Adam Avramescu, Vice President of Customer Education at Personio and co-host of the CELab Podcast, joins the show to share his thoughts on the evolving role of customer education in digital customer success. He and Alex dive into the challenges of content curation, scaling personalized experiences, and the growing importance of integrating education with broader customer experience strategies to drive engagement and advocacy.
Chapters:
00:04:04 - The love-hate relationship with social media
00:05:55 - Life as an expat in Amsterdam
00:07:10 - What "engagement" means in customer education
00:08:53 - Bringing teams together to scale CX
00:10:34 - Building a proper digital customer experience
00:12:14 - Adam’s elevator pitch on digital CS
00:15:39 - The evolution of customer education
00:18:20 - Blurring lines between customer education and CS
00:21:18 - Curation vs. content overload in customer education
00:29:41 - The never-ending ROI debate in CE
00:34:18 - Digital programs and human touch in customer success
00:37:40 - Customer education and building advocacy
Enjoy! I know I sure did…
Adam's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-avramescu/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam Avramescu (00:03):
But then I started thinking about it, and
it's not just that it's hard toget, it's that that's probably
not even the right argument,Like I don't think we can say
that customer education ordigital CX is the only thing
that leads a customer to renewor to expand.
Alex Turkovic (00:19):
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
(00:42):
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 you're back with methis week and every week as we
talk about all things digital inCS.
This is episode 77, and we havean awesome conversation lined up
(01:04):
for you today with AdamAvromescu, who is actually I
suppose you could call it anexpat.
He actually studied here inAustin, which is where I'm based
, and now lives abroad inAmsterdam.
Another cool thing is he's afellow podcast host, so he hosts
CE uh, which has been a showthat's been going on way longer
(01:28):
than this podcast, so he has alot of miles under his belt, um,
being a podcast host, so he isobviously focused very much on
customer education, ce.
We talk about how you knowthings like learning correlation
are hard.
We talk about micro learning,which is another buzz phrase in
(01:49):
CE.
Talk about content creationspecifically for digital CS.
So lots of great nuggets foryou if you're involved in
customer education in any way,shape or form.
I hope you enjoy thisconversation with Adam, because
I sure did.
Yeah, so true, it's very true,adam.
(02:10):
Welcome to the show.
We jumped right into it.
Good to be here.
We're right into it.
But welcome to the show.
I've been listening to CELabfor a while.
I mean, obviously you have waymore shows under the belt, I
will say, given that you've doneit for five years and whatnot.
Adam Avramescu (02:32):
But I don't know , I think.
I think you're going to outpaceus very quickly, because you
release more often than we do.
Alex Turkovic (02:38):
I'm just like I said, it's a little bit of
insanity and a little bit ofnuttiness happening over here,
but we like that we like thatyeah, why not?
um, but look, you know, I've uh,I've loved everything that
you've like put out.
Your, your, you, you.
You come into the world andinto linkedin life and all that
kind of stuff with a sense oflike, well, even what you were
(03:00):
just talking about, there's a.
There's a wiseness if that's aword.
I just made up a word.
There's a.
There's a wiseness If that's aword.
Adam Avramescu (03:06):
I just made up a word.
Alex Turkovic (03:06):
There's a, there's a sense of just like
reverence and wise, like likeintelligence behind the things
that you say and it makes peoplelisten and I appreciate that
about you, so I'm happy thatyou're here.
Adam Avramescu (03:16):
Well, thank you, I appreciate that reflection.
My, I have a I have a love haterelationship with with social
media Cause, like, on one hand,I love attention but on the
other hand, you know, we'llprobably like a lot of people.
I, I read, you know, I scrollthrough LinkedIn and I'm like
that didn't need to be said,that didn't need to be said,
like, so my, at least my, myphilosophy and I think I, I try
(03:40):
to, I try to adhere to this, Ithink I meet this most of the
time is like say something whenyou have something valuable to
say, otherwise, don't worryabout it.
Alex Turkovic (03:49):
That's right.
Yeah, I love that.
I too have a love-haterelationship with social media
because, a I do like theattention as well, I'll admit it
, but B I don't like heartpalpitations, so there, you go
Because it'll do that.
Adam Avramescu (04:04):
Yeah, true, true .
And sometimes, though, you geta, you get a great laugh, or you
get a, you know, check, check,this bleep out I don't know for
are we allowed to swear on thispodcast?
Hell yes, great, great thenwe'll.
I'm thinking of that scene fromthe simpsons where it goes we
live like, live like kings.
Damn hell, ask kings.
Alex Turkovic (04:27):
Oh man, you know what it's funny.
I showed my son.
He's 13.
I showed him the Simpsons theother day and I didn't realize
how bad that animation we're soused to it, the early seasons.
The early seasons are likesuper, super rough and I don't
remember it that way.
(04:48):
I remember it as this, likebright, shining star of my youth
.
And so I was a littledisappointed.
And then I was equallydisappointed when my son was
like I don't, I don't really getthis well, they were going for
a really punk vibe at first.
Adam Avramescu (05:02):
It took totally a while before they decided they
really wanted to smooth out theedges.
But okay, this is the Simpsonsanalogy I always use on my own
podcast.
We got to get to the fireworksfactory.
The fireworks factory.
We got to get to the fireworksfactory.
I don't know if people aregoing to want to listen to us.
Just talk about the Simpsons.
Alex Turkovic (05:19):
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah, probably not.
But it was a poignant moment inmy adulthood life where I was
like, okay, I'm disconnectedfrom my youth.
Anyway, look a bit about you.
I mean, we talked about Slack,you know right off the bat, but
you are, I think relativelyrecently in terms of lifespan,
an expat.
Adam Avramescu (05:40):
Yeah, I'm, I guess at this point, a toddler
of a European.
I've been living in Amsterdamfor a little bit over two years,
so getting adjusted, feeling alittle bit more, you know, in
the Dutch life, now the expatlife, but before that I was in
the Bay Area.
Before that Austin, of course,and originally from Montreal
(06:01):
Unreal.
Alex Turkovic (06:03):
How has the adjustment been?
Adam Avramescu (06:08):
It's been good.
I mean, I walked into thisimagining that it was going to
be a bit of a new chapter, right, With all the challenges that
that comes with, but also allthe fun and adventure, and I
think it's lived up to that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting,right.
I mean, there are things thatare meaningfully different about
living in Amsterdam than livingin Austin or you know wherever
whatever comparison you want tomake but at the same time, you
(06:30):
know on a day to day basis, you,you know, you wake up, you
commute, you go to work right,it's not you go grocery shopping
.
Alex Turkovic (06:36):
Breathe in, breathe out.
Everything is different, right.
Adam Avramescu (06:38):
Yeah, but yeah, no, it's been.
It's been a lot of fun and Ireally appreciate the
opportunity to be out here andhaving this life chapter for
sure.
Alex Turkovic (06:47):
Yeah, for sure.
Well, I've asked you on becauseI mean, obviously you're big
into customer education, havebeen for a long time and you get
it in terms of CE.
You're currently VP of CE andengagement, which I thought was
interesting at Presanio.
Talk about the engagement bit.
(07:08):
What does that mean?
Adam Avramescu (07:10):
Yeah, I mean so actually, even internally.
Now we just say VP of customereducation.
But what we wanted to dooriginally when I started was
really pull together all of thefunctions that either educated
or connected our customers atscale, or really that dealt with
the idea of learning andenablement.
(07:30):
So when I first arrived atPersonia, we had brought
together three different teamswith the intention to add one
more, which now exists.
So on one hand, it was oureducational content team, which
was originally called usereducation, so you could think of
them as being responsible forall of our help center, our
documentation, our videoproduction and channel
(07:54):
management.
So how do we get all of thoseeducational materials out
through in-app email everywhereelse where you might expect to
see it?
So that was team one else whereyou might expect to see it.
So that was team one.
Team number two was ourcommunity team, or customer
engagement, and that's whereengagement comes from.
So you could think of that asour online and offline
communities, the communityforums, our customer events, our
(08:18):
customer advisory board, allthe ways that we're really
connecting customers to eachother and to us as a business
and as the people in thebusiness.
And then we were also bringingin an internal enablement team
which were responsible forenabling our CX individuals, our
CX humans so brought all ofthose together, added in a
(08:38):
customer training team, which isnow what we call our Voyager
Academy, which is now what wecall our Voyager Academy.
And so that was the point tobring all of these programs
together that educated andengaged our customers under this
voyage by Personio Mantle.
So that's why we're alltogether.
Alex Turkovic (08:53):
Yeah, I love that , because so many times you see
all of those functions in aseparate maybe not separate org,
but definitely differentmanagerial structures and it
leads to silos and duplicationof effort and all that kind of
stuff.
And I would imagine thatbringing those together just
makes sense, you know, from akind of a voice perspective,
(09:17):
like what kind of voice you wantto portray in your content and
things like that.
But then obviously on thetactical level, like you know,
you know what content needs tobe developed, in what kind of
way to go in what certain places.
So it probably helps build someefficiencies that way, I would
imagine.
Adam Avramescu (09:35):
Yeah, exactly, and I think it's not only about
creating efficiency forourselves, but whenever we we do
something as a company, like amajor product launch or the
day-to-day release process oreven a major initiative like,
say, changing our pricing model,it means that instead of going
and figuring out how to do thatindividually for all of those
(09:59):
programs, that we actually canbuild, like you said, some
connections and efficiencies notjust for ourselves but actually
for the rest of the business.
So, you know, increasingly Isee what we do as being not just
and maybe we'll get into thislater not just the traditional
like skinny customer educationright, where we just do customer
training and we just have anacademy and we just go do
(10:20):
webinars or something like that,but but really like moving
towards.
How do we bring together all ofthese surfaces into more of a
scale?
Cx, totally remit, you knowtotally, because I mean we're
building scale for the rest ofthe business, yeah, yeah.
Alex Turkovic (10:34):
well, I mean, you know so much of what you know
we would classify as scaled cx'sis, you know, sure, data
automation?
You know, sure, data automation.
You know customer journey, allthat kind of stuff.
But one of the massive legs ofthe stool, so to speak, is
content Like what are youdistributing, when is it the
(10:56):
right, you know, to the rightperson at the right time?
Like all that kind of stuffLike so you're, you're only, and
that's why you know yeah, likeI, I haven't considered myself a
digital customer success expert.
