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Last week we hosted a panel discussion with four leaders on what they’ve learned from running CS Ops teams. The discussion featured the panelists: Jeff Justice Williams, Enterprise Lead of Customer Success at Box, Marco Innocenti, Senior Leader of Customer Success Operations at Zoom, Beth Yehaskel, Revenue Optimization and Customer Success Architect at Winning by Design, and Seth Wylie, Head of Customer Success Operations at Gainsight.
Below you’ll find a (lightly edited) excerpt from one of the highlights of the discussion, when the group each shared one tactic every CS Ops team should consider doing.
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JEFF: I'm lucky to have seen CS Ops within two different companies in the past year. What I’ve noticed is that CS Ops tends to get hit with different trajectories of asks: the long range, heat-seeking asks from up high and the short range, incremental asks from below. The sidewinders from by blind spots. And all of those requests stack on top of a CS Ops leader’s self-defined program for the team.
Shout out to an amazing partner I've already started working with at Box, Nora Soza. She and her team manage the process of prioritization extremely well by matching and justifying requests next to business end goals.
I may be dating myself here, but the CS Ops team reminds me of the Nas song from the nineties, “I Gave You Power.” CS Ops can set you on a really solid track if you work well with them, but you don't want to underestimate or undervalue their impact. They're not there to jump when you say “jump.” That's a common misconception. So one thing that I've recognized with CS Ops is their ability to power the team’s effectiveness towards a business goal.
If you align on business goals and strategically plan with the CS Ops team, your path will be clearer. You don’t just toss ideas over and say, “Figure it out, Ops.” You won't like what comes back to you if you do and whether you admit it or now, it will be your fault when goals aren’t met.
— Jeff Justice Williams, Enterprise Lead - CS at Box
JEFF: A CS Ops team will succeed if they have solid partnerships around the org and when their tasks are aligned with high-arching business goals.
CHRIS: You shared a lot of tips there. The one I personally liked the most is tying all CS Ops requests to a business outcome to help Ops prioritize.
MARCO: I would echo almost everything Jeff said and add a focus on getting Ops to that place of streamlined prioritization of requests sooner rather than later. Whatever tool you choose to track the inputs coming into your Ops team, make sure there is a direct link to show what the expected outcomes are from the person making the request, and then design how that ties off to either your operational Customer Success or global goals.
But tactically, having that tool in place to track asks is essential to show workload and balance. You need data around the amount of requests coming in to fuel headcount planning conversations. You need to be able to show important measurable outcomes and how your team of one or two will not be able to meet those goals in a specific timeframe.
That's one that I wish we had gotten to sooner. We're there now, and it's helped to tell the story of why our team needs to grow continually.
BETH: Jeff and Marco are spot on. What's worked well for me is to have the head of CS Ops right by my side as the Customer Success leader. CS Ops can easily become a dumping ground for a bazillion different fire drill requests all the time.
But when CS and CS Ops work in tandem, we’re able to provide air cover and guidance on request prioritization. CS Ops needs to be in a position to bring all the requests they receive to the executive table and say, “Here's the top five requests we’ve identified. We can realistically do three. Which three are the most important to the business?” Then CS and CS Ops can work together to address each request.
But when CS Ops is left on its own and isn’t a part of the CS senior leadership conversation, it's drastically more difficult for them to do their jobs efficiently. They miss out on the strategic conversation that would allow them to understand their role and the business as a whole.
— Beth Yehaskel, Customer Success Architect at Winning by Design
BETH: Ops needs to be empowered to say “no” while also preserving critical relationships with other departments. They have to say “no” in a way that doesn't upset anyone, but also they can't do everything. And I certainly don't want somebody working 80 hour weeks.
CHRIS: So CS Ops is essentially the hand of the queen?
BETH: Exactly.
CHRIS: Seth, you're going to top us off. So, what are some tactical wins?—something that your team does that everyone else should consider doing.
SETH: I have one answer that's internal to CS Ops and one that is a CS Ops outward-facing responsibility.
Internally, one of the first things I did when taking over leadership of CS Ops is still one of my crowning achievements. I put my team on an actual production cadence. We use Scrum to organize all our work and requests. Given Jeff's point, with all the heat-seeking missiles and the sidewinders, it can get real chaotic, real fast, especially if other departments are going directly to CS Ops team members with asks.
Having a production system like Scrum/Agile empowers those in Ops to use a language to respond to those requests. Finally, they are able to say, “Yes, but...” or “We can help, but there's a sprint structure” and so on. It has been hugely helpful to give CS Ops a sense of clarity, calm, and purpose, which all add up to help team members to stay focused.
Within this system, we recently added a fast lane for small requests. We dedicate a few hours a week for people on the Ops team to execute on tasks outside of the sprint because we realize a CS leader shouldn't have to wait two sprints for something like a simple report to be created. This is a nice parallel structure to have within CS Ops.
There are many things I could say about outward facing tactical wins for CS Ops teams, but one area I'm really happy our CS Ops team focuses on is taking charge of use cases. My team helps CSMs share and utilize use cases with each other. We also distribute blog posts and resources internally, so CSMs have access to this information.
At Gainsight, the Ops team also helps run our 1:many model including having ownership in our admin newsletter, our executive newsletter, in-app engagements, sharing use cases with customers, and more.
LEADERSHIP
How to Manage Managers: Lessons, Challenges, and Rewards
When you’re managing managers, “the balance of providing independence and stepping in when needed is difficult to strike.” Marta Simeonova offers advice for managers who are moving to the next level.
STRATEGY
If Nothing Else — Segment Churn
Jason Lemkin, Founder of SaaStr, points out that churn “doesn’t have a universal definition....even public companies define churn differently.” But he suggests that no matter how you calculate churn, “Whatever you do, and however you do it, segment churn and track the money.”
