April 8, 2025 • 34 mins
Digital CS consultant Holly Goodliffe joins the Digital CX podcast to share her journey from the nonprofit world to tech leadership and discuss the evolving role of digital CS in complex, stakeholder-rich environments. She and Alex explore how simplifying digital engagement, deploying timely CTAs, and adopting a Scrum mindset can empower teams to drive smarter, scalable customer experiences.
Chapters:
- Complexity, stakeholders, and collaboration
- Navigating toes and turf wars
- Building trust through shared strategy
- Key traits of successful digital leaders
- What Holly’s clients are asking for now
- Digital doesn’t have to be daunting
- Spotify Wrapped vibes for B2B
- The data dilemma and simple starts
- Omnichannel kindergarten vs. strategy
- The art of simple, timely CTAs
- Scrum mindset for digital execution
- Staying smart with content and courage
Enjoy! I know I sure did…
Holly's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollygoodliffe/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
We're in an era of lots of people who have been
incredibly good at the human-ledCS motion and have tons of
experience in that suddenlygetting put in charge of a
digital strategy and they'relike what?
I keep hearing this worddigital, what is it?
I can try, but I've neverthought in terms of campaigns
and programs like this.
(00:23):
So how do I do this?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
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
(00:49):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome back to theDigital CX podcast, the show
where we talk about all thingsdigital in CX.
So glad to have you back thisweek.
Today I'm joined by anincredible guest, holly
Goodliffe, who is a marketerturned digital CX expert, has
(01:17):
had a lot of cool gigs under herbelt, currently runs a
consulting firm focused ondigital CS, and so she has seen
a lot and is seeing a lot rightnow.
So we talk about quite a fewthings philosophical and
tangible related to digital CX.
So I hope you enjoy thisconversation with Holly
(01:39):
Goodliffe, because I sure did.
Holly, I'm so pleased thatyou've joined us on the show
today.
Thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Oh, thanks for having me, Alex.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, for sure I was trying to put together when we
first met and it was.
We've basically been kind ofchatting since I don't know late
last year or something likethat, on and off, and you have
lots of great things to sayabout digital and just CS and
all this kind of fun stuff andwe have a lot of mutuals.
(02:11):
So I was like, come on, holly,let's get on the show.
Come on, let's do this.
Alex, so tell me a little bitabout Holly and Holly's journey
into CS and what that's lookedlike.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, holly's journey actually started in the
nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Can we stop referring to yourself as Holly?
Okay?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I actually started back in the day in the nonprofit
world then went to business.
Well, did a lot of marketingfor nonprofits.
Went to business school,pivoted into tech.
In tech I had roles inmarketing and in CX.
So then, when this new fangledthing, digital CS which it
(02:51):
wasn't called that yet startedrising, it was very natural for
me to do that.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
At.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Adobe I actually did what we now call digital CS, but
I was sitting in marketing wecalled it retention marketing
and got to be the first gettingthings started for Adobe's
enterprise business, startingwith Adobe Analytics of how do
we help customers succeed usingdigital channels.
Then I got to go to Heap andstart Heap's digital CS function
(03:22):
from scratch as well.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You are our third Heap veteran on this show, by
the way.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
We have a very strong , beautiful connection with you,
Alex.
Yes, indeed, yeah, I'm honoredto be the third Heapster on here
.
So then, from Heap went toContentSquare and got to start
Digital CS from scratch atContent Square.
And then, after doing it allthree times in three different
(03:50):
ways and seeing all the patternsand the pitfalls and the joys
and the pains, I decided to goout on my own as a consultant
and help tons of companies.
I think this is a reallyexciting time to be obviously
working in digital, being ableto help so many companies who
are now fully convinced thatthey want to do it and just are
(04:11):
like how do I do it?
yesterday Let me figure this out.
So that's really fun for me toget to help tons of different
clients with.
How do they?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
do this.
Yeah, the why isn't really aquestion anymore.
It is the how right, and formany, it's still this proverbial
black box that we're alltalking about.
Like, you either have it or youdon't.
No, yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, I mean, it's a great time, I think, to be advising
companies on their digital CXstrategy.
It is shrouded in mystery in alot of ways and also, you know,
(04:41):
there's so much ambiguity whenit comes to all the different
software that's out there andmethods.
I'm sure you've found this tooin your work.
In digital, every organizationis a unique, special butterfly
in terms of its customers, howthey like to be communicated
with and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, Absolutely Complexity of the product.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Who's already doing what at the company?
Whose toes are you going tostep on?
Who do you need to becollaborating with?
Absolutely A little bitdifferent at each place.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, that's a huge point actually, and so we're
going to dig right into thatpoint because I love it, the
whole like stepping on people'stoes situation Because, you know
, digital by its nature has itshand in a lot of different areas
.
Right, we ideally work veryclosely with product, we ideally
work very closely withmarketing, with renewals, with
(05:36):
sales, and so it becomes thiswhole thing of guarding and
protecting the customerexperience while at the same
time not quote unquote steppingon toes or because there is some
overlap, especially with, youknow, I mean with marketing.
It's in digital we're taking alot of the classic, time tested
(05:59):
digital marketing strategies andjust applying them to the
customer journey.
What's your experience beenlike in your W2 work life and in
your consulting life ofnavigating those challenges?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, this is super crucial and I tell everybody who
I'm advising now.
You're not alone.
Everybody's having thisconversation right now with
marketing, with product, withother teams with whom we
collaborate.
In my W2 life I experienced italways.
Like I said to you, I sat inmarketing at Adobe and I needed
to collaborate with tons of theteam that sat in CS and in
(06:34):
product, and then at both Heapand Content Square, I sat in CS,
but I have my marketing roots,so I love my marketers, I love
collaborating with my marketers,and the advice I always give is
what's tricky about digital CSis that it's not something new.
I'm not starting something fromscratch.
I'm taking all these existingfunctions and I'm pulling them
(06:56):
together in a way that iscohesive for the customer, so
that one plus one equals ahundred.
Right, that's the goal, and so,frankly, it doesn't matter
which team does certain thingsLike if the product team wants
to own the in-app guide tool,great.
The important thing is justlike the strategy all needs to
come together.
So in all of my W2 jobs I triedto have my team play the role
(07:20):
of hey.
We want to raise our hand andvolunteer to be the ones who
will make the cohesive plan forhow this customer experience
will come together.
We're happy to be the ones incharge of QA-ing all the
experiences and having, like, ashared send calendar to make
sure this all comes together.
I do not recommend going in andbeing like hand over all the
tools to us today.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Right, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But like, we'd love to.
And if somebody else wants totake the lead on the strategy,
I'm also frankly fine with that.