Adam Avramescu (11:08):
You know, this is something.
I'm new to that world and it'ssomething that I've really been
digging into.
But this was, this was theevolution of our program, right?
So so we we came together,brought those programs together,
initially under customereducation and engagement, and
the first year or so was reallyfiguring out how do we work
together, how do we bring theseprograms together, how do we
gain those efficiencies thatyou've just talked about?
(11:29):
But more recently it's been hey, okay, we have, we have content
and we have actually now areally strong base of content.
We have the channels, the rich,to deliver them.
Now, how do we start to pull inthat automation, that targeting
, that relevance?
So now, now I think we'removing more into what a lot of
people would call traditionalTraditional is not a good word
(11:50):
for it Proper digital customersuccess or proper digital
customer experience.
Alex Turkovic (11:54):
Yeah, that's so cool.
So I mean, given that you know,one of the things I ask all my
guests is like what their ownkind of elevator pitch of
digital CS or CX would be, so Iwould love to hear your words on
it.
Since you're kind of elevatorpitch of digital CS or CX would
be, so we'd love to hear yourwords on it.
Adam Avramescu (12:11):
since you're kind of exploring it, but
intrinsically, I think you knowthe drill.
Yeah, so it's interesting,right, there's a lot of ways
that you can think about it.
But the thing that reallyclicked for me when thinking
about why is there a thingcalled digital customer
experience, why is there a thingcalled digital customer
experience, why is this afunction that exists, is is I
almost think of it like anequation that has a numerator
(12:32):
and a denominator, or you couldthink of it like a ratio.
So I think of it as a strategyby which you maximize the
customer outcomes with a minimumof human effort yep and this is
the strategy and the set ofprograms and a portfolio that
uses automation and uses contentand uses tactics that scale to
(12:55):
meet your customers where theyare and drive value.
Yeah, but it's about optimizingthat ratio to build growth
within an efficient business Ilove.
Alex Turkovic (13:06):
I love how you put that in terms of driving
outcomes.
Not a lot of people say thatwhen they come to the table with
their definition of digitalit's like meeting the customer
where they are, with what theyneed when they need it and all
that kind of stuff.
But ultimately you're right.
The goal is you drive theoutcome and you know, ideally
(13:30):
you do it in a way that reservesthe human capital that you have
on the team for those likeultra high value scenarios where
, if you're involving a human inthis, it means that either
you've taken care of the mundanedigitally and you know and
you're letting the human kind ofbe that massive exclamation
(13:51):
point at the end of the value,or there's some stuff going
wrong.
Adam Avramescu (13:56):
Yeah, and maybe it's because you know I don't
come from a high touch customersuccess background.
So I mean I know in customersuccess it's very common to
think about outcomes as as theheadline, but I don't know in
customer success it's verycommon to think about outcomes
as the headline, but I don'tknow maybe coming from a
different background, I'vethought about the function of
DCX from a little bit of adifferent angle.
Alex Turkovic (14:14):
Which is why I love asking the question.
Yeah, I love asking thequestion because it's different
every single time.
It's so good.
Adam Avramescu (14:22):
Well cool.
I look forward to beingincluded in the word cloud now.
Alex Turkovic (14:25):
I need to update the word cloud.
I'm way behind on it.
Adam Avramescu (14:28):
It's like update the word cloud.
Alex Turkovic (14:34):
Oh God.
So look, I think a lot ofpeople when they hear the term
customer education, they kind ofgloss over it a little bit,
because a lot of people think,okay, it's training or it's
e-learning or it's like whatever.
Um, I'm fortunate that I have,you know, I have a background in
learning and development, like,and I know some adult learning
(14:57):
theory, I know what the addymodel is, I know, you know like
that kind of stuff, and so I'vealways approached it in that
kind of way to say, okay, thisis performance support versus
training, versus certificationand all that kind of stuff.
But I think the majority offolks just look at customer
education, it's like, okay,that's like something I would
(15:24):
put.
This is what would you describeas a good customer education
model?
Or you know, a solid CE program?
Adam Avramescu (15:39):
Yeah, yeah.
So I think this goes back tosomething we were starting to
get into a little bit earlier,which is the lines are blurring
now around customer education.
It used to be that when yousaid customer well, it used to
be that when you said customereducation, it meant nothing.
It maybe meant your trainingservices program for your
on-prem tech company.
But things have changed andwe've started to evolve what is
(16:03):
included in customer education.
But I want to say this throughthe lens of, I think, at some
point, what we call customereducation today and what we call
scale CX or DCX.
They're actually not going tolook a whole lot different from
each other really about makingsure that your customers are
(16:28):
able to achieve theirperformance outcomes using a
portfolio of programs andstrategies to achieve that.
So what does that not mean?
It doesn't mean limitingcustomer education to the
traditional classroom model,having people sit in day-long
workshops or even takemulti-hour e-learnings.
(16:48):
I think some people hearcustomer education and they just
think like, oh, this is thecorporate university.
No, a good customer educationprogram really should have a
variety of ways to educate thecustomer about different topics,
to build different skills.
So, for instance, in theprograms that I've led, often
they have included thetraditional academy or an
(17:11):
academy component.
These days a lot more people,including ourselves, are tying
those to skill badges and movingtowards shorter form courses
instead of these multi-hour,multi-day trainings or formal
certifications, because a lot ofpeople that's overkill.
But also community has been nowa part of our program several
(17:32):
times, because it's one thing toteach a skill from zero to 60,
but it's another thing to bringpeople together to learn, to
connect, to share with eachother, as well as help centers,
documentation, knowledge bases,whatever you want to call that
cluster of activities, becausehaving quick references and
often having them contextual,available in the support flow,
(17:55):
that's the key to making surethe customers get what they need
when they need it.
And then you start getting intothings like email nurture
campaigns.
You start getting into in-appeducation, contextual help
campaigns.
You start getting into in-appeducation, contextual help.
All of those are tactics orprograms that you see making up
a successful customer educationprogram.
So that's why I say I think atsome point, customer education
(18:17):
and DCX, they're going to bealmost the same thing.
Alex Turkovic (18:20):
Yeah, yeah.
It's staggering to think aboutbecause I think as soon as you
blur the lines betweentraditional e-learning and all
the stuff that you know the oldschool, like learning nerds,
will say is learning versusperformance support, as soon as
you start blurring those lines,then at that point you know CE
(18:43):
is all about just like're right,getting the content to the
person at the right time, andthat can be like a, an
in-product pop-up.
Uh, somebody I recentlyinterviewed said they're using,
or they were using, linkedin adsas part of their digital
engagement strategy forunengaged customers, which and
(19:04):
and really you're educating yourcustomer on.
Hey, you're you have.
You know there's this featurein our product.
Do you want to you?
Adam Avramescu (19:09):
know want to go use it.
You could.
Alex Turkovic (19:10):
You could argue yeah, that that's customer
education, because it is youknow.
Adam Avramescu (19:15):
Yeah yeah, we just launched a LinkedIn page
for for voyage by Personio aswell, not just so we can promote
new, new things coming out ofour program, but also so that we
can educate our customers, whomight be finding us through
those types of channels insteadof wanting to come to an owned
platform.
That's a big debate right nowin the community world.
But you brought up thetraditional learning and
development definitions of someof these things.
(19:35):
You talked about the Addy model, you talked about training
versus performance support and,listen, all these definitions
exist for a reason and I thinkthey're useful models.
If you're in, say, thinkthey're useful models If you're
in, say, an internal learningand development program and
you're trying to explain to yourstakeholders why you're taking
a certain intervention, and thatall exists in customer
(19:56):
education, but I I try not touse that language or spend too
much time on those distinctions,because it really is time on
those distinctions, because itreally is.
It's closer to what you said.
It's about finding the rightways to drive the right
performance outcomes forcustomers, right?
So if I talk about performanceoutcomes, if I talk about
(20:16):
adoption, if I talk aboutbuilding skills that will
ultimately lead to higherretention, like those are the
things that are more importantfor for customer education.
But at the same time, the otherthing that I'm trying, you know
, always not to fall into isthis perception that customer
education is just, you know, anycontent you throw out there.
(20:37):
Yeah, so there's a school ofthought, for instance, that, oh,
you know what actually like youshouldn't have a a university
program or an academy program,because everyone just wants you
know super short form, tiktok,micro learning content, whatever
you want to call it.
Yeah, exactly.
Or like, hey, you know what youshould do.
You should just like take allof the gong recordings that you
(20:59):
have with your customers and cutyourself or, sorry, cut the
customer out of it, and justkeep the things that you said
and put it up on your helpcenter or your knowledge base,
and that's customer education.
Yeah, if you're just starting,maybe that's a fine way to build
a base of content, but that'scontent.
That's not actually customereducation.
It has to have a purpose, ithas to have a strategy.
Alex Turkovic (21:18):
The word curation comes to mind, because
ultimately, I think what you'retrying to do and the whole
reason why you have this teamaround it is you're trying to
curate an experience in acontrolled way, but also maybe
(21:40):
in a haphazard way.
But ultimately, you're lookingat what are the skills gaps,
whether it's a high influx ofsupport tickets on this one
particular topic, for instance,or whatever, there are skill
gaps that exist and you'retrying to strategically plug
those skill gaps in ways thatmake sense and in meeting the
persona where they are, whenthat skill gap is happening.
(22:04):
And that's a really it's acomplex puzzle to put together,
and so it may seem likehaphazard in a lot of ways, but
I think a lot of times-.
Adam Avramescu (22:14):
But none of it is just making content right
Exactly To your point.
You can look at unsolvedsupport tickets.
You can use that to figure outwhere the customer is actually
experiencing friction and usethat to prioritize not just what
content you create, but whereyou serve it, how you create it,
how it's delivered to customers, etc.
You can do the same thing foran onboarding program.
(22:41):
Where are your implementationmanagers or CSM spending the
most time delivering one-to-onetraining?
Are they doing it because ittruly needs to be customized for
every single customer?
Are they doing it because ittruly needs to be customized for
every single customer?
Or is this something where youcan actually create more
scalable materials that can beused either as the pre-work or
as the homework?
And then the humans again arespending their them on the more
(23:12):
bespoke thornier, like the stuffthat actually needs to be
customized.
So that's where I see you know,the digital, the digital motion
and the human motion playingvery well together.
But it also informs you knowwhere should you spend your time
in terms of creating andcurating content.