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Between Sales and Product: Building Out Self-Serve and Customer Experience at Notion & Dropbox
This post highlights Kate Taylor, Head of Customer Experience at Notion. One of the best moments from the interview is when Kate likens customer experience to going into someone’s home — “The concept I like to talk to the team about is customers coming into our living room, sitting down and having a conversation with us — how do we make it feel that easy to talk with us? How do we make users feel at home when they open that front door and engage with us?”
COMMUNICATION
These Are The Best Email Tips You’ll Read in 2021
Here’s Devin Reed of Gong Labs with a list of research-backed email tips. Although intended for Sales, these insights are also applicable for those in CS: make emails about the recipient, keep the content short, and add a specific CTA.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
There’s an ongoing debate within Customer Success about the merit of NPS and its correlation to retention rates. So when Brain LaFaille, Global Head of Customer Success Strategic Programs at Google, listed the Do’s and Don’ts of NPS I wanted to highlight this important topic and add my thoughts. You’ll notice that our views differ slightly—Brian is more empathetic towards NPS, whereas my view is that NPS isn’t useful.
Note: The following is a short version of his list. You can read his full list here.
✅ Do: Track NPS
Tracking NPS allows you to gather valuable qualitative data about how customers feel about using your product. This qualitative data can embellish the usage (quantitative) data you’re already tracking from customers.
❌ Don’t: Use NPS for variable compensation
Goaling monetary compensation on NPS typically doesn't go over well. NPS is purely qualitative and is dependent on the respondent's mood. Goals for variable compensation should be metrics that the CSM can directly impact and control.
✅ Do: Follow-up with all NPS comments
When a customer provides your company/service with feedback, be sure to have a human touch to thank the users who felt compelled enough to share feedback. Consider having different responses based on the responder's score:
❌ Don’t: Silo NPS data
Feedback should be shared across the company.
✅ Do: Make NPS part of your broader “sentiment analysis”
NPS coupled with other qualitative data points can help you build comprehensive sentiment health. Components of sentiment include (but not be limited to):
❌ Don’t: Focus on the number. Instead, focus on the trend.
Your actual NPS score doesn't tell you much and NPS alone can be a vanity metric. What's more powerful is measuring the trend of your NPS over time across your entire customer base, as well as specific customers. Powerful ways to leverage your NPS data include asking questions like:
✅ Do: Ask other questions than the NPS question
Here are the questions I’d advocate for asking instead of the NPS question to actually understand the customer experience:
Customer Success leaders can aggregate this data and share it with other executive team members—the CPO, CRO, CMO, CFO—to influence discussions around the product roadmap, the customer profiles the company should target, the content that Marketing should be creating, and more. By relying on better data, CS leaders can get to the root cause of customer churn.
❌ Don’t: Use NPS as an indicator of whether or not an account will churn
NPS is not correlated to overall retention rates. Other factors are much better indicators of the risk that exist on your account such as:
✅ Do: Consider the value of NPS as a touchpoint
Every touchpoint with the customer is precious, so consider what value your organization receives from the NPS score (besides executive ego boosts)? How is NPS data used to improve the quality of the customer experience? Since the average NPS survey gets < 20% response rate, that means we wasted the time of the other 80%.
Alternatively, try collecting feedback via one-on-one interviews with customers, recording them, and transcribing them. You can get great feedback from usability testing on the product side when you’re trying to diagnose product problems. And it’s important to have some kind of social media monitoring product, where you’re scanning for the sentiment of your customers on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. This will help to understand what kind of real sentiment is going on in places where people are sharing information.
❌ Don’t: Think of NPS as an accurate measure of a customer’s health
Here’s why:
WORKFLOW
Being Busy Doesn’t Mean You’re Being Productive
This piece is written for founders but applies to anyone who has to juggle many responsibilities and a hectic schedule—so everyone, right? Here’s Corey Haines on how to get deep work done. He shares tips on batching similar tasks together, cutting out distractions, delegating shallow work, and more.
GROWTH
Growth Is Sexy, but Not Its Ingredients: Retention and Operations
When most people see business growth, they storm in with questions like, “How do you get clients? How do you close sales? How do you do marketing?” But these people don’t understand what Customer Success leaders have known forever—sales aren’t the key to growth, retention is. And retention isn’t possible if the “nuts and bolts of the business” aren’t figured out.
What NPS Subject Line Drives the Highest Response Rate?
Not done with NPS yet? Head over to Jeff Breunsbach’s LinkedIn post asking commenters to share their highest performing NPS subject lines.
Dave Jackson, CEO of TheCustomer.Co, wrote a popular post on LinkedIn where he argued that ownership in business “creates division.” I disagreed. At ‘nuffsaid, one of our core values is to ensure every decision has one owner.
Dave joined me on the ‘wellsaid podcast to debate this topic. I really enjoyed our conversation, so here’s an excerpt from one of Dave’s most powerful responses.
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I believe ownership is a last-century concept built on the bankrupt idea of hierarchy.
The genesis of this idea is many years in the making and it's based on bitter experience in a way—not about taking ownership of things, but about trying to control things.
I'm not concerned about what you call it: Customer Success, Customer Experience, or customer focus. My understanding is this: if you're going to be truly customer-focused, you need the whole of the organization pointing in that direction. You need the whole of the organization aligned. But the bankrupt thinking piece is that we are still building organizations with silos without thinking about how we need to collaborate and do the right thing for the customer.
As soon as you create a silo, somebody says, “That's mine, go away, leave me to it. Don't do it.” People hoard their areas of ownership. And that in my opinion is what gets in the way of building a truly customer-focused organization.