But like, let's get a strategyin place, let's have some sort
of review process of what'sgoing out to the customers to
make sure it all fits together.
And then what I find naturallyhappens over time is that if my
team can add so much value tothat strategy and to the review
(08:06):
process, the other teamsnaturally just want to
collaborate with us.
More trust us, more trust ourjudgment, trust that we're
making what they're putting outthere even better, right.
So I've come into companieswhere the product managers have
been like, oh no, I'm the one incharge of product adoption, not
you, I'm the one KPI'd for that.
And I'm like, cool, I'm alsoKPI'd on that.
(08:28):
Like, let me support you, letme help you.
You know, lots of times digitalCS is a new function, so this
is new to them.
But like, okay, let me kind ofgently support anywhere I can.
And then over time they're gladthat I'm also KPI'd on it,
right, because I'm helping liftit.
But if you go in and are justlike yo, I'm the expert, get out
of the way.
(08:48):
Of course it's not going towork.
But I'd say in every case, anatural evolution happens over
about six months where we justtrust each other more and where
more control comes to thisdigital CS team because people
see it makes sense for there tobe a central strategy.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, yeah.
I love so many things you justyou just mentioned, but
ultimately, like somebodyrecently asked me, they were
looking at hiring a digitalleader.
And the question to me was whatare the top three or four things
that you would want to put onthe rec you know to hire this
role for and I always go tonumber one being just a
(09:31):
collaborator.
I mean, yeah, the fact that youhave digital marketing
experience is great, the factthat you know these tools is
great, the fact that you've runcampaigns and done those kinds
of things all great, I love it.
But if you can't collaboratewith somebody, if you can't work
with other leaders and buildstrategy together and just be
like a solid, good human being,I don't care.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah amen and being able to have that empathy for
where they're coming from.
I mean, like I, came frommarketing.
I get it, and I get folks beinglike we're in charge of email,
not you, we've always been incharge of email and just being
like I get it, I get that,you've always been in charge of
this, but, listen, like you'reKPI on leads and closing deals
(10:16):
and I'm KPI on retention, so howdo we?
There's a million differentways to split it, but like,
generally, you have your thingsthat you're better at and things
that I'm better at and, frankly, most marketing teams unless
they're like a really awesomelyestablished lifecycle marketing
team in which case cool, take it.
But, most don't want to be likeon the hook for the intricacies
(10:37):
of renewals and ongoing GRR.
So it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
It makes sense.
So it makes sense, it makessense.
The other thing that I reallylove advising especially new
leaders on that are trying toestablish those collaborations
is something that you hit onthat we often don't do Many
people don't do this which is togo to their peers and the
executives in the other areas ofthe business and ask what their
primary goals are for the year,for the quarter, what their KPI
(11:05):
on like, what goals you'redriving, and then that gives you
the incentive that you canleverage to help build that
strategy together.
It's like great, your KPI onthis is how my program is going
to help you do that, and viceversa.
I think we for some reason ashumans don't do that enough.
I don't really know why that is.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It is weird, it's a simple thing to just be like
what are your KPIs?
Here are my KPIs.
Let's make sure we're liftingboth and let's make sure we're
both doing what we need to do.
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Alex.
I mean it's like sales rightyou uncover the need and you try
to meet that need with yourproduct.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But you know.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
That's why a lot of us aren't in sales.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I guess yeah.
Plus one to that, but it's likeit's not even just like
marketing and product.
It's like we also need to bebest friends with all the ops
teams, especially marketing opsfor tooling and we also need to
be best friends with the datateam.
Like whenever I talk to a clientand they're like I don't have
access to the data I need, I'mlike, well, your problem is that
(12:09):
you're not yet best friendswith the head of data.
So become best friends.
Attached to the hip, be reallyconcerned about helping each
other.
Get your job done.
Get that data leader,understanding why this is
crucial to the revenue of thebusiness.
And then let's talk about nextsteps.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
That's right.
It's like step number one Getyour data house in order.
So, with your clients thatyou're advising, what kind of
projects are you working on?
Are there some commonalitiesthat you're seeing folks you
know?
I would imagine there's a goodbit of artificial intelligence
and leveraging that in there.
But what kind of things are youworking on?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
artificial intelligence and leveraging that
and there.
But what kind of things are youworking on?
Yeah, I'd say it falls into twomain buckets.
I have some clients where thestory is we know we need digital
(13:06):
.
We want to leverage digital toincrease our CSM to account
ratio.
We need to do more with less.
Holly, help us do that bytomorrow.
And we have no idea what thatlooks like, right?
So help us get started.
We're in an era of lots ofpeople who have been incredibly
good at the human-led CS motionand have tons of experience in
that suddenly getting put incharge of a digital strategy and
they're like what?
(13:27):
I keep hearing this worddigital.
What is it Right?
Like I can try, but like I'venever thought in terms of
campaigns and programs like this.
So how do I do this?
And so that's definitely onebucket of just like what's the
lay of the land at the company?
How do we get this started?
What are the right stakeholdersto work with?
What's the tooling?
What's the data situation?
(13:48):
And then, as you said before,the other bucket is hey, we're
already pretty good at this,we've been doing it for a while.
And how do we really take thisto the next level, including AI?
How do we really thinkdifferently?
And that's really exciting.
It's frankly amazing how bigthe we hardly know the word
(14:11):
digital to like we're doingincredible things with AI, so
for me, it's like really fun toget to play at both of those
extremes.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, for sure.
And the tooling is gettingbetter and better to where
bridging those gaps isn't asdaunting as it once was, even a
year ago or two years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And people who are just getting started now?
No problem, You've learned fromeverybody else's mistakes in
the last year.
Now we all know a little morewhat we're doing in this
emerging field, right?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, yeah.
One of the goals of this showhas always been to help
demystify it a little bit towhere it doesn't seem like this
big scary thing, where youeither have it or you don't, is
a thing of the past.
Like digital is its own entityand in a ways, we've all been
doing digital for a really longtime, I would argue.
Keeping notes in a CRM isdigital.
(15:00):
You know, it's all about howyou use the tooling around you
to make your humans moreefficient, whether it's your
human team members or whetherit's your human customers.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, amen, yeah, all those great humans that we love
, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Are there?
This is one question I alwayslove asking, which is like are
there digital things out therethat either you've helped build
or you've seen in the wild thatare really cool?
That has gotten you thinkingabout unique stuff over the past
few months.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, I love that Well as far as what's out there
in the wild, especially in theB2C space which I know you love
too is like just anything like aSpotify rep.
That's showing me my usage,showing me how I got value from
this tool.
I love it and I love that I'mseeing more and more companies
(15:50):
in the enterprise space imitatethat and do it and maybe even
calling it the pre-QBR email ormaybe for your lowest tier.