Alex Turkovic (23:25):
Yeah.
Adam Avramescu (23:26):
Yeah, and, by the way, what happens when you
know you have more peoplejoining the account and they
weren't in the original training?
Well, they probably want a wayto get up to speed as well, so
you need to be able to meet themwhere they are and sending them
recorded training calls is likethe quickest way to death Cause
like.
I don't want to watch arecorded call.
Alex Turkovic (23:43):
I don't want to watch a recorded call Come on,
man, make me feel a littlespecial and get me on board
quickly.
I don't need to hear yourbanter pre-training.
Adam Avramescu (23:56):
There's an art right.
Instructional design exists fora reason Exactly.
Alex Turkovic (23:59):
Absolutely.
Hey, I want to have a briefchat with you about this show.
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(24:20):
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(24:40):
Now back to the show.
I always thought it was sofascinating.
You know the difference between.
You know the design anddevelopment of a piece of
learning.
You know, because the two arekind of mutually exclusive,
right, but without like reallywell thought out front end
design of what it is.
You know what learningobjectives are you trying to
(25:02):
solve for.
You know what would be the bestmethod for doing that.
Like there's a whole kind ofart to figuring this puzzle out.
And then ideally, you know theperson developing it kind of has
that roadmap and they can justkind of go for it.
It's a cool thing to watchhappen in an org that hums.
Adam Avramescu (25:22):
For sure, and a lot of it becomes very close to
you know, to UX design when it'shappening.
Really well, you're figuringout what is the best way for the
customer to achieve theiroutcomes with a minimum of
friction.
Alex Turkovic (25:32):
It's almost like CE and product should have a
really close relationship.
Adam Avramescu (25:41):
CE and product CE and marketing CE and customer
success.
We, we sit in the middle of allof those and and I think it's a
beautiful thing.
Alex Turkovic (25:48):
I think that's.
That's one of the things thatcs and ce we'll just call them.
What's the combined word?
Customer went really really badplace there for a second uh
customer sex education.
Yeah, nope, I see it, I see it.
I don't know about customer sexeducation, but no but this does
(26:12):
, this does remind me.
Adam Avramescu (26:14):
I now, now that you've you've broken that
barrier, I have to.
I have to tell you one of thesilliest things I ever heard at
a conference.
Yeah, somebody asked thequestion how would you define
the difference between educationand training?
Right, because you know we lovedebating terminology.
We've been debating terminologyfor a while, even even today,
(26:34):
and the person responded they gowell, you wouldn't send your
child to sex training class,would you?
Alex Turkovic (26:44):
Interesting.
Adam Avramescu (26:46):
And I thought I thought, well, that's a, that
was a pithy response, but Idon't know if it really came
down to, I don't know that itreally answered the question.
It was memorable, that's forsure.
It was memorable I, I.
This was about a decade ago andI still remember it.
So I mean sure, I mean it getsthe point across, but like,
actually like, maybe, maybe,maybe to like, maybe to dig
myself out of that hole, like,if you actually think about the
(27:07):
difference between pure training, right, training, as we
understand it, that's the veryskinny version of customer
education.
That's the narrowest possibledefinition we can right.
Right, let's take a discreteskill, let's build content
around it that gets a learnerfrom you know, zero or wherever
they are, to a defined state.
Education is a portfolio ofactivities, right, if you're
(27:31):
running a great educationprogram, then you are finding
different ways to overall makesure that your customer is not
just better at discrete skillsrelated to your product, but as
well that they are getting helpand removing friction along the
way.
So it doesn't necessarily needto be hey, I didn't have the
skill and now I have the skill.
It could be, I had this problem.
(27:51):
Now I don't have this problem.
Yeah, as well, as I think in alot of the best programs, you're
also helping them learn how todo their job better, so you're
teaching them something aboutthe industry or you're
connecting them with othercustomers who know something
about the industry and havesomething to share with them.
So that's why I think all ofthese things go together, yeah.
Alex Turkovic (28:09):
I think so too, and also, similarly, there's
this whole thing in CS aboutwhat's the difference between a
digital CS program and yourscaled CS program and all the
definitions that go into it.
And ultimately, my opinion isthat a solid digital program is
part of scaling your CS, muchlike education is part of
(28:31):
scaling CS and all that kind ofstuff.
But without getting into thosecrazy semantics, I think CS and
CE share so many things becausewe're trying to accomplish
roughly similar things, right.
So there's a natural sharedkind of collaboration.
There's a natural kind of shareof all kinds of different
(28:53):
things.
One of the struggles that I feellike CS and like CE and
education in general has alwaysstruggled with is that ROI Like
what by doing this thing, what'sthe return on investment?
And it's a really hard thing totease out because there's any
number of other differentfactors affecting the exact same
damn thing, Right?
(29:14):
And so I think in CS that's Imean, that's been the talk of CS
for like the last few years ishow do you protect your seat at
the table and all that kind ofstuff.
And it's about, like revenueattribution based on the things
that you're doing, and so Iwanted to get your take on what
that looks like for you in CEand maybe what some of the best
(29:35):
practices are in CE for you knowthat kind of attribution.
Adam Avramescu (29:41):
Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this
for a long time.
Obviously it's a big thing forcustomer education and for a
long time I felt like the holygrail was going to be that I
could develop some sort of modelthat showed, with airtight
causation that customereducation programs directly
(30:02):
caused or I guess, werepredictive of revenue-based
outcomes.
So if we can say that customerswho took this many courses in
our academy or customers whowere this active in our
community, with some sort ofregression analysis, we could
prove that that actually led tohigher retention or higher NRR
(30:24):
via expansion or whateverultimately we wanted to tie it
to at the business level, thenwe'd be golden.
And in reality, first of all,that's really hard to get.
It's really hard to run aregression analysis that shows,
with all the other factors thatwere in there, like most
(30:44):
companies just don't have thescale or the volumes to properly
show that a customerparticipating in educational
activities upstream, that thatwas the thing that really
inflected their renewal or theirexpansion.
But then I started thinkingabout it, and it's not just that
it's hard to get, it's thatthat's probably not even the
(31:05):
right argument.
Like I don't think we can saythat customer education or
digital CX is the only thingthat leads a customer to renew
Because it's not, or to expandBecause it's not.
Yeah, so, with the whole right,because you try to go and do
you show some sort ofcorrelation in the business, you
say customers who have beeninvolved with this educational
(31:27):
program tend to renew at theserates compared to those who
don't.
Or you know the average NRR forcustomers, you know who
participated in our programs?
Is this compared to those whodidn't participated in our
programs?
Is this compared to those whodidn't?
Well, great.
And then so the next thing thatthe person who presented that
to you asks because they'resmart, they go well, how do you
know that that isn't a reversecausation?
Or if it isn't a falsecorrelation, how do you know
(31:52):
that it isn't just customers whoalready wanted to expand that
just took education because theywere already engaged with us?
Yeah, and I think that's thepoint.
My position on that for a whilehas been yeah, I don't think it
actually matters, I don't thinkwe're saying that customer
education or DCX is the thingthat causes the customer to want
to renew the product is thething that causes the customer
(32:15):
to want to renew.
But we have to help them getthere.
We have to help them see thevalue.
So like, anyway, like.
Here's the thing.
I think if you want to provethe ROI of your program, we have
to back up from this whole holygrail, airtight equation that's
going to prove it very close tobusiness priorities and that we
(32:39):
can demonstrate through theprograms that we take on,
through the stories we tell,through the quantitative and
qualitative data that we share,that we are driving the outcomes
that matter most to thebusiness and that it's a very
obvious, simple story what we'redoing to drive those outcomes.
I do think it's also reallyhelpful to make good friends
(33:03):
with your data science andbusiness systems teams, because
there are things that you canprove.
Showing that there's arelationship between those
things is important.
You just shouldn't claim thatit's more than it is.
You shouldn't pretend it'scausal.
If it's not, you can say it's afactor.
You can say there's a strongrelationship when people engage
with our programs.
So therefore, I think we can saythat our programs are a strong
(33:25):
component or attribute of acustomer renewing and, yeah, I
think, demonstrating as well,especially in today's economy,
that we can do this moreefficiently than other teams can
, because I think businessesneed to get the results that
they need to get, but,especially for smaller customer
segments, they can't do that bythrowing a bunch of humans at it
(33:48):
like they could a couple ofyears ago.
So true, so, especially, Ithink, working with our data
science teams, working with ourbusiness systems teams, trying
to model out, hey, this is whatthe same motion would look like
if we didn't exist.
Yeah, you could, you could, youcould remove this program and
(34:08):
you might not feel anythingtomorrow, but in terms of next
year's headcount planning andthe ratios that you would need
to build to accomplish the sameoutcomes, yep, here's what that
would look like yeah, it's funnyyou say that about the bi folks
.
Alex Turkovic (34:21):
Like, whenever I've joined a new company,
there's there's two people,actually three people I always
make friends with, likeimmediately it's the office
manager, it's the it person andit's the data people, because,
like, those are the three peoplethat actually make stuff happen
at the company.
Adam Avramescu (34:36):
These are your friends these are your friends,
but I think to your point.
Alex Turkovic (34:41):
I love where you're going with it in terms of
, like, you know, the stuff thatwe do ultimately feeds the
customer experience.
If you have a great customerexperience and your product, you
know, works, or at least youhave the great, you know, you
have good support mechanisms toback that stuff up, I mean,
that's, you know, that's halfhalf, if not the majority, of
(35:03):
the battle to get you to, youknow, renewal, you know, I mean,
how many times have we, have wein our careers, been surprised
by a customer who has, you know,announced that they're churning
and everybody goes crazy, butthe fact of the matter is the
customer hasn't really heardfrom you after onboarding.
They're kind of floating outthere without resources, and so
(35:28):
I think that's the golden areafor CE and digital programs to
step in, especially for thosesmaller customers that, quite
frankly, sometimes need way morehelp than your largest customer
.
Adam Avramescu (35:43):
Yeah, exactly, and and you know, if you model
out the number of touches theycan have with support or CSM,
before that becomes wildlyunprofitable, then you know you
you need to be able to do thisat scale while still, at the
same time, not leaving thosecustomers completely in the
lurch.
So, look, I love that we aremoving more now towards using AI
to serve content to thesecustomers, intervene more with
(36:06):
support.
We're experimenting with somecool stuff with AI assistance at
Personio as well, so I lovethat this is where we're going,
but you know what?