Chris wrote the following on my post: “If your company really does believe that customer outcomes are shared across everyone, then the CEO can solve this by:
He was dead right. But the problem is that not many CEOs do that. The problem is CEOs still say, “Hey, Marketing, here's your budget. Go away and do that. Sales, you go do that. Come up with the org plans.” Meanwhile, nobody thinks about what this looks like for the customer as a whole. In this way, I believe ownership is bankrupt.
Shared values, team alignment, and OKRs are all vehicles for creating collaboration. The problem is collaboration never appears on an org chart. But it's the most important part of building a successful customer-focused organization. That's the piece that I'm railing against—this lack of collaboration. The idea of, “This is mine, leave it alone.”
Creating a culture of collaboration comes down to the ability of a CEO to break down silos. As a CEO, you must emphasize shared values, alignment, and work on facilitating collaboration company-wide. A CEO should be like an architect.
The first thing any good architect does is to figure out who is using the building. What are their needs and expectations? How can they be delighted? It starts with understanding the user. Then the second thing an architect does is sketch out a high-level blueprint. Once you've got everyone across a company participating and contributing to the overall design, then you can say, “Within the architecture, Marketing - go and do your thing, and Sales - go and do that thing.”
Architecture is not just about walls. It is about how we use spaces—how things flow from one part to another. It's about purposefully designing those parts of the organization that are unseen. There's a saying, “Every organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results it does.”
The CEO must be the Chief Organization Designer. They must take the lead in forming the architecture, in bringing people together to design the culture, and in ensuring that the company is always thinking back to, “Who are our chosen customers, what are their needs and expectations, and how do we delight them?” Once you've got those mechanisms in place, then you can start to delegate ownership.
There is a lost art of real organization design, which has very little to do with lines and boxes and more about an alignment mechanism. CEOs need to be thoughtful about org design and build out the three pieces of a collaborative architecture.
If there's a fourth piece, it's around metrics. In an ideal world, everyone would be on the same bonus plan based on either Net Revenue Retention or, if you're mature enough, the LTV:CAC ratio. Both of those bring in the whole of the organization and force it to think about how to make the business successful, not just how each department can make its silo successful.
The mistake many leaders make regardless of their department happens when they go to the leadership table. They believe they're there to represent their function, which is wrong. You do the right thing for the business, even if your individual department loses at that point in time.
You're a business leader first and a silo leader second.
ALIGNMENT
Customer Success Is the Most Important Function in a Usage-Based Business
Kyle Poyar, Operating Partner at OpenView, outlines simple ways departments like Marketing, Sales, Product, and Support can do their part to bring the customer closer to their desired outcomes. “Everyone is a CSM now.”
LEADERSHIP
Five Leadership Lessons in Re-Launching a Global CSM Organization
Here’s Janine Sneed, VP of Customer Success at IBM, with 5 takeaways from redesigning her CSM org. She suggests over-communicating the design with team members, investing in a centralized adoption playbook, being accessible by creating “spaces for transparency and radical candor” and more.
STRATEGY
Data Analysis Is an Underrated Customer Success Skill
Brian LaFaille of Google explains how, “[T]he secret weapon to any Customer Success Professional’s toolbox is the ability to interpret, analyze, and tell a story through data.” It’s a learnable skill that’s become increasingly important in CS.
REMOTE WORK
How I’ve Improved My Remote Presentation Setup
This piece is chock full of tactical tips to create a better experience for your listeners when giving presentations or demos. Upgrade your conferencing skills with pointers like “Faking eye contact with the audience,” creating a wall backdrop, and choosing the right lighting.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
To wrap up Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting the best career advice from the incredible women driving Customer Success. They offer unique and powerful lessons about focusing on what matters, advocating for yourself, building a strong network, and more.
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Mary Poppen, CCO of Glint at LinkedIn
While reflecting on lessons learned throughout my career in Customer Success and Experience, five key principles came to mind (not necessarily in priority order):
Cairo Amani, CX Lead at Cutback Coach and Co-Founder of ThriveNetwork
Build a strong professional brand. Be able to speak confidently to who you are and what you bring to the table. When you walk into a room, no one should get the chance to tell your story except you.
Gemma Cipriani-Espineira, VP Customer Success at Chili Piper
Gloria Steinem said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” The truths I have learned in my career are that: 1) people are unpredictable, 2) systems can be unfair, and 3) top performers don’t like having a “boss.” Acknowledge these hurdles and choose to focus your energy on driving results.
Georgia Harrison, Senior Director of Customer Success EMEA at Braze
Anita Toth, Churn Consultant
Follow your heart, despite your head and everyone else telling you that it isn't the right path. I've taken jobs that were lower pay, less stable, and harder work because I knew in my heart that ultimately those jobs would bring me to the place I wanted to be in my career. It was hard tuning out the strong voice of my inner head and the external voices of my friends and family. But in the end it worked out far better than if I had gone against what my heart wanted. The career path we take isn't always easy, but you truly do know what's best for you—because your heart tells you.
Emily Garza, AVP of Customer Success at Fastly
Lauren Costella, VP of Customer Success at GoodTime.io
Never be ashamed to fully understand. This advice came from my mentor Jeanine Moss earlier in my career when I worked in Strategic Communications at the Pentagon. People would use jargon and language I didn't understand, and I felt, fairly or not, pressure that I was supposed to know what everyone was talking about to be good at my job, even though I had never been exposed to much of what they were saying. And by golly, sometimes people used so much fluff that what they said didn't have meaning or substance!
She encouraged me to keep asking questions, to keep digging until things were clear or broken down in a way I could understand. I use that technique in both my personal and professional life because communication and, more importantly, understanding between people - customer, client, teammate, colleague, boss, family, or friends - remains critical for any kind of business and/or personal success.
Kim Oslob, Senior Director of Customer Engagement at MeasuringU
Every company and every Customer Success role is different. Align with a strong mentor who has worked in a variety of different situations and can help you in your career. When you have grown in your career, become a mentor to help others grow strong.