It is kind of the digital QBR ofjust like here's what we're
seeing, let's do this and let'shave a meeting if we need it,
but maybe this is all you needis just to see how this is going
.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Have you found a good way of doing that yet, because
there was a thread in the DCSConnect community not long ago
where quite a few people werespitballing about certain ways
of accomplishing it.
I think Matic came up quite abit in that conversation.
I forget what other kind ofsolutions were in there.
(16:31):
Have you come across a slickway of doing that?
Hey, I want to have a briefchat with you about the show.
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(17:14):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, I mean, I don't even think honestly.
It's a matter of like you needa certain solution.
It's like you just need theAPIs to come in.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
That's the hard part.
You need the data.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It's like the rest of digital, where it's like
building a campaign.
You know that takes like fiveminutes Getting all the data you
need for the campaign.
That takes weeks.
That's the tough part and beingbest friends with the data
leader.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, and then turning that data into the
insights that actually meansomething.
Yeah, that's the tough part.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I mean, I will say some tools are better than
others.
For sure, you know, traditionalmarketing tools like Marketo
and HubSpot tend to strugglemore with APIing that data in,
Whereas like an iterable or youknow, customerio is much better
at it and, of course, a Maticjust makes it even easier.
(18:07):
So yeah, I mean whatever worksfor your company as far as how
you get that API in, I justreally suggest you know,
starting simply not worryingabout it being like super
beautiful, just make it superbasic and kind of pilot it and
try it.
When we did it at Heap we usedSendGrid.
I mean it was just like prettysimple at first.
(18:29):
See how customers react to it.
It was, of course, like one ofthe most opened, most clicked on
things, because everybody lovesseeing their own data and then
grow it from there.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Starting simple is the key with any of that stuff.
As soon as you like over-designyour first version, you're kind
of like grabbing at straws.
We are doing some interestingthings now at my gig with
Vitally where hashtag showsponsor, we're pulling in a
bunch of product data andproduct events via the API,
(19:00):
which is super cool, and thesystem allows you to then
identify and create like successmetrics for your customers
where you're tracking the samething over time for all of the
same customers.
I guess my point is that,related to your earlier point,
it almost doesn't matter anymorewhat tooling you're using
because a lot of tools,especially the modern ones that
(19:22):
are API based, that are birthedin APIs.
You know you can kind of pullthat stuff.
If you're not in SAS, then Idon't know what the answer is.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
But yeah, no need to tackle that today.
No, that's another topic.
Yeah, yeah, another.
You asked what?
What have I seen others do, ormy own teams do one?
One other thing I'llshamelessly plug that my own
teams have done, alex, that Iwant to bring it up on your show
because I'm frankly shocked athow often I go talk to clients
(19:54):
and they aren't doing this, andI feel like it's not rocket
science.
So we talk about omnichannelcampaigns.
Right, we talk about usingemail, in-app and community
together, but I'm shocked at how, for how many companies,
omnichannel simply means likewe're putting the same
one-to-many workshop ad in allthree of those channels and I'm
(20:16):
like, okay, that's like yeahkindergarten, like what I mean.
It's not that they're not wrong,it's omni-channel and
kindergarten is a great place tostart, but I just really think
there's incredible power,especially if the KPI you're
trying to lift is active usage,to use email and in-app together
(20:39):
just like all the time, justseamlessly, just they are
connected in everything and soevery email, in my opinion,
unless it's like a rare thoughtleadership thing that you want
to have linked to an article.
But generally I want every CTAto point into the product UI.
I want to get them in thereusing it and I want to teach
(20:59):
them in the product.
If I'm designing a new usernurture and it has 10 touch
points and I'm trying to getthem to use features ABCDE
because it's going to get themvalue in two minutes flat then I
say in my email this is goingto make your job easier in two
minutes by serving up the dataor the report you need or
whatever.
Click here and we'll show youhow to do it in two minutes.
(21:20):
Literally five clicks and thenactually have a permalink open
in your product UI.
Walking them through and itshouldn't be 20 steps, it should
be three or four, five maximum,and then you can link to more
information if you want.
But like, get them thatimmediate value and I will say
it takes some getting likeespecially the product team on
(21:42):
board, because the product teamwill be like no, you can use.
Or maybe the CSMs will be likeyou got to show them the super,
ultra complex, awesome use caseon their first time, cause
that's what rocks.
And I'm like nope, I need themost vanilla.
Simple, I need immediategratification I need.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
That's gonna get them to churn real quick I need it
to be so quick.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I need immediately for them to see this value and
be like oh, I just made my firstchart or whatever, and then
they have the confidence thatthey'll come back the second
time or the third time.
But, like, whenever I would bequeuing my team's, like flows
that they were building, I wasalways like how can you get this
earlier?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I need it.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I need it in step one , I need it in step two, and
it's that knowledge.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's that nesting of knowledge too.
You know you start with a verysimple flow and once you see
that they've completed that flow, or you see in the product
flags that something has beencompleted, then it's a nurture
situation where you know it'snot one flow to kill them all,
it's 10 baby steps to get you totackle that hard thing.
(22:49):
That will get you to complexity, but it's like there's so many
things that come together there.
It's a combination of shortattention span, adult learning
theory, where you have to kindof repeat stuff a lot Because in
each one of those follow oncampaigns you kind of have to do
a little bit of refresherprobably.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, amen.
And part of that alignment isI'm always asking clients like
do you have a happy path, atleast for the first 10 things
you want?
a new customer to be doing, andan answer I get a lot is oh well
, our products can do anything.
Choose your own adventure.
Our product is so powerful andI'm like no, we need internal
(23:31):
alignment on what is theprescriptive path.
Right, because exactly whatyou're saying, it's just like
how do I make this simple andmanageable?
It's really hard for a digitalteam to come in and sometimes I
think they're expected to comein and just magically build
these like nurtures when thecompany hasn't even decided or
aligned on what's the happy path.
(23:52):
So key factor there.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah for sure, absolutely.
That's so interesting.
The other thing that I've seena lot I don't know if you have
the same experience, but if I'vegone in and audited, like
existing things, it's amazinghow many of them like don't work
.
And I mean that in the mostbasic way, like you click the
(24:15):
button and it doesn't do it, andso as a user, you get the email
or you get the pop-up and youclick the button.
It doesn't do anything andyou're like okay, well, not
going to do that.
You know it's like test yourstuff, test your stuff test your
stuff and it's a huge.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It's huge work we need to do as digital CS leaders
to really evangelize andadvocate for our teams that 20%
of their time needs to bereserved for optimizing QAing
Like it's not, like you just putsomething out there in the wild
and it's good forever.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Go back to it every six months and make sure it's
still relevant and fresh andworks.
