
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. In each episode, podcast creator and host Marija Skobe-Pilley is bringing a conversation with a role model from across the industries to share her inspirational story and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. You’re going to hear from the ladies who are on their own journeys and want to share their learnings and strategies with us. You’re going to be inspired.
Women in Customer Success Podcast
123 - How Diversity Shapes Thriving Work Environments in Tech - Parul Bhandari
My guest in this episode, Parul Bhandari, shares her incredible journey from starting a career in customer success to becoming the CEO of her own business. She talks about what it is like to be your own boss and the CEO of your own business, the motivation behind her community "South Asian Success", and diversity of background, age, etc.
Parul is a Customer Success startup advisor and consultant based in Chicago. She draws from her collective background to design CS organisations that can be scaled successfully, to drive CS as a profit centre, and to drive value exchange and retention. Parul founded two organisations, CustomerXSuccess, where she provides advisory services to SaaS startups and coaching to CSMs, and the community South Asian Success, a global, professional community focused on the South Asian experience.
We talk about:
- Being a mom and a CEO
- Mentorship - professional and personal guidance
- Embracing gender, race, age and diverse backgrounds
- Hiring diverse talent
- The current job market
Listen now and learn how we can all contribute to creating a more inclusive world by supporting diverse voices and perspectives.
Follow Parul!
This episode was brought to you by Vitally.
Loved this episode? Make sure to subscribe to the Women in Customer Success podcast for more powerful stories and advice to help you succeed in the field of customer success.
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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.
Follow:
Women in Customer Success
- Website - womenincs.co/podcast
- LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/womenincs
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenincs.co/
Host Marija Skobe-Pilley
- Website - https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mspilley/
- Get a FREE '9 Habits of Successful CSMs' guide https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/9-habits-freebie
NEW - Women in Customer Success Courses:
- Thriving as a First-Time People Leader - https://womenincs.co/thriving-as-a-first-time-people-leader
- The Revenue CSM - https://womenincs.co/the-revenue-csm
This episode is brought to you by Vitally. Vitally is bringing in a new era of customer success productivity. With their all-in-one customer success platform, Vitally gives you unmatched visibility into your company's health and success, and now you can measure operational strategies on customer outcomes at scale with goals, directly in Vitally. Exciting news for all the listeners Vitaly are also giving away a free pair of AirPods for all Women in Customer Success podcast listeners when you take a qualified demo with them. If you're in the market looking for a CS platform, make sure you visit vitalyio slash women vitalallyio slash women to book your demo and get your AirPods. And now let's get into the episode.
Speaker 1:What's the case for different diversities in tech, Whether it is gender, race, age, background or experience diversity? What can we do to make our working environment more diverse and more successful? Join me in conversation with Parul Bandari, CEO of Customer X Success and the founder of South Asian Success, as we explore the case of diversities juggling motherhood and career and embracing mentoring for career progression. Let's get into it. Hi everyone, this is Maria Scobepile 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. It is such a pleasure to welcome Parul Bandari to today's episode. Parul, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I am so glad to be here, having been a big fan of this podcast for many years now. So wonderful to join the other women that I emulate so much.
Speaker 1:So Parul is a CEO of Customer X Success and the founder of South Asian Success. And Parul, just in short, what's on top of your mind currently or these days when it comes to customer success that we're going to spend a few minutes on today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think that for me top of mind. I've really been a DEI advocate my whole career but it has felt more present in my mind than ever before, not only because of South Asian success and the work we're doing there, but I think, just helping other women, other people that need guidance in this tough job market, diversity of thought, diversity of experience is just more important than ever. So that's really been top of mind for me.
Speaker 1:So that's really been top of mind for me and I can't wait to dive more deeper into that. But to start off, I would like my audience to get to know you a bit better and we start with geography, Like where are you based in the world at the moment?
Speaker 2:Well, at the moment I'm in my childhood home, which is in Ohio, but I am actually currently based in Chicago, illinois. So I grew up in the Midwest, I did live around a bunch of different cities in the US and I landed back in the Midwest in Chicago.
Speaker 1:Well, it's definitely not a bad place to land. Chicago is wonderful. Do you have a next? Travel destination no-transcript fat Indian wedding, because I didn't have that many in my life, so I can't wait to tick that off my list as well. Is it going to be three days, five days? What do you reckon?
