Navigating your career in Customer Success

In this season finale, our special guest is John O’Melia, CCO at Contentsquare, one of the world's leading and fastest-growing SAS digital experience analytics platforms. John describes how Customer Success works in a company destined to scale exponentially, discussing the strategies he follows and challenges he overcomes with the help of his teammates. Listen to the final episode of a second season full of lessons learned and groundbreaking perspectives.Jump straight into:(04:38) - Being the CCO of a fast-growing software company - “I take responsibility for everything post-sales. We look at implementing customers, getting them onboarded, introducing the success team and the customer success managers’ education.”(06:39) - What is Contentsquare's key to effectively scaling its business? - “We're able to analyze that information and really surface insights to our customers in terms of what users are doing on that website.” (09:04) - How has customer success evolved to meet the challenge of that growth? - “It's like we have a train that's moving at a hundred miles an hour and we're trying to change the wheels on the train as it's hurtling down the track.”(13:30) - Making sure customers are truly at the heart of a company’s culture - “We have touchpoints with our customers so we can sense something's not going quite to plan before it becomes an issue and take action very early.”(16:55) Standardization challenges in the management of companies with different visions - “You may have a different personality in France to the UK or the US but you've got to have a common underpinning and consistent global experience”. (19:03) Why CS technology matters now more than ever - “As we acquire companies, if they don't have Gainsight, then we introduce that and we roll that out and we spend a lot of time harmonizing our common identity and having a consistent methodology.”ResourcesConnect with John via LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

Adopting a Customer Success methodology that’s able to scale efficiently requires a deep understanding of workflows, people, and tools capable of ensuring an empathetic experience for clients and customers. Today we have a conversation with Tom Vane, Head of Customer Success at Totaljobs, to explore more on these components and learn about the overall performance results and benefits within a complete CS strategy adaptation. Join us in this episode full of CS leadership insights and inspiring stories from Tom and his work at Totaljobs.Jump straight into:(04:44) - Time for adaptation: Realizing your company needs a CS team and plan - “A customer's decision is now based on the all-round experience they have from the moment they talk to you all the way through to that renewal conversation and rendering.”(10:12) - Establishing processes, workflows, and customer journey maps - “We had to look at the individual customer segments and say: What do we need to improve the experience for these customers when they're working with us on a day-to-day basis?” (13:33) - Effective CS team leadership: Selecting the right skill sets and values - “You need people able to get in front of clients and articulate things, but also be able to turn internally and have those conversations with other internal teams.”(17:12) - The perks of dedicated CS technology implementation - “We needed something that brought all our data together and that allowed us to communicate en masse to different segments of customers. We needed that help and support to be able to scale as efficiently.”(21:29) - The outcomes of a complete CS strategy execution - “The impact that we've been able to have on customer sentiment and loyalty has grown 300%.”ResourcesConnect with Tom via LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

Have you tried creating your personal brand? In this episode we talk to Dana Soza, Founder and CEO at Dana Soza Customer Solutions and 2021 Top 100 Customer Success Strategist, delving into some smart alternatives to optimize the search process for an ideal profile, both for an employer and an employee. She also shares with us her life purpose, how she found it, and how it has allowed her to position herself as one of the best talents in the world of Customer Success. Listen and find out the formulas for understanding what it takes to find or become the ideal employee, and how you can match with the company that best aligns with your priorities, skills, and interests.Jump straight into:(02:09) - Dana’s backstory recognizing her life purpose - “I ended up teaching in Madrid, Spain, and that was when I realized what really lit me up in life was to make a marked difference in other people's lives.”(08:55) - Transforming the laws of Consumer Success into Employment Success - “I started pulling books off the shelf and I thought: how can I use the knowledge that's in here to help me stand out as an applicant while also helping those people who are trying to find a job as well?” (12:40) - Dana’s solutions on how to find the right employer in the rapidly growing CS world - “I created this way-to decision matrix to whittle down what's most important to you in a company, and that will allow the research to find those companies that match what's important to you.”(16:55) - Tools and mechanisms to choose the right role beyond descriptions and keywords - “You can actually look at your comp plan to understand why your role exists.”(23:15) - Documenting your own resources is a great asset - “These are the types of engagements that you want to be able to document while you're on the job so that you can use them and talk about them in stories when you're trying to look for a new one.”(25:33) The benefits of automation for employees and employers - “These types of tools are automation tools to make it easier to find those potential candidates.”ResourcesConnect with Dana via LinkedInDana Soza | Customer Success Consulting FirmPWC Personal Brand WorkbookHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