Permalinks aren't permanent.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, I love that, alex, very wise advice.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I need to make a nerdy t-shirt with that phrase
on it.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Very catchy, nobody would buy it.
Oh, I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So a lot of times.
So, speaking of, like, projectmanagers, digital program
managers, that kind of stuff, alot of times people will ask me
how to structure those teamsfrom a workflow perspective and
I always go back to mirror whatproduct and engineering do you
know?
Sprint planning and two weekdev sprints and all that kind of
(25:32):
stuff.
I know that you, after doing abit of LinkedIn stalking, you
are a certified Scrum Master.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Oh, my goodness, yes.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And I'm curious if that has informed how you think
about implementing digital andthe process that goes behind
actually doing the stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
That is a great question.
I think you bring up a reallycrucial topic, because I think
every digital team out there hasway more options of great
things they can be working onthan they actually have time for
.
So how do you kind of structurethat and make it so that the
projects happen, so that, Ithink, is kind of the first part
(26:16):
of it?
Of what kind?
of the scrum mindset helps withis the ruthless prioritization,
the concept of a backlog, theconcept of we only have so much
time or so many points, and so Ialways had a very open and
ruthless prioritization process,heading into a quarter that's
(26:37):
when, I have found is a reallyhelpful time to get on the same
page with all stakeholders andto really warn them and it takes
a couple quarters to get tothis point but to start training
them and warning them.
If you come to me with anemergency project mid quarter
like nope, there's nothing.
We are not brain surgeons.
There's no true emergency indigital CS.
We should be able to plan aquarter ahead what the business
(27:00):
most needs from us and where weshould be prioritizing our time,
not your rando pet project.
So, that, I think, is a veryscrummy mindset and I'll
actually say to people whenthey'll come with ideas that we
can't fit into the quarter right.
The concept of like yeah, thatmight be really great for next
quarter.
(27:20):
This quarter is closed.
As far as like, do I reallythink about it being like two
week sprints?
Absolutely, with my teams.
We need to have thattransparency with our partners
that we work with, of like aMondaycom or a JIRA or something
of like here's where it's allcoming together.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Organization and communication of what you're
doing, and all that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I haven't actually structured my team.
I know lots of people have, butI've never structured my team
as like we're in two weeksprints, partly because all of
my team members have always beenworking on about five to 10
projects at once.
That don't necessarily likethey all have different time
horizons, stakeholders to seeand has been really crucial.
(28:10):
And then, as the quarter goeson, we're constantly building
our quarter report out deck aswe go of like okay, this one's
done.
Like, make that slide, thisone's done.
So, yeah, the quarter has kindof for me been similar to the
sprint in the scrum world.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I think that makes sense because a lot of the
projects you work on in digitalare those longer tail things.
One interesting thing that Ifound is in my last gig, a lot
of what we did involvedinterfacing with the Salesforce,
you know, operations team, andthey operated in two week
sprints.
Right, and we didn'tnecessarily to your point, we
(28:49):
didn't necessarily operate intwo-week sprints, but the fact
that we had to do so muchinterdependent with them kind of
forced us to live and have atoe in both where we were
dependent on this team to do X,y, z, and so we had to do sprint
planning on our prioritizedthings to make sure that things
got put in place in time for usto meet the overall objective.
(29:11):
But at the same time, we weredoing more macro instead of
micro sprint planning then too.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, I love it.
That's such a good example ofwhat we were saying before about
collabing with other teams Likereally just being like.
Oh, you like to work on atwo-week sprint?
Great, we will give you thatstructure.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You meet them where they're at.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah, that's cool.
One thing I always love to getan insight on is what you're
paying attention to as a digitalprofessional and in CS, or even
outside of the business.
What do you occupy yourconscious with in terms of
content when you're not working?
Speaker 1 (29:49):
My conscience, my consciousness like to consume
this podcast for sure.
I also really love the DailyStand-Up.
I'd say those are my two mainones Lots of great newsletters
and thought leadership out therein our field, which I really
appreciate.
Consuming all of that and thenoutside of work but it actually
(30:10):
is strangely related to work I'mcurrently reading the David
McCullough's history of theWright brothers.
It's so interesting to bereading about just innovation
and bravery and doing the thingeverybody thought was crazy in a
completely different time.
Right Like it's just theparallels to our day are really
(30:30):
fascinating.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
That's interesting.
I mean, the Wright brothers arefascinating because now in the
history textbooks you kind ofgloss over the fact that they
were bicycle repair folks andstuff.
I didn't even know that.
And then they built an airplane.
I was like, yeah, of coursethey were.
But then, if you really putyourself in that timeframe,
there were so many differentgroups and nationalities going
(30:54):
after this powered flight thingand then these two folks from
Ohio.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Right, good old Ohio.
Well, and like the whole thingof like, several people have
died trying.
And there was like this wholerhetoric of anybody who tries is
a crazy quack and yeah just alot of courage to go for it yeah
, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That's cool.
I love that.
Anybody you want to give shoutouts to yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
all my teams who I've worked with are the best and
have made all of this possible.
I'll especially especially callout Christy Hollingshead, who
was my boss at Heap and she wasin charge of all the different
things that needed to cometogether for digital and so
taught me tons about all we'retalking about, of how to bring
this all together, and then Ijust want to give shout outs to
(31:46):
the amazing people in our fieldwho are just like bringing us
together and making communities.
I love dcs connect thank you,marie lunny, like amazing and I
love like being a part of csangels.
Like so grateful to jemma forstarting that so grateful it's
cool community yeah, so gratefulto jan for all the amazing cx
exchange stuff out there.
(32:06):
It's just so great to not.
There are so many trickypitfalls in our world and I just
really appreciate people whoare bringing us together to
learn from each other.
Yeah, you're not alone.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, you know, if you're in CS and you're feeling
alone, the good news is thatthere's a ton of us out there
that are willing and able toshare and talk, and I think I've
never been part of a communitythat's more open book.
Everybody's just sharing allthe time, which is so so, so, so
(32:40):
cool.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
So yeah, I hear you on that Cool.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Well, look, I've thoroughly enjoyed this
conversation.
Maybe we need to do a part twoat some point.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
but like, where can people talk about where it's all
going in the future.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
That's in the year 2000.
Where can people find you,engage with you, hang out with
you, learn about your business,all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Please come hang out with me on LinkedIn, connect
with me.
Please come visit my website,hollygoodliftcom, and if you're
in san francisco, cs eventshopefully I'll see you in person
or at other ones as I travelaround awesome, that's great.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, thanks again for joining.
It was awesome and keepfighting the good digital fight
you too, alex.
