Women in Customer Success Podcast

119 - Where to Start and How to Build a Successful Customer Success Function - Sara Masson

• Marija Skobe-Pilley • Episode 119

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Do you need to build a successful customer success function from scratch, but you feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start? In this episode of the WICS podcast, I asked Sara Masson to join me so that we can go into that specifically.
 

Sara is a VP of Customer Success and an innovative customer success professional who’s passionate about customer focus, creative campaigns, and organised project planning.

She shares her CS journey, her framework, where to start from, and what the building blocks of a customer success function are.

What you'll learn from this episode:

  • How to build a successful customer success function 
  • Common mistakes made by CSMs
  • How to deliver value to your customers
  • What works well 

Listen now and build a thriving customer success function. By mastering the customer journey and building a strong customer success function, will result in long-term satisfaction and loyalty. Remember, every step you take to improve customer success impacts the growth and success of your business.

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Sign up for Sara's course HERE.

This episode is brought to you by Deployflow.

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About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.


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Host Marija Skobe-Pilley


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Speaker 1:

Are you the first customer success resource in your company and you've been given a task to build out a CS function? Do you feel overwhelmed and completely unsure where to even start from? Well, this episode is for you. Join me as I welcome Sarah Masson, VP of Customer Success at LeapTool. After years of building a few customer success functions in early stage companies, Sarah is sharing her framework. Tune in and find out where to start from and what are the building blocks of a customer success function.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, this is Maria Scobe-Pillay and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast. 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 place. So let's tune in. I'm very excited to welcome Sarah Masson to the studio. Sarah is a VP of Customer Success at LeapTools. Sarah, this has been a long time in the making. I'm so excited that you're joining me today. Welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. Let's help our listeners get to know you a bit better. Can we locate you? Where are you based in the world?

Speaker 2:

I am in Canada, in the suburbs just outside of Toronto.

Speaker 1:

Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Toronto is one of my favorite cities ever. Once I spent two weeks there for during my new company onboard and I just loved it. I loved running in the area, I loved exploring all the food and I think the food is even better than London. I may get some haters now, but I just definitely remember it as an amazing food scene.

Speaker 2:

That is definitely a contentious statement, but we have an excellent food scene. If you're ever back in Toronto, just give me a shout. I'm happy to show you a few restaurants, oh absolutely, Sarah.

Speaker 1:

tell me more about the years when you were much, much, much younger, when you were a teenager. Now, I wonder, would the 16-year-old you be surprised to find you in this current job that you're doing?

Speaker 2:

Oh, 16-year-old me would be shocked, but so excited, I mean, when I was young, tech didn't exist as it does today. A job in tech would have been like something out of my imagination. But also and this might be shocking because anyone who knows me thinks I am the most outgoing person in the world, and I really think I am. But as a teenager I was shy. I mean, what 16-year-old isn't Like? You're figuring out the world. So a career working with customers, working with people I'm talking to people all day I would have been excited, but probably a little bit nervous.

Speaker 1:

A little bit, that's always good. A little dose of being nervous is always good, okay. So if you had to completely change your career tomorrow, for no matter what reason, what would you do?

Speaker 2:

What would I do? So I have two little ones at home, I have a three-year-old and a 13-month-old, and so I would probably I mean, I'm working remote right now, but that would still be my top priority and I love to bake. So my daughter and I we made sugar cookies for her birthday and made her this beautiful cake with this like half ganache, half mousse frosting. So I would probably be a home baker, which I mean, how many moms have not dreamed of being a home baker? But then my little daughter could come help me, you know, stir, pour. It would be fun.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's so awesome, so amazing. I mean, it comes with a job title, right, being a mom, suddenly you just have to be a baker as well. My daughter is now a bit bigger now and she definitely she also has cooking in her school. So she always comes home with something new and like can I do this, can I help you with this, can I do something? And I'm always trying to usher her out. You know, go, it's fine. Homework, homework time. I can, you know, I can sort this all out, just because, well, the mess afterwards. But no, it's just wonderful to have something to do together with your daughters, and baking is, oh, it's fantastic. What else do you two like? Baking together? Pancakes. I don't know if that counts as baking, but yeah, it's the favorite one, right?