Teresa Anania, VP of Global Customer Success and Renewals at Zendesk
Katrina Coakley, Director of Customer Success at talentReef
To anyone new in Customer Success, track your major wins, your losses, and trust yourself. There will be times when you may not take the next right step. Tracking your wins will help to provide clarity on all the times you get it right. Tracking your losses is meaningful as long as you learn from the experience. And trust yourself because no one at the company knows more about your customers than you do.
To Customer Success leaders, write down your “why.” You took on the role for a reason. Determine your priorities and put leadership battles that fall outside of those areas in the parking lot. Spend time with the CSMs you are privileged to lead. And set healthy boundaries for yourself—this includes setting aside time for an activity that you enjoy purely because you enjoy it.
Shirley Chapman, Senior Director of Customer Success Management (EMEA) at Pluralsight
Don’t count yourself out before exploring the possibilities. There is nothing to lose in expressing an interest, even if you think it’s a "not now but later" opportunity. I got my first leadership role because I applied for a position I didn't think I would get, but wanted to experience the process! Ask for feedback and advice from a range of people, inside and outside the company to get different perspectives. Believe in yourself and always bring your best self forward.
Kelly Berg, VP of Customer Success and Solutions at Ambition
Focus on timing. Was it the right time to move across the country for an opportunity or take a risk to join a startup? Was it the right time to ask for more responsibility? Or was it the right time to stick with something through a challenge and come out on the other side? That advice has helped me stay dialed in on maintaining balance between big career moves and my other key values—my family, where I want to live, and what I want each day to look like.
Maranda Dziekonski, SVP of Customer Success and People at Swiftly
I've received a lot of advice over the years, but a few points that have always stuck with me are:
I've always carried these with me, and while I am less than perfect, on occasion, I use them to ground me!
Monica Trivedi, Director of Global Customer Success at Schneider Electric
My best career advice centers around four pillars that have guided me for most of my professional and personal journey: 1) be authentic, 2) challenge the status quo, 3) advocate for what you deserve, and 4) embrace uncertainty.
Shadavia Jones, Scaling Customer Success Team Manager at HubSpot
To build your personal brand within a company, become the expert at something. It is not enough to just be great at your job function. People need to think of you and your skillset when opportunities arise, even if it's unrelated to your role. Find your thing, your foundation that you can build any career on, then reflect on the question, "Am I a good employee, or am I an expert?"
Negotiation is one of the most underrated skills. You're always negotiating on the job—with your clients, your worth when evaluating a new job offer or raise, and especially when you're trying to gain additional experience via strategic projects, so it helps if you're good at it. Negotiation is a muscle that strengthens over time, so start small but be sure to use it frequently.
The Customer Success mantra is typically some version of "put the customer first." My edited version of this is, "put humans first" — yourself included. You won't be able to delight customers if you aren't feeling like your best and most productive self. Do what's best for your customer by showing up as your authentic, well-rested, and energized self—the human in your customer depends on it.
No matter what line of business or role you're in, remember you're in the people business first. People are the foundation for all that you want to achieve over your career. Connect, empathize, and show compassion for them.
INDUSTRY
The Missing Piece of Software Sales
Here’s Rav Dhaliwal with a call to end the dated sales orthodoxy mindset of considering a sale complete at contract signature. He makes the case that Customer Success teams are still in a reactive state because they are “focused on solving the problems of a legacy perpetual license sales motion” instead of being able to drive the “continuous sales” cycle.
COACHING
Change Management in Customer Success
Being able to influence changes in behavior is at the core of the role of a CSM. This article articulates what “change management” includes and shares some scenarios of what it looks like in practice. Consider sharing this article with the team, and continue to reinforce this approach through coaching.
VIRTUAL DISCUSSION
Lessons From Running CS Ops at Zoom, Gainsight, Stack Overflow, & More
On April 22, we’re hosting a live panel discussion on everything CS Ops related. Sign up, submit your questions early, and share the link with your colleagues. (If you can’t attend live, you can still register and get the recording afterwards.)
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
Last week we hosted a panel discussion on creating a low-touch engagement model. The discussion featured Boaz Maor (CCO at talech), Selena Papi (the Director of Customer Experience & Engagement at Talentsoft), and Brian LaFaille (Global Head of Customer Success Strategic Programs at Google).
The conversation was packed with tactics and advice, and you can watch the recording here (or listen to the discussion on the go here). Below you’ll find a (lightly edited) excerpt from one of the highlights of the discussion, when the group shared their thoughts on how to move customers from high-touch into a low-touch segment.
A special thanks to inSided for co-sponsoring this event with us.
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Chris: How do you transition customers that are used to high-touch into a digitally-led engagement model? How do you set expectations properly so they have a good experience?
Selena: Customer Success teams need to lead with the “reason” the transition is happening. Are customers being transferred because a company is changing its customer relationship strategy and segmentation? Or is the customer downsizing and reducing the number of licenses? The approach will change based on the reason why the customer is moving into the low-touch segment.
And the communication should be transparent: share the reason why the transition is happening and focus on the benefits of the new, low-touch experience.
I’ll share an experience I had with one of my vendors that was very poorly handled for contrast. The company reached out to me via email saying, “Starting today, Selena, you don't have the right to a CSM anymore. Attached is the pricing list for a CSM. Otherwise, you’re moving to low-touch.”
Chris: Oh no.
Brian: That’s bad. That’s really bad.
Selena: I agree. If a customer is used to a high-touch approach, you cannot just move them with an email to low-touch with no empathy or explanation. Your high-touch CSM needs to explain the transition, proactively communicate this change ahead of time, and be considerate about the changes involved in transferring from a high to low-touch digital experience.
