98 - Succeeding with Humility and Customer Obsession - Amy Downs

This episode is proudly brought to you by Vitally.io, the leading all-in-one customer success platform. Visit vitally.io/women today to schedule your demo and get your Airpods.

In this podcast episode, Amy Downs, the founder and CEO of Customer Obsessing Consulting, talks about her journey from being a software engineer to becoming a customer success leader and the lessons she learned along the way. The episode delves deep into the principles of humble leadership, the importance of creating a safe space within organizations, and the need for a customer-centric approach in business.

Drawing inspiration from the principles of servant leadership, Amy emphasizes the role of humility in leading teams that are supportive and customer-focused. Her insights, inspired by Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, hold critical lessons for leaders seeking to foster an environment where employees feel valued, not inferior.

Amy is sharing her unique consultative approach to customer success, from journey mapping, segmentation strategy, and digitization to team culture. 

In this episode, you'll learn about: 

• Amy's career journey from software engineer to company CEO
• Humility and servant leadership as a catalyst for career growth 
• Embracing intuition as women's superpower 
• Empowering organizations to be customer-centric

Follow Amy Downs and Customer Obsessing Consulting!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Women in Customer Success podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Vitaly, the all-in-one customer success platform. Take a qualified demo with the Vitaly team and get a free pair of AirPods. Vitaly maximizes the productivity, visibility and collaboration of your customer success team, helping to increase NRR and streamline operations. With Vitaly, your team can focus on the tasks and work that matter, while powerful automation takes care of the routine stuff. See why Vitaly is trusted by leading B2B customer success teams. Visit vitallyio slash women today to schedule your demo and get your AirPods. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Amy Downs on the podcast today. Amy is the founder and CEO of Customer Obsessing Consulting based out of Germany. Amy, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Thank you and so good to be here. Appreciate your time and having me on today.

Speaker 1: 1:12

The pleasure is mine really, since few minutes that we chatted before the recording. I just am so excited about this conversation for so many reasons. So, amy, thank you for being here, and let me ask you a few kind of quick questions to warm ourselves up. Amy, what would you say about yourself? Are you an extrovert or an introvert?

Speaker 2: 1:33

I am a, according to Myers-Briggs, a 75% extrovert.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Yes, Okay, that was precise.

Speaker 2: 1:42

And it's true, I'm more extroverted, for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Oh, that's really lovely. Is there any book that you would recommend to the audience? Anything that really caught your attention recently?

Speaker 2: 1:55

Yeah, so I would say not recent, but probably a good old classic, I would say Leading Greatly, by Bruné Brown. Yeah, I love all of her books, but yeah, I think her book on leadership and just being brave is just great knowledge to carry with you throughout your life journey.

Speaker 1: 2:13

You know what?

Speaker 2: 2:14

I just feel more connected with you Leading bravely, I should say I just feel more connected with you because you love Bruné Brown.

Speaker 1: 2:20

For me, she is like whoa the ultimate everything that she ever published is top notch. Yes, I agree.

Speaker 2: 2:27

That was a great great recommendation.

Speaker 1: 2:30

And Amy, just last of these quick questions. Do you think the 16-year-old you would be surprised to see you in this current role?

Speaker 2: 2:39

I love that question. I would say no. I think the 16-year-old me was always motivated, but one of the things that I thought about when I saw the spurring questions was I was always into customer success, even though it wasn't. I worked in the restaurant industry as I was in high school, all through college, and so I was always in a service role, always serving customers, always understanding the value that that brings, and I just have a bit of a service attitude if that makes sense. And so, yeah, I think she would not be all that surprised that I went into roles that were very close to the customer.

Speaker 1: 3:23

And I bet she wouldn't be at all surprised that you are a CEO and the founder of a company. But we'll come to that part. I'm just so interested in your career journey and how it all happened. You already mentioned you've been working in a restaurant, you've been in that industry, so talk me through what happened after you finished your school and entered the whole really adult work life.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Absolutely so I started my career journey as a software engineer. So I would say, even when we talk a lot about empowering women, I would say that my mom was such a great influence because she always told me my entire life, amy I think part of this is her part of this is growing up in Orlando, florida, sort of Walt Disney, like the land of dreams everything is possible. But she always told me, amy, there is absolutely nothing that you can't do. As long as you put your mind to it, you focus, you give it your energy. There's just nothing you can't do that anybody else on this planet couldn't do.

Speaker 2: 4:26

So I grew up thinking that I first went to school for law. That was not the profession for me and thank goodness I didn't continue down that path. Law in America, certainly not, I think, the best profession, because I loved computers from a really early age and I thought you know what do I love, what is a passion of mine? I was like I really like I like I love tinkering with them, I love programming, and so I decided to try to get a degree in computer science and as a woman that was very unheard of back then I was one of three women in my graduating class of over a thousand people in college and so I started my career as a software engineer and doing everything like across the full software belt in the life cycle from coding to testing to writing business requirements and doing support, and I got to see all of those roles really early in my career and then I progressed up into more project management work, mostly because I got very lonely programming and, being that extrovert, I also needed to be a bit more around people and so I started to get more into customer facing roles, so leading a lot of the kind of customer facing like responsibilities and building out processes and helping companies to become more customer obsessed.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Even like back in my early career days I moved up through that trajectory really helping businesses. I found really early on that I was really passionate and good about helping companies to find these like little problems that were getting in the way of delivering great experiences for customers and then I would go work with teens to fix them and that just kind of came up naturally for me. I was like, oh God, that really sucks. Why do we do it that way? Like that's a pretty painful experience for a customer. We could maybe we rework it this way. So I started to see these different patterns that would come up and then I would work with teens to go fix those and that got me a lot of credit with the folks that I worked with and that helped me to sort of progress my career further and further, because I think people took notice of like hey, all of these things are getting fixed and these team members are working together and the customer experience is improving.

Speaker 2: 6:29

And so I went on to lead multiple teams that started off with leading what we call technical account management teams, which were back in the day like the very early form of customer success, and then started to take more of the post sales function under my umbrella. So customer support, professional services, tech docs I've led the knock for a while. I've led IT teams for a while, but mostly all on that post sales side of the full journey pre-sales, engineering, you name it and I did that kind of over and over again. So progressively moving up and sitting on leadership teams again with tech companies where mostly generally I was the only woman in the room in many of those teams. But that's sort of how my career progressed.

Speaker 2: 7:13

The last job I had before I opened the consultancy was at a company called Twilio, which many of the listeners may know, and I started off with a team of 12 there leading Europe on the Post-Sales side, and, through that crazy COVID growth curve that many companies were going through, built that team up to over 250 and had about a billion under revenue management across all of Europe and Asia Pacific. So lots of cool growth, lots of opportunity to sort of test this framework out that I had been building over so many years to really deliver great experiences to customers time and time again and really test that at scale. And that's when I thought you know, there's something to this. Maybe, maybe we can take this to other companies, other organizations, and help them to succeed and accelerate their success in customer success and all the post-sales functions much more quickly and help leaders to be leaders that have best practices sort of at their fingertips so that they can scale their organizations and build those great experiences too. So then I started the consultancy.

Speaker 1: 8:16

And it all happened just like that, right. Maybe this is just so awesome, Like you gave us such a wonderful snippet of your career journey in less than two minutes and it is such a fascinating career. I mean just this number. You grew the team from 12 to 250. I could ask so many questions about it, but, like one question that I'm sure the listeners would want to know more about is like if you could pick two or three things as the main ingredients of that recipe of what does it mean to be a successful woman? Very often, as you said, the only one in the room in tech like what was your recipe for growing and working successfully in such a large organization?

Speaker 2: 9:00

I think there's a few key things. They're all centered, most of them centered around just personality. One I would say be yourself and be humble. People like getting things done and working with people who they like, so I would say that's always been a recipe for success. I think in a lot of cases and I heard this very early on in my career many women were like you know, no, you have to be like the men in the room and I thought that is such crap, like I'm just going to be myself, you know, and if people don't like it, then it's probably not the right place for me to be, period.

Speaker 2: 9:34

So I've always tried to stay true to myself. I'm, you know, a pretty warm, caring person and I do get things done and very operational minded execution focused. You know I use a lot of data driven decision making, but at the end of the day, you know our business and the business of all companies we're all in the people business and we're all in the business of making sure that teams are empowered and that they are doing the best work, that and to do things that are like, really, that they are passionate about, and so I would say that a lot of the success, my success? Yes, I've, I learned all these like recipes and kind of prescriptions, if you will, frameworks, built these frameworks to be successful. But at the end of the day, I think the biggest part of that success was just kind of a staying true to myself being more of a servant leader than being somebody that's like you got to go do this. You know, it's like the people that I've worked with and having had the pleasure of reading, have all been just really amazing people and really just kind of working through them. And I think this is something as an early leader it's. You know you're so used to saying, okay, I'm just going to go get it done because it's so much faster.

Speaker 2: 10:40

And as you do that, you realize you're getting in the way of your people and your leaders having the opportunity to actually go do great things or to fall down and make mistakes and to learn from those, and then you being there to kind of pick them back up and usher them through that journey. So so I would say that that servant leadership, sort of staying true to yourself, that was a big thing. The other thing is working through your teams, making sure that you are not doing the job for them but empowering them to be their best selves, understanding who they are like as an individual, what their strengths are, how to encourage and motivate them to do their best role and, again, work through them, give them direction, yes, but don't tell them what to do. They're going to figure it out, they'll figure that out on their own. And then I would say, thirdly, you know, navigating that, that being in more of an executive seat and executive role, again, kind of staying true to yourself and true to who you are and understanding your own superpower and strengths.

Speaker 2: 11:35

I would say a lot of what I did was using my own internal intuition, and I do think this is a superpower that so many women like do not leverage.

Speaker 2: 11:44

It's very effective in executive settings, I will say, and people, I think, I think sometimes women are a bit afraid of talking about that because it seems, maybe in a way, to be this like you know, not this hard skill, right, but more of this like kind of soft, innate skill that women have.

Speaker 2: 12:05

But it is so powerful and I would say that most of the just really great decisions that I've made in my life I've made because my intuition, my gut, is like that is the direction you should be going, and I think there's a lot of science behind intuition and gut feeling and the mind-brain connection that I will not go into, but, but there is science proving that the way that women use their, what we're doing is we're kind of able to connect a lot of the dots, and so it's not just a gut feeling, I mean, it's actually a decision making process that's happening, that's allowing us to use the feelings and sort of these emotions that we have in our body to help us make better decisions. And so I would say this is a superpower that I think I've used it naturally and I think many women use it naturally. That is something that I think is certainly a superpower should be highlighted as it relates to being an executive, leadership teams and also being on in board rooms, so something that it has helped me Grow and accelerate my career greatly.

Speaker 1: 13:08

I'm so appreciative of you talking about intuition as a superpower. I couldn't agree more and, as you said, I sometimes it seems that we are not leveraging it enough. Maybe perhaps not only the soft skill, but how do you measure? You know, when you are in executive board room, like it's all about the data, is it's all about the numbers, especially in tex, and you need to have Very strong narrative about the numbers. And then when you put the intuition there, you know it's almost counterintuitive with what you are required to do.

Speaker 1: 13:40

I just love how you're calling it out, because I personally have seen it in my career working wonders very often. It's not about very often strategy and planning. It's really sometimes your gut feeling is telling you what you should be doing in that moment and later on it proves to be the right thing because of your intuition, because you Kind of opened up yourself to those emotions, right. So I really like that you're acknowledging it as being women's superpower and we all should be leveraging it much more rather than potentially being afraid of it as Something that could be attributed to softer skills or maybe women specific skills. Let's take ownership of that. It is an amazing superpower to have.

Speaker 2: 14:21

Absolutely, and it does combine well with the other ones too, right? I mean, there there's a I think it as you think about using that. I mentioned earlier that data driven decision making. You still need that to kind of back up these intuitive feelings. And, quite honestly, a lot of those intuitive feelings are coming because you have the information. You're just able to sort of Circulate it and feel it in a way. That's a little bit different. It's not always just about like this number, but you're taking all these other data points into account. Yeah, I love how you say let's embrace it, we should, we should. It's so important.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Absolutely, and Amy is still talking about it leadership and those straights. I really, really love the ones that you described and I want to pick up on the one you said, which is be humble, just because I incredibly value that trade of being humble and for me personally, it is the trade that I'm looking for in the guest for the postcards, the trade I'm looking for in people that I want to work with order. I want to work for me, which sometimes seems almost again counter intuitive in tech, because tech it's all about rat race. Like you know, grabbing everything as much as you can very often just seems like that. Maybe I'm wrong. What does it actually mean for you to be humble as a leader, and how do you portrayed the street? I'm really like I'm fascinating by you calling it out and I want to Just get more ideas from you. What do you mean by it?

Speaker 2: 15:49

I think a lot of it has to do with and I mentioned this concept of servant leadership and I think these two go a little bit Hand in hand.

Speaker 2: 15:58

As a leader, being humble, I mean there's a bit of this balance because as a leader, your job is to really like go out there, be the voice of your team, you know, make sure that they're recognized, that they're heard, that they're being kind of propelled within the organization and being seen. But there's a way to do that. Where you don't look like you, where the best ever you know everybody else is terrible, there's a way to do that. I sort of have this humility as a leader, as an individual contributor, as a team, where you bring the value and what that team is bringing you know to the organization, but you're doing it in a way that's also lifting others up. So it's not kind of this Us or them type of mentality or type of philosophy, but ultimately it's like we as an organization are basically doing great things. So I would say, as a leader and you think about humbleness, there still needs to be this you can still be humble and to the horn of your team so that they feel elevated and lifted up, but in a way, that's not when the best nobody else's fashion. I also think that, to your point, there is when you're working with I mean, we are again in the people business and I think being like human, like letting people know that you had a bad day or like I'm having a really crap day I might not be fully here for you all today, but like just being able to sort of open up this maybe goes back to Bernabe or out a bit, but like being able to open up, to be vulnerable with the people that are around you and to know that maybe they judge you, maybe they don't, but like that's okay, that's them and it's okay for you to be more open.

Speaker 2: 17:42

I think that like that bit of humility, if you will, and your ability to kind of have this vulnerability or to show I should say show your vulnerability to others, also helps them to open up and feel like, okay, I'm in a safe environment where, like, if I tell my boss I'm having a really bad day or a really good day or whatever it is, they're going to be okay with it. And it's okay to have those types of conversations at work because a lot of times people you know performance is affected not just by, like how you're doing at work, but like what's going on in your world, and you've got to have a bit more of this. Like I think that's part of being a humble leader is having more of an awareness and a visibility that, like you know, we are all human and stuff's happening outside of work, you know, day in and day out that might be leading to us feeling a certain way, you know, one week versus the other week. And, yeah, just being able to sort of create an environment where you can have those conversations and people feel safe to sort of be themselves and that they're not going to be, you know it's, and that ultimately, the job of the leader of the team etc. Is to kind of support these people and yeah, so I think this is, this is a lot of, at least the way that it shows up.

Speaker 2: 18:57

I think the most for me is being able to be humble and kind of be yourself and not take things.

Speaker 2: 19:02

I mean, yes, taking, then you know taking your job seriously, but like not taking everything all too like to your point in tech, like, ah, we all have to, like, you know, it's all about the job.

Speaker 2: 19:13

Like, now, it's all about the human beings that get the job done and like, if you get that piece right and this is part of the reason that I've been so successful is because and that's probably not a humble statement, but I'll say it anyway that, like, helping companies to sort of have a bit more of that, like that style of leadership, really helps them to be better companies.

Speaker 2: 19:38

And so, again, it's all about like, the people, the human beings, having that servant leadership, bringing those people together a bit more cross functionally. That like leads to customer centricity, which is what I founded the consulting company on is. It's not about like yes, it's about building these great experiences for customers. But the reason you do that is because you have a great set of people who all like, love working together and you're creating the environment for that to happen, and there are programmatic ways to do that, and so this is a lot of like how important it is to kind of bring those characteristics into companies and organizations to succeed and be able to be customer centric and customer obsessed. It's all connected.

Speaker 1: 20:23

I'm so glad you're bringing those dots together. I can see already you know incredible value in your consulting business and I'm so glad that you mentioned being vulnerable and, of course, brené Brown's work on it. But also she says that is the real courage, right? Because if you're a leader, it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable in front of everybody around you, and that is something that is a catalyst for others. That is really something that can empower others.

Speaker 1: 20:50

I just remember a few years ago, when I was probably at the beginning of my customer success career, some of the most empowering moments for me was seeing my boss or my manager being vulnerable. I'm being open to say I don't know, or I think I messed up, or I really don't know what we are doing here. Let's figure it out together. That was such a huge almost shock for me at the moment, because until that point, I almost expected leaders to know it all right, like you look up to them and you think it's okay, what do we do? You should know the answers. And it really empowered me to see my leaders in different light and understand. Well, yes, it's all human right. That's what being in a company, in the team and me is we all are figuring it out together and it's just okay to be vulnerable, so I can attest how, when people around you vulnerable, they really allow you personally to be empowered and to do your best work, because it is just the perfect environment for it.

Speaker 1: 21:48

But you're bringing all of it into your business. So, as he said, in the midst of covidia you were still with two yorks a huge growth with the organization and then, bang, you just decide well, let me Do something else, let me bring it all somewhere else. I really wonder what for those motivations behind starting customer obsessed consultancy and also starting with a name, because you, you loved working for customer obsessed Company is like much, much long before you even thought of having it in your own business. So what does it mean for you and what was the motivation for starting your business? Sorry, too many questions, but Absolutely there's. No, it's gonna tell me about it.

Speaker 2: 22:28

It's great. So I actually dipped my toe in the consulting waters after life size because I, as I mentioned, I started to see maybe that's part of the software, mine. But I started to see all of these patterns over and over again at the companies I was working with and I thought this is very prescriptive and I was building out, like overtime, some framework. So I was like, okay, this, this, I'm gonna tweak a little bit, but I can actually use the same, like you know, recipe Over at this company. And so I had done that and notices patterns again and again and again and I thought, okay, there is really something to this. So I did a little consulting after I left my size but I wasn't convinced that the framework that I had built like could really scale. And I want to just test that out a bit and test the waters on it. And this is why I brought it to twillio, because I thought, okay, this is a company, they're going places, it's easy to scale up. And I did the kind of the framework scale on a global basis. But I hadn't really tested it at, like I said, at a billion rafting, which is a lot of revenue to manage and to see if the framework stands the test across very complex regions. And so I think this was when I was like afterwards I was like I am convinced, like there's really something here that is scalable, that can work and I want to bring it to other companies because and I'm able you know, it's like every time I did it, the teams and I got faster and faster implementing it. Because I was like, okay, I can like help a lot more companies rather than just going into company Sitting in the operator role. What if I took this and really like helped to accelerate the success of CS leaders and post sales leaders and sort of bringing some of these best practices and like really building this kind of Culture of customer obsession as well as all of the framework kind of bring that into place and doing it super quickly. So I was like I'm gonna go do that, but I can't do it alone and I know that about myself. I've been a leader teams for many years. I need a strong support system. So the universe sometimes opens these doors and if you're, as you mentioned earlier, if you're kind of hard as open and you're listening, things kind of come to you.

Speaker 2: 24:38

So there was a woman that I had helped. She helped her with her thesis when she was in her master's program around customer experience and had done some mentorship with her. She worked for company that was owned by a friend of mine and I thought, and he's like she's about to leave, she's like Up for grabs. And I was like oh my gosh, because when I helped her with her master's thesis which was like three years prior to that I told her I said one day we're gonna work together. So I don't know when, I don't know how, but I have a feeling we're gonna work together. So I ended up talking to her, we had lunch and she's like I'm absolutely interested, like yes, so I was like perfect and she's very you know, and very operational and execution focused, as well as has some marketing background, which is a huge benefit.

Speaker 2: 25:23

And then also, serendipitously, a woman that used to work for me that ran all the programs at, truly all the cross functional programs, project management background. She needed a reference because she's like I'm looking for a new role and I thought I have something even better Because I could see these two superpowers kind of coming together. She had more of like the sales experience she said some team leadership experience, highly extroverted a little, a little bit introverted, you know, since a good match for these two coming together in those really strong project management skills as well. I thought between the three of us I mean, what a powerhouse. She said yes as well. So we all came together December of last year, so we're almost up on our one year anniversary to form the company and, yeah, and really be the leaders in Europe for the kind of experts on all things customer success and post sales.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Well, congrats. I'm super proud to hear that story and to realize that this is like all female founded company consultancy in customer success, which gives me I don't know why just so much pride. I'm just so proud of all of you because I know those ladies as well and they are all superpowers, so just I can just imagine what you all are going to achieve together. And congratulations in advance for your first anniversary. It's just coming up very soon. This is awesome how it all started. Tell me more about your framework, like when you were talking about it. You like you are so passionate about it, like your face is glowing which is, and I'm just thinking- tell me more.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Tell me more. What is the framework? How can people start with it? How do you connect all of those amazing values that you have into, you know, creating those awesome customer experience? Like I'm all ears.

Speaker 2: 27:09

Absolutely so. Our mission is to empower every organization in the world to be customer centric and we do this by applying. We have a very practical framework, again that yeah, building over all of these years that helps companies get there, and so we typically offer sort of three areas of expertise. And again we see it as this holistic, as I've been mentioning, kind of throughout our conversations, that we focus on the people, the culture, the process in the systems and we look at this kind of how our framework was established and build typically would come into organizations. We do a little bit of like a discovery to better understand where they're at in their journey. Many companies are just like starting their customer success function. Many are going through like transformational change in CS. So we see a lot of things happening, especially right now, around Efficiency and driving more efficiency into customer success, commercial ownership, so taking more of a role in commercial responsibility within customer success. There's a lot of teams are Undergoing change and that will come in and help as well, and so what we typically do is do a little bit of discovery, gap analysis to understand where customers are at from a maturity perspective and where there's like when are their biggest challenges, the pain points of things that you know, that for CS leaders, you know, and sales leaders who own CS, like their bosses are like what you know, what's going on here? How are we thinking about this? So we come in, we bring some of that external vantage point expertise about kind of what's going on in the market and where the organization sit from a maturity perspective, and then we map out A plan to kind of help come in and build a framework for them.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Generally, cs teams are so deep down into the weeds of like actually doing things for customers that it's super hard to sort of pull themselves up, think about things from a thirty thousand foot view and say, okay, strategically, like where do we want to be this year, like how are we gonna get there and how are we gonna actually move the team forward. So we help a lot with that kind of strategic thinking, like helping to sort of map out a bit of a trajectory for them and then we'll look at what are the big things that kind of need to happen along that trajectory. So we do a lot of things like customer success charter. So helping the team, you know, really like Get down and dirty about what are we actually responsible for and what are we maybe, more importantly, not responsible for, because typically CS teams tend to catch it all.