Speaker 2:

Kids love pancakes. We make these banana bread muffins with chocolate chips, and they are probably her favorite thing, so she'll like anything as long as it has chocolate chips in it. I think that's really what differentiates soyaki from not so yummy.

Speaker 1:

Well that's very reasonable for a three-year-old, of course. What else would you like, perfect Sarah. Okay, I think it's time to try to find out more about your career. You mentioned 16-year-olds would be surprised or like nicely surprised to find you in this role. So what did you do between being a teenager and going to university? How did it all happen that you ended up in customer success?

Speaker 2:

I got wildly lucky. So right out of grad school I was applying to different jobs and there were two tracks I was really looking at. The one was hospitality my undergrad is actually hospitality and tourism and I was looking at this program that would fast track you to be a general manager at beautiful, beautiful Canadian chain of hotels in 10 years. So that was exciting. And I went and interviewed and everyone was wearing these awful, awful uniforms and I was like, oh really, really great career track, great travel. Do not like the uniforms, I don't know how I feel about that. And then I went to this tech company and there were like Nerf guns, I think. They had a beer fridge. I was like, oh, this is interesting. Everyone was wearing their own clothes, whatever they wanted. Oh, this is great. It was in Leslieville, which is an area in Toronto with an excellent, excellent suit scene, some of the best brunch in the city. So I was like this is really interesting to me. I think I prefer this choice.

Speaker 2:

And I ended up at Wave Accounting as employee 23 or 24, which is a phenomenal Canadian success story and I joined and really my role was hey, let's figure out the customers, but we were freemium, so hundreds of thousands of users, very low touch. Everything I was doing was collaborating internally, working with different teams to try to figure out how do we get these customers back in the platform. And then, as we layered in more products and started to have monetization paths, how do we get these customers to these paid products? And customer success as a function didn't exist. But that's what I was doing in a scale-based form is just trying to get these customers to use our platform and to slowly move to our credit card processing, which is one of the great payment paths that we had. And so we did everything like really fun contesting. I scripted and helped direct some videos, which was way outside of my zone of expertise, but a lot of fun In-app messaging, emailing, really complex email triggers with tech that is we're talking like 13 years ago, so nowhere near the incredible software solutions that you have in place today. And I had so much fun and I loved talking to customers. And so, when I moved on from Wave, that was really important to me is, hey, how can I talk to even more customers?

Speaker 2:

And I found Lupio and again I stumbled into this cool co-working space and I was joining as employee 10. And I met the three founders and I was like I have never met three people who are so just thoughtful in everything they're doing. I want to be part of this, I'm so excited. And so they offered me the job and they said, hey, welcome to the team. We're actually going on a company retreat tomorrow. I know you haven't met anyone yet, but would you like to come to cottage country? We're going to go to a little chalet with 10 strangers and I said, yeah, I'll bring cookies. This sounds great. So I showed up with a container full of cookies and said, hello, I'm new, I'm going to help take care of all of your customers. Oh, I love that. I helped build up the customer success function from the ground up.

Speaker 2:

Lupio again, another huge Canadian success story, phenomenal team, some of my best friends in the world I met in my time at Lupio and absolutely loved it. Built the customer success function from the very ground up. So when I joined, our CEO was managing every single customer. Lovely, lovely. That's common and it was such an honor, but such a big thing for these brilliant founders to be entrusting the most important thing their customer base to me.

Speaker 2:

And so worked at Lupio over the years, built out health scores, built out all of our customer journeys, launched customer success software, got to know our customers, got to love our customers they're phenomenal and then eventually went on maternity leave with my daughter and when I returned to the world of working I joined LeapTools and LeapTools is a much larger team, but the customer success team didn't have any of those structures or foundations. So no segmentation, no role differentiation, no journeys, no health scores, none of those basics. So I was building all of those basic core components with a much larger team that already existed. So we were kind of driving the car while we built it at Leap. And that's where I am today.