Thank you thank you for joiningme for this 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.
(33:41):
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success definition word
map and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, Dylan
(34:03):
Young.
Lifetime Value aims to servethe content, video, audio
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Trikovich.
(34:23):
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
We're in an era of lots of people who have been
incredibly good at the human-ledCS motion and have tons of
experience in that suddenlygetting put in charge of a
digital strategy and they'relike what?
I keep hearing this worddigital, what is it?
I can try, but I've neverthought in terms of campaigns
and programs like this.
(00:23):
So how do I do this?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
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
(00:49):
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
Hello and welcome back to theDigital CX podcast, the show
where we talk about all thingsdigital in CX.
So glad to have you back thisweek.
Today I'm joined by anincredible guest, holly
Goodliffe, who is a marketerturned digital CX expert, has
(01:17):
had a lot of cool gigs under herbelt, currently runs a
consulting firm focused ondigital CS, and so she has seen
a lot and is seeing a lot rightnow.
So we talk about quite a fewthings philosophical and
tangible related to digital CX.
So I hope you enjoy thisconversation with Holly
(01:39):
Goodliffe, because I sure did.
Holly, I'm so pleased thatyou've joined us on the show
today.
Thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Oh, thanks for having me, Alex.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, for sure I was trying to put together when we
first met and it was.
We've basically been kind ofchatting since I don't know late
last year or something likethat, on and off, and you have
lots of great things to sayabout digital and just CS and
all this kind of fun stuff andwe have a lot of mutuals.
(02:11):
So I was like, come on, holly,let's get on the show.
Come on, let's do this.
Alex, so tell me a little bitabout Holly and Holly's journey
into CS and what that's lookedlike.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, holly's journey actually started in the
nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Can we stop referring to yourself as Holly?
Okay?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I actually started back in the day in the nonprofit
world then went to business.
Well, did a lot of marketingfor nonprofits.
Went to business school,pivoted into tech.
In tech I had roles inmarketing and in CX.
So then, when this new fangledthing, digital CS which it
(02:51):
wasn't called that yet startedrising, it was very natural for
me to do that.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
At.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Adobe I actually did what we now call digital CS, but
I was sitting in marketing wecalled it retention marketing
and got to be the first gettingthings started for Adobe's
enterprise business, startingwith Adobe Analytics of how do
we help customers succeed usingdigital channels.
Then I got to go to Heap andstart Heap's digital CS function
(03:22):
from scratch as well.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You are our third Heap veteran on this show, by
the way.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
We have a very strong , beautiful connection with you,
Alex.
Yes, indeed, yeah, I'm honoredto be the third Heapster on here
.
So then, from Heap went toContentSquare and got to start
Digital CS from scratch atContent Square.
And then, after doing it allthree times in three different
(03:50):
ways and seeing all the patternsand the pitfalls and the joys
and the pains, I decided to goout on my own as a consultant
and help tons of companies.
I think this is a reallyexciting time to be obviously
working in digital, being ableto help so many companies who
are now fully convinced thatthey want to do it and just are
(04:11):
like how do I do it?
yesterday Let me figure this out.
So that's really fun for me toget to help tons of different
clients with.
How do they?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
do this.
Yeah, the why isn't really aquestion anymore.
It is the how right, and formany, it's still this proverbial
black box that we're alltalking about.
Like, you either have it or youdon't.
No, yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, I mean, it's a great time, I think, to be advising
companies on their digital CXstrategy.
It is shrouded in mystery in alot of ways and also, you know,
(04:41):
there's so much ambiguity whenit comes to all the different
software that's out there andmethods.
I'm sure you've found this tooin your work.
In digital, every organizationis a unique, special butterfly
in terms of its customers, howthey like to be communicated
with and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, Absolutely Complexity of the product.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Who's already doing what at the company?
Whose toes are you going tostep on?
Who do you need to becollaborating with?
Absolutely A little bitdifferent at each place.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, that's a huge point actually, and so we're
going to dig right into thatpoint because I love it, the
whole like stepping on people'stoes situation Because, you know
, digital by its nature has itshand in a lot of different areas
.
Right, we ideally work veryclosely with product, we ideally
work very closely withmarketing, with renewals, with
(05:36):
sales, and so it becomes thiswhole thing of guarding and
protecting the customerexperience while at the same
time not quote unquote steppingon toes or because there is some
overlap, especially with, youknow, I mean with marketing.
It's in digital we're taking alot of the classic, time tested
(05:59):
digital marketing strategies andjust applying them to the
customer journey.
What's your experience beenlike in your W2 work life and in
your consulting life ofnavigating those challenges?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, this is super crucial and I tell everybody who
I'm advising now.
You're not alone.
Everybody's having thisconversation right now with
marketing, with product, withother teams with whom we
collaborate.
In my W2 life I experienced italways.
Like I said to you, I sat inmarketing at Adobe and I needed
to collaborate with tons of theteam that sat in CS and in
(06:34):
product, and then at both Heapand Content Square, I sat in CS,
but I have my marketing roots,so I love my marketers, I love
collaborating with my marketers,and the advice I always give is
what's tricky about digital CSis that it's not something new.
I'm not starting something fromscratch.
I'm taking all these existingfunctions and I'm pulling them
(06:56):
together in a way that iscohesive for the customer, so
that one plus one equals ahundred.
Right, that's the goal, and so,frankly, it doesn't matter
which team does certain thingsLike if the product team wants
to own the in-app guide tool,great.
The important thing is justlike the strategy all needs to
come together.
So in all of my W2 jobs I triedto have my team play the role
(07:20):
of hey.
We want to raise our hand andvolunteer to be the ones who
will make the cohesive plan forhow this customer experience
will come together.
We're happy to be the ones incharge of QA-ing all the
experiences and having, like, ashared send calendar to make
sure this all comes together.
I do not recommend going in andbeing like hand over all the
tools to us today.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Right, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But like, we'd love to.
And if somebody else wants totake the lead on the strategy,
I'm also frankly fine with that.
But like, let's get a strategyin place, let's have some sort
of review process of what'sgoing out to the customers to
make sure it all fits together.
And then what I find naturallyhappens over time is that if my
team can add so much value tothat strategy and to the review
(08:06):
process, the other teamsnaturally just want to
collaborate with us.
More trust us, more trust ourjudgment, trust that we're
making what they're putting outthere even better, right.
So I've come into companieswhere the product managers have
been like, oh no, I'm the one incharge of product adoption, not
you, I'm the one KPI'd for that.
And I'm like, cool, I'm alsoKPI'd on that.
(08:28):
Like, let me support you, letme help you.
You know, lots of times digitalCS is a new function, so this
is new to them.
