, soccer
stuff, and so I got to do, uh, alot with, with that sort of
(04:37):
stuff, you know, keeping ontrack with what the designers
were up to, and a lot of it wasvery last minute as well of what
the designers were up to, and alot of it was very last minute
as well, of course, because youknow a team wins or loses a
match, and then we've got to getthe posters ready in a you know
three or four day turnaround toget them to the pubs ready for
the next match, so they canstart start promoting it.
(04:58):
So it was a lot.
That's where I think.
That's where I learned tothrive in chaos.
Alex Turkovic (05:03):
Oh yeah, sure Right.
Nat Onions (05:04):
Yeah, we're, we're semi, we're as ready as we can
be to go.
We will wait the words and thatgives us the final instructions
and then it is just go, go, go.
Everything's got to be done inorder and that.
So that was.
That was pretty, pretty fun.
I used to love those.
Usually, evenings would be whenthat was all happening, right?
Alex Turkovic (05:23):
I mean, I would imagine probably barely enough
time to let the ink dry, right?
Nat Onions (05:27):
Yeah, yeah.
So it was fun and I learnedenough about just sort of design
and layout and stuff to just beable to put together really
good professional lookingdocuments together, really good
professional looking documents.
So yeah, I mean no way adesigner, but it kind of taught
(05:53):
me how important it is whenyou're sending a PDF to someone
whether it's confirming theircontract or giving them a
walkthrough of a concept justreally paying attention to
detail there.
So it's I learned a lot ofstuff in that environment that I
still carry forward today soyeah, I would imagine.
Alex Turkovic (06:07):
I mean you know you probably, that was probably
early exposure to you knowcustomer issues and
relationships and early exposureto, like content creation to,
you know, and those kinds ofthings.
So that's a cool trainingground.
Nat Onions (06:22):
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Turkovic (06:24):
But physical instead of digital.
Nat Onions (06:26):
Yes, yes, I mean, it was a long time ago as well.
So yeah, the digital tools andproducing a physical product as
well.
It was just limited.
Alex Turkovic (06:39):
Yeah, for sure, Sure, and I gather from your
background that you are and alsothe embroidery on your chair
that you're slightly a Supermanfan.
Nat Onions (06:56):
Just a little bit.
Yeah, I think people always askme what made you get into it,
and the genuine truth is Icannot remember a time in my
life when I was not intoSuperman.
It's just always been somethingthat I thought was really cool
and got really excited about.
Alex Turkovic (07:11):
So did you watch the Christopher Reeve movies as
a kid and all that kind of stuff.
Nat Onions (07:18):
Yeah, he still is my favorite Superman.
I think he did a great job andas as I've as I've gotten older
and had grown-up jobs that thatpay grown-up salaries, I've been
able to build out a really bigcollection.
I've got a lot of stuff from1939, when superman first was
launched.
(07:38):
So yeah, it's, it's a pretty Iguess it's a pretty niche thing,
but.
But I think everyone knows ofSuperman.
But that kind of collecting andcataloging is pretty dorky, but
I mean, that's what we're all.
Alex Turkovic (07:52):
I disagree, I disagree.
I think it's.
You know I've actually workedwith.
There's one person inparticular.
We actually used to call himSuperman, yeah.
Nat Onions (08:01):
Because he's worse.
My nickname is Super Nat.
That's kind of what they callme yeah, there you go.
Alex Turkovic (08:08):
Cool, that's cool .
Well, I guess you know, fastforward to today, you're
currently leading customerexperience at Customerio a lot
of customer in there, I guess.
Talk to us a little bit aboutthat transition and that journey
for you and what led you intothat role today.
Nat Onions (08:24):
Yeah, yeah, sure.
So I actually startedCustomerio in the customer
success team.
I applied for a completelydifferent job I think it was on
that, you know when they werelaunching their partnership team
a very small company at thattime.
I didn't get the job, but Iloved the interview process so
much and I had like with thosepeople and I had gotten to know
(08:45):
the products as I was goingthrough that process, that I was
just like I'm not ready to giveup on this company.
So I said to the recruiter whatlike, where do you think I could
fit in this in this company?
You know what, what, what, whatcan I maybe work on and come
back to in the future?
And she actually said well, youknow, I think I think you might
be a good fit for customersuccess.
(09:07):
It's a brand new thing, we'venever done it before.
So you'd be one of one of thefirst, but if you wanted to give
it a shot.
So I went through that process.
Turns out it was the right fitbecause they hired me for that
one um and so I started as oneof three csms.
We were the first, first onesin the door and essentially kind
(09:29):
of built out this cs program.
Um, I was, I was.
I was a 35th person when Ijoined and now we're 275 people.
So yeah, it was it was I arelatively quick journey into
management from being anindividual contributor yeah,
just sort of went through theleadership and management ranks
(09:52):
on the customer success team andthen eventually took over the
technical support team as well.
As our customer base grew andthe company's goals pivoted and
became more ambitious as well,we built out what is today an
account management function.
So those are the three sort ofmain branches that report into
(10:15):
me, and I'm also responsible forour email deliverability
program.