Whether it’s a startup or a long-established enterprise, for every company culture is important because it binds the whole organization together and serves as the fuel for an active, healthy, and successful work team. In this episode, our guest Eduardo Amorim, Global Head of Customer Success at Sendcloud, shares some useful insights to understand which factors contribute in developing a CS Culture that is able to regenerate, grow and adapt to new kinds of frameworks while acknowledging and optimizing the company’s priorities.Jump straight into:(04:59) - Foundational aspects to grow a winning customer success culture - “We have three main pillars: People first, culture second and the third one is business.”(08:39) - How to build an evolving framework - “Making sure that the entire team will actually achieve the vision and be excited about it.” (15:30) - Encouraging team members to step forward through an entrepreneurial approach - “If it works out and if it's successful, you run with it and you'll be in the forefront of the celebration.”(18:08) - Culture challenges within hybrid environments - “We allow ourselves the moments to bond and to get to know each other behind the results.”ResourcesConnect with Eduardo via LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

Whether it is the growth in the number of people now working in CS departments or the 20,000 attendees to the most recent Pulse Everywhere event, Customer Success is only getting bigger and better. What does Customer Success look like and feel like in other models like B2B, public sector, or higher education? In today’s episode, CS strategist, influencer, and Director of Customer Success Solutions at MarketSource, Jeffrey Heckler joins us to chat about the new models of customer success, how we continue to understand customers through technology, and the effects of growing CS in day-to-day life. Listen now to what this expert has to say about the present and future of the industry!Jump straight into:(01:00) - Who is Jeffrey Heckler? A CS strategist, influencer, and runner - “We are the global leader in sales innovation processes and have been for 46 years. And so what we're doing now is bringing customer success to the enterprise fortune 500 focused.”(05:33) - How CS has evolved within organizations - “CS principles, philosophies and practices can modernize historic older models of sales and how they can bring out the entire customer life cycle beyond just journey mapping.”(08:59) - Holistically understanding your customers with technology - “You take all the data and then you pad it with storytelling. And so you draw with your visuals on the data, but then you have the real attributes of what your customer’s telling you.”(13:52) - New and better data and the next generation of CM’s - “It's like everything else that we see in CS, the problems become these amazing solutions for adventure.”(15:32) - Using CS as the glue that holds businesses together - “You can standardize some practices and processes and we can start to put some rigor and integrity in our work and then streamline and automate.”(17:57) - Customer Success's effects in day-to-day life - “Any frequent flyer program, any key chain where you have a gym tag on it, it's about the membership. It's about the relationship. It's about people with people.”ResourcesConnect with Jeff through LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