Speaker 2:

I actually just got off of maternity leave with my second child, my son. But lots of exciting stuff. We're doing really exciting things on the customer success team as well, especially over the last 13 months while I've been on maternity leave. The landscape of tools has evolved so significantly so it's been exciting to come back. I feel like my toddler opening presents on her birthday. I'm like, oh, what else? What else exists in this tech landscape that's been built over the last year? So it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:

And especially AI. That just happened from last year Like completely different world.

Speaker 2:

Completely different world. So I'm unlocking all of these new tools that I'm looking at and they're blowing my mind. The possibilities are incredible.

Speaker 1:

I've noticed the pattern as you've been talking about your career building, building, building, building, building, building. It seems that you've been building customer success functions and teams everywhere where you were. You've been building customer success functions and teams everywhere where you were, and all of those companies you know became pretty successful Canadian startups. You know a lot about it. Now let's see, you're in a situation where you have a customer success function to do or you have inherited a function that, as you said, maybe it's called customer success, but it's not actually that, as you said, maybe it's called customer success, but it's not actually. It's almost like a blank canvas for you. Now take us through your process. What do you do? Where do you start from when there are so many problems to solve, so many things to create, so many possibilities, so many priorities, so many of everything? Obviously it's all overwhelming as well. So many of everything. Obviously it's all overwhelming as well. What's your process? Take me through your framework. If I was a person that tomorrow needs to do all of that, where should I start from?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, it's a great question because I think it's such an exciting role coming into a company and having all of this opportunity to be so creative and to work with your customers and really make an impact, and I think it's a big role. Your founders you're probably working really closely with them if you are an early employee, and so you care really deeply and they're entrusting you with what feels like the most important thing to them. Or if you're a founder who is trying to master customer success, you care so deeply about your customers. You probably didn't start this tech company because tech seemed cool. You probably found a problem and found customers you're working with, you're talking to. You care so deeply, you have really deep conviction that what you are doing can solve problems for them.

Speaker 2:

And yet we end up often running around like chickens with our heads cut off. We are just, yes, what can you do? I'll do anything. What are you asking? I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. And so we become just, yes, people with no structure, no process and we will do anything to make these customers successful, because we care deeply and we have no roadmap, no guide map. So we're just, yes, let's do it. I'll respond, and so the very first thing I would do is you need to start having some conviction about what you are trying to deliver for your customers. What does value actually look like in terms of what you can deliver? And the other thing I'll say is that I am really big on tracking from day one, like let's get great data in there. And this is interesting for me because you are talking to someone who like high school math data statistics. Oh my gosh, this was like my own personal nightmare. I did not think I was data oriented and I think so many girls are told girls are good at English, english drama, music, boys are good at math, and I hope that that narrative shifts as my children grow and as your children grow and as all of our children grow, because it's so counterintuitive and so the barrier to data seems really high.

Speaker 2:

But it's not. You don't need to understand Tableau. You don't need to start with pivot tables and being an expert If you start by saying, hey, I'm looking at our customer base and I'm noticing a trend. A lot of people are having adoption issues. I mean, like that's the most common issue. So many of us are going to face adoption challenges. So, okay, let's just hopefully you have a CRM. If not, let's put our customers in a spreadsheet and let's log how many of them have adoption issues. Okay, now I have to count. That's data, like just counting how many customers have adoption issues. Okay, now I have to count that's data, like just counting how many customers have adoption issues. That is data.

Speaker 2:

Okay, now let's test something. I am going to look at three different ideas to tackle adoption issues and I'm just I'm going to write out three plans Like here's three things we can test and I'm going to test all of them with two or three customers and see which ones start to improve from an adoption standpoint. That's data, and that is the kind of data that is so accessible and so critical to capture from the earlier days. So my top tip you're building, you're scaling is let's start to layer in that data really early on. Let's start to test, be creative, but document as we're going and actually capture some of that data in a really approachable way. You will become an expert at building Salesforce reports over time. You will become an expert at Excel or Google Sheets over time. But you got to like dip your toe in the water and that's really scary for a lot of people.