Alex Turkovic (10:20):
Jeez, okay, yeah, that's a lot.
Nat Onions (10:27):
That's enough, that's a it's a that's enough I
have a really great group ofleaders, directors and managers
that support me and keep me sane, so I'm well taken care of on
that front yeah, yeah.
Alex Turkovic (10:40):
Well, you have to , you have to, you have to.
I've had conversations on thisshow with other, I guess,
customer-facing leaders ofcustomer success platforms, or
CX platforms or whatever youwant to call it Platforms that
serve the customer experience,and most of them have expressed
(11:03):
both gratitude but also addedpressure for having to
essentially kind of be a rolemodel for your customers on how
to run a customer.
Nat Onions (11:17):
Or do you feel that?
Yeah, I do feel that, that Ithink it's always in the back of
my mind that you know we've gotteams that are going out into
the world and they're talking toour customers about here's the
right strategy to get yourcustomers talking to you, and
here's why we would recommendnot over emailing them.
Here's our recommended timelinefor that type of campaign and
(11:41):
you know, I know that at thesame time campaign and you know,
I know that at the same timewe're using our own, our own
tool, but we've got our ownprogram that has timelines and
you know volumes and stuff andit's kind of we have to get that
spot on, otherwise ourcredibility can just plummet
because the customers will be.
Well, you know I'm not enjoyingthe, the journey that I'm
(12:04):
getting from you, so I don'treally feel like you're in a
position to tell the advising me.
Alex Turkovic (12:12):
It's always.
Nat Onions (12:12):
It is always a small thing that runs through my mind
, but I think I think it's alsowhere we thrive and that's from,
you know, from management allthe way down to our individual
contributors, because they takeso much pride in everything.
You know it's.
Our customers ask us a lot andyou know we want to know the
(12:35):
same.
What, what are other people andother businesses like mine
doing?
It's great when we can helppeople make those connections.
But when a customer says Ireally like these messages I'm
getting from you, tell me, tellme what you've built there, that
is when I see people just kindof like pop out their chest and
(12:55):
they're like glowing becausethey know they, they had a hand
in building that and it's reallyresonating.
So I try to lean more into thethe positive of yeah, we, we
feel really confident that we'redoing something good and we're
continually iterating on it andmaking sure that it's still
hitting the mark, and so we getto be really proud when somebody
(13:16):
asks us for advice or, you know, points out something that
they've enjoyed in the contentthat we're delivering.
Alex Turkovic (13:22):
Yeah, yeah, and I would imagine you've probably
learned some things from yourcustomers on cool things that
they're doing that you'veimplemented as a turnaround
there.
Nat Onions (13:34):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we've worked with somereally really smart people,
whether that's on sort of agrowth marketing role, a content
role, even the more techengineer type roles, the more
you know tech engineer typeroles, the questions that they
ask sometimes, or when we, whenwe go into their accounts and
see what they've built,sometimes it's just this really
mind-blowing wow, like they,they did that on their own.
(13:57):
We didn't.
We didn't tell that theyfigured out this really cool
thing that they could have built.
So, yeah, having having ourcustomers create great things
and share them with us, but alsochallenge us, say, hey, I've
got this great idea.
I'm not sure how to do it inthe best way.
Can you help me?
There's a couple of missingpieces that we we need to slide
(14:19):
into place to make that possible.
It's so motivating to to go toa product team and say, hey, if
we can make these small changes,this is the kind of use case it
would unlock.
That's what the product teamloves to hear and it's the kind
of thing that gets CX reallyexcited as well.
Alex Turkovic (14:37):
Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's so cool.
Well, I do want to get intosome of the specifics of what
you guys are doing digitally,but, as you know, one of the
things that I ask pretty muchall of my guests is if they had
to describe what digital is tosomebody that doesn't know
anything about CX or CS orwhatever, I'd be curious to know
(15:02):
how you would describe it.
Nat Onions (15:04):
Yeah, so I'd probably position it as the the
using this ever-evolving toolboxof technologies that allow you
to create a scalable experiencefor customers that's predictable
and repeatable.
And it's not about replacinghumans.
It's about creating a situationwhere you can apply the human
(15:27):
touch at the time and placewhere the most value can be
created, and to get there, youneed to create some operational
efficiency with the help ofdigital tooling for that lower
hanging fruit totally.
Alex Turkovic (15:41):
I love that and and you're absolutely right like
you, you don't want your humancapital wasting cycles on stupid
stuff that can be automated orthings that are repeated over
and over and over again.
Exactly.
Nat Onions (15:55):
You want them focused on driving value.
Right, and it can make thecustomer experience so much
better as well and asking forsomething that is you know?
The answer is just.
Here is the link to thisdocument.
There is nothing that they gainfrom sitting in a support queue
(16:16):
waiting for a human to addressthat.
If it can be automated anddelivered to them.
Based on you know some keywordsor some intelligent doc search,
it unlocks them instantly.
And you know, I think that'swhere.
That's where I think from thefrom folks maybe on the outside
looking in that are a bit moreskeptical about some of these
automations, that they'rereceiving them all the time, and
(16:39):
it does make for a betterexperience.