That still relies on reallyeffective content served in the
right way.
Alex Turkovic (36:17):
And good data.
Adam Avramescu (36:20):
Because?
And good data to serve it?
Yeah for sure.
Right, like I think sometimeswe, we assume we have the curse
of knowledge about our ownproduct and and we think, oh,
you know what, this isn't hardto learn, it's easy, and you
just do it this way, andespecially if you're if you're,
you know you're working at thecompany, you've been at the
company a long time, you justknow how it works.
But if you read, oh gosh,what's the book?
Book with the Heath brotherstalking about the curse of
(36:41):
knowledge?
It is, I want to say, made toStick.
Is the book where they talkabout that.
Alex Turkovic (36:47):
My internet doesn't like me right now.
Adam Avramescu (36:50):
Okay, it's fine, so I'll give the book
recommendation read Made toStick by Dan and Chip Heath
there you go.
And they talk yeah, they talkabout this in the book.
There's also a similarly titledbook called Make it Stick.
That is also very good, butanyway, they talk about this,
right?
The more you are familiar witha certain thing, the harder it
is to learn it or to see itagain through fresh eyes.
So we always talk about wantingto be customer centric and
(37:13):
wanting to have customer empathy, and one thing that customer
education can do really well isactually help the business see
the product as the customer seesit.
Yeah, so we can't assume that,oh, the customer is just going
to get it because the userinterface is intuitive, right,
because customer education isn'tjust about teaching them what
buttons to click.
Customer education is helpingthem figure out how this product
(37:35):
helps them get their job done.
Yeah, and that's where weshould be spending our time.
Yeah, customer education alsodoes something interesting that
a lot of other programs don't do, and I think we could be
talking about more, which isactually building customer
advocacy.
Oh, interesting, and that's alofty term.
I don't like using it alwaysbecause it means too many
different things, but I'm goingto tell you specifically what I
(38:00):
mean is that often you can pointto the customers who are having
a great experience in awell-built academy, or customers
who are engaged in thecommunity and building
connections with each other.
Or you know, in our case,customers who have joined our
customer advisory board.
Like these become yoursuperstar customers.
These become the customers thatyou invite back to share their
insights with the rest of yourcompany, to build customer
empathy and to help build acompetitive moat.
Alex Turkovic (38:22):
Yeah.
Adam Avramescu (38:22):
Right Because they're going out there, they're
sharing social proof, they'reparticipating in customer case
studies.
So I think customer educationprograms actually give you an
opportunity to identify whichcustomers are also having a
really great experience withyour product.
That's cool.
Not a lot of other programs dothat.
Alex Turkovic (38:39):
No, not at all, and I think people think of
customer advocacy as like thisbig thing, like you get
marketing involved and you doall this kind of stuff.
But it doesn't necessarily haveto be that.
Adam Avramescu (38:48):
It can be like you know it's, it's that and
it's yeah.
I mean, that's why I saidcustomer advocacy, you know yeah
, all kinds of different stuff.
Alex Turkovic (38:55):
Smart person on here to talk about everything it
means but like a really uh, youknow, a really active community
member.
I think is is also equallyamazing somebody who's I love
the people who like havefacebook groups about your
product, because it's likethat's where the real stuff
happens oh, I mean like when wewere at slack, that was, that
was one of the, that was one ofthe.
Adam Avramescu (39:16):
the huge things was containing all of the and
not even containing, that's notthe right word like fostering
all of the ad hoc groups thatwere spinning up all the
communities, the communities ofpractice, the fan clubs, and
Slack was super cool in thesense that there was a Slack
community with a bunch of localuser groups as well as a Slack
champions network that wasfostered out of our customer
(39:39):
success team.
So, yeah, it was super cool.
A lot of ways to bring togetherall the organic love for your
product.
Alex Turkovic (39:47):
Yeah, that's really cool.
That's cool.
Look, I mean we are woefullygetting close to time and it's
really making me sad becauseit's been a lovely conversation
and there's probably way more wecould get into.
But a couple of things I dowant to just ask that I can't
frankly ask everyone is is youknow, what are you paying
attention to?
What do you?
How do you keep yourself fresh?
Podcast, books, all that kindof stuff?
Adam Avramescu (40:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So I am generally a really bigmedia consumer.
I'm a I'm a big reader, but Idon't limit it just to stuff
that's directly about my field.
I'm I'm a big reader, but Idon't limit it just to stuff
that's directly about my field.
I'm a big believer in gettinginspiration from areas that are
a little orthogonal or outsideyour day-to-day, but some things
(40:33):
that are closer to home Ilisten to.
Well, I listen to your podcast,of course, but I also I listen
to this Is Growth by DaphneCosta Lopez.
Quite a bit.
It's a good one.
I'm taking the Cover your SaaScourse right now.
Cool yeah, nice, yeah, that's areally cool one.
Alex Turkovic (40:48):
It's really good you had Jay and Jeff on your
show, right?
Yeah, I've had both on.
That course is a little strokeof genius because I don't know
of any other course like it.
That really explains, you know,sas fundamentals in the way
that they do, in a way that'sapproachable and like pretty
much anyone who's in SAS at anylevel like can use that info.
Adam Avramescu (41:13):
Yeah, and certainly for me.
You know if I'm, if I'minteracting with our, with our
CFO or, or, you know well,really any any SAS executive?
it's really helpful to have thatbackground and to understand
how those pieces fit together.
But you know, I'll say ingeneral, whenever I want to go
learn something new, I'll gofigure out where people are
talking about it and what thepodcasts are.
(41:35):
So, for instance, when I firsttook over community, I started
listening to In Before the Lock,which is Brian Oblinger and
Erica Kuhl, right took overcommunity, I started listening
to in before the lock, which isbrian oblinger and erica cool,
right, uh, experts in the field.
So yeah, that's, that'sgenerally what what I try to do.
I just try to, I try to getsmart on things if I, if I don't
know what they are yeah, yeah,for sure.
Alex Turkovic (41:52):
Do you want to give any like shout outs to
folks that are either doing coolstuff in ce or doing cool stuff
in digital?
Adam Avramescu (41:59):
Oh, yeah, great.
I mean, I'm a big fan of thedoers.
I guess, first of all, I'll saythere's a lot of people who
talk big on LinkedIn, but Ireally want to call out the
doers.
Yeah, let's see who can I callout?
I mean, first of all, you'vehad her on your podcast before.
Dee from Miro Miroverse.
(42:19):
That whole program is excellent, one of the best.
Yeah, she's, she's awesome,amazing.
Yep, she's amazing.
Alex Turkovic (42:27):
I love, I love D because she's not crazy active
on LinkedIn.
You know she's one of thosepeople who are to your point.
She's doing the thing and she'sdoing the thing incredibly well
, and so when you do hear fromher, it's like gosh, this is
like gold yeah, she'll write amedium post and then all of a
sudden it'll blow your mindthat's right you know she's not
(42:48):
going to say something just forthe sake of saying something but
you know what?
Adam Avramescu (42:51):
there's?
There's millions, not millions,there's there's.
There's a lot of people outthere.
I'm exaggerating, but thinkabout, okay.
I'll tell you about okay.
I'll tell you some of myfavorites.
Alex Turkovic (43:01):
Like.
Adam Avramescu (43:01):
Christy Hollingshead from Heap slash
Content Square.
She's doing great work thatbridges together a lot of these
disciplines.
Alessandra Marinetti, who's atAsana Really the whole team you
know on the community side andthe education side at Gong.
I think they're doing greatwork.
Pendo right, I think you've hadErica on there and Shelly
(43:23):
Berkowitz as well over there.
Really really great human.
And I'm really thankful as wellfor the folks in the Digital
Customer Success Network whohave been helping me get smart
about this, including yourself,but also Carrie from Qualtrics,
marie Lunny, dan Ennis right,totally, really appreciate their
wisdom and generosity.
Alex Turkovic (43:43):
Yeah, dan's a good share.
Marie, you're in the community,right?
I'm in the community, yeah, inthe DCS community, and I have
the distinct advantage of beingin Amsterdam.
Oh yeah, that's right, so wewere actually able to meet up
for coffee.
See, maybe I need to move toAmsterdam.
Adam Avramescu (44:01):
This is my pitch Everyone should move to
Amsterdam.
Alex Turkovic (44:04):
That's a good pitch.
I mean there's no, you knowthere's very few like arguments
that I could make against that.
Adam Avramescu (44:11):
If you want to have coffee with me and Marie
Loney?
Move to Amsterdam, that's it.
Alex Turkovic (44:16):
That's right.
Well, look, visiting move, movelike fullblown move.
I've really enjoyed this combo.
It's been enlightening.
It's always fun to talk aboutce and the broader implications
and stuff like that, but wherecan people find you and connect
with you and listen to you?
Adam Avramescu (44:35):
okay.
Yeah, there's the wind up.
So you know, I am, as youmentioned, on LinkedIn.
I say things when I feel like Ihave something useful to say,
so definitely connect with methere.
But maybe in a more structuredsense, I host a podcast called
C-Lab.
Our website iscustomereducation.
(44:55):
You can also find us whereverpodcasts are found.
So C-E-L-A-B the CustomerEducation Lab and I wrote a book
about customer education.
It's now a few years old, but Ithink a good 94% of what's in
there is still relevant fortoday.
So if you check out thecustomer education book, it's
(45:15):
called Customer Education whySmart Companies Profit by Making
Customers Smarter.
You can find it on Amazon.
Alex Turkovic (45:21):
On Amazon.
Awesome, that's cool.
Yeah, I mean, a customereducation book probably has way
more shelf life than an AI book.
Adam Avramescu (45:32):
You know I'm thinking about second edition,
and second edition's got to talkabout AI right, yeah, it's got
to.
The world has changed, but thefundamentals haven't.
That's right.
Alex Turkovic (45:40):
Yeah, exactly, adam, thanks a lot for the time.
I really appreciate it.
And, um, yeah, enjoy yourFriday evening and your weekend,
because I am literally thething that's keeping you from
beer 30, I think.
Adam Avramescu (45:54):
Well, you know what it's.
It's no, no trouble at all,because I've I've been a fan of
your show.
I've listened to probablyalmost every episode, so you
know it's an honor to be able tobe on this side of the podcast
now.
Yeah, it's always interestingas a host being on other
(46:15):
people's shows, isn't it?