Speaker 2:I think it's officially three days, but I think it will be extending into five days for us, with all the pre-events and just as members, we're actually members of the family hosting. So I think a lot more just general responsibility, but all really exciting and very nice. And we actually had a good big family wedding already this year. So now we're having kind of weddings in the next generation, which is awesome. So the kids actually did a dance at that wedding and now we're primed and ready to do a dance at the next wedding. Wonderful, is it? Bollywood dance, bollywood dance. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:I had it on my wedding. Well, all the best with your travel. I know it's going to be like an awesome food, awesome beautiful dresses, saris and everything else that comes with those celebrations, so I'm sure you can't wait for that. And last one, from this quick questions, Parul, I know that you are extremely intelligent and constantly love learning. So what has been the last book you've read?
Speaker 2:Oh, my, okay. So I read this book called the Covenant of Water. It's by Abraham Barghese. It's a thousand or so pages. I read it on my app so I don't exactly know the pages, but it's about a thousand pages. I chose it for our book club that we have in my neighborhood and I thought it would be an easy challenge. It was quite a long read. It took us two months of book club to get through it. But highly recommend Abraham Berge's if you are interested in understanding about different parts of India. He writes about in this book Kerala, and this is back in the 1940s and beyond beyond. So he's writing from a perspective of before development, before there were hospitals, before people had access to care, and I he's, he's a physician, so if you you know, if that's of interest. I found the book very powerful. It's got a ton of richness to it and it goes through many, many generations. So it was. It was a quite a long read but well worth it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can imagine. Well worth it. It was one of my favorite counties. No states in India you say states States, yeah, okie, dokie, parul. Now into the customer success. I do wonder what was your career journey that brought you into customer success?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I think many people know this about me. Some may not. I'm an occupational ergonomist in my trade. So I started working as an ergonomics consultant back in 2000, I don't know a long time ago, 2003 or 2005. And that job was my first ever real job right outside of like a retail job, and I dove in. I would go to visit these customers around the world actually and really just was like wow. My mind started opening up on business and what was happening. It took it some time.
Speaker 2:I went back to business school, actually worked in HR for a while and I worked at big, large CPG companies as well as tech. It was my first sort of dabble into tech as an HR manager at Twitter, but I recognized that HR wasn't my path but maybe tech was going to be my path someday. It was kind of like really interesting, I needed something to do. I said I went back to that same ergonomics consulting firm for a couple of years and in the meanwhile they had developed software. So they developed two software programs. We were not managing the software in the way that we think of customer success today. It was just the traditional sales kind of sell it and let them go model.
Speaker 2:So I jumped into this data set and I had the opportunity to build the customer success department from the ground up every piece, every playbook, every hire and it was, I think, one of my most rich experiences because we didn't have all the traditional tech team sort of things that you have. We didn't have product marketing. So we led product marketing and you know we did. We did every single thing and it was awesome and I learned so much from there. We got acquired, became part of a large entity, so learned a lot about scale as well, and then from from there, I continued on to different startups. So I really loved I sort of just recognized I love the build phase. I loved being in the early stage and I think that it's rare to be able to find that outside of a startup, like I happened to find it at a 40 year old company, but I don't think that's usually the case. So you know, I do focus heavily on startups and that's been my journey since, you know, that time, and I just absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:So that's how you started in customer success and then how you continued in customer success. Your path led to you starting your own consultancy business. How is it going? Or shall I ask, how is it being your own boss and being a CEO of your own business?
Speaker 2:I find I say this to people all the time I find I'm thrilled about every day because I'm doing passion driven work. There's nothing more rewarding than ending your day on a note that you're like, wow, I did something based on what I really wanted to do or I felt was the right path. It is hard, though right, and I think that we were discussing this a little bit at the beginning, but it is tough and I think it's a bootcamp in learning about business that I haven't had before. I have unique mentors. My mom has been a business owner since 2004 or so, so she's like a mentor to me. She's giving me references for website people and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:But I think it's a little bit of that uncertainty. Now I can recognize what it feels like to be in sales or be a founder, when you're like, hey, I just sent out a contract and I didn't hear back for a couple of days. Like, do they want to negotiate? Are they saying no? Right, you're asking questions and you know I can. I can really relate to what it's like in the more business go to market, focus, function, so I'm loving that. But yes, you know, every day is new, every day is different, and I'm early in my journey, so I am hoping to continue to learn from others as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure you will. But I am also convinced that many others can learn from you and, although I know that's not something we want to focus a lot of today, but I know there are many, many ladies out there who are thinking of you, know they had enough, maybe, in their roles or they don't feel fulfilled anymore and they are exploring, doing coaching and doing consulting on site. If there was one thing that you think I wish I had known this before I started, what would it be?