Alex Turkovic (16:42):
It's.
It's so interesting that youit's not interesting.
It it's, I think, a normalthing that you put the qualifier
of it's not here to replacehumans in with that definition,
because I do it too mosteverybody I ask does it and and
there's this kind of like humannature element of digital that
(17:03):
makes us as a species, I think,immediately go towards this is
going to replace me and blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
And it's so interesting becauseall these tools are here to do
is to make you, the individual,more efficient and give you the
tools that you need so thatyou're not pulling your hair out
getting ready for a QBR oryou're not pulling your hair out
(17:26):
trying to get the context ofthe account when you're trying
to solve a difficult support youknow case and those kinds of
things yeah, I mean, you knownobody.
Nat Onions (17:34):
Nobody went through, you know, years of of training
and climbing a career ladder anddoing all of this extra
learning to be solving veryentry-level questions that are
rooted sometimes in laziness.
You know they want to be usingtheir brains to to solve complex
problems and give real,tangible value back to customers
(17:59):
, and I think that's that's theway that I've been positioning
things.
A lot with our team is.
This is all going to make yourjob a lot more fun right, nobody
.
Alex Turkovic (18:09):
Nobody is saying man, I really wish I could use a
slide rule for this.
Like the computer, you know,it's the same.
It's the same shit thathappened a few years ago.
Like the computer, right?
So so what?
What is the?
What are you doing digitally?
Like what?
How are you putting thosethings into practice?
Nat Onions (18:28):
Yeah.
So I say, the biggest thingthat we've done this year,
that's customer-facing, isactually to launch a virtual
assistant in our app.
So it's powered by Zendesk.
That's who we use for ourticketing system, but we've
actually connected it to abackend AI called MyAskAI
(18:50):
Absolutely fantastic team.
I have to give them a shout outwherever I can because they are
phenomenal, did you say MyAsk?
Yeah, myaskai yeah, and soessentially what this does?
It's there essentially as an AIpowered doc search.
So if you're in the custom IOUI, you can open it up, you can
(19:12):
ask it a question.
It will search through our docs, it'll give you the response,
it'll link you to the relevantdocs and if you still are
struggling or if you need to aska question that's very specific
to your account, we're carefulthe AI does not look at it,
doesn't have access to youraccount data.
So if that's where yourquestion is rooted, you can ask
(19:32):
to be passed through to a human,but it is.
It's solving 54% of thequestions that it's being asked,
which is you know.
We're really pleased with thatas an initial result Massive,
massive, and it's unblockingcustomers in 20 seconds versus
having them wait in a queue fora couple of hours to be sent a
(19:53):
doc link because that's assimple as their question was.
So that's been the big one.
The second half of this year isjust focused on improving that,
training the model and thenworking with our marketing team
to boost adoption there.
So that's the really big onethat we've been the most proud
of.
Then, behind the scenes, we'reworking on a lot of those
(20:16):
operational efficiency, qualityof life improvements.
So we're going to be working ona ticket summary project.
So if you imagine some of oursupport threads, they are many,
many replies long.
There's been a lot of back andforth, or sometimes we'll have
customers that they alwaysrespond to the same email
(20:38):
because they just search theirinbox and they respond to the
thread that they opened a yearago.
So what we're implementing isan automation that will actually
pull all of the conversationhistory and give you a summary.
So this is who it is, this iswhat's going on, this is what
you said last time and you knowthis is our score on the tone so
(20:58):
far.
So I think that one's going tobe a good time saver.
I think our estimation is thatit will save us probably about
80 hours a week of human timewhen we're looking at the kind
of insights that it's going tobe able to to pull together
right and and gather.
So that's going to be a reallybig one.
Alex Turkovic (21:17):
That's huge because, I mean, there's so many
times where you are made awareof a customer scenario or a
customer situation and you'regiven these incredibly vague
details and you know, I thinkback to a time, you know, before
we had some of thesesummarization tools in place and
(21:37):
those kinds of things.
It's like you'd have to go okay, let's look at their tickets
and let's look at the csm'snotes, and let's look at the
sales notes and let's look atlet's talk to three different
people and by the time you'reready to have a customer
conversation which, by the way,they're waiting for, you're like
a day or two into it and it'snot the best.
So I think that's massivelypowerful.
(21:59):
That's awesome.
Nat Onions (22:00):
Yeah, so I'm excited for that one.
Then we've always been prettyhot on the automations
internally, but kind of reallyleaning into that even harder
this year.
So things just like escalationworkflows.
So you need to get theattention of the right people.
(22:21):
We now have a command thatpulls up a form and that form
gives you these fields that youhave to fill in.
So every escalation that isbeing sent up the chain to you
know our technical leadership,our product leadership,
sometimes financial leadershipif it involves some customer
billing.
Everything is very consistentacross the board because you are
(22:44):
told this is the informationthat you have to put in so that
we can help you out quicker, sothat we can get the customer
issue resolved quicker.
Because I can't tell you howmany times I've seen these
threads and people saying well,what's the account number, how
much are they paying us, whatplan are they on?