Speaker 1:

So that is where I would start, but can I just mention something I just love your call out on. You know you don't have to be an expert and just start really small. I think that's where people start to become overwhelmed. Oh, data, data, like there's huge amounts of data and just the huge amount of data or the lack of data can be really overwhelming because you don't know what to look for, where to start first. I really like your approach of take even one single data point and you can always find at least one in your product data Test. Three things then move on to the next one. Don't think that you have to absolutely know everything or feel very overwhelmed because you don't have a data analyst yet, because it is early stages.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly it is. Hey, can you look in your CRM and see how many accounts are single threaded? Like that's a really common short reason. So let's look and see how many accounts are single-threaded One data point that can make a huge impact across your customer base. It's not complicated you don't need to get into really complex formulas but it's meaningful and it gives you that information to really start tracking Perfect.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for giving us a little introduction into data and how to approach it. Now we are a few weeks already into it. Data is something we are really looking at. We are testing what is next from the whole bag of things that you could do.

Speaker 2:

What is next? So there are so many directions you could go. I actually just recently launched a course called CX Found for these early employees, for founders, to help them figure out where to go next, because it is a huge responsibility and it can be very overwhelming, and so you're starting to layer in the data, you're starting to find things. My top tip for where to go next and this might seem counterintuitive and shocking to a lot of CX professionals but don't start with a health score. Don't start with a QBR. That's fine, okay, okay, I mean like I can't leave with that. You're going to Google customer success and they're going to be like build a health score. And you're going to go, oh okay, yes, build a health score. And they're going to go build a QBR. You're going to go, yes, build a QBR. And you're going to have a checklist and you're just going to be, yes, I've done it, I've done it, I've done it and no wrong. Start by looking at your customers, talking to your customers. My favorite customer success tool is call recording software, because that's going to give you such good insight into your customers. Listen to them and ask them really good discovery questions. So if you are brand new in customer success. If you are building a CX function, where do you start? Start with getting really good at discovery. You are building a CX function, where do you start? Start with getting really good at discovery? That's going to let you dig in and understand where you actually have risk, where you have opportunity and what you can solve, so that you can stop just like yes, yes, yes, I'll do whatever, and start saying, oh, okay, okay, I'm talking to our customers and I'm seeing that we have adoption issues and they're telling me why. Now I have ideas and I can really start playing with them and creating a few initiatives, creating campaigns, and then you can start to do things like building a customer journey. That is not a checklist. It is not.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I was told to do a renewal call, so let's do a renewal call. Oh, I was told to do a renewal call, so let's do a renewal call. Oh, I was told to build a QBR, so let's build a QBR. I was told to build a kickoff call, so let's do that too. And you can say okay, what I'm realizing is that we have all of these other stakeholders, we're single threading our accounts and you're in this fortunate position where you're not fixing a journey that is single-threaded by design.

Speaker 2:

You are designing a journey so you can build a multi-threaded journey from day one, and you can capture data along the way on how many contacts you're building. So you want to start with data capture, like, hey, let's get a few data points, let's start building those foundations from day one. Identify some trends, if you can, and then get really good at discovery so you know where to focus, because otherwise you're going to spread yourself way too thin and you're just going to be checking items on a box instead of delivering value for these customers who you care so deeply about.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

I really love how you're positioning that, because when somebody is new and they start out, as you said, they're just going to go and Google everything and then they will just create a whole checklist of things. What customer success department has right, you have to do QBRs. You have to do okay, this is discovery call, this is now renewal call. Oh, look at this, there is a health course. We should build that. Oh, look at that, there is a campaign for whatever. Let us build that. But you are saying just forget all of that.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, you can have CS function without any of those items. Obviously, go and listen to the customers. I really love that approach because I have been in the companies where and listen to the customers. I really love that approach because I have been in the companies where you are in customer success department. But customers actually couldn't care less about any of those things. They just want a CSM to help them almost validate how they did something, how they built the system, coach them a bit, and that's what they really need in their journey. They don't need anything else fancy. So if you are not delivering on what is value for them in that moment but you are just trying to give them all of those other items from the menu that they are not interested in, you're going to lose them because you haven't listened to them, what they actually need in the moment, I agree.