Speaker 2:I think it's building my network. I wish I had built my network a little differently. So the one thing that I think we do really well in customer success is that we reach out to and we connect with other people. In customer success, we actually are very good at building our network there. But when it comes to your actual customer, if you are doing sort of consulting or fractional work, your customer is likely not going to. I mean, it could come from customer success, but most likely it's going to come from other sort of company members slash people in different phases of their company journey.
Speaker 2:So I've been expanding my network quite a bit and I think I feel very lucky. I got enrolled in a mentorship program with an organization in Chicago called 1871. So I'm meeting startup, you know, early stage founders every single week, which has been fantastic. Early stage founders every single week, which has been fantastic. But yeah, really I wish I had a bigger network of people that were possible customers, right, because that's something that I am working to continue to build now. So, yeah, that's something I've learned.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I can so relate to that. I also thought for myself oh, I'm well connected in the industry, right? Until I realized, well, actually, my target audience for my consultancy are CEOs and founders of early stage startups. How many of them did I know when I started? Not many, so I also just needed to build network all over again. Basically, yeah, I think this is just such a good takeaway. It's amazing to be in customer success and be connected with everybody, but as soon as you start having thoughts of something a bit different, start focusing also on who is your ICP and start growing network in that way. However, parul, you also started a few different ventures, one amazing community called South Asian Success. Tell me more about what was the motivation behind?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, the true motivation is probably work I actually did when I was in HR. So when I was in HR I got connected with the AAPI organization at Procter Gamble and I actually got to lead one year of our activities in the office that I worked in. That was the first time that I ever was part of a formalized organization outside of my university and, like in university, we did stuff but it was always focused on celebration. I felt like I didn't feel like we were actually focused on educating and helping others recognize what was happening. Right, the university ones were not bad, but they were just more focused inwardly. The P&G one was focused outwardly. It was actually for all employees, so we would do these big AAPI Heritage Month events and we would invite anyone in the company to come.
Speaker 2:That was my first exposure to other very passionate people from the region that I was from that were spearheading this that I learned from and then people just excited to share with others about their culture and what we saw that the result of what we did were just so, so amazing and so high impact. I think that's where this all was rooted. And then since then, working in startup world, as many of us know in the US you may not find as much diversity, right? So, jumping into diversity initiatives or jumping into, I found like one of the most impactful trainings that I ever got was at a company I worked for where we learned about diversity and hiring. Every little shred of information that comes into my brain is like oh, this is so cool, right, this is great.
Speaker 2:Putting it all together, I'm seeing organizations like Women in Customer Success, like Success in Black, that were created a couple of years back, and I'm going this is a thing that's missing, right.
Speaker 2:So, without going too long on this, the one thing in CS, like, when we go to a conference, we see every type of topic that you can imagine in that conference, but what we don't necessarily see today in my mind is us talking about diversity in CS at these conferences. So I'm trying to like not only do what we're doing for our South Asian community, but also think bigger, right, because I think the work that we're all doing is so important and it reminds me of my PNG days, right that how can we be more outward facing, right? So provide what we need to for community, provide a resource for people to connect and feel a part of something but also educate outward. So, yeah, I don't know, this has been like a long time coming and I had a career gap last year and it just became the right time to do it. Right, it was like, hey, I have little time for once, let me take some time and build this thing. And I got very lucky, I think, having a great steering committee to help me.
Speaker 1:I am very, very happy that you got the idea for the initiative that you. You know you made it because everybody can get the idea and the ideas are the easy part, but you launched it. It's already doing some great things and I'm really excited to see what is coming. But this question about diversity is, oh my gosh, so important. I think people mostly know the reason why this podcast started is also because of diversity, very much gender diversity in customer success. After I have seen stats on one conference, stats that showed how, you know, there is 70% men and 30% women in leadership roles in customer success, which was obviously oh my gosh, wow, what is happening? How did we come here? And that's why this podcast started.