How and when is it the right time to engage with our customers? Rule #1: Customer engagement should never have a cookie-cutter approach. In today’s episode, our host is joined by Flexential’s Senior Manager of Customer Success Operations and Senior Director of Customer Experience Strategy, Jessica Owens, and Mike Garret, to deep dive into the best practices of a powerful customer engagement strategy. Throughout this episode, Jessica and Mike share the best practices that have allowed Flexential to set themselves apart from their competitors, the importance of taking action based on feedback, and how a strategy-and-technology perspective can throw off results from one quarter to the very next. Listen now to improve your customer engagement strategy, and establish a real and strong relationship with your customers and CSMs, starting today.Jump straight into:(00:40) - Get to know our guests: Jessica Owens and Mike Garret- “I decided to continue down the operations path and have loved it ever since!” (07:03) - Not your typical CS model: On Flexential’s unique framework - “Our challenge was really: How do we create value in an industry that's really commoditized?”(11:16) - Reaching the epitome of Customer Success through feedback and careful planning - “The CSM is going to have to be more in the driver's seat as far as how and when they're going to engage with the customer.”(17:25) - On Flexential’s improvement and future - “When we first kicked this off, we were only talking to 23% of our customer base in Q2. This quarter that we just closed out, we're over 75%. That is an amazing increase.”ResourcesConnect with Jessica through LinkedInConnect with Mike through LinkedInFlexentialHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

During the last 18 months organizations have started to focus on introducing digital customer success strategies not only for their higher-paying customers but for the long tail of smaller buyers. One of the organizations that has done a great job in bringing this program to life is Sitecore. In today’s episode Global Vice President Customer Success and Renewals at Sitecore, Lara Barnes joins us to chat about their experiences implementing this new high digital touch customer success strategy, how they got everyone on board, and the way they’ve been iterating the original plan to suit companies in a better way. Listen now and learn how this huge company with thousands of customers is revolutionizing customer success through automation without losing the human touch. Jump straight into:(00:56) - Who is Lara Barnes and her work in CS at Sitecore - “There's been a huge investment in customer success since our CEO came in 12 months ago as he saw some of the really fantastic work that we're doing.”(06:47) - Developing digital touch CSM: A scale data-driven model - “The digital strategy is built on the company's ability to capture and manage and take action on data. And that's the most important piece.”(10:34) - An automated but also human-to-human onboarding - “It can't just be an automated onboarding, it has to be combined with human interaction, somebody calling them and taking them through an onboarding as well as providing them with different materials.”(13:57) - The processes and management of customers on high digital touch - “We knew how we were going to measure ourselves and what indicators we're going to have in order to understand whether we are doing a decent job for those customers.”(17:19) - Rethinking and pivoting the original plans - “We have a very clear understanding of what many of our customers are trying to achieve and where the gap is and what we need to fulfill.”(20:03) - The importance of having the right tech available - “You've just helped us accelerate that journey in using Gainsight. It's all there. It's just how you want to use it.”ResourcesConnect with Lara through LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

Software AG, one of the biggest software businesses in Europe, recently faced a huge transformation that shook up its 10,000 enterprise customers in over 70 countries and almost 5,000 employees. To talk about the massive Helix Project we talked to Andrew Cutler, Strategy, Transformation, and Customer Success Leader at Software AG. Andrew shares his experience transitioning from a perpetual licensed business model to a subscription one, and how customer success played a strategic role in this change. As Andrew points out, customer success in a proper subscription model is completely vital. Listen now and learn how AG made this huge transformation and what CS strategies helped them bring everyone on board.Jump straight into:(00:56) - Andrew’s background and his role in Project Helix’s big transformation - “I spend a lot of time rolling out customer success and running that here at Software AG.”(05:37) - Going from a perpetual licensed business model to a subscription one - “You cannot expect too much of a variance between what your goals are as a company commercially, and what your customers are getting from the software.”(09:14) - How to make a case for customer success - “You need to be able to show what is the incremental impact to some kind of financial metric.”(11:39) - Andrew’s learnings from Project Helix - “We're on all fronts pretty far ahead of where we thought we would be right now, we did a lot of comparisons looking at other companies that have made this shift before.” (13:59) - The importance of customer success in this big transformation - “Our ability to help our customers with the adoption data that they want to see in our business lines has reached full coverage of our cloud customers.”(17:31) - How product-led customer success can optimize your processes - “The realization over the last year is that through product-led customer success and a partnership between the teams, we actually don't need heavy-duty CSM engagement on free trials.”ResourcesConnect with Andrew through LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.