It's really like everything.
Alex Turkovic (46:19):
I'm restraining myself not to take over or
accidentally start asking mequestions.
You wouldn't be the first.
Adam Avramescu (46:23):
All right, man, so listeners if you.
Oh sorry, sorry, that's you,it's you Okay.
Alex Turkovic (46:29):
Yeah, my outros aren't as boisterous as yours.
All right, I'm going to stopthe recording because we've got
enough.
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
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(46:52):
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We'll talk to you next week.
But then I started thinking about it, and
it's not just that it's hard toget, it's that that's probably
not even the right argument,Like I don't think we can say
that customer education ordigital CX is the only thing
that leads a customer to renewor to expand.
Alex Turkovic (00:19):
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
(00:42):
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 you're back with methis week and every week as we
talk about all things digital inCS.
This is episode 77, and we havean awesome conversation lined up
(01:04):
for you today with AdamAvromescu, who is actually I
suppose you could call it anexpat.
He actually studied here inAustin, which is where I'm based
, and now lives abroad inAmsterdam.
Another cool thing is he's afellow podcast host, so he hosts
CE uh, which has been a showthat's been going on way longer
(01:28):
than this podcast, so he has alot of miles under his belt, um,
being a podcast host, so he isobviously focused very much on
customer education, ce.
We talk about how you knowthings like learning correlation
are hard.
We talk about micro learning,which is another buzz phrase in
(01:49):
CE.
Talk about content creationspecifically for digital CS.
So lots of great nuggets foryou if you're involved in
customer education in any way,shape or form.
I hope you enjoy thisconversation with Adam, because
I sure did.
Yeah, so true, it's very true,adam.
(02:10):
Welcome to the show.
We jumped right into it.
Good to be here.
We're right into it.
But welcome to the show.
I've been listening to CELabfor a while.
I mean, obviously you have waymore shows under the belt, I
will say, given that you've doneit for five years and whatnot.
Adam Avramescu (02:32):
But I don't know , I think.
I think you're going to outpaceus very quickly, because you
release more often than we do.
Alex Turkovic (02:38):
I'm just like I said, it's a little bit of
insanity and a little bit ofnuttiness happening over here,
but we like that we like thatyeah, why not?
um, but look, you know, I've uh,I've loved everything that
you've like put out.
Your, your, you, you.
You come into the world andinto linkedin life and all that
kind of stuff with a sense oflike, well, even what you were
(03:00):
just talking about, there's a.
There's a wiseness if that's aword.
I just made up a word.
There's a.
There's a wiseness If that's aword.
Adam Avramescu (03:06):
I just made up a word.
Alex Turkovic (03:06):
There's a, there's a sense of just like
reverence and wise, like likeintelligence behind the things
that you say and it makes peoplelisten and I appreciate that
about you, so I'm happy thatyou're here.
Adam Avramescu (03:16):
Well, thank you, I appreciate that reflection.
My, I have a I have a love haterelationship with with social
media Cause, like, on one hand,I love attention but on the
other hand, you know, we'llprobably like a lot of people.
I, I read, you know, I scrollthrough LinkedIn and I'm like
that didn't need to be said,that didn't need to be said,
like, so my, at least my, myphilosophy and I think I, I try
(03:40):
to, I try to adhere to this, Ithink I meet this most of the
time is like say something whenyou have something valuable to
say, otherwise, don't worryabout it.
Alex Turkovic (03:49):
That's right.
Yeah, I love that.
I too have a love-haterelationship with social media
because, a I do like theattention as well, I'll admit it
, but B I don't like heartpalpitations, so there, you go
Because it'll do that.
Adam Avramescu (04:04):
Yeah, true, true .
And sometimes, though, you geta, you get a great laugh, or you
get a, you know, check, check,this bleep out I don't know for
are we allowed to swear on thispodcast?
Hell yes, great, great thenwe'll.
I'm thinking of that scene fromthe simpsons where it goes we
live like, live like kings.
Damn hell, ask kings.
Alex Turkovic (04:27):
Oh man, you know what it's funny.
I showed my son.
He's 13.
I showed him the Simpsons theother day and I didn't realize
how bad that animation we're soused to it, the early seasons.
The early seasons are likesuper, super rough and I don't
remember it that way.
(04:48):
I remember it as this, likebright, shining star of my youth
.
And so I was a littledisappointed.
And then I was equallydisappointed when my son was
like I don't, I don't really getthis well, they were going for
a really punk vibe at first.
Adam Avramescu (05:02):
It took totally a while before they decided they
really wanted to smooth out theedges.
But okay, this is the Simpsonsanalogy I always use on my own
podcast.
We got to get to the fireworksfactory.
The fireworks factory.
We got to get to the fireworksfactory.
I don't know if people aregoing to want to listen to us.
Just talk about the Simpsons.
Alex Turkovic (05:19):
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah, probably not.
But it was a poignant moment inmy adulthood life where I was
like, okay, I'm disconnectedfrom my youth.
Anyway, look a bit about you.
I mean, we talked about Slack,you know right off the bat, but
you are, I think relativelyrecently in terms of lifespan,
an expat.
Adam Avramescu (05:40):
Yeah, I'm, I guess at this point, a toddler
of a European.
I've been living in Amsterdamfor a little bit over two years,
so getting adjusted, feeling alittle bit more, you know, in
the Dutch life, now the expatlife, but before that I was in
the Bay Area.
Before that Austin, of course,and originally from Montreal
(06:01):
Unreal.
Alex Turkovic (06:03):
How has the adjustment been?
Adam Avramescu (06:08):
It's been good.
I mean, I walked into thisimagining that it was going to
be a bit of a new chapter, right, With all the challenges that
that comes with, but also allthe fun and adventure, and I
think it's lived up to that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting,right.
I mean, there are things thatare meaningfully different about
living in Amsterdam than livingin Austin or you know wherever
whatever comparison you want tomake but at the same time, you
(06:30):
know on a day to day basis, you,you know, you wake up, you
commute, you go to work right,it's not you go grocery shopping
.
Alex Turkovic (06:36):
Breathe in, breathe out.
Everything is different, right.
Adam Avramescu (06:38):
Yeah, but yeah, no, it's been.
It's been a lot of fun and Ireally appreciate the
opportunity to be out here andhaving this life chapter for
sure.
Alex Turkovic (06:47):
Yeah, for sure.
Well, I've asked you on becauseI mean, obviously you're big
into customer education, havebeen for a long time and you get
it in terms of CE.
You're currently VP of CE andengagement, which I thought was
interesting at Presanio.
Talk about the engagement bit.
(07:08):
What does that mean?
Adam Avramescu (07:10):
Yeah, I mean so actually, even internally.
Now we just say VP of customereducation.
But what we wanted to dooriginally when I started was
really pull together all of thefunctions that either educated
or connected our customers atscale, or really that dealt with
the idea of learning andenablement.
(07:30):
So when I first arrived atPersonia, we had brought
together three different teamswith the intention to add one
more, which now exists.
So on one hand, it was oureducational content team, which
was originally called usereducation, so you could think of
them as being responsible forall of our help center, our
documentation, our videoproduction and channel
(07:54):
management.
So how do we get all of thoseeducational materials out
through in-app email everywhereelse where you might expect to
see it?
So that was team one else whereyou might expect to see it.
So that was team one.
Team number two was ourcommunity team, or customer
engagement, and that's whereengagement comes from.
So you could think of that asour online and offline
communities, the communityforums, our customer events, our
(08:18):
customer advisory board, allthe ways that we're really
connecting customers to eachother and to us as a business
and as the people in thebusiness.
And then we were also bringingin an internal enablement team
which were responsible forenabling our CX individuals, our
CX humans so brought all ofthose together, added in a
(08:38):
customer training team, which isnow what we call our Voyager
Academy, which is now what wecall our Voyager Academy.
And so that was the point tobring all of these programs
together that educated andengaged our customers under this
voyage by Personio Mantle.
So that's why we're alltogether.
Alex Turkovic (08:53):
Yeah, I love that , because so many times you see
all of those functions in aseparate maybe not separate org,
but definitely differentmanagerial structures and it
leads to silos and duplicationof effort and all that kind of
stuff.
And I would imagine thatbringing those together just
makes sense, you know, from akind of a voice perspective,
(09:17):
like what kind of voice you wantto portray in your content and
things like that.
But then obviously on thetactical level, like you know,
you know what content needs tobe developed, in what kind of
way to go in what certain places.
So it probably helps build someefficiencies that way, I would
imagine.
Adam Avramescu (09:35):
Yeah, exactly, and I think it's not only about
creating efficiency forourselves, but whenever we we do
something as a company, like amajor product launch or the
day-to-day release process oreven a major initiative like,
say, changing our pricing model,it means that instead of going
and figuring out how to do thatindividually for all of those
(09:59):
programs, that we actually canbuild, like you said, some
connections and efficiencies notjust for ourselves but actually
for the rest of the business.
So, you know, increasingly Isee what we do as being not just
and maybe we'll get into thislater not just the traditional
like skinny customer educationright, where we just do customer
training and we just have anacademy and we just go do
(10:20):
webinars or something like that,but but really like moving
towards.
How do we bring together all ofthese surfaces into more of a
scale?
Cx, totally remit, you knowtotally, because I mean we're
building scale for the rest ofthe business, yeah, yeah.
Alex Turkovic (10:34):
well, I mean, you know so much of what you know
we would classify as scaled cx'sis, you know, sure, data
automation?
You know, sure, data automation.
You know customer journey, allthat kind of stuff.
But one of the massive legs ofthe stool, so to speak, is
content Like what are youdistributing, when is it the
(10:56):
right, you know, to the rightperson at the right time?
Like all that kind of stuffLike so you're, you're only, and
that's why you know yeah, likeI, I haven't considered myself a
digital customer success expert.
Adam Avramescu (11:08):
You know, this is something.
I'm new to that world and it'ssomething that I've really been
digging into.
But this was, this was theevolution of our program, right?
So so we we came together,brought those programs together,
initially under customereducation and engagement, and
the first year or so was reallyfiguring out how do we work
together, how do we bring theseprograms together, how do we
gain those efficiencies thatyou've just talked about?
(11:29):
But more recently it's been hey, okay, we have, we have content
and we have actually now areally strong base of content.
We have the channels, the rich,to deliver them.
Now, how do we start to pull inthat automation, that targeting
, that relevance?