But like, okay, let me kind ofgently support anywhere I can.
And then over time they're gladthat I'm also KPI'd on it,
right, because I'm helping liftit.
But if you go in and are justlike yo, I'm the expert, get out
of the way.
(08:48):
Of course it's not going towork.
But I'd say in every case, anatural evolution happens over
about six months where we justtrust each other more and where
more control comes to thisdigital CS team because people
see it makes sense for there tobe a central strategy.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, yeah.
I love so many things you justyou just mentioned, but
ultimately, like somebodyrecently asked me, they were
looking at hiring a digitalleader.
And the question to me was whatare the top three or four things
that you would want to put onthe rec you know to hire this
role for and I always go tonumber one being just a
(09:31):
collaborator.
I mean, yeah, the fact that youhave digital marketing
experience is great, the factthat you know these tools is
great, the fact that you've runcampaigns and done those kinds
of things all great, I love it.
But if you can't collaboratewith somebody, if you can't work
with other leaders and buildstrategy together and just be
like a solid, good human being,I don't care.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah amen and being able to have that empathy for
where they're coming from.
I mean, like I, came frommarketing.
I get it, and I get folks beinglike we're in charge of email,
not you, we've always been incharge of email and just being
like I get it, I get that,you've always been in charge of
this, but, listen, like you'reKPI on leads and closing deals
(10:16):
and I'm KPI on retention, so howdo we?
There's a million differentways to split it, but like,
generally, you have your thingsthat you're better at and things
that I'm better at and, frankly, most marketing teams unless
they're like a really awesomelyestablished lifecycle marketing
team in which case cool, take it.
But, most don't want to be likeon the hook for the intricacies
(10:37):
of renewals and ongoing GRR.
So it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
It makes sense.
So it makes sense, it makessense.
The other thing that I reallylove advising especially new
leaders on that are trying toestablish those collaborations
is something that you hit onthat we often don't do Many
people don't do this which is togo to their peers and the
executives in the other areas ofthe business and ask what their
primary goals are for the year,for the quarter, what their KPI
(11:05):
on like, what goals you'redriving, and then that gives you
the incentive that you canleverage to help build that
strategy together.
It's like great, your KPI onthis is how my program is going
to help you do that, and viceversa.
I think we for some reason ashumans don't do that enough.
I don't really know why that is.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It is weird, it's a simple thing to just be like
what are your KPIs?
Here are my KPIs.
Let's make sure we're liftingboth and let's make sure we're
both doing what we need to do.
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Alex.
I mean it's like sales rightyou uncover the need and you try
to meet that need with yourproduct.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But you know.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
That's why a lot of us aren't in sales.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I guess yeah.
Plus one to that, but it's likeit's not even just like
marketing and product.
It's like we also need to bebest friends with all the ops
teams, especially marketing opsfor tooling and we also need to
be best friends with the datateam.
Like whenever I talk to a clientand they're like I don't have
access to the data I need, I'mlike, well, your problem is that
(12:09):
you're not yet best friendswith the head of data.
So become best friends.
Attached to the hip, be reallyconcerned about helping each
other.
Get your job done.
Get that data leader,understanding why this is
crucial to the revenue of thebusiness.
And then let's talk about nextsteps.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
That's right.
It's like step number one Getyour data house in order.
So, with your clients thatyou're advising, what kind of
projects are you working on?
Are there some commonalitiesthat you're seeing folks you
know?
I would imagine there's a goodbit of artificial intelligence
and leveraging that in there.
But what kind of things are youworking on?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
artificial intelligence and leveraging that
and there.
But what kind of things are youworking on?
Yeah, I'd say it falls into twomain buckets.
I have some clients where thestory is we know we need digital
(13:06):
.
We want to leverage digital toincrease our CSM to account
ratio.
We need to do more with less.
Holly, help us do that bytomorrow.
And we have no idea what thatlooks like, right?
So help us get started.
We're in an era of lots ofpeople who have been incredibly
good at the human-led CS motionand have tons of experience in
that suddenly getting put incharge of a digital strategy and
they're like what?
(13:27):
I keep hearing this worddigital.
What is it Right?
Like I can try, but like I'venever thought in terms of
campaigns and programs like this.
So how do I do this?
And so that's definitely onebucket of just like what's the
lay of the land at the company?
How do we get this started?
What are the right stakeholdersto work with?
What's the tooling?
What's the data situation?
(13:48):
And then, as you said before,the other bucket is hey, we're
already pretty good at this,we've been doing it for a while.
And how do we really take thisto the next level, including AI?
How do we really thinkdifferently?
And that's really exciting.
It's frankly amazing how bigthe we hardly know the word
(14:11):
digital to like we're doingincredible things with AI, so
for me, it's like really fun toget to play at both of those
extremes.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, for sure.
And the tooling is gettingbetter and better to where
bridging those gaps isn't asdaunting as it once was, even a
year ago or two years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And people who are just getting started now?
No problem, You've learned fromeverybody else's mistakes in
the last year.
Now we all know a little morewhat we're doing in this
emerging field, right?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, yeah.
One of the goals of this showhas always been to help
demystify it a little bit towhere it doesn't seem like this
big scary thing, where youeither have it or you don't, is
a thing of the past.
Like digital is its own entityand in a ways, we've all been
doing digital for a really longtime, I would argue.
Keeping notes in a CRM isdigital.
(15:00):
You know, it's all about howyou use the tooling around you
to make your humans moreefficient, whether it's your
human team members or whetherit's your human customers.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, amen, yeah, all those great humans that we love
, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Are there?
This is one question I alwayslove asking, which is like are
there digital things out therethat either you've helped build
or you've seen in the wild thatare really cool?
That has gotten you thinkingabout unique stuff over the past
few months.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, I love that Well as far as what's out there
in the wild, especially in theB2C space which I know you love
too is like just anything like aSpotify rep.
That's showing me my usage,showing me how I got value from
this tool.
I love it and I love that I'mseeing more and more companies
(15:50):
in the enterprise space imitatethat and do it and maybe even
calling it the pre-QBR email ormaybe for your lowest tier.
It is kind of the digital QBR ofjust like here's what we're
seeing, let's do this and let'shave a meeting if we need it,
but maybe this is all you needis just to see how this is going
.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Have you found a good way of doing that yet, because
there was a thread in the DCSConnect community not long ago
where quite a few people werespitballing about certain ways
of accomplishing it.
I think Matic came up quite abit in that conversation.
I forget what other kind ofsolutions were in there.
(16:31):
Have you come across a slickway of doing that?
Hey, I want to have a briefchat with you about the show.
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(17:14):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, I mean, I don't even think honestly.
It's a matter of like you needa certain solution.