Boaz: I have two suggestions on that point. The first is, it's very common to grandfather existing customers in who become used to a certain price. Most companies change pricing schemes as their customer base grows. As long as you're a fast-growing company, it doesn't matter if you grandfather a small percentage of that customer base. The same goes for level of service. If you have customers who get used to a certain service level, leave them be as your processes change and as your company moves forward. It will take care of itself.
My second point is, the experience Selena had was the perfect example of what not to do. You don't email a customer and tell them you’re reducing the level of service.
You call them and say:
It's more, not less. The “more” is in the scaled mechanism as opposed to the one-to-one. It's almost common sense, right? You don't need to be a Customer Success expert for this.
Brian: That soundbite of you Boaz is so good. Just put that on repeat and let that sink in. As you are moving customers from a one-to-one motion, it should not be that you're taking the service level down or away. You're supplementing it in a different way. You're giving the choice to users: the choice to watch videos on YouTube, the choice to use a learning management system, the choice to engage with a CSM if they want to.
As you bring down the number of accounts in a CSM portfolio, you simultaneously have to ramp up your digital experience. As a customer, if resources are ripped away, like in Selena’s case, I would have PTSD and I’d churn from that account. To be honest, I have very high expectations of my vendors.
Boaz: Exactly. If you enable customers more with a learning management system for example, and they don't use it, that's not their problem. It's yours. What you offered didn't work. Offer something else.
The point is not, “How can I minimize service?” Rather it's, “How do I optimize results?” If the customer doesn’t buy into what you offered, then fix it, change it, or do something different.
Brian: That's so good. On that point, Boaz, going digitally-led means giving users the choice to pick from a learning channel that resonates best for them. There are individuals from our customer base who have implemented Looker previously. They just want emails and they're very docs heavy—they don’t want to talk to a CSM, they just want the docs. There's no need for us to get involved there. But there are other customers that want more of a one-to-one experience. We can offer that if a customer chooses that path.
Another piece I want to call out is that before any changes happen towards implementing a digitally-led engagement model, you need to have internal enablement about the pivot. Other teams, department heads, and leadership need to be bought in. They need to understand the benefits of the transition and who to align with if not the CSM of an account. The company as a whole has to see the benefits of a scaled approach and know that motion will help the company scale.
The second thing is, the transition cannot transpire like this: “Oh, we decided that in Q1 we're going to move all of our customers under 50K into scale. Then we're going to send an email about how they can pay for a CSM if they want.” No. You have to wait for a natural point in the customer lifecycle to make this transition.
At Google, we use the renewal to make a change and we position it with very positive language: “Hey customer, you've graduated. As a CSM, I can't do much more. You're using the product in a mature manner, your license utilization is high, you just renewed, and we've got all these different offerings to support you. Congratulations. You got to the next phase of maturity.”
CAREER
The 40 Best Interview Questions as a Candidate
Most content about interview questions is written for the interviewers. This article flips the script and offers a path for candidates to “treat companies like they’re an investor” and ask questions that uncover vital information about the opportunity.
STRATEGY
Feedback Is a Gift
Kristi Faltorusso, VP of CS at IntelliShift, offers an inside look at her survey strategy—the questions her team asks customers at each stage of their journey.
COMMUNICATION
Write Simply
In his most recent article, Paul Graham makes the case for writing simply. “Use ordinary words,” he says. “When you write in a fancy way to impress people, you're making them do extra work just so you can seem cool.”
To wrap up this week’s newsletter, here’s a fun piece that may resonate: I’m a Short Afternoon Walk and You’re Putting Too Much Pressure on Me
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
The following is Max’s response to the question, “What does your interview process look like for CSMs at Intercom and how has that model evolved?
When I joined Intercom as a CSM, the hiring process went like this: apply online, receive a written test, then interview with the Head of Customer Success.
Some parts of that model still exist. But since stepping into a leadership role, we’ve also evolved the process in two major ways: there have been changes to the written test (and it now includes a video test, too), and we’ve added a session that’s completely dedicated to having candidates ask the interviewer questions.
My first boss at Intercom instilled a core belief within me: when you're hiring, one fundamental skill to assess is writing. If an interviewee can think through a problem and compose their answer in a neat way, they likely can do the same verbally. But the proof is in the pudding—and my director’s team was renowned for their talent and tenure.
We’ve included an at-home written test as part of our hiring process since before I joined. But now, along with the written portion, we also have candidates record select answers via video on Loom or similar.
Here’s what the at-home test includes:
Video:
Written:
3.1 What makes you a power user of it?
3.2 If you could make one change, what would it be?
4.1 How would you decide which accounts to work on first?
4.2 Why would you take that approach?
As you can see, the questions vary in complexity. But to me, the most telling piece is how candidates respond to the question, “How would you describe Intercom to someone with zero technical knowledge?” Those who have empathy for their audience and who understand our product at a basic level, usually start by saying, “I'm going to describe this in a way that my granny, my granddad, or my mom and dad would understand.” Whenever someone begins that way, I know I’ve hit a gold mine—I’m about to hear a beautiful articulation of what our platform does. This question points to a good fit because the best CSMs know how to turn complex topics into easy-to-understand terms.
Better than any other medium, these videos also capture two areas that signify a good CSM:
The first—energy and passion. Are they genuinely interested in our company? Do they show real excitement? How passionate are they in the mission of Intercom? These qualities will shine through in a video.
In hiring, I care far more about passion than experience. You could’ve worked at a top company for decades, but if you don’t exude substantial enthusiasm for Intercom, I’ll keep looking. That’s not just for our own self interest in hiring, but also for the candidates. The #1 piece of career advice I give everyone—family, friends, or anyone asking me for it—is to first find companies that you’re passionate about. If you’re not passionate about a company, then why do you want to work there? Why would you waste your life away working for a company that doesn’t excite you? Ultimately if you can find a company you’re passionate about and you land a job there, the world is really your oyster. You’ll be happy and the company should be happy.
