Swimming With Sharks: Customer Ops Unplugged - S2 Episode 4: Lucas Pimenta

In this engaging episode, Kevin Dean welcomes Lucas Pimenta, an experienced professional in customer operations. Lucas discusses his journey from finance to global customer relations, stressing the importance of empathy and strategic planning in meeting high customer expectations amidst resource constraints. He also explores the transformative role of technology, including AI, in enhancing customer success strategies while balancing efficiency with human touch.

Episode Summary:

Introduction: Kevin Dean introduces Lucas Pimenta, an expert in customer operations with a diverse background in international customer relations and a keen interest in strategic customer success.

Interview Highlights:

Lucas's Journey: Lucas discusses his career evolution from finance to customer operations, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and building lasting relationships across diverse cultural contexts.

Challenges in Customer Operations: Lucas identifies technological advancements and varying customer expectations as primary challenges, stressing the need for personalized, yet efficient service delivery.

Balancing Expectations and Resources: Lucas shares strategies for aligning high customer expectations with limited resources, emphasizing strategic planning and empathetic communication.

Technology's Role in Customer Success: Lucas explores the transformative impact of AI and data-driven tools in optimizing customer interactions and enhancing service delivery.

Key Takeaways:

• Empathy in Customer Relations: Leading with empathy remains crucial in navigating complex customer relationships and delivering personalized solutions.
• Strategic Use of Technology: Leveraging AI and data analytics empowers organizations to better anticipate and meet customer needs while maintaining a human-centered approach.
• Continuous Learning: Adaptability and continuous learning are essential in the evolving landscape of customer operations, enabling professionals to stay ahead and deliver exceptional value.