Speaker 2:

And what you said, like you're going to lose them. That's so critical because you are a fresh face, you are making introductions, you're new whether you're joining a team, whether you're building a team and you are training your customers in a way as to what to expect from you and what to expect from success at the company. And so if you deliver very little value, if you say, oh, I just need to be talking to people, so let's get on a monthly call, and you get on and you say, hi, what's up, any questions for me? They're not going to show up to the next call because you are training them that you don't deliver value.

Speaker 2:

And so if your customers aren't responding to your emails, the first thing I would do is forward your emails to yourself and say, oh, would I respond to this If this landed in my inbox? Would I? Because I had my CSMs once do this as an exercise. I said, hey, take the last 10 emails you sent your customers and ask if you would respond if you received that email. And they were like oh, no, I would not, like, okay, so that's probably where we're going to start.

Speaker 1:

Oh gosh, I love that exercise because what I'm seeing is people get frustrated, CSMs get frustrated. Oh, another unresponsive customer. Oh, they didn't come back to me. Okay, what did you write? There was no call to action, there was positioning. As I'm your CSM, Would you like to jump on a call with me? Obviously not Like. Why would they like? If there is no any value proposition for a call, why would anyone show up? So I really love that approach. Check out your emails and, you know, be kind of honest with yourself yeah, that's completely it.

Speaker 2:

Like, would you respond to this email? And one of my favorite things to do is you're saying hey, I'm going to deliver value. I'm going to deliver value, I promise, I promise. I promise they don't know you Deliver value in that email. Give them something that they can use just from reading it. Like, put the proof right in that email and show them that you deliver value up front, and then I guarantee they are much more likely to get on that call. I mean, they may still say no, but the likelihood shifts dramatically if you can deliver value up front in that first touchpoint. Agree.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we have data, we have discovery, know checking some of your practices checking emails.

Speaker 2:

What comes next? Data discovery, looking at your processes, being really honest about your communications, trying to be very thoughtful about your communications. And then what comes next is the fun. There's so much room for creativity as you start to build out your journey. So this is where you probably are going to start to build out onboarding or the rest of your journey. Typically, you're going to focus on those separately, but you suddenly are not just shooting blind. You are building out an onboarding journey, understanding your customers, understanding their pain points, understanding the whole business, not just the champion, not just the exec sponsor. Let's really understand the business holistically and then start to build out an onboarding journey that thoughtfully captures all of those stakeholders, that engages them, that delivers value right away. And when you're building that onboarding journey, you want to make sure that you don't try to accomplish 100% of everything during onboarding.

Speaker 2:

This is a mistake. I see a lot of teams see is they say like, oh, we're onboarding, this is the time we build. And then onboarding takes five months, six months. It's really extensive. And then the customers get passed to the CSM and the CSM says, oh, I'd love to talk to you. And the customer says, but why, like I'm done, the onboarding team did everything. I don't really see why.

Speaker 2:

And so if you can chunk out, hey, here's where we can deliver value fast. Like, let's get that time to value fast. Can we de-scope? Can we make it small? Here's the core functionality, here's the stakeholders we want to engage. Can we build just that and then transition to CS but have a really clean hey, like, here's our checklist of things we want to do, here's the checklist of things we prioritize, here's what we've done and here's what's still outstanding. And then, when you do that transition to the CSM, you're showing the customer hey, we've done 30% of what we wanted to do and the next 70% we're going to prioritize and work on over the coming months. But you're already receiving value, we're already driving something meaningful for you. But there's still more work, more configuration, more training, more to be done. And then you can build a journey that gets people really excited, engages more stakeholders, but doesn't get drop off because people feel like I'm done, I don't see the value that I'm going to be getting from you.