The second reason we ask candidates to use video is to assess how comfortable they are recording themselves. Our CSMs are on video calls day in and day out. They often record customer videos to share information at scale, or to send tailored messages. Fundamentally, if a person doesn’t exude the kind of confidence on camera that will engage or de-escalate customers, they might not be best suited as a CSM at Intercom.
Once a potential candidate has passed a quick screening call and the take-home test, they schedule a call with me. Instead of quizzing them (“tell me about your strengths and weaknesses”), I leave the session completely open for a candidate to ask me questions. Interviewees need to know if they’re making the right decision with their career and feel comfortable progressing to an onsite. Plus, if candidates don’t ask questions, they might not have the intellectual curiosity that we like to see in CSMs.
The written and video tests were designed to give me answers, now it’s the interviewees’ turn to ask questions. I'm there to explain everything: the role, company, team, leadership, vision, company culture, and my management style.
Some leaders consider this “question asking session” an odd practice. But Intercom’s mission is to make internet business personal and it’s the CSM’s job to be personal and empathetic to their customers. And since the first part of our interview doesn’t involve talking to anyone, it's only right to allow candidates a chance to know with absolute certainty they are making the right career choice.
INDUSTRY
The Age of the Customer
Here’s a LinkedIn post from Hubspot’s CCO, Yamini Rangan, with takeaways from the CX Spotlight 2021 Conference. In short, it’s “the age of the customer” and companies that bring the customer to the core of their business will rapidly outperform those that don’t.
FEEDBACK
One Thing You Can Do This Month That Will Level-up Every CSM on Your Team
“Being a CSM can be a lonely role....You have very little exposure to how other CSMs are working with their customers, or feedback about the QBR or customer meeting you just ran.” This article makes the case for adding a new process for feedback within your team: “Add peer-to-peer feedback as part of your MBOs this quarter. Meaning each CSM shadows other CSMs in the field and provides immediate, actionable feedback.”
LEADERSHIP
Force Isn’t Power
Ed Batista explains why people who are earlier in their careers, believing they lack power, can tend to “act forcefully in order to have the desired effect. But later in [their] careers and at more senior levels, when [they] likely possess much more power than before, continuing to act forcefully can be unnecessary and even counterproductive.”
HIRING
9 Questions to Ask Candidates for Your First Head of Customer Success
Here’s Jason Lemkin with a quick interview checklist for the first CS leadership hire. For example: “Find out what their #1 core KPI has been. Some don't even know. Don't hire those ones.”
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
Recently I posted a list of lessons I’ve learned from 15 years and 5 companies in the tech startup scene in New York. I’ll share my list and then narrow in on the stories behind some of these lessons.
I learned this lesson early in my career. I'd spent almost seven years in an educational technology company called eChalk as an account manager. For that entire time my role was consistent which allowed me to master the craft of account management.
At the time, I felt that I had achieved a level of seniority, so when I began a job search, I was looking for either a team lead or management position, or a very senior-level account management role.
But then I saw a Customer Support Agent opening at Zocdoc, and I had an instinctual feeling that this opportunity would lead to something better. One caveat—the salary was less than half of what I was making before. Objectively, this was a step back in my career, especially at a time when I wanted to take a big step forward. But I spent the next nine months on the phones proving myself, and eventually earned a chance to design a business case for building out a post-sale function that didn't exist at the time.
Although I originally took a step back, I ended my time at Zocdoc as a manager who grew the team from 0 to 25 people over 18 months. It was my first opportunity to hire a team, create processes, and collaborate with other departments. I learned a lot in that short time frame, and my rapid growth only validated my decision to take what others considered a demotion.
The truth is, especially when you’re earlier in your career, compensation and role matter a lot less than you’d think. What matters is the opportunity to grow fast in terms of responsibilities and exposure; and if you stay too long at a place where you’re comfortable, you’re missing out on future growth.
Eventually, I was hired as the head of account management at Managed by Q. I immediately noticed that the business was operationally heavy. There was a long list of tasks most new managers would have focused on in their first 90 days but I could see the most pressing issue for the business was the operations problem. Solving this would grow revenue for the company and deliver great customer outcomes.
There were plenty of people who knew about this problem—but I raised my hand. I called it out, aligned with the CEO on its importance, invited the right individuals to the table, and shepherded the team towards a solution. While some thought it was “out of turn” as my first project, I just got to work. And in time, the result was a positive impact on revenue, customer experience, and employee satisfaction.
I learned that no matter the role I’m in, I’ll always pick my head up and look around, scanning for gaps that need to be filled or areas I can lend a hand. I firmly believe this practice opened the door for me to take on more responsibility. After only a year and a half at Managed by Q, I was promoted to COO.
Earlier in my career, I thought it was my manager’s job to carve out a path for me, give me clear expectations of how to be promoted, and support me along the way. In reality, that's not how it works. You need to be in the driver’s seat of your career.
One great way to start taking control is to document the outcomes you create. Results that seem small in the moment are compounded with time. For example, if I helped increase the win rate of service requests from 10% to 20% over a three-month period, I’d translate that into a revenue number, so I could track my impact. If your goal is a promotion, track how you’ve tactically helped the company over time.
I always had a strong desire to get promoted to the C-suite. But once I got there, it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would. I realized that doing what actually matters to me in my work is truly satisfying.
Sometimes you’ll get on a track towards a high prestige role that doesn’t energize you. Don’t chase it. Learn about how you personally want to spend your time, taking two steps back if necessary, so you can progress in a way that’s fulfilling.
My goal now is to be a positive impact and help people succeed professionally and personally, whether it’s a customer, teammate, or friend. My career is more than achieving a title or earning a certain amount of money—it’s about being the lever of support I wish I had earlier in my career.