Speaker 1:When I see your work in South Asian success and most recently also seeing Priscilla doing Latinos in Success and so many other communities coming in, I'm just thinking, oh, background, which is again incredibly important, but what do we do, or how can we help out with different types of diversities as well?
Speaker 1:As you said, in tech you don't typically see lots of diversity, not only gender and race, but like backgrounds, not even to mention looks. But you know, everybody seems to be going to the same schools, working in the same companies and then they start moving together and you always have the same same same people working on the same similar jobs without lots of diversity. I know that personally as a hiring manager. One of my most proudest hire was a person who never had even a tech or SaaS experience day of it, and we hire her as a CSM, and she was absolutely she still is absolutely brilliant, constantly learning about something that was new for her. So I have seen firsthand how, yes, bringing very much different background in terms of even education and experience, is absolutely crucial. Now, what are your thoughts on those different types of diversity and what are you seeing in the industry and what can we do about it? Sorry, that was a very long question.
Speaker 2:No, I know, but I think you hit it all. I mean, you hit a lot of great. There's so many good points. I will try to make sure I answer properly. I was just going to say it's so interesting because when I started in CS it wasn't, you know, 20 years ago. It's like 2016,.
Speaker 2:My first team that I was building, there were no people in my region that had customer success background. So we were very much creative in trying to assess what would be a good fit. Our product was highly technical, but we had a really great LMS and training program so you could actually teach. We would teach people about ergonomics. So if we could teach everybody in the world about ergonomics, we could teach CSMs right. We knew that that was a baseline that we were able to meet. So we were very broad in our thinking, right, and I think the problem one of my problems that I see is it's not a bad problem. It's actually like amazing for the field but it is creating issue. It's like one is people now want pure customer success experience because I think you you know, believe you'll have faster time to value, which I can totally relate to, and I'm so glad to know that we have people with like 10 plus years of CS experience now that you can actually hone in on. But I think what that does is that, like one, it narrows the pool right, because if you do have a unique background, that maybe is not necessarily customer success but customer adjacent, you might overlook that. So that's one thing that I think as a function we have to remember, like our roots are from diverse backgrounds, because we didn't exist until the 2000s. So how do we keep a little bit of that in our minds?
Speaker 2:I'll give you an example. One of the companies I worked for is InsureTech. Insuretech is unique because people come into insurance. They find it super complex. They might run away from it. We didn't necessarily always find people with customer success experience, but we would find people with unique insurance experience. You worked in some random part of insurance like social security, disability, and you know who you are.
Speaker 2:If you're listening to this and you can still come into this business and not be overwhelmed. It didn't have to be pure customer success, but it could be an adjacent experience that's still going to provide value to the customers and give them a sense of hey, not only is my partner somebody that can help me in my tech journey, but this is a partner that understands what I'm going through. So I think this is something that I'm dealing with a couple of people I've talked to. As far as mentorship is like, don't ignore your prior background, right. Like don't put it aside, because every bit of your background is gonna be important in this journey. Every bit of your background is gonna help you craft a career that is more uniquely you but that also provides value to the company that is looking for that. So I think we need to just think a little bit bigger sometimes in customer success and give ourselves a little space, because if we put on every job rack like minimum five years of CS experience, we're going to possibly lose out on some great candidates.
Speaker 1:But also for the candidates, I would say exactly what you said. Let's reiterate be proud of your different types of background, because that can be your unique selling point. I remember once I was hired in the customer success team and I was the only person in that team who had previous customer success experience. No one else had. That was my unique selling point at the moment. But then it really depends on the company and on the team. If you have everybody who already had previous CS experience, maybe this is the time when you really want to bring a subject matter expert because you didn't have that so far. So for all the candidates out there looking for work and how do you position yourself, please be proud of your backgrounds, because that can really be, you know, that X factor sometimes that will take you through the interview stages.
Speaker 1:Yep absolutely sometimes that will take you through the interview stages. Yep, absolutely. What about when we speak about different diversities, diversity of background? What about diversity of age? For me it's very interesting because I think a few years ago I found myself in my 30s and realized, huh, I'm working more and more with people who are so much younger than me. Where are all of those more seniors people that I would like to learn from? And I realized, well, sometimes you do have them in tech. They might be in some you know senior leadership positions. I don't see many of them in, you know, individual contributor roles. But I would like to have more of those senior people than me, because I remember in one of my first roles I had a mentor who was, you know again, individual contributor, many decades older than me, and it was just so amazing pouring wisdom on me from my end. I was just learning so much. I kind of missed that. What has been your experience in tech when it comes to different age diversity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's a great question. I think this is one that will continue to change and I think we'll continue to go towards the direction that you've been talking about. But I, in a weird way, my some of my strongest mentors have not been people that were like 20 years older than me or anything like that. They've actually probably been closer to my age and journey but maybe just had, you know, a bit more experience or a bit of different experience. So I look back and when I worked at Procter Gamble, one of my mentors was somebody that was probably just two classes ahead of me in business school. Age didn't necessarily matter, but in business school they were two classes ahead of me, so they had gotten their job two years earlier. I look at their path today they're still on an incredible path and I can see why they were a mentor to me back then, because they've continued that growth and that learning.
Speaker 2:For others. I think mentorship is going to change to mentorship of experience, right, so you might talk to somebody that we might talk to somebody in our roles that is a founder that is just out of college, and actually I think I've talked to three people this last couple of weeks that were out of college, developed their company with people from their school, and that's what they are doing now. They're founders, right, but I look back and I'm going well, they've been doing this founder journey for three years, so, as far as experience goes, they have understood what it takes to be a founder. I think our models of mentorship might change and we might say, okay, it's not necessarily going to be that you learn from tons of tenure now you learn from unique experience or you learn from people that have done something different to you. And then I think, beyond that, I want us to be able to give back. I know that it's great.
Speaker 2:I actually mentored through Women in Customer Success every year. I've been doing it and I love it. People I've met have been incredible. The experiences have been incredible. While I'm mentoring, I'm also learning in the process, and I think there's almost like a reverse mentorship agreement. It's never just a one-sided thing. As I'm talking to people, I'm also honing not only what how I might manage somebody or how I might, you know, learn about these unique experiences or something that's different. So I think there's quite a bit of. It's almost like we're going to, we're going to shift up. The models are shaking themselves up for for our generation of people. But I think, beyond that, it's diversity of experience that is going to really bring richness to everybody's career. You know, and I think that's where we can all lean on somebody that's had a unique experience that we could learn from.
Speaker 1:I really love this take on mentorship and I completely agree, and sometimes all you need is that like 10% edge or somebody's being a few steps ahead of you, so like if you're a first time founder and speaking with somebody who has been a founder for three years, that's an absolute advantage already, but not somebody who has been in those shoes for 10 years and they completely forgot how it was at the very beginning.
Speaker 1:So that's a really awesome type of mentorship. Which brings me to the point how we both understand how mentorship is important in both ways right, but how so many different types of mentorship is going to prevail in the future. As you said, you have skills mentorship for maybe particular skills or experience mentorship based on you know last few years that somebody has done and now you are on that path. Then you may also have different types of perhaps leadership mentorship for somebody who is a first-time leader, even if they had maybe decades of experience behind them. I just really love how you can have mentors. You can have so many different mentors at the same time for different things, because you're learning from all of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, think about it when you became a mom, when I became a mom, anybody that was a mom a year before me I'm talking to them. Yeah, think about it when you became a mom, when I became a mom anybody that was a mom like a year before me I'm like, talk to them. I'm taking all their information Right. And they might have been younger than me. Age was not relevant, it was experience, it was stage that was relevant, right? So, yeah, I think about that all the time that there's so many parts of our lives that we find uncertainty and you can really create unique mentorship opportunities and or, you know, grow your own mentorship practice in that way.
Speaker 1:So speaking about motherhood parole, you just got me to another question. Um, how is life, how is being a mom and being your own boss, being a founder, being a ceo? It must be tough. I would like to see from your end.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is tough. So I think, for the first time though, having taken a step out of full time, I do fully recognize that I have had more opportunity to be with my kids and spend time with my kids, which I do try to build into the week. I'm not good at it every single day, I'll be honest. I will still have calls till five and be busy, and my kids usually come in right at five. So I say call till five because at five they're like mom, it's five o'clock Time to go.