Speaker 1:

What if customers simply don't want to engage with CSM? Is that a huge risk, or could it also be a positive sign sometimes, or could?

Speaker 2:

it also be a positive sign sometimes I mean then I really want to look at what's happening. So if we are doing so much in onboarding that our customers don't want to engage with their CSM, then I want to look at hey, are there things we are front-loading that we shouldn't be? But there could be scenarios where we are getting so much value, like the customer is getting meaningful value, and we don't need to put ourselves on a phone call. I think one of the mistakes that we have made as a customer success community is that we have assumed that for meaningful value to be delivered, we have to be on the phone with our customers, and I think that the world of AI and scale in the last few years, the economy, like we've been forced to do more with less, and sometimes our customers are saying, yeah, that's great. Yeah, deliver this value in an email. Like, show me exactly what I need to do through an LMS, through an email, find a way to scale it, because, hey, I'm being asked to do more with less too. Like you, as a customer success function, are not the only one who is stretched so thin. Your customers are being stretched just as thin, if not more thin, and so there are scenarios where it's okay, you're a CSM, your customer doesn't want to get on the phone with you Cool, let's find another way to drive meaningful value for them. So, for example, in an SMB segment I've had in the past, we knew that our customers didn't necessarily have 45 minutes to do a QBR with us. Cool, let's do a really, really, really micro version and use a tool like Vidyard or Loom and just record that value, get it to them right away. So instead of this whole back and forth conversation, you say hey, I was looking through your data, looking through your metrics. Here's two or three things I noticed and here is the impact of that. So I noticed that you have a ton of users who are logging to the platform, but we haven't taken advantage of a full branded experience. So these users are getting a really diminished experience, really diminished workflow.

Speaker 2:

And here is the very quick value that I think we could do to make a change here. So de-scope, but still deliver that value in a scalable way. Another example could be hey, they don't want to get on a call to do a product roadmap. Okay, makes sense. How can we showcase that at scale? So can we do a product roadmap webinar? And suddenly there's another pull because they're seeing information from other community members and questions from other community members. Could we do a resource that they could just flip through quickly? That might get them excited? Can we spell it out in a way that's really custom to them? So like, hey, here's, instead of the 20 things we're working on, here's the three features that we think are going to impact your business and why All of those ways can be scale-based. They don't have to be one-on-one calls and they can drive meaningful value. So I would say it's not always problematic if your customers don't want to talk to your CSM. I would consider it problematic if they're not getting any value from their CSM.

Speaker 1:

I would agree and I love your examples and I see that's where the industry will be going. For me, it's not all about scale, it's more about customers. I think statistics show that what every single team or department works with? At least between 50 and 200 applications every single day. So as much as we all CSMs somewhere would want them to use our product the most, they simply have to just do their job and in an ideal world, they would not need to call their CSM or call even support or anyone from the vendor, simply because things are working well and they are just doing their job. Their job is not to talk to us, right? But then that's why I like your examples. Like you have a roadmap. Perfect, put it as a webinar. You want some resources to share them. Create your own CS newsletter every week. Webinar you want some resources to share them. Create your own CS newsletter every week, maybe you know, do something very short, as you said, short videos.

Speaker 1:

You have to think of how you deliver something really good that is meaningful for them without them being on the call. I'm a firm believer that. I mean. I always have been a high touch CSM. Yes, of course I want to talk to customers, but things are changing. They don't have time, as you said. No one has 45 minutes of your time Like you really have to earn it and very often there is no need for it. So do everything that you can in those little small bites that they can just consume whenever it's relevant for them, and sometimes there is just so much more value for them, especially learning through the community with other customers than only talking to CSMs, and I like how you're saying it. What's your positioning? It always just comes to the value they are getting, no matter in which way.

Speaker 2:

That's completely it, and your point is excellent. We often feel entitled to our customers' time, like I am your CSM, I have been hired to talk to you. You talk to me please. You have to. This is my job, you must. And I mean no, they don't owe us their time, we owe them value.

Speaker 1:

That's a good one, sarah. How many of those steps you still have that you feel are very important. I love this how you're already starting to scale and provide value in so much more sustainable ways. What else should CS leaders do, and how long would it all last? Oh, we've done it well. You know we have a solid foundation. Of course, there is always room for improvement every single month, but, like, what do you have to achieve to say, really, this is a solid CS org or department?

Speaker 2:

now. So I would say other steps. Like, we have started gathering data, we have listened to our customer, we've got really good discovery, we've built out a very customer-centric, multi-threaded onboarding and customer journey. Now we can layer on a few other elements so we can look at hey, can we start logging risk in a really thoughtful way? Can we start logging risk clays that are tied to those risk types? So, like, hey, what risk exists? Why, like, do I have a ton of mergers and acquisitions? Is there a ton of single threaded accounts? Do I have accounts that tend to, you know, be really sensitive to the economic climate? Like, if you're working in the restaurant industry, that is going to be a very volatile industry and you're going to have to log that, so log all of that, and then you can start picking your top two or three and documenting safe plays. You want to test for each of them. So, now that we have some of those foundations, get deep into risk and if you have a product that has the ability to expand, to upsell, you could do the exact same thing there. So what are our expansion plays that we're looking at? Do we have seat-based expansion? Okay, what scenario would prompt me to say there's opportunity to discuss seat-based expansion. Probably they're close to their license limit. That's a pretty obvious one. They might mention a different geography across their company. Like that's a very clear scenario that would say, hey, let's talk about expansion from a seat-based version and then what you can do is again start to document. Okay, so scenario is seat-based expansion. They're close to their license limit.

Speaker 2:

Here's three things and I keep saying three because I do think three gives you a lot of flexibility. Like you're testing, you're iterating. It's a good number. You don't want to do 10. Like don't bury yourself, but two. I mean like push yourself, try one more. So I like three. But try three different paths that you could use for users who are over their license limit, for users who have different geographies, and start to test those out.

Speaker 2:

Capture the data and that's why it's so powerful earlier on to start capturing this data. If you do that, you're looking at risk, you're looking at expansion. You can prioritize whichever one based on your current book of business and what you're seeing. Like are you getting no expansion, but you have a ton of expansion opportunity? Are you absolutely bleeding customers and you need to start on the risk side? Prioritize one of those first and start to gather that data. Keep it, even if it's in a spreadsheet Great Like that's better than in your head. So document it anywhere and start to really understand what you can do to move the needle from a risk and from an expansion point of view.

Speaker 2:

That is not campaign based. That is not campaign-based. No one ever wins long-term on just like firing off these one-off campaigns. You need to do something more systemic, and capturing that data early on, from both a risk and an expansion point of view, is going to be your superpower. And it's so creative, like thinking of those three things. It's fun Like this is where the magic of CS comes to play.

Speaker 1:

What are the things that you found that are really good? Forget campaigns that can be, you know the option, because it kind of has to be. What are those cool things that you have seen work pretty well that people could start testing out?

Speaker 2:

I will give you a story. We obviously adoption is a challenge at most SaaS tech companies, so we were facing adoption challenges and the CS team was given let's call it like six or seven different safe plays that they could execute with their customers. So, like, hey guys, here's some options, start using them, and one of them was executive outreach, so you can ask the CEO to send an email to your customer to try to engage them. You know, you feel special, you get an email from the CEO. Great, and the CSMs were using this one as their favorite save, because if the CEO can't engage your customer, then, like, you've done everything you know.