And if we just front load thatwith an automation that says
(23:05):
here it is, pull it in, we can.
We can get a lot done a lotquicker.
That's a big one too.
Alex Turkovic (23:11):
Man, that's huge.
One of the things you saidearlier about just summarization
or something related to support.
I ran across this tool recentlywhich is so cool.
I think it's called ArigladA-R-I-G-A-L-A-D.
Have you heard of it.
(23:32):
I've heard of that one.
Yeah, it's interesting becauseit basically looks at your
support cases and suggestsrewrites of knowledge base
articles, or or or a gap inknowledge base articles, which
is huge, because if you've evertried to manage a knowledge base
, you know what an uphill battlethat is.
Nat Onions (23:48):
Oh, yeah, such a battle.
And then you know you've alreadycreated this company tone of
voice and you know you've gotthese marketing boundaries that
you need to adhere to and it canbe hard to kind of cut through
some of that tape.
But when you're actually gettingthis advice of, hey, we're
looking at where people arehaving a bad time, or even going
(24:10):
as far as saying we're lookingat where people are churning,
yeah, this is where you can dobetter, actually having
something quantifiable andsaying this is why I'm making
this change or this is why weneed to reorder things, even
(24:30):
it's super helpful.
I mean, I've learned from beinga very junior person in my
early days to where I am now isthat you got to get the data.
You can't just go to someoneand say we should make this
change with no base for that.
So all of these tools that areworking in the background to
actually present that to us, itmakes my job as a leader for
sure, a lot easier because I cansay this is what I need.
(24:52):
Here's the data that backs that, here's the upside, here's the
downside.
Alex Turkovic (24:56):
And so, yeah, any any kind of digital tooling
that assists with with that sideof things as well, is just gold
dust do you it sounds like youare you as an organization are
fairly open to that kind ofthing like tooling.
You know, it doesn't sound likeyou've run into a lot of like
(25:17):
roadblocks of like, hey, this isa really cool thing that we
should adopt because it'll doxyz and then you don't.
Doesn't seem like you have tobreak like 10 barriers of red
tape to get it in right.
Nat Onions (25:30):
Yeah, yeah.
So for tools like that, wherewe're looking at, you know, the
just creating those efficiencies, especially right now as we're
kind of stepping into the AIworld, the company is very open
to just letting peopleexperiment and pick the tool
that they want to go with.
You know, we've got, we've gotsome criteria that we have for,
(25:52):
you know, assessing and makingsure that we're finding the
right one.
But ultimately, the more we cantest these I mean the market is
crazy saturated with this kindof tooling right now so the more
we actually get to test byhaving a single team launch it,
that's that's better for us as abusiness.
Now, yeah, you know, a fewyears from now, I'm positive, we
(26:14):
will meet a place where we haveto consolidate and shrink up
maybe a list of 20 down to alist of three, but for right now
it's.
It's actually pretty fun to tosee which teams are doing what
and the reasons why they'vechosen what they've chosen.
You know we're all, we'resharing each other's assessments
(26:36):
and and testing and all of thatstuff and it's yeah, it's just
interesting to see why or hearwhy, the tool that I've loved
and chosen is not quite theright fit for a different
department and they've gone withsomething else and another
team's done the same thing.
It's really cool to see howdifferent use cases can be
applied in different ways.
Alex Turkovic (26:58):
Hey, I want to have a brief chat with you about
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Now back to the show.
Yeah, that's super cool.
I love that.
It's like a testing ground, soto speak.
(27:43):
Yeah, it's been cool to, justover the I don't know year and
change, that we've been doingthis show, just learning of all
the different, you know, toolsthat are out there.
There is a, there's a page onthe website where I keep like a
tech stack it's called the dcstech stack, but it's like a just
a laundry list of tools, whichis great, but also not, because,
(28:07):
like, there's a lot of tools onthere but you still, you know,
still got to do the legwork oflike figuring out what what's
hype, what's not hype and allthat kind of fun stuff.
So, it's cool that you get to dothat.
One of the reasons I wasexcited to talk to you was the
fact that you all have SMScapability in terms of engaging
(28:31):
customers.
And that's something that I havebeen.
I don't know philosophizing isthe right word, but something
I've been thinking a lot aboutrecently in terms of digital
engagement because, especiallyin certain industries, your
customers are on their phones.
You know they're not waiting bytheir inbox, they're not like
(28:52):
you know they.
They they're not chomping atthe bit for your next in-app.
You know pop-up or whateverthey're, they're on their phones
and, especially if you're anexecutive, you're like, you're,
you're whatever.
And and a lot of people, I think, sleep on SMS, especially in
B2B.
For some reason, b2c, it's,like you know, become more of a
(29:12):
thing, but I was curious if youhad some insights or thoughts in
general on using SMS as part ofyour customer engagement.
Nat Onions (29:22):
Honestly, the key thing that this comes down to is
just consent and preferencesOffering the customer up front
that choice of how do you wantus to communicate with you.
That's where it's key, becauseyou know I'm going to use myself
.
For an example, love SMS and,like you said, especially if the
(29:46):
service that I'm beingcontacted from is an app on my
phone it's in my hand already Ican click from the SMS.