In the age of hyper-growth for customer success, it is vital to have solid foundations over which you can build and expand. What are the pillars that will ensure a good alignment once your team has grown to dozens or even hundreds of people? Are these foundations the same for every company? In this episode of Gainsight Gamechangers, Henry Trevelyan Thomas, Vice President of Customer Success at Tessian joins us to chat about his blog article Building a Customer Success Team: 5 Pillars of Success. Henry walks us through each one of the 5 pillars: People, customer, growth, community, and product, and tells us how to implement them and whether this model could apply to other industries. Listen now to learn how getting these five principles right can skyrocket Customer Success in your business.&nbsp;Jump straight into:(00:55) - Who is Henry Trevelyan Thomas and his role at Tessian - “When I joined, we were around five people sitting around one table. And we've now scaled to around 200 people split across both the US and London.”(04:40) - How to find alignment between the team, leadership, and CS - “There are so many overlaps with other areas of the organization. It can be really hard to know what you should and shouldn't be doing.”(06:11) - Pillar # 1: People &amp; people satisfaction - “Once every one of the team starts to realize that anyone can instigate change, everyone gets with the mindset of thinking like a business owner and a leader.”(10:46) - Pillar #2: Customer Health - “Customers are only as healthy as they think they are. This is where the gut feel from the CSM really needs to come in, it requires the CSM to have great empathy and awareness of what's happening in the account.”(14:11) - Pillar #3: Customer Growth &amp; Onboarding - “If we nail onboarding for a customer, we have so much confidence in our product and the value that it provides that we know they're going to see value in the first couple of weeks.”(18:02) - Pillar #4: Community Building - “I do think the community aspect of it and being plugged into that network is super important as well in order to help them in our world and mature their customer success strategy.”(21:22) - Pillar #5: Product Enablement - “Our customers can no longer afford to spend hours on the phone or in a meeting trying to figure out how to do a specific thing within the product. And it's on us to figure out how we remove friction.”ResourcesConnect with Henry via LinkedInBuilding a Customer Success Team: 5 Pillars of SuccessHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

Only a few years ago there was only one role in the customer success world, Customer Success Manager. But as things have evolved and success has become more specialized, a bunch of new roles have popped up in this space. To talk about how to navigate your career in the customer success world, we invited Rachel Provan, Customer Success Director at Doodle to join us. Rachel shares her views on specialization CS roles, the most common challenges her mentees face in companies and what is the future of CSMs. Is it true that they could be the next CEO’s? Listen now to get a glimpse of the new expanding market of customer success and catch some tips on how to join it!Jump straight into:(00:55) - Who is Rachel Provan? Her role at Doodle and her favorite movie for rainy days - “What I really love about it is that the focus is not just on scheduling meetings, but really on owning your time and that's something that it's easy for us to lose during the pandemic.”(03:59) - An exciting time for new specialist roles in customer success - “People are finally starting to understand the value that it's not just about making your customers happy, it actually drives value and drives revenue.”(06:10) - Some advice for people starting out in this sector - “There are so many different paths to take and I think something that's really important to point out is that you're not limited just because you're not a generalist.”(08:39) - Some of the most common challenges for CS mentees in new companies - “It's rare to find companies that really understand customers' success and what it can do.”(13:40) - The path up the CS ladder - “It's important to show upper management the need for those roles, because a lot of the time you'll need them to be created for you, for them to even exist.”(16:37) - What kind of background should a CS have? - “Do the research and learn on your feet. If you're able to demonstrate that you know how to do the skill that they don't, which is customer success, I don't think it’s much of a blocker.”(18:50) - Are CSMs the CEOs of the future? - “The most important thing is to make sure that you like what you're doing, that you're not just doing it because you can move up and have that be the end goal.“ResourcesConnect with Rachel vía LinkedInHosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.This show is produced and edited by StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at [email protected] or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodsf.