107 - How to Get Started with Digital Customer Success - Marley Wagner

In this episode, Marley Wagner, a digital customer success consultant with a wealth of experience, takes you on a journey through the digital customer success landscape. Discover how to get started with digital customer success, achieve work-life balance, and how to be a good customer success professional.

In this episode, you’ll find the answers to these two questions: 

• What does a digital customer success consultant do?
• What is digital customer success experience?

Plus, if you were wondering where to start when creating a digital CS practice, you’ll hear about the shortest way to get started in digital customer success, and how to identify and stand up for your personal needs in the workplace.

Don’t miss out - tune in to learn from Marley’s digital customer success experience and get some useful tips for succeeding in the digital world.

Follow Marley Wagner!

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About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

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Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, lovely, are you a woman who wants to continue learning, challenge yourself, teach, mentor, belong, inspire others and make an impact? If that sounds like you keep listening, because I just have to tell you something very important, I want to invite you to our brand new membership, the PowerUp Tribe. It is your ultimate destination in customer success. Yeah, you heard it well, this is not just a podcast. This is your customer success career destination. Here at the PowerUp Tribe, we all are on a mission to empower women to thrive in their careers through enablement, networking, mentoring and sharing inspiring experiences. So what will you find in our gorgeous new community and how will that help you? You'll find dedicated enablement, including master classes and roleplay courses so you can increase your business acumen and become more commercially minded. So, of course, you can increase the revenue, reputation and customer outcomes. You will find peer mentoring programs so you can develop your leadership skills and get clarity on your career direction. You'll find continuous opportunities to showcase your work through speaking opportunities and our regular connect sessions. Yes, you will find PowerUp Connect sessions, including podcast clubs, books clubs, coffee chats and ask me anything sessions with experts. You will also find monthly teams for creating content for your own personal development and developing your personal brand so you can become more visible and engage in more conversations. At the PowerUp Tribe, we are redefining what does real connection means in customer success. Join us now. Go to womenincscom slash PowerUp. Join us now and I'll see you there in our gorgeous PowerUp Tribe.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Today I'm talking to Marley Wagner, the digital customer success consultant. Marley is the leader in the digital success and B2B marketing space. She's been leading marketing and event programs within startups, nonprofits, retail and the arts. Her multi industry experience has developed her unique approach that focuses on building brand reputation, firstly, and trust through digital channels. So she's going to teach us today how to start with a digital customer success strategy, how good it looks like when you're just starting out and what is your ideal digital customer success state. What is good when you're starting out and what's the North Star you want to achieve. We also touch upon parenting, juggling work and life and figuring out what works for you and how to ask for it. So stay tuned for this conversation.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Hi everyone, this is Marius Cobepile and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast, the first women only podcast where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place, so let's tune in. Welcome to the new episode of Women in Customer Success podcast. It is a really exciting day because I am talking to Marley Wagner, the digital customer success consultant. So far, every episode about digital customer success have been very, very popular, so I'm just so excited to hear from Marley about her experience. What does it even mean to be a digital CS consultant? It's like very nice and catchy title, actually, plus so many other topics related being a woman in tech, being a mother in tech, etc. So, marley, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 4:11

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I'm so excited for our conversation today, marley, I would like all my listeners to get to know you a bit better, so would you like to tell us where are you calling from? Where are you?

Speaker 2: 4:21

based. Yes, I'm in Denver, Colorado it is. Yesterday it was snowing and today I think it's going to be like a high of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So big temperature difference. We're hoping spring will actually be here soon.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Would you describe yourself as an introvert or an extrovert? So?

Speaker 2: 4:41

I always call myself an extroverted introvert. I'm very social, I love chatting with people, making those connections, but I definitely need my rest time, my downtime, my thinking time on my own in between those kind of social interactions. So what's your ideal environment for a rest time? I love to read, although I've been doing a lot more audiobooks lately. I also love true crime, so love all those podcasts of all the true crime stories. I love it. Do you live?

Speaker 1: 5:16

in Colorado, in Denver, rocky mountains are just down there. Now I need to ask you are you a pretty good out-dory person, like going on hikes enjoying the beauty of Rocky mountains, or would you rather chill out next to the pool?

Speaker 2: 5:31

What would you prefer? Well, don't get me wrong. I love to chill out by a pool, but I am a big hiker. I'm not a skier, which people are often surprised to hear, living in Colorado, but I do love to hike. So I actually love the Rocky Mountains in the warm weather even more than during the snow. Oh, wonderful.

Speaker 1: 5:49

And last of those very rapid-fire questions. You are listening to audiobooks. What's on your playlist or most recent audiobooks?

Speaker 2: 5:58

Yeah, actually, most recently I've been listening to a fiction book that I had never heard of. It just popped up randomly on my suggestions, a little out of my normal read, but it's called the City of Girls. It's about New York City and theater in New York in the 1940s. Really really good. Again, a little different than my typical read, but that's been my most recent one and I've really enjoyed it Very nice.

Speaker 1: 6:23

It sounds really good like Tieta Girls, 1940s cabaret style. Oh wonderful. Okay, marley, I would like to find out more about your career. Typically, I like to ask a question like would a 16-year-old be surprised to find you where you are today? So it's the same question for you, because I would like to understand from your 16-year-old until today what was that journey and career path.

Speaker 2: 6:47

I think my 16-year-old self would be very surprised. Yes, At 16, I definitely did not know what customer success was, let alone digital customer success. In college, I thought I wanted to work in the fashion industry. That was really the path that I was going down. I also was a semi-professional dancer during college. That was sort of my side hustle, if you will, at the time. So very, very different from what my world looks like today.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Tell me about a professional dancer. What style was that?

Speaker 2: 7:19

Yes, I performed with a semi-professional company in ballet and musical theater in Minnesota, which is where I'm from, for almost 10 years, up until my mid-20s. I missed dancing. I love it. I taught dance for a long time and it's a true passion of mine, aside from what I do professionally, that's so good.

Speaker 1: 7:40

I didn't know that really, I was also like I was studying to be a classical musician and I was for some time, and the teacher as well. So just having that performance background, it's so awesome. That is so cool. I'm happy to discover a fact that I didn't know about you Ballet, oh my gosh, I'm so untalented for that. I really admire everybody who did it. That's awesome. Okay, so, from professional dancer, from ballet, from performing arts, what happened? What was your journey? What did you study to get into digital customer success? I'm sure it wasn't overnight.

Speaker 2: 8:20

It was not Definitely. I feel like every customer success journey has its twists and whines and everyone takes their own path, which I think is part of what makes our community so wonderful. So early in my career I was working in events, which again makes sense with my deaf dance background. I was doing events and event marketing. I used to produce a film festival all sorts of really, really fun events that I got to work on. But as I got a little bit older, the hours of being an events professional are just so grueling I really. I mean, I was working so many evenings, so many weekends and I knew that I wanted to find something that was just as interesting to me but a little more stable, more like nine to five hours. So I moved into the digital marketing space, which was a pretty seamless transition from events. Marketing was always a part of what I was doing with those events and planning. So I moved into digital marketing. Absolutely loved digital marketing, did that for many years, and then I kind of found myself in customer success on accident at the end of 2017.

Speaker 2: 9:32

The end of 2017, I got a job at ESG in a marketing role. Totally didn't know what customer success was still right. I was like, great, I can market anything, it doesn't matter. And little did I know what that would turn into. When I first joined ESG, they were in the very, very early stages of transitioning from a customer training and education business into customer success. So I had the opportunity to really help shape and define what customer success as a service looked like.

Speaker 2: 10:09

For ESG. We trademarked that term and I've had the opportunity to both run ESG's own digital marketing practice as well as be client facing and really become an expert in the digital customer success space. It just sort of was a natural transition because of the nature of our business, the nature of the clients we were working with and my background and expertise. I was able to easily understand those digital components of CS that not so many people in the world really have done before, and then, working for a customer success focused company, obviously quickly became an expert in that field. So it was just magical to get to combine those two things that I love to do and have so much fun doing.

Speaker 1: 10:54

It's really, as you said, kind of seamless journey, but from very different areas, but absolutely common sense and very natural transition. Esg is one of those companies that were pioneers of customer success as a consultancy as well. You said, yes, they trademarked customer success as a service. When I found out about them a few years ago, I was just so pleasantly surprised because just a little sideways story my husband was very business minded, kept on asking me oh, don't you guys have those customer success consultants? You know so many different resources to come in and just do the CS work actually. And a few years ago I was saying, oh, no, no, no, you need to know the product, you need to be in the company. Not every company would want to have consultants. Little did I know. I found out so many customer success consulting companies, esg being one of the first ones, and today that is absolutely normal thing to do. I believe you are also an independent consultant as well, right? So what do you do as a consultant at the moment?

Speaker 2: 12:03

I am yes, so I'm going to back up to explain this a little bit. So I had my first daughter at the end of 2022. And as soon as they found out I was pregnant, I knew that I wanted to take more of an extended maternity leave. Thankfully, my CEO at ESG, michael Harnam, was absolutely amazing. He was very supportive in me doing that. So I was lucky enough to be able to take all of 2023 off of we'll call it off of paid work, because being a state home parent is certainly work, but I took the whole year off from being at my computer and doing paid work to spend with my daughter, sloan.

Speaker 2: 12:44

It was such a special year, such a special time, and as the end of 2023 approached and I was thinking about, okay, my plan is to go back in early 2024.

Speaker 2: 12:55

What does that look like for me? Now I realized that I just loved that time with her so much that I wasn't ready and I didn't want to go back full time into paid work. So, again, thank you to my wonderful CEO, who was not mad at me when I told him that, and so I've been able to step into both a new role with ESG as an executive consultant of digital customer success through their company, as well as taking on clients in a similar vein independently on my own. That flexibility has really just it's exactly what I was looking for. So I am able to have that time with my daughter, spend whole days during the week with her and get that quality time, but make sure I'm still using my brain and using all these skills I've learned and I did miss that part when I was completely full-time with her. So I'm really really happy to be back in the workforce if you will, the paid workforce and have that balance in these new roles that I've taken on. So it's been wonderful.

Speaker 1: 14:02

I'm really glad that you managed to do it for yourself, that you asked your CEOs, and you were surely confident and assertive in knowing what you want to do and what is best for your family.

Speaker 1: 14:15

I can so much relate. My kids are now a little bit older, like nine and six, but as the years were passing, I was realizing how, with every further or next year, they need you even more than when they were so little and it was just so nice to spend time with them. But the homework and so many activities like I also really wanted that bigger balance freedom. That's why I also went into consulting, so I can so relate to you. Before we go much more deeper into the digital CES, you have transitioned really well in your career to do different things and now being on a place where you're really content, seemingly at least, with your family life, personal and professional life, what's your advice for women who would like to have either more freedom or more balance, like how should they position themselves and how they should ask for the things that they need and still being really seen as good professionals?

Speaker 2: 15:16

Yeah, I think it's a really important question and I think it's a really hard question, right? I don't think there's like a magic formula. You'll probably hear me say that again about other things we talk about, but the reality is almost any situation we're gonna face in our lives personal, professional, whatever. There's not like a magic path that's going to take you where you wanna go, but I think the important things to think about when you're thinking about okay, what do I want for my life? What do I want my life to look like. I think that's where you need to start. You have to create that picture for yourself of the ideal scenario, the ideal work-life balance, whatever it is. Make sure it's really clear in your head first, and then all you can really do is ask and stand up for yourself and be clear in what you want and why you want it, and hopefully you'll be able to work with wonderful leaders, like I have had the opportunity to, who are open to that and who wanna support you and who want you not only to be successful in your career but to be really happy in your life. You know, and I think that even plays into a component when your job's searching right.

Speaker 2: 16:28

We're not. I never expected to want to be a stay-at-home mom for any period of time. If you had asked me, even five years ago, would you wanna stay home for a year with your child? My answer would have been no. So we're not always gonna anticipate what we're gonna want later in our lives, but I think surrounding ourselves by people who are going to support us, whatever those changing needs and wants are. You know, of course, in your personal life, that's important, but also in your career. Who's your boss? Where are you working for? Who is on the leadership team of your company right? Do they support employees? Maybe it has nothing to do with becoming a mom and taking time off. Maybe it has to do with hey, I wanna go get this certification or I wanna go back to school in order to be able to take my career to the next level or in a different direction. Are you surrounding yourself with leaders that are gonna support those decisions and really be your cheerleaders and help you get to where you wanna go?

Speaker 1: 17:26

That's really great. Call out to be very careful, especially when you are job searching, or what is the company's values? How do you see others are being treated Like? Do more of a research and speak with a lot of people to understand, from your boss to your peers, how the culture really is and will the culture also allow you to make some of those life decisions? And then something similar that you mentioned is it's almost negotiation, right Understanding what should work for you, almost making a top five or a list of non-negotiables, and then you know, like product features, what is a must have, what is a nice to have, and then you will know whether your must have or your non-negotiables, like how you go about it and what is the package, what can you take out, what do you have to take in. But I like how you said.

Speaker 1: 18:16

It's so many different situations. But if you're very clear into what you need and what you want, that will certainly help the conversations with your leadership and, of course, if they are awesome, they will want to support you. But yeah, going into the conversation with being really really clear on what you want are really important to get that. Very often we are just not getting things because we don't ask. We are too afraid sometimes. Yeah, marley, what does the digital customer success consultant do? Where are you getting engaged with companies? What is it that they're struggling with? That they reach out to you.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Well, it can be a number of things, and I think, especially looking at the business world right now the economy, the challenges that tech has gone through in the last year or two there's even more of a need and even more of an interest in digital than ever. And that really applies digital in any subsection of a business. We could be talking about marketing, we could be talking about automating sales process. We could be talking about digital CS. We could be talking about self-service in the support organization. So CS is not alone in this. The digital is just becoming much more of a must-have. For several years now in the CS space, digital has been this shiny object, if you will. It kind of makes people's eyes light up and it's really exciting. But it's been a nice to have, I think, for a lot of companies, and now I'm seeing more of it being a must-have.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Right, budgets are being cut, headcount is being limited and CS leaders are being asked to do more with less, and so the only viable path is scalability in that scenario. So oftentimes people and companies are reaching out to me when they're like, hey, we have come to the conclusion that we need digital customer success. It's no longer just this glimmer of fun work. It's now a necessity, but we don't know how to do it, and the reality is there are not very many people in the world even in tech, even in SaaS, even in customer success there are just not that many of us who have built a successful, scalable, effective, efficient digital CS program before Right. There just aren't that many, and so I feel really, really lucky that I'm one of those people that has that expertise that I can come in and really help those leaders figure out OK, where do I start and what path am I heading down? Right, where am I going? What are the steps I need to get there in order to accomplish this new goal that I have of scalability?

Speaker 1: 21:11

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Speaker 1: 21:57

I wanted to comment on your point about how the economy made us have digital customer success as a necessity, because we lack resources. On another hand, as a consumer, as customers, we do want to engage as much as possible in a digital way, because we you know everybody have their job to do. They're not paid to fiddle with your product. They're not paid to just do your products. Everybody wants to just do their job, do it as best they can and go and self-serve and try to do as much as they can on their own time without being dependent on a person. It's kind of a natural transition as well of the types of success services that we are providing. Okay, now organizations matured enough to understand, okay, now we really need it. Then they come to you In terms of where to start. There is certainly so many ways, shapes and forms how digital success can look like. What is, in a way, kind of shortest way to get somebody started?

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah, so I always, anytime I'm interacting with a new company, I always want to first start by saying hey, what does your foundation look like? Of course we're talking about what are your current CS processes, practices, all of that. But also, do you have an automation platform that we could even run digital plays out of? It doesn't have to be a dedicated CS platform. It could be a marketing automation tool, it can be a CRM. Potentially it could be something that's been built in-house. There are options, but do you have the technology available to you to be able to do? This is number one.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Then this one is going to sound so silly, but people forget it all the time. Have you talked to your legal team about if you're actually allowed to contact your customers in this way? You would be shocked at the number of people who tell me oh no, I haven't thought of that. Then they run into a lot of challenges as far as whether it's GDPR or the new privacy laws in California, whatever it is. So please, please, please, if you're looking at going down this path, make friends with your legal team, talk to them. Let's start this conversation. It's really important.

Speaker 2: 24:17

Then, once you have those two foundational aspects done, then I talk about. Hey, how about segmentation and personas? What have we done already to be able to start to create a personalized digital experience? How can you take? Another question I ask is do you have a journey map for your high-touch customers so that we can then take that and translate it into a digital experience? So that's really where I start is like hey, what's the lay of the land? Have you covered these foundational components? If not, let's get those done right now, like yesterday. Those need to be done in order to move into what we would truly call a digital motion.

Speaker 1: 24:58

If somebody is not there yet with all of those components that you mentioned and somebody is really early on, it may take a while to figure out the journey. Sometimes it takes months and months. It's some companies to figure it out properly. What would be just in general, few main, either touchpoints or main plays that you would recommend as being a really great starting point or even necessary starting point for digital customer success.

Speaker 2: 25:24

Yeah, absolutely. Those foundations can be run or created in tandem with the early phases of a digital process. So it's a great question. So I always recommend starting with email. It's a channel that we're all familiar with. It's a channel that your customers are used to interacting with you through, so I always start with email automation.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Then, especially if you're still working through your customer journey, I always encourage companies to start with time-based emails, because you're just not going to have access to more advanced usage data. Or let's say you're like oh well, I really want to send this email when somebody is done with onboarding. Well, do you have the capability to track when they're done with onboarding? No, okay, so let's estimate how long it's going to take them to be done with onboarding and we can at least start there as a starting point. So let's say, onboarding is going to take 60 days. All right, we're going to be able to trigger this message to send 60 days after a contract is signed.

Speaker 2: 26:30

When you're thinking about setting up triggers and workflows and automation, you have to think about the data that's required behind that to be able to push those messages through. So starting with time is the simplest way to do that. That can also include things like a customer newsletter. This should be done carefully. I think newsletters can be overused, but there is a place for them.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Also, thinking about how your product announcements are sent out to your customers. Is this done through product today? Is it done through customer success? What do those messages look like? When are they sent? How are they sent? Those can be really really powerful messages as well, or even things like product features. Maybe it's not a new product or product feature that you're releasing, but maybe you're really starting to learn that our customers that are renewing or growing with us they're all using this particular product feature, so we really want to highlight it to the rest of our customer base and help them utilize it better. Again, even if you don't have advanced usage analytics to be able to see who's using it, how they're using it, when they're using it, you can certainly start with just feature emails about those specific features that you know help customers be successful. That's a few areas that I always recommend. Those are the low hanging fruit. If you will, that can be done in tandem with those foundations if you're still working through them.

Speaker 1: 27:57

Perfect. So, basically, you can't go wrong with any of these email automations newsletters, ascending product features that's the basics that typically customers won't mind. Then onboarding, of course. It's also really, really important one that will add a lots of value. What about the renewals? Would that be the next one, or what would be your other preferred place? No playbook, right?

Speaker 2: 28:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Renewals is another good early one because, same thing, it's time bound, you know when their renewal is coming up and so you can back up the date to notify them or ask them to schedule time with their CSM However many days prior that makes sense for your business. That leads me into what I call the CSM task Phase of maturity when it comes to digital, because after you get your V1 with basic email communication awesome the next place that I really like to take digital is actually more of an internal focus, because our CSMs are spending so much time copy and pasting the same email either to their peers or to their customers, like all day long, all week long, all year long. So I think an underutilized way of really benefiting from digital is to think about hey, what are the internal components? What are those manual CSM tasks that they're just doing over and over and over again that we can automate for them? So maybe it is.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Hey, normally the CSM has to manually email their customer 60 days before renewal. Excuse me, maybe they get a notification in Salesforce or maybe they're just in charge of keeping traffic of that manually. Well, okay, can we automate that email for them? We can make it look like it comes directly from them. We can even allow the CSM to approve the email before it's sent in some platforms with some setups, right. So it's not to exclude the CSM, but it's to take repetitive work off of them, and I think that's another really critical and important component of digital that, again, I think is often kind of overlooked and forgotten about.

Speaker 1: 30:11

Two questions related to it. Let me go with collaboration one firstly. So you already have marketing teams that are very likely heavily focused on new pipeline and prospects and very often very little on customers. So you have to collaborate well with the marketing team because very likely you're going to use some of their platforms and tools. Then you have a product team and you already mentioned very often there are some in-product messaging or in-product related emails or emails that are triggered by certain behaviors and consumption within the product. And then you have custom success teams that are very likely now starting out with digital success.

Speaker 1: 30:54

In most of the cases that I have seen, some of those other department have it a bit more mature and now customer success is coming in with their idea. We are doing digital now and now. They all have to start working together, understanding who does what. Now, what is your shall we even call it a recipe or what is a good strategy to approach it all? Because very often there is so much overlap in responsibilities and in the activities that can result in customers just receiving loads and loads of emails from all of those different departments. So what's your take on it? How do you really work well across those departments to deliver what is valuable for customers and not the volume. That can easily become a problem.

Speaker 2: 31:38

I love this question and it's so important. I didn't mention this specifically in that kind of foundations phase. But another thing I recommend very early on when you're heading down the digital path is you create what I call a communication inventory. So this covers any message that any customer of your company is receiving from any department. So it's a really great initial way to make those connections with marketing and product and professional services, as your company has that department, whatever the various departments, may be really great initial connection point of just saying, hey, can you help me understand what messages you're sending to our existing customers today, what's happening right now, and you create a big, big inventory of that.

Speaker 2: 32:25

Sometimes that inventory looks really scary, right, even without customer success starting to send any kind of message. Sometimes it can be really overwhelming and you're like, oh my God, our customers must hate us, like we're bugging them all the time, and so it can be a really helpful tool to figure out, hey, where does customer success fit in to what exists today? And then, where, potentially, do other teams need to reevaluate as well? Right, cause there might be overlap between marketing and product. Let's say that they just hadn't identified and their leadership is gonna be like, oh my gosh, what the heck? Just like you're saying the heck. So it's a really, really helpful tool.

Speaker 2: 33:06

And then the other thing I'll say on this a digital initiative really needs to come from the top down.

Speaker 2: 33:11

There needs to be leadership alignment in order to make it happen, because otherwise, if it's just, let's say, a digital CSM or a digital CS project manager or program manager, whoever's in charge of building this, if they're just going to their peers in marketing or product or whatever, and saying like, hey, you're sending too many emails, that's not gonna go over really well.

Speaker 2: 33:37

So it really needs to be a top down conversation. There needs to be alignment at the C-suite or the VP level between those interdepartmental department heads about hey, we're trying to create this cohesive digital experience for our customers and we all need to work together to do that, and so it doesn't really matter who's sending which message. I've seen digital CS live in CS live in marketing, actually even live in its own independent like digital experience org. All of those are fine, but the reality is all those departments need to play nicely, they need to be friends, they need to all be on the same page and work towards the same goal, which ultimately, we're all trying to do the same thing. We're all trying to make customers happy, successful and growing right. We're trying to make revenue for our company, so it shouldn't be that hard to align, but it can be a challenge absolutely.

Speaker 1: 34:34

I like that we're talking about it because I have seen the times and times again, this particular challenge of not having the inventory and then, once you are starting to discover what goes into customers inbox, you are just shocked.

Speaker 1: 34:49

So I would say that that's another wonderful initiative, or even a pain point that digital CS could resolve, because digital team will be really very well placed to understand the inventory and what's happening and then present it to the business, because very often the business is just not aware because for years and years they're just going through the motions and the best that they can until there is a new department who has to do the similar thing. So this is really a great starting point to also get a buying from the executives and from the business about those things that have to be improved. Marley, what I would also like to final from you we talked about initial building blocks of digital CS and how email automation is a great starting point. Then you took us through how this is really good internally and now I really wonder, between the initial phase and the whole journey, how does an amazing digital CS program looks like? Like even if not many companies have it like what would be the ideal state?

Speaker 2: 35:52

Such a good question. I love talking about this. You're absolutely right that it's very rare. There are not many companies who are doing this amazingly well today. There are a few, and it's really really fun to talk to those leaders and really, really fun to see what they're doing.

Speaker 2: 36:08

So, for me, an ideal digital customer success program that's really, really successful is branching beyond just email, right? I think a lot of times when we think about digital or digital CS, we're really just thinking of customer marketing, which is, you know, email campaigns. Those are important, they're great, they're a critical component. But to be well-rounded and really, you know, best in class, you're going beyond that. So that may look like in-app notifications using a tool like Pendo or Walk Me or something that your product team has built in-house. That's a really powerful channel, right? Your customers are in your product, which you want them to be, then why not reach them there, right?

Speaker 2: 36:52

So, thinking about that, thinking about self-service, what does your community look like? Or your knowledge base, how are you partnering with support, potentially on on either of those channels? Also, thinking about, you know, additional channels like a Slack or text message how can you be automating messaging? To your earlier point, how can you be automating it in a way that your customer wants to receive it. Right, Maybe your customer gets too many emails and they're like hey, I would really rather get this information through Slack. I have a good friend and and colleague who says I never read my emails, I only. I only respond to Slack messages. Right, there are tons of people like that, I know. I know I'm already in my emails, exactly, so how can you you know, how can you think about hey, where is my customer and how can I reach them where they are?

Speaker 2: 37:49

And then the other critical and important part about digital is how are you measuring? We know digital is going to make you more efficient, right, which is, you know, natural, that's what we think about. But is it making you more effective? So we're not just measuring oh, how many people are opening my email or how many people are clicking on this, you know, in product Pop-up, but we're looking at hey, is that leading to revenue growth? Is that leading to renewals? How do those numbers correlate? And being able to really Understand your analytics and follow that path is the ultimate goal of Well, any program, but specifically any digital CS program, is is it working, is it making more efficient and is it effective?

Speaker 1: 38:34

Is it helping you accomplish your ultimate goals, marley as we are wrapping up this Episode, I'm really grateful that you gave us so much wisdom and really great tips about how to start, what to identify was to start measuring, and we spoke about loads of different types of Activities and programs that all require pretty different skill set that very often traditional CSMs Maybe didn't have a chance to develop, simply because they were not exposed to it and there were other departments doing the work.

Speaker 1: 39:06

Now I'm a firmly believer that when an individual contributor, like a CSM, recognizes the opportunity for a proof, improvement For example, we don't have email automation Can we do something about it. Here is my suggestion I firmly believe that they should go and suggest some solution and try to fix it, and very often that's how they enter into the new role. What I wonder from you is what would be a set of, maybe basic skills that CSMs should start working on if they want to, you know, go with the trends and become much more Digitally CS literate, if that's how we can call it, because it is definitely one of the skills for the future, a skill that everybody will be using at some point. So what are the basic skills for it? I love this question.

Speaker 2: 39:53

I don't think I've ever been asked this question and I love it. Um, so I would say Start with exactly like you said, right, a lot of times we solve a problem by someone just raising their hand to be like, hey, I see this challenge, I want to figure out how to fix it. This is my suggestion. I'm gonna go figure out how to do that, right. So, number one start by raising your hand. Love that, amazing.

Speaker 2: 40:16

I think that's really how how I recommend progressing in your career, but specifically around digital, the skills I would seek to understand. Number one is just any kind of email Email automation training you can get right, so it can be really from any platform. They all kind of work the same, it doesn't really matter. I personally really like hub spots, training in general, and it's all free, so I love that. Just understanding the back end of how email automation works in general and how triggers a workflows function. Again, the platform is less important, but the the basic concept is critical.

Speaker 2: 40:55

And then making friends with your analytics team and understanding your data. Data and digital Are like best friends and they have to be, and that's super important. So if anybody's gonna look to move into a digital role, you have to start understanding your data, how to read it, what it's telling you and then, what data do not have access to that you wish you had access to. That's another important one too. So a lot of times we see that you're missing data and you're like well, I think the data is telling me this, but without this other data point, I don't really know. I would say those would be the two places I would start.

Speaker 1: 41:29

That is some great advice, and More often I start hearing about the importance of being, you know, data Analyst basically as a CSM, is going to be so much more important. So, for everybody listening, uh, that is a wonderful way to start, as as Marley said. So check out some of the HubSpot trainings, because they are many related to email automation and and digital journeys in general. Marley, thank you so much for sharing this with us today. Last question, as we are wrapping up what would be your advice for aspiring leaders in customer success? I think it's what we just talked about. I think it's raise your hand.

Speaker 2: 42:10

My career has progressed simply by me saying I can help with that, right, maybe it's a problem that I've noticed, maybe it's a problem that somebody else at the company has been talking about, maybe it's a problem that somebody else at the company has noticed, but all I've done is raised my hand and said, yep, I can take that on, I can solve that problem, I can face that challenge, and I think that's really the best way is just raise your hand, speak up, don't be afraid like we talked about earlier to ask for what you want and to share your ideas. I think, especially as women, we have a tendency to, you know, be afraid to be wrong or be afraid to be too loud, and I would just encourage everyone to try to face that fear. Speak up, share your thoughts, share your ideas, ask your questions and then raise your hand to take on those challenges.

Speaker 1: 43:00

That's it nothing more to say to this Marley's and thank you so much for coming to the show. Thank you so much. This was so fun. 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.