Transcript

0:01

Hey there and welcome to Swimming with Sharks, a deep dive into customer ops. I'm your host, Kevin Dean, CEO of ManoBite, and I'm thrilled to have you join us for this exciting journey through the dynamic world of customer operations. On this podcast, we're going to explore strategies, tools, and innovations that drive exceptional customer experience. And this week, I am super excited to have with me Lucas Pamanta. And we're gonna have a really great conversation. Welcome Lucas, super excited to chat with you today. Thank you so much Kevin and thanks for having me here. It's an honor. Yeah, so Lucas, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in the world of customer ops? Well, definitely. Long story short, graduated in economics. So I did my start of my career in the financing field, but always within customer phase, like dealing with customers, with their expectations, their investments, and always trying to build a relationship to get a better view of their investments and their money. Because when you talk about people's money, they are very concerned about it. So you have to deal pretty well with them and with their money. And afterwards, I went to the US, lived there for three years, then went to India for another year, then got back to Sao Paulo in Brazil, where I'm currently based. And all of those experiences were customer-facing, dealing with international projects and making sure we had the best services provided to our customers globally. So that's the bit of my journey. I love it. So what are you doing today and what got you to really get into this Well, currently I'm working for this US based company. They are an outsourced company, near shore outsourcing company. So what we basically do is we make sure our customers are having the best professionals they can within the best time frame and the best service provider to them. So I deal with the customer relations, bring new talents to the team. So it's pretty neat. And what got me here, I... had this passion about talking to people, about understanding people, what they're really looking for, their expectations. And that kind of happened naturally in my life, in my professional life. So I was always, you know, dealing with customers, getting their frustration back in hand. And once I got that figured out, I started noticing my leaders started guiding me through this path without me not even noticing So as soon as I got to understand, I was already a customer success, working with customers and diving into this field that is amazing. So as you look out into the field from your perspective, there's different levels of individuals that are listening to our show with different perspectives. What do you see as one of the biggest challenges facing those who are customer facing? while there's not just one but different challenges we face on a daily basis, because we depend on the type of customer you're dealing with, if it's a small business, medium business, it's an enterprise customer. And also you're currently facing the technology problem. And that is also a help, but also a problem when you talk about AI. So I see the relationship we're building. there's a lot of expectations in that because we are in a very fast -paced environment currently where things are very fast, when the solutions are very fast, and when you don't deliver that as fast as they're expecting can be a problem. So we are currently having to deal with that where data is something that is important to us, but it's not as easy for us to transform this data into a real relationship, right? So I can have like the best... I can have the best MPS rates, can have the best customer usage rates, and yeah, the customer is not happy. So how we can really deal with that in the era of AI? So I think that's one of the most challenges we are currently facing, to make sure we have this human touch to the technology and yet tell the customer that we can do it fast, but we can do it better, if you will. But you gotta wait, you gotta understand that something we got to work on together. So it's not only on the customer success, but it's the both sides of it. I think that's one of the challenges we're currently facing. Yeah, I hear that from all levels, everybody who's working to help with customers. So from your perspective, how do you handle high customer expectations while managing limited resources? Kevin, that's a really good question. I think I would like to hear your perspective on that as well, because when I was having a customer, mainly I work with enterprise customers. So when I have some customers with very high expectations, I first try to understand why they have these high expectations, because sometimes they have some targets to meet, they have some goals to achieve. So we gotta understand the reason behind it, because if you don't have the same sense of urgency the client does, we may not be able to help them the way they need us to help. And this can be like turning to a churn and we don't want that to happen. So how I deal with that is basically understanding the customer requirements and understanding why it's subvergent. Because sometimes they're feeling it's urgency, but we can definitely turn that around with some, you know, kind of suggestion or work around with the technical team and making sure, because mostly I work with sizing. you know, understand what could be done for things to go is probably not as fast because fast doesn't mean good. Fast doesn't mean sometimes we have not a good sense of planning. So we gotta be, you know, some, some, somehow kind of psychology, experts as well to understand what is actually urgent and making sure we deliver that with common expertise. And I don't know how do you do it. would love to hear your perspective as well. I think that would be awesome. I think that there's not really a silver bullet. I think that each organization really has to, like you were saying, think about what are the needs and the expectations of the customers, and then try to leverage, and try to kind of meet them in the middle, right? I think that's important. It's like, we only have so many resources. We know that this is what you're trying to accomplish. How do we really meet in the middle in order to get And of course, you you mentioned it already, you know, the proper use of technology can really help to do that. And I am super excited into some of the advancements that are happening with GEN.AI and how tools like Maven AGI and other two platforms that are out there can really help, you know, those who are customer facing get answers quicker for customers. So when we think about GEN .AI and we think about all these advancements, what you feel is the role that technology plays as when it comes to addressing customer challenges? Kevin, I see customer success as an industry that is still evolving and technology gives us to help on that. So Jen and I came to bring this whole new level of customer success where we are more accurate on the solutions we provide to the client. Because I