So now, now I think we'removing more into what a lot of
people would call traditionalTraditional is not a good word
(11:50):
for it Proper digital customersuccess or proper digital
customer experience.
Alex Turkovic (11:54):
Yeah, that's so cool.
So I mean, given that you know,one of the things I ask all my
guests is like what their ownkind of elevator pitch of
digital CS or CX would be, so Iwould love to hear your words on
it.
Since you're kind of elevatorpitch of digital CS or CX would
be, so we'd love to hear yourwords on it.
Adam Avramescu (12:11):
since you're kind of exploring it, but
intrinsically, I think you knowthe drill.
Yeah, so it's interesting,right, there's a lot of ways
that you can think about it.
But the thing that reallyclicked for me when thinking
about why is there a thingcalled digital customer
experience, why is there a thingcalled digital customer
experience, why is this afunction that exists, is is I
almost think of it like anequation that has a numerator
(12:32):
and a denominator, or you couldthink of it like a ratio.
So I think of it as a strategyby which you maximize the
customer outcomes with a minimumof human effort yep and this is
the strategy and the set ofprograms and a portfolio that
uses automation and uses contentand uses tactics that scale to
(12:55):
meet your customers where theyare and drive value.
Yeah, but it's about optimizingthat ratio to build growth
within an efficient business Ilove.
Alex Turkovic (13:06):
I love how you put that in terms of driving
outcomes.
Not a lot of people say thatwhen they come to the table with
their definition of digitalit's like meeting the customer
where they are, with what theyneed when they need it and all
that kind of stuff.
But ultimately you're right.
The goal is you drive theoutcome and you know, ideally
(13:30):
you do it in a way that reservesthe human capital that you have
on the team for those likeultra high value scenarios where
, if you're involving a human inthis, it means that either
you've taken care of the mundanedigitally and you know and
you're letting the human kind ofbe that massive exclamation
(13:51):
point at the end of the value,or there's some stuff going
wrong.
Adam Avramescu (13:56):
Yeah, and maybe it's because you know I don't
come from a high touch customersuccess background.
So I mean I know in customersuccess it's very common to
think about outcomes as as theheadline, but I don't know in
customer success it's verycommon to think about outcomes
as the headline, but I don'tknow maybe coming from a
different background, I'vethought about the function of
DCX from a little bit of adifferent angle.
Alex Turkovic (14:14):
Which is why I love asking the question.
Yeah, I love asking thequestion because it's different
every single time.
It's so good.
Adam Avramescu (14:22):
Well cool.
I look forward to beingincluded in the word cloud now.
Alex Turkovic (14:25):
I need to update the word cloud.
I'm way behind on it.
Adam Avramescu (14:28):
It's like update the word cloud.
Alex Turkovic (14:34):
Oh God.
So look, I think a lot ofpeople when they hear the term
customer education, they kind ofgloss over it a little bit,
because a lot of people think,okay, it's training or it's
e-learning or it's like whatever.
Um, I'm fortunate that I have,you know, I have a background in
learning and development, like,and I know some adult learning
(14:57):
theory, I know what the addymodel is, I know, you know like
that kind of stuff, and so I'vealways approached it in that
kind of way to say, okay, thisis performance support versus
training, versus certificationand all that kind of stuff.
But I think the majority offolks just look at customer
education, it's like, okay,that's like something I would
(15:24):
put.
This is what would you describeas a good customer education
model?
Or you know, a solid CE program?
Adam Avramescu (15:39):
Yeah, yeah.
So I think this goes back tosomething we were starting to
get into a little bit earlier,which is the lines are blurring
now around customer education.
It used to be that when yousaid customer well, it used to
be that when you said customereducation, it meant nothing.
It maybe meant your trainingservices program for your
on-prem tech company.
But things have changed andwe've started to evolve what is
(16:03):
included in customer education.
But I want to say this throughthe lens of, I think, at some
point, what we call customereducation today and what we call
scale CX or DCX.
They're actually not going tolook a whole lot different from
each other really about makingsure that your customers are
(16:28):
able to achieve theirperformance outcomes using a
portfolio of programs andstrategies to achieve that.
So what does that not mean?
It doesn't mean limitingcustomer education to the
traditional classroom model,having people sit in day-long
workshops or even takemulti-hour e-learnings.
(16:48):
I think some people hearcustomer education and they just
think like, oh, this is thecorporate university.
No, a good customer educationprogram really should have a
variety of ways to educate thecustomer about different topics,
to build different skills.
So, for instance, in theprograms that I've led, often
they have included thetraditional academy or an
(17:11):
academy component.
These days a lot more people,including ourselves, are tying
those to skill badges and movingtowards shorter form courses
instead of these multi-hour,multi-day trainings or formal
certifications, because a lot ofpeople that's overkill.
But also community has been nowa part of our program several
(17:32):
times, because it's one thing toteach a skill from zero to 60,
but it's another thing to bringpeople together to learn, to
connect, to share with eachother, as well as help centers,
documentation, knowledge bases,whatever you want to call that
cluster of activities, becausehaving quick references and
often having them contextual,available in the support flow,
(17:55):
that's the key to making surethe customers get what they need
when they need it.
And then you start getting intothings like email nurture
campaigns.
You start getting into in-appeducation, contextual help
campaigns.
You start getting into in-appeducation, contextual help.
All of those are tactics orprograms that you see making up
a successful customer educationprogram.
So that's why I say I think atsome point, customer education
(18:17):
and DCX, they're going to bealmost the same thing.
Alex Turkovic (18:20):
Yeah, yeah.
It's staggering to think aboutbecause I think as soon as you
blur the lines betweentraditional e-learning and all
the stuff that you know the oldschool, like learning nerds,
will say is learning versusperformance support, as soon as
you start blurring those lines,then at that point you know CE
(18:43):
is all about just like're right,getting the content to the
person at the right time, andthat can be like a, an
in-product pop-up.
Uh, somebody I recentlyinterviewed said they're using,
or they were using, linkedin adsas part of their digital
engagement strategy forunengaged customers, which and
(19:04):
and really you're educating yourcustomer on.
Hey, you're you have.
You know there's this featurein our product.
Do you want to you?
Adam Avramescu (19:09):
know want to go use it.
You could.
Alex Turkovic (19:10):
You could argue yeah, that that's customer
education, because it is youknow.
Adam Avramescu (19:15):
Yeah yeah, we just launched a LinkedIn page
for for voyage by Personio aswell, not just so we can promote
new, new things coming out ofour program, but also so that we
can educate our customers, whomight be finding us through
those types of channels insteadof wanting to come to an owned
platform.
That's a big debate right nowin the community world.
But you brought up thetraditional learning and
development definitions of someof these things.
(19:35):
You talked about the Addy model, you talked about training
versus performance support and,listen, all these definitions
exist for a reason and I thinkthey're useful models.
If you're in, say, thinkthey're useful models If you're
in, say, an internal learningand development program and
you're trying to explain to yourstakeholders why you're taking
a certain intervention, and thatall exists in customer
(19:56):
education, but I I try not touse that language or spend too
much time on those distinctions,because it really is time on
those distinctions, because itreally is.
It's closer to what you said.
It's about finding the rightways to drive the right
performance outcomes forcustomers, right?
So if I talk about performanceoutcomes, if I talk about
(20:16):
adoption, if I talk aboutbuilding skills that will
ultimately lead to higherretention, like those are the
things that are more importantfor for customer education.
But at the same time, the otherthing that I'm trying, you know
, always not to fall into isthis perception that customer
education is just, you know, anycontent you throw out there.
(20:37):
Yeah, so there's a school ofthought, for instance, that, oh,
you know what actually like youshouldn't have a a university
program or an academy program,because everyone just wants you
know super short form, tiktok,micro learning content, whatever
you want to call it.
Yeah, exactly.
Or like, hey, you know what youshould do.
You should just like take allof the gong recordings that you
(20:59):
have with your customers and cutyourself or, sorry, cut the
customer out of it, and justkeep the things that you said
and put it up on your helpcenter or your knowledge base,
and that's customer education.
Yeah, if you're just starting,maybe that's a fine way to build
a base of content, but that'scontent.
That's not actually customereducation.
It has to have a purpose, ithas to have a strategy.
Alex Turkovic (21:18):
The word curation comes to mind, because
ultimately, I think what you'retrying to do and the whole
reason why you have this teamaround it is you're trying to
curate an experience in acontrolled way, but also maybe
(21:40):
in a haphazard way.
But ultimately, you're lookingat what are the skills gaps,
whether it's a high influx ofsupport tickets on this one
particular topic, for instance,or whatever, there are skill
gaps that exist and you'retrying to strategically plug
those skill gaps in ways thatmake sense and in meeting the
persona where they are, whenthat skill gap is happening.
(22:04):
And that's a really it's acomplex puzzle to put together,
and so it may seem likehaphazard in a lot of ways, but
I think a lot of times-.
Adam Avramescu (22:14):
But none of it is just making content right
Exactly To your point.
You can look at unsolvedsupport tickets.
You can use that to figure outwhere the customer is actually
experiencing friction and usethat to prioritize not just what
content you create, but whereyou serve it, how you create it,
how it's delivered to customers, etc.
You can do the same thing foran onboarding program.
(22:41):
Where are your implementationmanagers or CSM spending the
most time delivering one-to-onetraining?
Are they doing it because ittruly needs to be customized for
every single customer?
Are they doing it because ittruly needs to be customized for
every single customer?
Or is this something where youcan actually create more
scalable materials that can beused either as the pre-work or
as the homework?
And then the humans again arespending their them on the more
(23:12):
bespoke thornier, like the stuffthat actually needs to be
customized.
So that's where I see you know,the digital, the digital motion
and the human motion playingvery well together.
But it also informs you knowwhere should you spend your time
in terms of creating andcurating content.
Alex Turkovic (23:25):
Yeah.
Adam Avramescu (23:26):
Yeah, and, by the way, what happens when you
know you have more peoplejoining the account and they
weren't in the original training?
Well, they probably want a wayto get up to speed as well, so
you need to be able to meet themwhere they are and sending them
recorded training calls is likethe quickest way to death Cause
like.
I don't want to watch arecorded call.
Alex Turkovic (23:43):
I don't want to watch a recorded call Come on,
man, make me feel a littlespecial and get me on board
quickly.
I don't need to hear yourbanter pre-training.
Adam Avramescu (23:56):
There's an art right.
Instructional design exists fora reason Exactly.
Alex Turkovic (23:59):
Absolutely.
Hey, I want to have a briefchat with you about this show.
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(24:20):
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(24:40):
Now back to the show.
I always thought it was sofascinating.
You know the difference between.
You know the design anddevelopment of a piece of
learning.
You know, because the two arekind of mutually exclusive,
right, but without like reallywell thought out front end
design of what it is.
You know what learningobjectives are you trying to
(25:02):
solve for.
You know what would be the bestmethod for doing that.
Like there's a whole kind ofart to figuring this puzzle out.
And then ideally, you know theperson developing it kind of has
that roadmap and they can justkind of go for it.
It's a cool thing to watchhappen in an org that hums.
Adam Avramescu (25:22):
For sure, and a lot of it becomes very close to
you know, to UX design when it'shappening.
Really well, you're figuringout what is the best way for the
customer to achieve theiroutcomes with a minimum of
friction.
Alex Turkovic (25:32):
It's almost like CE and product should have a
really close relationship.
Adam Avramescu (25:41):
CE and product CE and marketing CE and customer
success.
We, we sit in the middle of allof those and and I think it's a
beautiful thing.
Alex Turkovic (25:48):
I think that's.
That's one of the things thatcs and ce we'll just call them.
What's the combined word?
Customer went really really badplace there for a second uh
customer sex education.
Yeah, nope, I see it, I see it.
I don't know about customer sexeducation, but no but this does
(26:12):
, this does remind me.
Adam Avramescu (26:14):
I now, now that you've you've broken that
barrier, I have to.
I have to tell you one of thesilliest things I ever heard at
a conference.
Yeah, somebody asked thequestion how would you define
the difference between educationand training?
Right, because you know we lovedebating terminology.
We've been debating terminologyfor a while, even even today,
(26:34):
and the person responded they gowell, you wouldn't send your
child to sex training class,would you?
Alex Turkovic (26:44):
Interesting.
Adam Avramescu (26:46):
And I thought I thought, well, that's a, that
was a pithy response, but Idon't know if it really came
down to, I don't know that itreally answered the question.
It was memorable, that's forsure.
It was memorable I, I.
This was about a decade ago andI still remember it.
So I mean sure, I mean it getsthe point across, but like,
actually like, maybe, maybe,maybe to like, maybe to dig
myself out of that hole, like,if you actually think about the
(27:07):
difference between pure training, right, training, as we
understand it, that's the veryskinny version of customer
education.
That's the narrowest possibledefinition we can right.
Right, let's take a discreteskill, let's build content
around it that gets a learnerfrom you know, zero or wherever
they are, to a defined state.
Education is a portfolio ofactivities, right, if you're
(27:31):
running a great educationprogram, then you are finding
different ways to overall makesure that your customer is not
just better at discrete skillsrelated to your product, but as
well that they are getting helpand removing friction along the
way.
So it doesn't necessarily needto be hey, I didn't have the
skill and now I have the skill.
It could be, I had this problem.
(27:51):
Now I don't have this problem.
Yeah, as well, as I think in alot of the best programs, you're
also helping them learn how todo their job better, so you're
teaching them something aboutthe industry or you're
connecting them with othercustomers who know something
about the industry and havesomething to share with them.
So that's why I think all ofthese things go together, yeah.
Alex Turkovic (28:09):
I think so too, and also, similarly, there's
this whole thing in CS aboutwhat's the difference between a
digital CS program and yourscaled CS program and all the
definitions that go into it.
And ultimately, my opinion isthat a solid digital program is
part of scaling your CS, muchlike education is part of
(28:31):
scaling CS and all that kind ofstuff.
But without getting into thosecrazy semantics, I think CS and
CE share so many things becausewe're trying to accomplish
roughly similar things, right.
So there's a natural sharedkind of collaboration.
There's a natural kind of shareof all kinds of different
(28:53):
things.
One of the struggles that I feellike CS and like CE and
education in general has alwaysstruggled with is that ROI Like
what by doing this thing, what'sthe return on investment?
And it's a really hard thing totease out because there's any
number of other differentfactors affecting the exact same
damn thing, Right?
(29:14):
And so I think in CS that's Imean, that's been the talk of CS
for like the last few years ishow do you protect your seat at
the table and all that kind ofstuff.
And it's about, like revenueattribution based on the things
that you're doing, and so Iwanted to get your take on what
that looks like for you in CEand maybe what some of the best
(29:35):
practices are in CE for you knowthat kind of attribution.
Adam Avramescu (29:41):
Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this
for a long time.
Obviously it's a big thing forcustomer education and for a
long time I felt like the holygrail was going to be that I
could develop some sort of modelthat showed, with airtight
causation that customereducation programs directly
(30:02):
caused or I guess, werepredictive of revenue-based
outcomes.
So if we can say that customerswho took this many courses in
our academy or customers whowere this active in our
community, with some sort ofregression analysis, we could
prove that that actually led tohigher retention or higher NRR
(30:24):
via expansion or whateverultimately we wanted to tie it
to at the business level, thenwe'd be golden.
And in reality, first of all,that's really hard to get.
It's really hard to run aregression analysis that shows,
with all the other factors thatwere in there, like most
(30:44):
companies just don't have thescale or the volumes to properly
show that a customerparticipating in educational
activities upstream, that thatwas the thing that really
inflected their renewal or theirexpansion.
But then I started thinkingabout it, and it's not just that
it's hard to get, it's thatthat's probably not even the
(31:05):
right argument.
Like I don't think we can saythat customer education or
digital CX is the only thingthat leads a customer to renew
Because it's not, or to expandBecause it's not.
Yeah, so, with the whole right,because you try to go and do
you show some sort ofcorrelation in the business, you
say customers who have beeninvolved with this educational
(31:27):
program tend to renew at theserates compared to those who
don't.
Or you know the average NRR forcustomers, you know who
participated in our programs?
Is this compared to those whodidn't participated in our
programs?
Is this compared to those whodidn't?
Well, great.
And then so the next thing thatthe person who presented that
to you asks because they'resmart, they go well, how do you
know that that isn't a reversecausation?
Or if it isn't a falsecorrelation, how do you know
(31:52):
that it isn't just customers whoalready wanted to expand that
just took education because theywere already engaged with us?
Yeah, and I think that's thepoint.
My position on that for a whilehas been yeah, I don't think it
actually matters, I don't thinkwe're saying that customer
education or DCX is the thingthat causes the customer to want
to renew the product is thething that causes the customer
(32:15):
to want to renew.
But we have to help them getthere.
We have to help them see thevalue.
So like, anyway, like.
Here's the thing.
I think if you want to provethe ROI of your program, we have
to back up from this whole holygrail, airtight equation that's
going to prove it very close tobusiness priorities and that we
(32:39):
can demonstrate through theprograms that we take on,
through the stories we tell,through the quantitative and
qualitative data that we share,that we are driving the outcomes
that matter most to thebusiness and that it's a very
obvious, simple story what we'redoing to drive those outcomes.
I do think it's also reallyhelpful to make good friends
(33:03):
with your data science andbusiness systems teams, because
there are things that you canprove.
Showing that there's arelationship between those
things is important.
You just shouldn't claim thatit's more than it is.
You shouldn't pretend it'scausal.
If it's not, you can say it's afactor.
You can say there's a strongrelationship when people engage
with our programs.
So therefore, I think we can saythat our programs are a strong
(33:25):
component or attribute of acustomer renewing and, yeah, I
think, demonstrating as well,especially in today's economy,
that we can do this moreefficiently than other teams can
, because I think businessesneed to get the results that
they need to get, but,especially for smaller customer
segments, they can't do that bythrowing a bunch of humans at it
(33:48):
like they could a couple ofyears ago.
So true, so, especially, Ithink, working with our data
science teams, working with ourbusiness systems teams, trying
to model out, hey, this is whatthe same motion would look like
if we didn't exist.
Yeah, you could, you could, youcould remove this program and
(34:08):
you might not feel anythingtomorrow, but in terms of next
year's headcount planning andthe ratios that you would need
to build to accomplish the sameoutcomes, yep, here's what that
would look like yeah, it's funnyyou say that about the bi folks
.
Alex Turkovic (34:21):
Like, whenever I've joined a new company,
there's there's two people,actually three people I always
make friends with, likeimmediately it's the office
manager, it's the it person andit's the data people, because,
like, those are the three peoplethat actually make stuff happen
at the company.
Adam Avramescu (34:36):
These are your friends these are your friends,
but I think to your point.
Alex Turkovic (34:41):
I love where you're going with it in terms of
, like, you know, the stuff thatwe do ultimately feeds the
customer experience.
If you have a great customerexperience and your product, you
know, works, or at least youhave the great, you know, you
have good support mechanisms toback that stuff up, I mean,
that's, you know, that's halfhalf, if not the majority, of
(35:03):
the battle to get you to, youknow, renewal, you know, I mean,
how many times have we, have wein our careers, been surprised
by a customer who has, you know,announced that they're churning
and everybody goes crazy, butthe fact of the matter is the
customer hasn't really heardfrom you after onboarding.
They're kind of floating outthere without resources, and so
(35:28):
I think that's the golden areafor CE and digital programs to
step in, especially for thosesmaller customers that, quite
frankly, sometimes need way morehelp than your largest customer
.
Adam Avramescu (35:43):
Yeah, exactly, and and you know, if you model
out the number of touches theycan have with support or CSM,
before that becomes wildlyunprofitable, then you know you
you need to be able to do thisat scale while still, at the
same time, not leaving thosecustomers completely in the
lurch.
So, look, I love that we aremoving more now towards using AI
to serve content to thesecustomers, intervene more with
(36:06):
support.
We're experimenting with somecool stuff with AI assistance at
Personio as well, so I lovethat this is where we're going,
but you know what?
That still relies on reallyeffective content served in the
right way.
Alex Turkovic (36:17):
And good data.
Adam Avramescu (36:20):
Because?
And good data to serve it?
Yeah for sure.
Right, like I think sometimeswe, we assume we have the curse
of knowledge about our ownproduct and and we think, oh,
you know what, this isn't hardto learn, it's easy, and you
just do it this way, andespecially if you're if you're,
you know you're working at thecompany, you've been at the
company a long time, you justknow how it works.
But if you read, oh gosh,what's the book?