Speaker 2: 29:32

We do a lot of capacity and activity tracking and planning. So better understanding, like, what are the activities of CS and you're doing today? Do those need to be in or out, and how do we maybe shift those to other teams if they don't need to be into in the remit, because, depending on what the remit is, for example, and then mapping the activities that the team is doing so that we can better understand capacity, you know, are there activities that are right for automation, that we need to digitize? Are there activities that need to stay, that you know where the team can be that more proactive, especially those higher segments. We look at segmentation strategy and basically kind of hone in and help teams to find, like, what should that segmentation strategy look like? What are the portfolio ratios for the CSM's? And really digging down into, like, how do we map out the portfolio ratios by customer success manager? What is the tech stack look like? You know, are there opportunities to really, you know, bring in tech or leverage existing tech to help these teams be more effective, more efficient, have better visibility into forecasting and into the numbers and to renewals and up, so cross all opportunities.

Speaker 2: 30:37

We do this all in a workshop format so we work with the teams and I guess this again goes back to this my philosophy of not like doing everything for everyone. What we do is we work alongside leaders to bring in the team members so that they are part of building this new, like all of the pieces. And we do a lot of journey mapping. That's a huge part of what we do Looking at the journey, documenting all the playbooks along the journey and how, all the metrics along the journey, and then wiring that into the tech and into reporting and dashboarding. What we do is we facilitate workshops with this framework along the customer journey, always bringing in that lens of thinking about it. You know that's part of what we do like let's think about it from the customer's perspective. What are their objectives, how do they derive value? And building along that journey line. All through this workshop format and then we do all.

Speaker 2: 31:28

I think what differentiates us, because we do have team members, is that we're not just kind of going out doing Individual like strategic consulting, that we're doing the strategy, but we're also getting embedded in the organization operationally so that we're not the consultant say that comes in, gives you some good advice and then we're out. Nobody ever like does anything with it. We we hop in, we work alongside the teams. We're doing a lot of collaboration, a lot of brainstorming. You know a lot of like workshop work that we come out of this workshops. We detail and document everything.

Speaker 2: 31:58

We build the entire, you know play, all the playbooks, all the work, design, all the roles and responsibilities, crew development frameworks, the journey maps, all the kpi.

Speaker 2: 32:07

So like we're doing all of the operational heavy lifting Going back, all the teams have to do is really review it and then they've got these really well defined Charters and playbooks and artifacts that they can then use to run the company. You know we help with like a show through the rp process on the tag. We bring in other folks to help implement tech when necessary. So and you know, kind of wire in all the playbooks into the tech so they can realize the tech strategy and the digitization of cs. So I think that the piece where we really differentiate ourselves is really helping the teams to not just giving the advice but giving the advice what great and best practices look like, but also accelerating their ability to get there along the journey by working alongside them, and then, once we're gone, the other benefit is the teams own it because it's there, it's like all documented, they've helped to build it, it's all their ideas, and so they then own it, going forward not thinking that it's not their work product, because it is the work.

Speaker 1: 33:08

You're entirely enabling them to own their new toolkit and start working with it, because anyone almost can provide some strategy or they can read about it, they can have the ideas about it, but what they are missing is really that journey that is happening on how to implement it and what do they do with it. So it's really it's great to see that approach, really, so they can be completely Like, ready to have a go with it and just just run with it because it's theirs.

Speaker 2: 33:36

Absolutely absolutely, and the great thing is they are running with that as kind of part of us working with them, because the process is start to change and then they use them and we do. I guess I probably should have highlighted this. We do a lot of skills coaching along the way. So this is the other, like the people kind of culture piece where we're enabling the teams because in many cases the roles are changing. Right. People are like okay, we now have to specialize. So now we don't just have a csm who is doing onboarding and or implementation whatever you call that and support and solutions architecture. Like you're starting to specialize those roles and figuring out like where the skills that lie within the team, where the gaps, and then how do we go fill those gaps through skills coaching. And so we do a lot of the skills coaching along the journey so that the team members are really developing the skills that they need to be successful in their roles and then helping them to kind of get into those roles and then, as they're in the roles, coaching.