Speaker 2:But a few things that I've done, like my family life. We actually we opted to get an au pair. My husband travels for work quite a bit, so we had, you know, basically weekdays were, you know, kind of inconsistent and I would find myself either fatiguing out or I would not be able to attend, let's say, an evening event. And I'm also part of another community called Cusp in Chicago, so I'm super community, I'm a community lover. By the way, that's amazing that community we do a lot of evening events. To be able to have flexibility to do that and actually be a part of that group, I really knew that I needed some more flexibility in my life. So we actually made the decision to have an au pair. So if anyone is out there that wants to ever talk about that experience, I actually have notes because I got a great education and mentorship from a friend of mine that had five years of au pairs and I share that same knowledge with other people and I thought it was super valuable. But that for us has been good and while my kids are young, we're going to try to do it again for another year. We'll see how long we do it.
Speaker 2:It is, you know, a bit of a change in general, like your family, you're adding a person to your family, you're, you know, having somebody on trips and stuff. So it is, it is a change in that way, but it's been really rewarding for us and it's given me more flexibility than I had before because I would otherwise, on, like the days my husband was gone, I would just be. I couldn't do anything else, right. So that's given me a little. That's been good. But like, like, parenting is hard and life is hard and I always say to people like there's going to be the curve ball that comes your way and I'm family first, right. So I, if I work with people, I always like, let them know that I'm not one of those people that's going to hide my children that they're not there, which is, they're very much present.
Speaker 1:And it's so important to lead with that example as well, because very often you may not realize, but that will help another person on another side of that Zoom call just seeing a lady like you who have children next to her. I love your thoughts on having an au pair, simply because I used to have one for a few months when my son was very little. But I think every help that you can get as a mother and as a career woman is incredibly important and grubby. It's just because kids grow up so quickly and every year is different and situations change from year to year. So never feel bad about getting the help, Just really literally grab it, because it's not going to last forever and you know what you have to do and you can't be 100% into everything every single day and you still have to feel good about your work because you're always trying the best as you can in all of those different areas which are completely different and take lots of time and effort.
Speaker 2:And I think it helps you when you ask for help. This is something that's a skill, even in leadership that I actually struggled with in my early leadership jobs. I was like I can do everything, right, I can do it all, but as a parent, I really started to crumble under the fatigue. Right, I can do it all, but as a parent, I really started to crumble under the fatigue. To be frank, I didn't sleep well for the first year of my first son's life and I was really struggling. So I think to be the best parent and to be the best customer success, professional and individual and business owner, I have to be my best and I think, building in time just for exercise and fitness and things that are important to me, that also the help gives you that time. So I think you're absolutely right and just take whatever help you can get and that we know that not everyone can, you know, have as quite as much, but it is, it's all super valuable Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Parul, what is one message that you would like to share to the aspiring leaders in customer success?
Speaker 2:I feel like the times have changed and I follow some go-to-market leaders, bloggers and things like that in customer success at a company is learning more about that business, asking more questions about the actual health of the business and finding ways that I could contribute. I think I started to do that later in my career and I got the opportunity to report metrics to the board and actually get excitement from some of the initiatives that we were putting forth as customer success people. That to me, is like the holy grail. We have to be relevant and present at the board meetings. We have to be relevant and present at the financial discussions.
Speaker 2:You don't want to be on the receiving end of, hey, we're going to cut this software that you got because we just don't have money for it. You want everyone to understand the value of what you're doing so that you're not on that end and that maybe you can find other creative solutions to help the business right. So I think I wish and I hope that everyone out there is taking time to learn their business well, to learn the financials and just take time to be a part of that business, because I think we kind of felt siloed. We're like, hey, we're this relationship team. We don't need to touch the bottom line, but every single thing we do impacts the bottom line, and if we learned anything from these last few years is that customers could turn just because of a perceived lack of value. So it's our job to really deliver that and make sure that, if we're a part of these companies, or a part of your own entity, like myself, that you are really thinking about that in everything that you do.
Speaker 1:So that's a wonderful advice Get that business acumen exercise, get the muscle exercise and literally behave like you are a CEO of your own business, Even if you're representing just a fraction of customers. That will get you more visibility. Parul, this was such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for giving us snippets of your life and of your career and for sharing so many beautiful messages with us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. This has been wonderful, and I really enjoyed just chatting with you too. This was great.
Speaker 1: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.