FOCUS
Know Your “One Job” and Do It First
We’ve all worked with the “extracurricular MVP”—the person that goes to every conference and meetup, coaches other team members, jumps on new projects, responds to your slacks immediately, and posts life lessons on LinkedIn daily. But what happens when that person falls short on the responsibilities they were hired to do? ““You had One Job”, as the kids say, and it comes first.”
PRODUCT
How Guru Layers Human Touchpoints Onto a Strong Self-Service Model
For any executive grappling with how Customer Success should work in a product-led growth company, reading about the approach taken by Rob Falcone of Guru is a good place to start. “Rob and his team have done an exceptional job of bridging the gap between what a product can offer end users at any time and any place, while also enabling a human touch and a tailored experience where and when it’s desired.”
PROCESS
Privy's VP of Customer Success on Providing a High-Touch Feel to Customers at Scale
Erica Ayotte, VP of Customer Success at Privy, breaks down how she’s evolved her company’s segmentation. One part of her strategy that's relatable is the aim to provide a high-touch feel to customers at scale. To do that, they've developed prescriptive onboarding to drive immediate value for customers—her team’s motto for SMB customers is “get it live on the call.”
COMMUNICATION
Presenting to Executives
“As you get further into your career...increasingly, your impact will be constrained by your ability to influence executives effectively.” Will Larson, CTO at Calm, articulates what it looks like to communicate effectively, and how to avoid common mistakes when meeting with executives.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
The following is Rebecca’s response to the question, “You’ve helped develop and run Customer Advisory Boards at multiple companies. What lessons have you learned about running them?”
For the past 20 years, I’ve worked with Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) at different companies. They can bring immeasurable value to both customers and the business when designed well.
Problems arise when companies don’t think programmatically about a CAB. You can’t just throw your top customers in a room and call it a Customer Advisory Board. To build a successful program, facilitators must consider each piece—planning, executing, and following up.
Whether you’re just getting started with creating a CAB or you already have one, here are some lessons I’ve learned that you may be able to apply:
The outcome of a successful CAB is a win for both the customer and business:
One common issue occurs when a business regularly receives more value than the customers in the CAB. If companies don’t spend enough time thoughtfully planning and strategizing, or worse, spend too much time selling, members become disengaged. The purpose of a CAB is simple — gather feedback to improve the product and drive more value for the customer base. The goal of a Customer Advisory Board should align with that foundation.
Start by developing a clear charter, clearly outlining the goals of the CAB, the expectations of the attendees, and the value the customer will get from participating. Determine the length of commitment for the participants — is this a two-year responsibility, requiring a two-hour virtual meeting every quarter and a full day session every year?
Once your overarching goals are set, it’s time to invite committed people with the right skills needed to advance to those goals. For a Customer Advisory Board to succeed, it’s crucial to be intentional about who’s involved.
From the customer base
It’s tricky to choose the right customers for an advisory board. I’ve had colleagues request to include customers for the wrong reasons — to make someone “feel special” or even to help win a deal with a prospective customer. Both miss the point.
Invite a customer:
Choose the right number of customers to join. You need a good amount of voices, but not so many that the conversation is diluted. The exact number is debatable, but 10 customer participants is a good estimate. The room should feel intimate, engaging, and involving for those who are having the conversations and owning the follow-up.
The CAB is also an advisory board. It is not a User Group or Special Interest Group. Attendees should be executives with a long-term strategic view of what is happening in their company and industry.
From the company
Internally, the people best equipped to help with an advisory board are those who can deliver insights to customers with a clear vision of the product, best practices, and industry trends. Good fits have a high-level view of the company strategically and are able to offer guidance to stakeholders about the solution. Focus on representation from executive leadership and product management, including sales only where they would provide input based on strategic customer relationships.
Only a small handful of people from your company should attend. I would recommend no more than 1 person for every 2 customers in attendance. They should be adept at listening to feedback, gathering information, and driving a conversation. As with customer attendees, internal participants should commit to long-term engagement and drive next steps.
Once you develop a charter and select a winning list of attendees, you can create an agenda and decide what conversations will take place. Determine the overarching structure — the date of the first meeting, continued meeting cadence, main problems to solve, questions to ask, and the delegation of responsibility for various follow-up actions.
Before the kickoff meeting, make sure to prepare everyone involved. Share the advisory board’s mission, agenda, attendees, and format. Give participants the main topics or questions that will be discussed in the first meeting. Doing this ahead of time gives members a chance to reflect on the topics so they can come to the meeting with thoughtful responses. Ask stakeholders what they want to discuss, in addition to the talking points your team developed.
During the discussion, it's important to create space for the advisory board to converse naturally, give feedback, and expand on each other’s ideas. At the same time, a good facilitator knows when to pivot back to the main topics. A well-organized meeting with a timeline helps to stay on track and get the most from each session.
Networking is an important benefit customers derive from participating in a CAB. Traditionally, companies have rewarded participants with a dinner or an in-person activity. Over the past year, the shift to virtual CABs has been more successful than some would have anticipated. The reduced amount of time or travel required guarantees better participation from all attendees. As the host company, you should consider ways to facilitate some informal conversation in addition to the more organized topics.
No one joins a Customer Advisory Board so their ideas can be tossed into the void. A company needs to deliver and act on the feedback they receive. Above all, customers want to know their voices are heard by people who can actually make decisions. Seriously consider their suggestions to improve the solutions, work with them to understand their requests, and update them on your plans.
The best Customer Advisory Boards are built thoughtfully, deployed strategically, and focus on customer-centricity. Engagement happens when people are given a platform to share their thoughts, a community that listens, and a way to represent their needs in a solution that matters to them.