Speaker 2: 34:32

And so we do a lot of coaching around like real world use case examples. So, for example, escalation management or sbr's, ebr's, whatever different cbrs, whatever companies call them, but you have a different like touch points. So so we do a lot of like skills coaching with real world use case examples, because you know we're also getting kind of embedded in their business. So we understand. We understand that we can bring in best practices, strategic thinking, critical questions, things like that to help them with the real customers that they're working with, so that they do One or two with us and they're like I got it, okay. I got it like now I'm good to go and I'm off to the races. So this is also part of that, you know, kind of strategy to empower them to be successful in those roles.

Speaker 1: 35:15

It is a time when, as you mentioned, so many teams are going to transformations and especially now in planning for budgets for next year. There is always a question of what happens with customer success, like what direction they're taking, because almost every team is going to Get transformed as a result of current economy and what's happening in the last three years of big bull of customer success. So I'm really glad how you emphasize the approach of risk killing and upskilling and Coaching for different skills, because I'm hearing loads of CSM being uncomfortable with transitions because they are either asked to now be suddenly more commercial or Go in some other directions and they want their CSM job to still be the same, based on the things that they really liked about it. What would be your advice for CSM's? How to embrace those changes?

Speaker 1: 36:07

I know I personally I love all the changes and I was thinking of it immediately. Well, this is awesome new career opportunity, like now you can be even called different names. Now you can specialize like so awesome. Like what is there to be afraid of? But I know it doesn't come naturally for everybody. So what are some of your, as we wrap this up like, what is your main advice for CSM's that are going through transformation, like how can they raise that changes to think of more benefits for them rather than Negative aspects of companies changing.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Yes, I think this is such a great what you I think you probably answered a lot of, or at least said a lot of. What I would have said is a lot of life's learnings come from being open to change, and I will say that the only, the only constant in life is change, and this will happen throughout your career. And if you do look at it, you know half glass full versus maybe a half glass empty. You look at it with this kind of open mindset if you subscribe to Buddhism.

Speaker 2: 37:10

It's basically, like you know, it's a new beginning, everything as a new beginning, and this is something that you can learn from, that you can grow from and, I think, embracing the change in being being somebody. I mean, not everyone's going to be like, yes, I'm going to be the champion for it, but at least being open to saying, okay, but let me explore it. And if it's not for me, that's okay. But at least give it a bit of a chance. And don't I would say maybe don't make your mind up to too fast or too quickly about what it might look like, because the only way that you will know is to actually Sit in that seat and to understand what those new skills or those new opportunities are going to look like, and so you can sit back all day long and think of and think that you know that what, what, what the future outcome or what the future might look like.

Speaker 2: 37:53

But none of us are fortune tellers.

Speaker 2: 37:56

So I would say, just be open about it, like, embrace it, learn the new skills that companies are offering.

Speaker 2: 38:01

If they're not offering those, then speak up and say you know, I would like to get some coaching and training In these skills. I would also say, maybe be of it vulnerable with your leaders and let them know that you are feeling anxiety about this change and maybe how could they help you to sort of move through it. Because, to your point, some people are going to be very much like, yes, I'm all on board, this is exciting and interesting, and there are many folks that are going to be like the scarce that you know what I mean, like I don't even know how to process this. So I think just if you have that relationship if not with your manager, then maybe talk about it with somebody that you know that is a bit better embracing that change that can like help you to maybe get a different perspective or fresh perspective on how it might be actually a good opportunity for you to move your career forward. And if it's not for you, that's okay, but at least you know you've given it a shot and a chance.

Speaker 1: 38:52

I would say it's a wonderful advice, amy. Yes, yes, change is the only constant and we all have a perfect opportunity how we respond to this change, because we can make our lives and lives and work of people around us Much more pleasant by responding with open mind, versus being the ones that, well, we just respond any other way. Not to go into details. Exactly, amy, this has been such a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for coming to the show and sharing all of this with us.

Speaker 2: 39:26

Thank you for your time and for sharing all of these great conversations with so many others out there, so it's a great work that you're doing.

Speaker 1: 39:36

Thank you for listening. Next week new episode, subscribe to the podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn so you're up to date with all the new episodes and the content I'm curating for you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.