see AI as a data -driven tool that helps us to get a deeper understanding of what actions to take regarding because there are so many blind sides, right? Because when you deal with client, when we deal with customer, we deal with unpredictable behaviors, right? Because behind that logo, behind that company logo, there is a person taking care of it. So you're not dealing just with the logo expectation, but also dealing with the person expectation. That person, that role requires them to do. So there's so many blind spots, because we Even like, don't think that's even possible to cover all those spots. And that is where Kimi and Jen and I came in. To kind of give us these, know, perspectives on the things we're not seeing or we are not thinking that's so important, but it turned out to be. So I think Jen and I came to give us this power of taking better decisions and guide the customer to a better path. Right? So I think that's why Jen and I is so important. But it's also turned to be a trick, right? Because it kind of gives us, gives the customer the impression that everything's super fast and everything's easy to do and most of the time it's not. So I think there is a balance we need to find between those two things. It is good, but until which point is good? Because honestly, it's completely transparent to you. I don't think everyone is prepared the usage of GNI, of intelligence, artificial intelligence. So I think people are still figuring out how to use it and still figuring out the power of it. And some people are not yet prepared to deal with it. So we have also to deal with that. And that's a thing that is also a challenge for us at customer ops. Yeah, I agree with you. GNI is still in its very infancy, right? And so most organizations, especially in the SaaS space, really haven't adopted a GNI solution. mean, everybody's talking about chat GPT and you can go out and create a prompt. But there's a lot of risk and challenges that most enterprises really should be wary of. their customers are successful. Leveraging GNI because it's putting proprietary information out there that's training models that could be a risk or a liability. So I think that you're right. There's a lot that technology can do. I think there are some things that need to happen that organizations really need to start looking at it from a different perspective. Yeah, definitely. And as I mentioned, Yai is here to help you. There is no turning around, there's no turning back. Yai is part of our life, either like it or not. You just have to deal with it, learn how to deal with it, and teach our customers how to deal with it as well. Because as I mentioned, they may think things are super easy and fast, they may think like it's... everything's figured out, which I agree, but not always. It's so easy to figure out what the throne requires on their own. I think there's this middle way where we both, Testamaran and CSOps, got to meet and make this work in the battery for that it's beneficial for all of us. So yeah, got it. Yeah, you know, you make a really good point. I believe that customers and humans in general, you know, set the bar and expectation at the best experience that they receive. But most organizations can't deliver at that level. You know, they're off, they're delivering at a lower level. So it's not, Hey, we delivered the best experience that we can deliver. think organizations have to think about, you know, what is the best experience that my customer is experiencing? That's the level that they've got to rise to. What do you think about? exactly, exactly. And we're still figuring out all the capabilities AI could do for us. Because there's companies that are still figuring how they could integrate AI to their technology, to their services. So everything's still being discovered. So we don't know just yet what all the possibilities is. So I think there's something that's going to be a huge journey. that we have to face ahead and we in the customer ops need to be prepared for it. So my suggestion here, that's at least what I'm doing. I'm getting deeper understanding on the AI tools and how to integrate and how to give overall a human touch to it. Because I think I even shared with you prior this recording an experience that I have myself. using like as a customer using a banking services that was entirely based on the AI and I was getting super frustrated because my problem was not getting solved and I couldn't speak to no one and things were escalating and escalating and the problem that seems super easy to solve like 30 minutes to solve it took me three days to get you know the solution I was requiring so I believe there is so much for improvement and learning because not just because it's AI, it's going to work perfectly. So we need to still have the home -in-touch to it. We need to still train the AI to be more human, be more, I know, empathic with our client because sometimes that's all they need, right? Sometimes all the customer needs is the customer success to be there, the customer apps to be there and listen to them. Because sometimes it's easier and simple than it looks, so. I think the human touch to it, makes the total difference we need. You know, that's very insightful and I think that there's a lot to what you're saying. You there has to be the human in the middle that really, you know, makes the decision for customers and, you know, helps AI to get them to the right answer. So, from your perspective, how have customer service apps evolved since you first started in the field and what are some tools that you're excited about using? Well, it's been a long journey. I've been in customer ops for 13 years. So 2011, so many things have changed since then. Well, customer ops was very underrated, I believe, and it still is, in my point of view, but it was way more at the beginning because people didn't see the customer ops as something very, know, useful for the company because they seem more like, oh, you're just getting relationship with the client, you what, you know? What a waste of time and talent. And that's what I used to hear at the beginning. So what this will come positively for us, like through this relationship, that turned out to be really great because you have the first impression sales and then you have the customer apps increasing this relationship and bringing up sales to the table where the revenue really comes up. Because when you talk about SaaS companies, the majority of the time, the first sales we do for the These are the basic services we serve mostly of the time because you know the company doesn't know if this software or whatever it might be service be will really help the company. So why would they pay so much for a technology they don't even know how it's gonna perform in their company. It is going to be the perfect fit for the company, right? So that is when the customer ops comes out like hey it is good for you. Let me teach how to use it. Let me show you. some tools and some functionalities and you may not even know you need