It's like you just need theAPIs to come in.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
That's the hard part.
You need the data.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It's like the rest of digital, where it's like
building a campaign.
You know that takes like fiveminutes Getting all the data you
need for the campaign.
That takes weeks.
That's the tough part and beingbest friends with the data
leader.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, and then turning that data into the
insights that actually meansomething.
Yeah, that's the tough part.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I mean, I will say some tools are better than
others.
For sure, you know, traditionalmarketing tools like Marketo
and HubSpot tend to strugglemore with APIing that data in,
Whereas like an iterable or youknow, customerio is much better
at it and, of course, a Maticjust makes it even easier.
(18:07):
So yeah, I mean whatever worksfor your company as far as how
you get that API in, I justreally suggest you know,
starting simply not worryingabout it being like super
beautiful, just make it superbasic and kind of pilot it and
try it.
When we did it at Heap we usedSendGrid.
I mean it was just like prettysimple at first.
(18:29):
See how customers react to it.
It was, of course, like one ofthe most opened, most clicked on
things, because everybody lovesseeing their own data and then
grow it from there.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Starting simple is the key with any of that stuff.
As soon as you like over-designyour first version, you're kind
of like grabbing at straws.
We are doing some interestingthings now at my gig with
Vitally where hashtag showsponsor, we're pulling in a
bunch of product data andproduct events via the API,
(19:00):
which is super cool, and thesystem allows you to then
identify and create like successmetrics for your customers
where you're tracking the samething over time for all of the
same customers.
I guess my point is that,related to your earlier point,
it almost doesn't matter anymorewhat tooling you're using
because a lot of tools,especially the modern ones that
(19:22):
are API based, that are birthedin APIs.
You know you can kind of pullthat stuff.
If you're not in SAS, then Idon't know what the answer is.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
But yeah, no need to tackle that today.
No, that's another topic.
Yeah, yeah, another.
You asked what?
What have I seen others do, ormy own teams do one?
One other thing I'llshamelessly plug that my own
teams have done, alex, that Iwant to bring it up on your show
because I'm frankly shocked athow often I go talk to clients
(19:54):
and they aren't doing this, andI feel like it's not rocket
science.
So we talk about omnichannelcampaigns.
Right, we talk about usingemail, in-app and community
together, but I'm shocked at how, for how many companies,
omnichannel simply means likewe're putting the same
one-to-many workshop ad in allthree of those channels and I'm
(20:16):
like, okay, that's like yeahkindergarten, like what I mean.
It's not that they're not wrong,it's omni-channel and
kindergarten is a great place tostart, but I just really think
there's incredible power,especially if the KPI you're
trying to lift is active usage,to use email and in-app together
(20:39):
just like all the time, justseamlessly, just they are
connected in everything and soevery email, in my opinion,
unless it's like a rare thoughtleadership thing that you want
to have linked to an article.
But generally I want every CTAto point into the product UI.
I want to get them in thereusing it and I want to teach
(20:59):
them in the product.
If I'm designing a new usernurture and it has 10 touch
points and I'm trying to getthem to use features ABCDE
because it's going to get themvalue in two minutes flat then I
say in my email this is goingto make your job easier in two
minutes by serving up the dataor the report you need or
whatever.
Click here and we'll show youhow to do it in two minutes.
(21:20):
Literally five clicks and thenactually have a permalink open
in your product UI.
Walking them through and itshouldn't be 20 steps, it should
be three or four, five maximum,and then you can link to more
information if you want.
But like, get them thatimmediate value and I will say
it takes some getting likeespecially the product team on
(21:42):
board, because the product teamwill be like no, you can use.
Or maybe the CSMs will be likeyou got to show them the super,
ultra complex, awesome use caseon their first time, cause
that's what rocks.
And I'm like nope, I need themost vanilla.
Simple, I need immediategratification I need.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
That's gonna get them to churn real quick I need it
to be so quick.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I need immediately for them to see this value and
be like oh, I just made my firstchart or whatever, and then
they have the confidence thatthey'll come back the second
time or the third time.
But, like, whenever I would bequeuing my team's, like flows
that they were building, I wasalways like how can you get this
earlier?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I need it.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I need it in step one , I need it in step two, and
it's that knowledge.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's that nesting of knowledge too.
You know you start with a verysimple flow and once you see
that they've completed that flow, or you see in the product
flags that something has beencompleted, then it's a nurture
situation where you know it'snot one flow to kill them all,
it's 10 baby steps to get you totackle that hard thing.
(22:49):
That will get you to complexity, but it's like there's so many
things that come together there.
It's a combination of shortattention span, adult learning
theory, where you have to kindof repeat stuff a lot Because in
each one of those follow oncampaigns you kind of have to do
a little bit of refresherprobably.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, amen.
And part of that alignment isI'm always asking clients like
do you have a happy path, atleast for the first 10 things
you want?
a new customer to be doing, andan answer I get a lot is oh well
, our products can do anything.
Choose your own adventure.
Our product is so powerful andI'm like no, we need internal
(23:31):
alignment on what is theprescriptive path.
Right, because exactly whatyou're saying, it's just like
how do I make this simple andmanageable?
It's really hard for a digitalteam to come in and sometimes I
think they're expected to comein and just magically build
these like nurtures when thecompany hasn't even decided or
aligned on what's the happy path.
(23:52):
So key factor there.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah for sure, absolutely.
That's so interesting.
The other thing that I've seena lot I don't know if you have
the same experience, but if I'vegone in and audited, like
existing things, it's amazinghow many of them like don't work
.
And I mean that in the mostbasic way, like you click the
(24:15):
button and it doesn't do it, andso as a user, you get the email
or you get the pop-up and youclick the button.
It doesn't do anything andyou're like okay, well, not
going to do that.
You know it's like test yourstuff, test your stuff test your
stuff and it's a huge.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It's huge work we need to do as digital CS leaders
to really evangelize andadvocate for our teams that 20%
of their time needs to bereserved for optimizing QAing
Like it's not, like you just putsomething out there in the wild
and it's good forever.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Go back to it every six months and make sure it's
still relevant and fresh andworks.
Permalinks aren't permanent.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, I love that, alex, very wise advice.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I need to make a nerdy t-shirt with that phrase
on it.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Very catchy, nobody would buy it.
Oh, I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So a lot of times.
So, speaking of, like, projectmanagers, digital program
managers, that kind of stuff, alot of times people will ask me
how to structure those teamsfrom a workflow perspective and
I always go back to mirror whatproduct and engineering do you
know?
Sprint planning and two weekdev sprints and all that kind of
(25:32):
stuff.