Speaker 1:

Like, if the CEO can get the whole little excuse almost.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean. But it makes sense from a human nature, like, oh, I'm tapping in the CEO, this is the big guns, he's going to email the customers, and so this was our most used save point. And then we started collecting the data because I'm sharing lessons that I didn't know in my earlier days and guess what our conversion rate was on this exact outreach? Two percent, zero, zero, zero, wow. Where we only leaned on the execs and the CEO to send emails, we're staying.

Speaker 2:

But training, we were converting like 50% of the customers when we put a really heavy training plan in place. So we would process, map with them, we would understand the entire lay of the land, we would go deep. And that told us, for our particular customer base and I'm not saying training is like a golden answer for every single customer base, but for our customer base for our product it showed us that there was a clear training gap and that the trainings we were doing when they were first onboarding were not enough. And so through that we were like, okay, let's double down on training, let's get an LMS, let's create really thoughtful, thoughtful training flows that are interactive, that are fun, that are engaging, and let's, in addition to that, offer free training for customers who are at risk. So we had this proactive approach, this reactive approach, but we were really investing heavily in something that we had validated and worked and we were saying goodbye to something that was really easy and psychologically made a lot of sense but was never converting.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for sharing those examples to all the CEOs out there. It's nice if you send an email here and there, but don't expect too much.

Speaker 2:

We appreciate it, but it's not a strategy. It's like a lovely thank you though.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a little gesture.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's a lovely gesture, not a strategy.

Speaker 1:

Sarah, I think that we could talk forever, just because when you're building CS function, there is so many things to think about and so many things to do. What I would like to find out now is, as we are wrapping up, tell me in which moment, as you're introducing all of those different, like building blocks of CS department, when will you say, oh, I really do have such a solid CS org. You know it's solid. Here are all the things that we have done, Like how big is the gap? Are we almost there? Or is it like 15 more different things that we should be doing within a year? I just really wonder, because it is never ending. Where do you almost draw the line and say, dear CEO, this is what you hired me for. Just have a look at what was done so far. It's really solid.

Speaker 2:

It's a great question. So I think, if you've got all of these things in place, I think your CEO and your exec team is going to be wildly impressed If you can take some of this churn data, some of this expansion data, and build out a few decks, show them to your executive team, start collaborating with the rest of your org. I think that at that stage you could say, hey, I've delivered something I'm really proud of. But I would say, as someone who has joined very early stage tech companies joint companies that might be larger but have very early stage customer success functions Whatever you build, you can never have so much ego that you think it's done. I have never built something that I thought was done. I have always built something that I thought was the right process, the right tool, the right whatever it is for our current stage in our evolution.

Speaker 2:

So the save plays that you have built that are working really well today, guess what?

Speaker 2:

If you're joining as an early stage customer success leader, all those early customers, they might eventually, your software might eventually outgrow those early customers and those save plays that worked for your earliest customers are not going to work as you go upmarket and start targeting enterprise customers, and that is okay. It does not mean that you built the wrong thing. It means that the thing that you built is no longer what your new version of your product, your customer base, your company needs. So I think that once you've got those core foundations, once you're capturing data, especially once you can actually start to execute on some of those safe plays, the expansion plays, and report on them, that's something you should be incredibly proud of. Then, like yeah, let's layer in a customer health score, let's layer in and make sure we have a QBR in our customer journey, like those things are useful, but only once we have all of these other insights, and at that stage you would have something you were really proud of, but never something that is done.

Speaker 1:

I love this approach that is really wrapped in loads of humility, but also confidence. Be confident that what you're doing is okay, even if you're doing it for the first time, because it will change, it will evolve, you will iterate on it, but be confident. Thanks, sarah, so much for this. I'm really looking forward to seeing your new course. That sounds absolutely fantastic, and we'll make sure that we include all the details in the show notes for everybody, starting with a CS function. If you're not sure where to start from, as was my question at the beginning, I'm confident that Sarah will give you great answers.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. It has been so lovely catching up with you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for sharing your amazing insights and spending time with me Absolutely. 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.