it, but it's here. So close to the renewals, like, hey, what is happening? How is everything going? And this may seem simple to many, but it's so hard because you're literally predicting human behavior here. You're really predicting the company behavior, like, hey, it is the company really happily with the services. what can we upgrade them? Because I cannot just offer something that is not good or makes no sense for the company because there is something called a good fit company. So sometimes the company I'm selling to is not a good fit for my company. It's not all about the money. It's about the fit. If the culture fits, if the technology fits, the people environment fits, because when does fit... We have so much room to work and to grow and to prosper with both sides. So I think most things changed since then and it changed for the better in these circumstances. The company started noticing it. It's way more complicated and it's way more necessarily think to be. So that's how I see it. I don't know about you, Kevin, because I know you've been on this journey longer than me. and how you see these changes. so you're saying I'm old, is that what you're saying? No, no, really, not really. That's not our man. no. It is funny because I have been in this space for quite some time and things have changed drastically. And what's interesting to me is that we're a Databricks partner and Databricks, they are at the leading forefront of GNI creating a lot of the models that people are using today. But even with the things that they're doing, things are changing on a weekly basis. And so like, we can go back 20 years, once I was out of school and started in this space. But it's really, think about, were old a month ago that were out. Things are just exponentially fast nowadays and that's unbelievable. It's just crazy. I agree. that's what I mentioned at beginning of the conversation. Customer ops is an industry that has been involved since its beginning. And I see a lot of room for improvement still. And the companies are still seeing value on what we do. Because some companies still like seeing customer ops as something just as part of the sales. But I think it goes beyond that. So I think, yeah, definitely there's. so much more to come and with the AI, I think we're to go way further being one of the most strategic positions of each company. You know, you've mentioned something more than once and I want to dive into this point that you've made because everybody looks at customer ops differently and organizations define it differently. So from your perspective, how would you define customer ops? Well, customer ops, Kevin, my point of view is a very strategic position in the company because it's the position that really brings revenue, constantly revenue to the table. Because you can have a client that just buy your services and once it's done, it's done, they do not renew, they go to a different provider, they go to your competitor because it's cheaper, because you know, I don't need whatever they're offering me. I can pay way cheaper than what I'm paying. but it's not about what they pay but how they are being served and provided with. And I think customer success, customer ops is this very strategic position where you show the customer what they need but they don't know yet they need. You know, that's not about price, it's about what you need but you don't know just yet you need it. So I'm helping you figure it out. So I see customer ops as very strategic position for each company. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that definition with our audience. I think that they'll really appreciate that. So let's kind of change gears a little bit and talk just a little bit more about you. So when you're not being, you know, in work, what do you like to Well, I love cooking. Actually, I've done professional cooking for a while in my life as a hobby, but I make some living out of it as well. And I did pretty well. was vegan for about four years, actually vegetarian, then vegan for about four years. And then I developed this personal chef where I bring all the restaurant experience to the people's home where I could deliver a whole course starters and then main course and then dessert with the most best experience of vegan food. So I love doing that. And that's also all about customer experience, right? So it's all about the experience, how the customer feels and how they experience what you're serving them. So knowing and having all this background and customer success, I use that in my advantage and I create this incredible experience for my customers in the cooking field. And it turned out to be perfect. It was pretty cool. I stopped doing that for a while because my schedule turned to be very busy. A lot of meetings, know, on the weekends, and then I couldn't do any more. But I'm still kind of looking forward to go back to it because I love doing it. And I love experiencing because I believe, like, eating brings you to a whole new life. Like, there's few experiences in life that you can do it without leaving the home, like reading, eating. watching a movie or listening to music. So I believe those sensual experiences bring you to places that you've never been before. That's what I tried to do with food. Well, I love that. You like to cook, I like to eat. You and I are gonna be good friends. I believe so. We got up with a good start. I love music. I love music. So give me one song that you think I should go and listen to. Kevin, that's a tricky one because I listen to so many different genres of songs. I don't have one specific song. Yesterday I was just listening to a very old song from seven years ago, guess, from Mufferge and songs. I don't know if know this band. They're kind of folk men, believe, indie or don't know what their genre is. But I love their song. They're so good. And I was listening to them. I was revisiting. the songs because bringing me back the time I was leaving the US. So was like, my God, I'm going back to that time where I was pretty happy and serious. So yeah, and then I was listening to it. So that's my advice for you right now. I love it. I'm going to go and listen to that for sure. This has been awesome connecting Lucas. Thank you so much for joining our show and I'm sure that you and I will connect and chat I hope so too. I really hope I could bring some good tips on the customer ops. And to everyone listening to it, it is a challenge in being a customer ops because you got to be very strategic. You got to understand about human behaviors, technology, but yeah, it's a great position to be in. It's a very strategic one. if you're looking forward to start your career or change your career to customer success, make sure to follow in Kevin. He's giving great advice for it also. Follow me on LinkedIn as well. I always put some articles and some posts about the customer world and how to get into it. So if you're one of them or just follow us, I think that would be great. All right, Lucas, we'll talk to you soon. See you, buddy. bye.