It opens the app.
I can do whatever I need to.
I think my bank does it verywell.
That's fantastic for me.
If I'm emailed, I'm not goingto act on it, I'm going to read
it.
I'm going to think I'll do thatlater when I'm at my desk, but
(30:09):
I'm never logged into mypersonal email at my desk, so it
gets forgotten.
So I'm a very SMS preferenceheavy person for my personal
stuff, but for anything workrelated, for my entire work tool
stack, I don't want SMS.
I want it to be an email.
My email inbox is my to-do list.
I've got communicationpreferences and when I get asked
(30:34):
what I want my journey to looklike, that's how I really kind
of attribute quality and careover the customer experience,
because it's letting me decide.
It's not somebody on the otherside of it running the tool
saying I know how you want to bespoken to and so I'm going to
(30:55):
choose to build the journey likethis.
I think that's just my corepiece of advice is build a
journey that lets people chooseand that's the advice that we
give to our customers and we areseeing an increasing adoption
in all of our mobile channels,SMS included, and I, you know I
(31:15):
really think it's because peopleare being thoughtful and just
applying that type of engagementopportunity to choose.
Yeah.
Alex Turkovic (31:23):
Yeah, it's super smart.
I mean, yeah, the flip side ofthat is the possibility to
really spam your customer iscrazy high.
Yes, you got to be measured.
(31:44):
Okay, I'm thinking specificsnow.
I think it would be incrediblypowerful to engage your
executive buyer persona with aquarterly SMS that has like
three things in it, likeadoption risk, roi done.
(32:08):
You know it's like super quick,concise.
It's like the mini QBR, so thatmaybe they don't have to have a
QBR and you can reserve the QBRfor, like you know, your admins
and the folks that like needthe engagement to have the
technical engagement to likehelp them unstick some stuff.
I don't know what, like the perpersona engagement on things
(32:33):
like SMS.
Nat Onions (32:33):
I think that's crazy powerful yeah, and I think you
know the.
The one of the ways I wouldthink about it is, you know,
just separating marketing fromthe more action-based or
transactional is not quite thethe right word.
I don't I don't mean in the inthe sense of like a commercial
transaction.
But you know, if your, if yourmarketing team has just gone
(32:57):
through the, the, the QBR, andyou know their results have been
delivered and whatever send,you know the, the exec buyer
getting that follow up SMS.
I think that's a great examplethat you gave of like yeah,
that's, that's a value add,probably just a bit of a quick
win at the exec level so thatthey can run it down.
I love that idea.
(33:18):
I think it's more of themarketing SMS which is where it
gets very risky.
Yeah, it's hairy and it's alsoit's tricky to track engagement
there as well.
So you know we're very goodwith email deliverability.
We have an excellent emaildeliverability program because
(33:39):
it's easy to see who's openingand where are they clicking and
what are they doing with thatemail and setting up all these
filters.
But it gets very difficult onthe mobile front because if
someone has their notificationsilenced, that gives a
completely different engagementstat.
That can be a false read, andso yeah, when you so you don't.
(34:01):
You don't have that same levelof hey, they're not responding
to my marketing emails, they'renot opening my marketing emails,
so the system is set to stopsending.
It's a different game when itcomes to to sms.
So it can be, like you said,easy to go down that spam rabbit
hole, and that's when.
That's when things get annoyingand people get pissed off, and
(34:23):
if you're the exec buyer, you'rejust going to say I don't want
this service anymore like they,they don't, they clearly don't
know what's going on in ourbusiness and who I am, and, yeah
, get rid of it.
So, yeah, the transactionalvalue add, all about it, but
marketing got to be preferencebased.
Alex Turkovic (34:41):
High risk high reward.
High risk low reward Maybe.
Nat Onions (34:45):
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, probably a reward with an
asterisk.
Yeah, like a lot more notesunderneath.
Alex Turkovic (34:52):
Just don't F it up.
An asterisk, yeah, like a lotmore notes underneath, just
don't f it up.
Basically, you were.
You were recently on turnfmwith andrew which is a great
podcast I love.
I love listening to that showand one of the things that you
were talking about on that showwas minimizing the impact of a
(35:13):
champion change on an account,because we all struggle with
that.
I mean, your champion leavesand the red flag immediately
goes up because that's theperson that you've built the
relationship with and all thatkind of stuff.
Nat Onions (35:27):
I was curious you talked a lot on there about some
of the playbooks that you havein place to kind of minimize the
impact of that and whatnot, andI was curious if your digital
strategy informed that at allyeah, I think one of the one of
the things that that really madeus think about it is we, we use
a platform called plan hats asour customer success tool and
(35:50):
they is a picture that, yeah, itallows us to assign a backup
csm in that.
So it's all fully automated.
So if a csm goes on pto, ifthey're unexpectedly off sick,
everything gets forced to theirbackup csm, so that we don't get
in that situation where acustomer's reaching out and the
csm maybe they've.
(36:10):
You know, if they've gone offsick they may not have turned
their out of office.
On those, those communicationsfrom customers don't sit there,
they go straight to the backupCSM and so we'll, we'll call
it's.
It's easy to to do that by.
You know, what we're doing isspreading, spreading the risk.
Basically, we're going fromthis system where there's a
single point of failure in theCSM, to having a backup there.
(36:38):
Obviously, we can't build asystem of backups within a
customer's business, but justthat notion of spreading the
risk is, I think, the move thatwe want to be making, and it's
as simple as making friends withas many people as we can.
So we have our primary user, wehave our champion, our power
user.
But hey, we'd love to see yourhead of product.
Would you mind bringing themalong to the QBR?
You know we'd love to get theirtake on what we're doing.
(37:01):
Or, you know, product person toproduct person, I'll bring my
PM, you bring yours.
Let's make some connectionsthere.
And then for our higher valueaccounts as well, we've we're
really learning the the value inadding an exec sponsor, and not
just not just when things aregetting a bit, a bit hairy, I
think one right from thebeginning, because there is a
(37:23):
lot of power among the c-suite.
And so, you know, if I championsomeone that's, you know, maybe
a marketing director leaves andwe're struggling to find the,
the next, the next person thatwe can work with, then our cmo,
who's the exec sponsor, canreach out to the cmo at the
customer's company, say, hey,like really sorry to hear that
(37:47):
so and so had left.
We'd really appreciate it ifyou could introduce us to the
rest of the team.
So, yeah, risk mitigation bymaking friends as possible exec
sponsors.
And, um, something that we'rewe're working on in the account
management front is getting arelationship with the
procurement team it's not goingto be frequent where you know
(38:09):
it's not something that is goingto come up on, like you know, a
day-to-day type relationship,but we'd love to get the
procurement contact into a qbr.
Let them see firsthand what thevalue is so that when that
conversation occurs at therenewal time they're familiar
with the tool.
They've gotten to know the team.
We do really fun qbrs so theyare probably already pretty
(38:32):
warmed up to us.
So, yeah, not always an easynut to crack on the procurement
side, but it's there's just ifyou can, if you can get them on
side early, yeah, it's massive.
Alex Turkovic (38:43):
I mean as a, as a champion of a platform myself,
like I can't tell you howpainful it is to have, come
renewal time, to have tointernally sell the tool to, you
know, the finance team and theprocurement team and the support
team and the security teams.
(39:04):
Like every.
There's this whole freakingcycle of sales meetings
internally, and so I love thatyou're trying to make that bit a
little bit easier by like beinga known quantity.
I love the notion of crashingteam meetings as a as a.
CSM or as a customer facing teamand I know you know quite a few
(39:24):
people who've started doingthat a lot more of like hey, can
it, you know?
Can I be a fly on the wall inyour meeting?
Or can I have 10 minutes orsomething like that to talk
about the new feature release?
Or can I give you these threeslides that you can use in your
all hands or something like that, like that's, that's so cool
because it it does, you know,minimize risk, expose you to
more people so that invariably,when your champion goes and gets
(39:47):
a promotion or moves on to youknow another company or whatever
, you still have that contactwith the others.
Nat Onions (39:53):
Yeah, and that's something low lift that we can
do as well.
We have a template for some ofour onboarding, some of our
pitch decks, and we've actuallygot an automation that drops the
customer's name in it, dropstheir account number in their
logo, so it very quickly andeasily personalizes that.
So, again, tying it back to someof that digital experience and
(40:16):
automation, yeah it doesn'talways have to be approached as
something that's manual and thenit gets shut down because it's
not scalable.
Just think about that from thestart.
Just just what can I do tooperationalize this?
Alex Turkovic (40:32):
okay, I'm gonna bite, because you mentioned um
the word qbr and fun in the samesentence.
Um, so what's that all about?
How are you?
Nat Onions (40:43):
well, okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be
honest, we don't.
We actually call them qscs.
We've, we've tried to rein theterm.
It's a QBR for all intents andpurposes, but we call it a
quarter success check-in.
Alex Turkovic (40:57):
Awesome Love it, yep.
Nat Onions (40:58):
So we've tried to shed that long-held kind of like
.
Oh no, qbr, that's a lot, butsomething that is an absolute
staple in this.
Every single time we have somekind of product sneak peek, and
sometimes that's an exercisewhere we'll take customers
through a series of you knowwireframes or designs and say
(41:21):
what resonates with you the most, tell us about it.
Let's do a little workshop for10 minutes.
Sometimes it is, hey, here's afeature that we're launching in
a couple of weeks time andyou're going to be the like,
among the first to see it.
Like, let me just take youthrough it and let you click
around.
But it's not just.
It's not just about, hey, lookhow great we are and look how
(41:44):
great you are because we helpedyou.
You know, we don't need to beleaning into that.
We want it to be exciting.
We want people to see what thecontent that call is going to be
and say, oh, hell, yeah, I wantit to be exciting.
We want people to see what thecontent that call is going to be
and say, hell, yeah, I'm goingto be there and hopefully I'm
going to bring some other peoplefrom my team too.
That's one of the staples isjust that product sneak peek.
(42:06):
And I think you know thecustomer success team that we've
built.
I'm just really proud of all ofthem.
They've got such a sunnydisposition and they are
genuinely good at building thesereally good connections with
their customers, and so Iwatched some of them going into
these calls and it's very clearthat there's a great personal
(42:27):
connection there, that they knoweach other.
So you know they arecontinually and consistently
just building up to this feelingof I want people to enjoy this
QSC and they do.
They're excited to get to hangout with their CSM for, you know
, 45 to 60 minutes.
Alex Turkovic (42:49):
I dig it, I love it.
I mean, you know it's, youdon't.
I'm not saying you should makelike you know it's, I'm, you
don't you?
I'm not saying you should makelike you know your QSC or QBR or
whatever you want to call itlike an entertainment show or
whatever, but it needs, it needsto have a.
There needs to be a draw Like Idon't.
I don't want to come to yourmeeting and talk about how many
support tickets I've put in overthe last quarter, or like what
(43:10):
bugs you fix.
I don't care, your bugs are notmy concern.
I want to know what thisrelationship is going to look
like going forward and whatwe're going to do and all that
kind of stuff.
So I love that you guys arefocused on that.
That's great.
I've had the great fortune ofinterviewing a fair amount of
(43:31):
women on the show who holdexecutive positions within
companies, you being one ofthose, and you know it's.
this isn't this is not digitalCS related at all, but I always,
I always am curious to get youknow these leaders opinions on
you know the current state intheir opinion of you know
(43:53):
diversity, especially genderdiversity in tech, because in CS
, I mean in general, there seemto be more women in CS, but more
on the IC level and still noton the leadership level.
So you know, I'd love to getkind of your read on you know
what that looks like for youtoday and also on what that
looks like for you today andalso what you see kind of going
(44:15):
forward, how the industry andhow maybe young women or young
men in the industry can help tolevel the playing field.
Nat Onions (44:25):
Yeah, that's great, and I love talking about this
topic, especially because I dothink that across the board,
we've we've got work to do, um,to get to that point of equality
where, where people do lookaround a room and they, you know
, they see people that look likethem, people multiple that look
(44:46):
like them.
And you know there's I thinkwe've we've we have made
progress, but there's still.
You know there's, I think we'vewe have made progress, but
there's still there's a long wayto go.
And I think you know it'simportant for people in your
position to be really drivingthat with the people that you
choose to give a platform to.
You know I feel very, you know,very fortunate to you know I've
(45:11):
got Savannah, who works on ourpr.
She's fantastic at seeking outopportunities savannah is
amazing.
She's amazing, by the way, yeahshe's fantastic and but you know
she's she's reaching out topeople like you and saying, like
I want to give nat a platformand for people in your position
to say, yeah, let's, let's,let's do it.
(45:33):
You know that is how more femalevoices get heard and more
diverse voices is.
You know, being on the's, theic level, making referrals to
people in their network to comeand work in in your business,
(46:01):
and I think you know this.
This can be a controversial wayto look at things as well, but
if you, if you look around yourbusiness and you see that you
know there are not people ofcolor in your business, if
you're hiring for a role, theninterview the people of people
of color.
If you don't see enough women,interview the women.
(46:24):
You know, I think we're allstriving to build a diverse
hiring pool, but you know, ifyou, if you know you need more,
more women in your business,seek out the women and make that
the hiring pool.
That's a great way to make surethat you're bringing women into
the, into the story and givingthem that opportunity.
So yeah yeah, I think it's.
(46:45):
It's all just about beingwilling to step out and say, hey
, I've, I've got a voice and I'mgoing to use it for change and
and not sort of saying, well,there's nothing that I can
really do about it.
There's always something.
Alex Turkovic (47:05):
There's nothing worse than like.
Complacency in this stuff islike oh, it's just the way it is
.
It's like no, no, it's no, no,it's not at all.
And I mean some of the bestteams I've been on have been the
most diverse teams, becauseyou're getting viewpoints from
different places, you're gettingdifferent walks of life
(47:25):
together that bring kind of thecollective emotional
intelligence and the collectivelife experience of the team up.
It raises the bar of theconversations that you have in
your day-to-day work life andit's so fulfilling those
(47:48):
experiences.
So I definitely hear you onthat.
And that brings us to the pointin our conversation where we
are woefully short on timebecause we've covered a lot.
We covered a lot of territory,yeah, but you know, to close out
, I mean a couple of things thatI always like to ask is first
(48:08):
off, I'd love to know what's inyour content, diet, like what
are you paying attention to?
Books, podcasts, shows, blah,blah, blah.
Nat Onions (48:15):
Yeah.
So from sort of a personaldevelopment standpoint, I love
the CCO human duct tape show.
Alex Turkovic (48:22):
Yeah.
Nat Onions (48:22):
You know, that's where I want to be.
One day I'd love to get thatCCO title.
So it's great and it'sentertaining as well because of
the industry that that our toolsits in and what you know, our
primary bread and butter, thatwe were built on.
The email geeks communityphenomenal really, really
helpful people, yeah, um, and Ilove the the crack the customer
(48:45):
code podcast as well.
I think that's that's a reallyfun one.
And then a, a book that Irevisit probably like every 18
months or so.
I'll read Five Dysfunctions ofa Team.
Alex Turkovic (48:56):
Cool yeah.
Nat Onions (48:57):
It's an oldie but a goodie, and every time I sort of
just need to be reminded of youknow, everyone is facing very
similar challenges and just alittle bit of a reminder of how
to best tackle those.
It's just a good read.
Reminder of how how to besttackle those.
It's just, it's just a goodread and I love, I love business
(49:19):
books and business theory thatare written as an actual, not
like a story.
Alex Turkovic (49:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's the fun one yeah I love that
book because for me anyway, um,that was kind of the first
business book that I read thathumanized being not quite okay
at everything it's like yes, yesexactly this is gonna suck over
here and that's okay, but thisis how we move through that and
(49:45):
this is how we embrace it.
Nat Onions (49:46):
Yeah, I love that exactly and and it's written
around you know, a female ceobeing pulled in to come save the
day.
So I think it's written aroundyou know, a female CEO being
pulled in to come save the day.
So I think it was written like20 years ago or something.
Alex Turkovic (49:57):
It was a while ago.
Is that Lencioni?
That's Lencioni, right?
Yes, yes, yeah.
Nat Onions (50:06):
So that's a good one in today's climate.
But I can imagine when it cameout it's like oh okay, this is
new.
Alex Turkovic (50:11):
A little edgy maybe, but why?
I don.
It came out.
It's like, oh okay, this is new, a little edgy maybe, but why?
I don't know cool any shoutouts you want to give that are
doing.
You know people that are doingcool things in digital or cx
yeah, I think I I already calledout my ski.
Nat Onions (50:25):
I think they're they're my superheroes of the
year.
They've been so collaborative,they're building something
really exciting and they'resuper humble guys as well.
Yeah, just just really greatteam to work with.
So I've got to give them theshout out, and that they're a
smaller company as well.
So whenever I can give them aplatform, I always want to, and
I think something that reallysurprised me not that they need
(50:48):
the marketing or anything butdisney.
I was I've got I've got youngnephews and I was just
arbitrarily like you know, whatwould it look like to to take
them to disney?
And so I I went on the websiteand I was just kind of clicking
around it.
You know, building, building atrip, basically and it's it's
really cool their digitalexperience of how they guide you
(51:11):
through that and tell you tothink about it and personalize
it.
Yeah, it was.
It was surprising.
So that was that was.
It was just one that was likewow, I didn't realize that they
were quite as in tune on thatside of things.
I mean, probably shouldn'tsurprise me that they're giants.
Alex Turkovic (51:26):
I mean, they probably had a little bit of a
budget for that that.
That that's awesome.
Yeah, that's cool.
I love it.
Nat Onions (51:41):
Where can people find you and reach out to you
and chat with you and all thatfun stuff.
Linkedin is probably my go-to.
I'm pretty active in messageson there.
I love to connect with newpeople.
I know I'm.
I'm also very open to jumpingon a call and saying hello and
exchanging some ideas withpeople as well.
I've people have been very thanwilling to just give me their
(52:02):
thoughts and perspective.
They didn't have to do that,and so I want to try and pay it
forward and give back as well.
(52:22):
So, yeah, linkedin is probablythe best way and yeah, any kind
of Superman auction online.
I'm usually there lurking tosee if there's any hidden gems
are you so?
Alex Turkovic (52:38):
are you on the superman front?
Are you like into, like themovie memorabilia or the comic
books or the you know like?
Do you have a favorite genrearea?
Nat Onions (52:49):
the.
I think like the, the comicbooks mostly and the the earlier
christopher reeve stuff I'vegot.
I've got this site couple ofsigned christopher reeve things.
Oh, that's cool, yeah.
So I got a signed piece ofkryptonite and a photo there.
I've got a couple ofstoryboards.
I've got a piece of his cape soI've got nifty things yeah
(53:12):
that's really cool.
Alex Turkovic (53:14):
Yeah, christopher reeve was the man I mean he was
, he was like, he was it, he wasit.
Those movies I mean I haven't.
Do they hold up?
Nat Onions (53:24):
I haven't watched one recently I mean, they do
that, they're.
It's a little.
It's a little cheesy, I guess,if you were to compare it to
today's yeah, I mean the specialeffects.
For sure it's all like apractical effects, like the
effects and the destruction andthe explosion.
It was this, this wholesome guyjust doing, doing good and,
(53:47):
yeah, the challenge of, of youknow, having having two separate
identities.
Alex Turkovic (53:52):
That's right.
Yeah, well, supernat, we'vegone over time, but I've very
much appreciated the convo issuper fun and super fun and yeah
, yeah, I can't wait to sharethis one with the audience.
Thank you so much for joiningand and you you know you brought
a ton of ton of knowledge andton of wealth.
(54:13):
So thank you, cool thanks, alex.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
(54:34):
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success Definition
Wordmap and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, dylan
Young.
Lifetime Value aims to servethe content video, audio
(54:56):
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
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Trukovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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