I know that you, after doing abit of LinkedIn stalking, you
are a certified Scrum Master.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Oh, my goodness, yes.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And I'm curious if that has informed how you think
about implementing digital andthe process that goes behind
actually doing the stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
That is a great question.
I think you bring up a reallycrucial topic, because I think
every digital team out there hasway more options of great
things they can be working onthan they actually have time for
.
So how do you kind of structurethat and make it so that the
projects happen, so that, Ithink, is kind of the first part
(26:16):
of it?
Of what kind?
of the scrum mindset helps withis the ruthless prioritization,
the concept of a backlog, theconcept of we only have so much
time or so many points, and so Ialways had a very open and
ruthless prioritization process,heading into a quarter that's
(26:37):
when, I have found is a reallyhelpful time to get on the same
page with all stakeholders andto really warn them and it takes
a couple quarters to get tothis point but to start training
them and warning them.
If you come to me with anemergency project mid quarter
like nope, there's nothing.
We are not brain surgeons.
There's no true emergency indigital CS.
We should be able to plan aquarter ahead what the business
(27:00):
most needs from us and where weshould be prioritizing our time,
not your rando pet project.
So, that, I think, is a veryscrummy mindset and I'll
actually say to people whenthey'll come with ideas that we
can't fit into the quarter right.
The concept of like yeah, thatmight be really great for next
quarter.
(27:20):
This quarter is closed.
As far as like, do I reallythink about it being like two
week sprints?
Absolutely, with my teams.
We need to have thattransparency with our partners
that we work with, of like aMondaycom or a JIRA or something
of like here's where it's allcoming together.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Organization and communication of what you're
doing, and all that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I haven't actually structured my team.
I know lots of people have, butI've never structured my team
as like we're in two weeksprints, partly because all of
my team members have always beenworking on about five to 10
projects at once.
That don't necessarily likethey all have different time
horizons, stakeholders to seeand has been really crucial.
(28:10):
And then, as the quarter goeson, we're constantly building
our quarter report out deck aswe go of like okay, this one's
done.
Like, make that slide, thisone's done.
So, yeah, the quarter has kindof for me been similar to the
sprint in the scrum world.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I think that makes sense because a lot of the
projects you work on in digitalare those longer tail things.
One interesting thing that Ifound is in my last gig, a lot
of what we did involvedinterfacing with the Salesforce,
you know, operations team, andthey operated in two week
sprints.
Right, and we didn'tnecessarily to your point, we
(28:49):
didn't necessarily operate intwo-week sprints, but the fact
that we had to do so muchinterdependent with them kind of
forced us to live and have atoe in both where we were
dependent on this team to do X,y, z, and so we had to do sprint
planning on our prioritizedthings to make sure that things
got put in place in time for usto meet the overall objective.
(29:11):
But at the same time, we weredoing more macro instead of
micro sprint planning then too.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, I love it.
That's such a good example ofwhat we were saying before about
collabing with other teams Likereally just being like.
Oh, you like to work on atwo-week sprint?
Great, we will give you thatstructure.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You meet them where they're at.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah, that's cool.
One thing I always love to getan insight on is what you're
paying attention to as a digitalprofessional and in CS, or even
outside of the business.
What do you occupy yourconscious with in terms of
content when you're not working?
Speaker 1 (29:49):
My conscience, my consciousness like to consume
this podcast for sure.
I also really love the DailyStand-Up.
I'd say those are my two mainones Lots of great newsletters
and thought leadership out therein our field, which I really
appreciate.
Consuming all of that and thenoutside of work but it actually
(30:10):
is strangely related to work I'mcurrently reading the David
McCullough's history of theWright brothers.
It's so interesting to bereading about just innovation
and bravery and doing the thingeverybody thought was crazy in a
completely different time.
Right Like it's just theparallels to our day are really
(30:30):
fascinating.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
That's interesting.
I mean, the Wright brothers arefascinating because now in the
history textbooks you kind ofgloss over the fact that they
were bicycle repair folks andstuff.
I didn't even know that.
And then they built an airplane.
I was like, yeah, of coursethey were.
But then, if you really putyourself in that timeframe,
there were so many differentgroups and nationalities going
(30:54):
after this powered flight thingand then these two folks from
Ohio.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Right, good old Ohio.
Well, and like the whole thingof like, several people have
died trying.
And there was like this wholerhetoric of anybody who tries is
a crazy quack and yeah just alot of courage to go for it yeah
, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That's cool.
I love that.
Anybody you want to give shoutouts to yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
all my teams who I've worked with are the best and
have made all of this possible.
I'll especially especially callout Christy Hollingshead, who
was my boss at Heap and she wasin charge of all the different
things that needed to cometogether for digital and so
taught me tons about all we'retalking about, of how to bring
this all together, and then Ijust want to give shout outs to
(31:46):
the amazing people in our fieldwho are just like bringing us
together and making communities.
I love dcs connect thank you,marie lunny, like amazing and I
love like being a part of csangels.
Like so grateful to jemma forstarting that so grateful it's
cool community yeah, so gratefulto jan for all the amazing cx
exchange stuff out there.
(32:06):
It's just so great to not.
There are so many trickypitfalls in our world and I just
really appreciate people whoare bringing us together to
learn from each other.
Yeah, you're not alone.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, you know, if you're in CS and you're feeling
alone, the good news is thatthere's a ton of us out there
that are willing and able toshare and talk, and I think I've
never been part of a communitythat's more open book.
Everybody's just sharing allthe time, which is so so, so, so
(32:40):
cool.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
So yeah, I hear you on that Cool.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Well, look, I've thoroughly enjoyed this
conversation.
Maybe we need to do a part twoat some point.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
but like, where can people talk about where it's all
going in the future.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
That's in the year 2000.
Where can people find you,engage with you, hang out with
you, learn about your business,all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Please come hang out with me on LinkedIn, connect
with me.
Please come visit my website,hollygoodliftcom, and if you're
in san francisco, cs eventshopefully I'll see you in person
or at other ones as I travelaround awesome, that's great.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, thanks again for joining.
It was awesome and keepfighting the good digital fight
you too, alex.
Thank you thank you for joiningme for this 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.
(33:41):
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
audience.
You can view the DigitalCustomer Success definition word
map and get more informationabout the show and some of the
other things that we're doing atdigitalcustomersuccesscom.
This episode was edited byLifetime Value Media, a media
production company founded byour good mutual friend, Dylan
(34:03):
Young.
Lifetime Value aims to servethe content, video, audio
production needs of the CS andpost-sale community.
They're offering services at asteep discount for a limited
time.
So navigate tolifetimevaluemediacom, go have a
chat with Dylan and make sureyou mention the Digital CX
podcast sent you.
I'm Alex Trikovich.
(34:23):
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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