CAREER
When Executives Break
“If your executives are not able to scale with the company [you will] fall into a mode as founder of constantly putting out fires or covering for your executives, when in reality executives exist to give you more bandwidth to do more as a company and as a CEO.” Here’s Elad Gil with a list of indicators that an executive isn’t scaling. Review this list while reflecting on your work to find areas where you can level up as an executive.
TRENDS
Customer Growth and Renewals In The Covid Economy: A Shift From Product To Services Capabilities
Jack Johnson, VP Research at TSIA, makes the case that Customer Success will start to manage more revenue responsibility and “own the number.”
FEEDBACK
How to Give Top Performers Feedback
How do you approach giving feedback to an employee who is almost too good at their job? This article shares 4 methods leaders can use to challenge top performers without giving “employees the impression that they’re being “punished” for excelling, especially when peers are held to a lower standard on the same goals.”
COACHING
Six Productivity Tips for CSMs
Here’s a reminder to coach CSMs to plan their day-to-day work to prioritize the highest impact customers and assignments, with feedback from you on what “highest impact” means.
ROUNDTABLE
Don’t Just Throw Together a Digitally-Led Engagement Model — Here Are the Skills, Processes, and Tools You Need
Register for the live Q&A-style discussion with Customer Success leaders from Google, Talentsoft, and talech on creating low-touch and tech-touch engagement models.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
The following is Pat’s response to the question, “You’ve advocated for risk forecasting rather than risk assessment. Can you explain the difference between the two, and recommend how other Customer Success leaders can establish a risk forecasting system?”
Over the last 10 years, particularly in Customer Success where there's a lot of focus around risk assessment, many of the tools and the data are tailored towards “highlighting” risk which we’re very good at and is a key component of CS. What I’m a big advocate for however is extending risk assessment into risk forecasting. The difference between these two is the difference between identifying a problem versus actually committing to an outcome.
For example, I’ve attended many risk and health assessment meetings where we spend hours in conversations around customers' health, assessing what the problems are, and what we should do about it next. But then, nothing happens because in many cases there aren’t any real individual consequences to inaction.
This is why I will always advocate for individual CSM risk forecasting as a key discipline in parallel to risk assessment.
Take a look at a high functioning Sales organization. The ability to forecast deals is a non negotiable. It's the ability to know where you're going to be at the end of the quarter and then give your manager the confidence that you're going to land within that range. In most cases, Sales managers don't care what the actual makeup of that spread is, as long as the salesperson hits within that committed range.
I see Customer Success, particularly higher touch CS, as being no different. CSMs have a book of business and in many cases a clear commercial event (renewal). It’s the CSMs responsibility forecast where they will land within that range of ACV, churn, MRR, etc and hold themselves to account for that. Without this discipline, It's very easy for a CSM to find themselves at the end of the quarter in the same situation they were in at the beginning of the quarter, because at no point during the quarter were they put under scrutiny to make that call and to deliver on that commitment.
One question that can come up around this topic is about who in the organization should own the renewal forecast—CS or Sales. From my perspective, the CS organization should own the call on the renewal forecast. Acting on that forecast call comes down to CS aligning with the Sales or renewal org to pull the strings to make it happen. Responsibility for making a forecast call doesn't mean that you necessarily need to be personally in a renewal commercial conversation. What it does mean is that as a CSM, irrespective of what your comp plan says and of what your KPIs are, your job is to ensure that customers see value in what they originally invested in your product to achieve, and to make the call as to whether or not that's the case and if they will renew or not.
It’s one thing to want to be a CSM, to want to be making connections, to want the org to acknowledge the work we do. But real excellence comes from having the discipline to be able to commit to a forecast and an outcome that you know will be difficult and could leave you exposed but you do it non the less. In terms of skill sets, I believe this is a gap in CSM enablement. I am obsessed with discipline and with training CSMs the same way as a Sales organization views enablement.
We need to evaluate CSMs on areas like:
A more commercial, sales-led approach, irrespective of who owns what, is critical to having a high-performing Customer Success organization. Deep discovery, champion building, and risk forecasting are all part of the DNA of a high-quality CSM, and the best CSMs don't ignore these activities just because they aren’t metrics within their comp plan. This toolset is simply part of how they operate. And as their manager, the contract I have with CSMs is that it's my job to enable them and to give them the skills to be able to do that exceptionally well and in return, they put themselves out there and commit.
PERFORMANCE REVIEWS
Performance Reviews Should Be Unsurprising, Fair, and Motivating
It’s performance review season for many companies, so here’s Lara Hogan on how to thoughtfully facilitate these sessions in a way that provides actionable feedback for your direct reports. Among her advice, she says to consider how you can personally own the feedback even if the feedback originally came from other people, and also “frame the biggest behavior change you’d like to see from your direct report in terms of what they are currently optimizing for.”
BUDGETING
Takeaways From Our Survey on Customer Success Budgeting
This post recaps the results from a survey on how SaaS companies are thinking about their 2021 CS budgets. Among the findings: “Companies are investing in CS Operations. We’re now seeing an average ratio of 16:1 in terms of CSM FTEs compared to CS Ops FTEs.”
COMMUNICATION
How CSMs Can Help Customers With the Change Management Process
Here’s a quick article with advice on how CSMs can change a customer’s behavior. Stay focused on the customers’ “why” to motivate them to change, help them know how to speak about the product internally, and don’t be shy about repetition.
REMOTE WORK
I've Spoken to 2,000 Companies About Their Plans for Remote Work, Here's What I've Learned
Chris Herd shares a list of trends he’s seeing in regards to remote work. Most of it isn’t new information, but a few nuggets stand out including this one: “In the same way companies are finally realizing the power of community externally – internal community may become even more important to a company's success.” It’s worth thinking about how you can start to establish a “community” feeling amongst your CS team.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
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