Book with the Heath brotherstalking about the curse of
(36:41):
knowledge?
It is, I want to say, made toStick.
Is the book where they talkabout that.
Alex Turkovic (36:47):
My internet doesn't like me right now.
Adam Avramescu (36:50):
Okay, it's fine, so I'll give the book
recommendation read Made toStick by Dan and Chip Heath
there you go.
And they talk yeah, they talkabout this in the book.
There's also a similarly titledbook called Make it Stick.
That is also very good, butanyway, they talk about this,
right?
The more you are familiar witha certain thing, the harder it
is to learn it or to see itagain through fresh eyes.
So we always talk about wantingto be customer centric and
(37:13):
wanting to have customer empathy, and one thing that customer
education can do really well isactually help the business see
the product as the customer seesit.
Yeah, so we can't assume that,oh, the customer is just going
to get it because the userinterface is intuitive, right,
because customer education isn'tjust about teaching them what
buttons to click.
Customer education is helpingthem figure out how this product
(37:35):
helps them get their job done.
Yeah, and that's where weshould be spending our time.
Yeah, customer education alsodoes something interesting that
a lot of other programs don't do, and I think we could be
talking about more, which isactually building customer
advocacy.
Oh, interesting, and that's alofty term.
I don't like using it alwaysbecause it means too many
different things, but I'm goingto tell you specifically what I
(38:00):
mean is that often you can pointto the customers who are having
a great experience in awell-built academy, or customers
who are engaged in thecommunity and building
connections with each other.
Or you know, in our case,customers who have joined our
customer advisory board.
Like these become yoursuperstar customers.
These become the customers thatyou invite back to share their
insights with the rest of yourcompany, to build customer
empathy and to help build acompetitive moat.
Alex Turkovic (38:22):
Yeah.
Adam Avramescu (38:22):
Right Because they're going out there, they're
sharing social proof, they'reparticipating in customer case
studies.
So I think customer educationprograms actually give you an
opportunity to identify whichcustomers are also having a
really great experience withyour product.
That's cool.
Not a lot of other programs dothat.
Alex Turkovic (38:39):
No, not at all, and I think people think of
customer advocacy as like thisbig thing, like you get
marketing involved and you doall this kind of stuff.
But it doesn't necessarily haveto be that.
Adam Avramescu (38:48):
It can be like you know it's, it's that and
it's yeah.
I mean, that's why I saidcustomer advocacy, you know yeah
, all kinds of different stuff.
Alex Turkovic (38:55):
Smart person on here to talk about everything it
means but like a really uh, youknow, a really active community
member.
I think is is also equallyamazing somebody who's I love
the people who like havefacebook groups about your
product, because it's likethat's where the real stuff
happens oh, I mean like when wewere at slack, that was, that
was one of the, that was one ofthe.
Adam Avramescu (39:16):
the huge things was containing all of the and
not even containing, that's notthe right word like fostering
all of the ad hoc groups thatwere spinning up all the
communities, the communities ofpractice, the fan clubs, and
Slack was super cool in thesense that there was a Slack
community with a bunch of localuser groups as well as a Slack
champions network that wasfostered out of our customer
(39:39):
success team.
So, yeah, it was super cool.
A lot of ways to bring togetherall the organic love for your
product.
Alex Turkovic (39:47):
Yeah, that's really cool.
That's cool.
Look, I mean we are woefullygetting close to time and it's
really making me sad becauseit's been a lovely conversation
and there's probably way more wecould get into.
But a couple of things I dowant to just ask that I can't
frankly ask everyone is is youknow, what are you paying
attention to?
What do you?
How do you keep yourself fresh?
Podcast, books, all that kindof stuff?
Adam Avramescu (40:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So I am generally a really bigmedia consumer.
I'm a I'm a big reader, but Idon't limit it just to stuff
that's directly about my field.
I'm I'm a big reader, but Idon't limit it just to stuff
that's directly about my field.
I'm a big believer in gettinginspiration from areas that are
a little orthogonal or outsideyour day-to-day, but some things
(40:33):
that are closer to home Ilisten to.
Well, I listen to your podcast,of course, but I also I listen
to this Is Growth by DaphneCosta Lopez.
Quite a bit.
It's a good one.
I'm taking the Cover your SaaScourse right now.
Cool yeah, nice, yeah, that's areally cool one.
Alex Turkovic (40:48):
It's really good you had Jay and Jeff on your
show, right?
Yeah, I've had both on.
That course is a little strokeof genius because I don't know
of any other course like it.
That really explains, you know,sas fundamentals in the way
that they do, in a way that'sapproachable and like pretty
much anyone who's in SAS at anylevel like can use that info.
Adam Avramescu (41:13):
Yeah, and certainly for me.
You know if I'm, if I'minteracting with our, with our
CFO or, or, you know well,really any any SAS executive?
it's really helpful to have thatbackground and to understand
how those pieces fit together.
But you know, I'll say ingeneral, whenever I want to go
learn something new, I'll gofigure out where people are
talking about it and what thepodcasts are.
(41:35):
So, for instance, when I firsttook over community, I started
listening to In Before the Lock,which is Brian Oblinger and
Erica Kuhl, right took overcommunity, I started listening
to in before the lock, which isbrian oblinger and erica cool,
right, uh, experts in the field.
So yeah, that's, that'sgenerally what what I try to do.
I just try to, I try to getsmart on things if I, if I don't
know what they are yeah, yeah,for sure.
Alex Turkovic (41:52):
Do you want to give any like shout outs to
folks that are either doing coolstuff in ce or doing cool stuff
in digital?
Adam Avramescu (41:59):
Oh, yeah, great.
I mean, I'm a big fan of thedoers.
I guess, first of all, I'll saythere's a lot of people who
talk big on LinkedIn, but Ireally want to call out the
doers.
Yeah, let's see who can I callout?
I mean, first of all, you'vehad her on your podcast before.
Dee from Miro Miroverse.
(42:19):
That whole program is excellent, one of the best.
Yeah, she's, she's awesome,amazing.
Yep, she's amazing.
Alex Turkovic (42:27):
I love, I love D because she's not crazy active
on LinkedIn.
You know she's one of thosepeople who are to your point.
She's doing the thing and she'sdoing the thing incredibly well
, and so when you do hear fromher, it's like gosh, this is
like gold yeah, she'll write amedium post and then all of a
sudden it'll blow your mindthat's right you know she's not
(42:48):
going to say something just forthe sake of saying something but
you know what?
Adam Avramescu (42:51):
there's?
There's millions, not millions,there's there's.
There's a lot of people outthere.
I'm exaggerating, but thinkabout, okay.
I'll tell you about okay.
I'll tell you some of myfavorites.
Alex Turkovic (43:01):
Like.
Adam Avramescu (43:01):
Christy Hollingshead from Heap slash
Content Square.
She's doing great work thatbridges together a lot of these
disciplines.
Alessandra Marinetti, who's atAsana Really the whole team you
know on the community side andthe education side at Gong.
I think they're doing greatwork.
Pendo right, I think you've hadErica on there and Shelly
(43:23):
Berkowitz as well over there.
Really really great human.
And I'm really thankful as wellfor the folks in the Digital
Customer Success Network whohave been helping me get smart
about this, including yourself,but also Carrie from Qualtrics,
marie Lunny, dan Ennis right,totally, really appreciate their
wisdom and generosity.
Alex Turkovic (43:43):
Yeah, dan's a good share.
Marie, you're in the community,right?
I'm in the community, yeah, inthe DCS community, and I have
the distinct advantage of beingin Amsterdam.
Oh yeah, that's right, so wewere actually able to meet up
for coffee.
See, maybe I need to move toAmsterdam.
Adam Avramescu (44:01):
This is my pitch Everyone should move to
Amsterdam.
Alex Turkovic (44:04):
That's a good pitch.
I mean there's no, you knowthere's very few like arguments
that I could make against that.
Adam Avramescu (44:11):
If you want to have coffee with me and Marie
Loney?
Move to Amsterdam, that's it.
Alex Turkovic (44:16):
That's right.
Well, look, visiting move, movelike fullblown move.
I've really enjoyed this combo.
It's been enlightening.
It's always fun to talk aboutce and the broader implications
and stuff like that, but wherecan people find you and connect
with you and listen to you?
Adam Avramescu (44:35):
okay.
Yeah, there's the wind up.
So you know, I am, as youmentioned, on LinkedIn.
I say things when I feel like Ihave something useful to say,
so definitely connect with methere.
But maybe in a more structuredsense, I host a podcast called
C-Lab.
Our website iscustomereducation.
(44:55):
You can also find us whereverpodcasts are found.
So C-E-L-A-B the CustomerEducation Lab and I wrote a book
about customer education.
It's now a few years old, but Ithink a good 94% of what's in
there is still relevant fortoday.
So if you check out thecustomer education book, it's
(45:15):
called Customer Education whySmart Companies Profit by Making
Customers Smarter.
You can find it on Amazon.
Alex Turkovic (45:21):
On Amazon.
Awesome, that's cool.
Yeah, I mean, a customereducation book probably has way
more shelf life than an AI book.
Adam Avramescu (45:32):
You know I'm thinking about second edition,
and second edition's got to talkabout AI right, yeah, it's got
to.
The world has changed, but thefundamentals haven't.
That's right.
Alex Turkovic (45:40):
Yeah, exactly, adam, thanks a lot for the time.
I really appreciate it.
And, um, yeah, enjoy yourFriday evening and your weekend,
because I am literally thething that's keeping you from
beer 30, I think.
Adam Avramescu (45:54):
Well, you know what it's.
It's no, no trouble at all,because I've I've been a fan of
your show.
I've listened to probablyalmost every episode, so you
know it's an honor to be able tobe on this side of the podcast
now.
Yeah, it's always interestingas a host being on other
(46:15):
people's shows, isn't it?
It's really like everything.
Alex Turkovic (46:19):
I'm restraining myself not to take over or
accidentally start asking mequestions.
You wouldn't be the first.
Adam Avramescu (46:23):
All right, man, so listeners if you.
Oh sorry, sorry, that's you,it's you Okay.
Alex Turkovic (46:29):
Yeah, my outros aren't as boisterous as yours.
All right, I'm going to stopthe recording because we've got
enough.
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
(46:52):
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
(47:14):
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
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for a limited time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go, have
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Sent you, I'm Alex Trukovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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