I'm thrilled to share my conversation with Lara Barnes, Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Renewals at Sitecore.

With a wealth of experience spanning roles at Oracle, Facebook, and Sitecore, Lara offers massive insights into building and leading successful customer success teams.

Thank you, Lara, for sharing your story with us at The CS Café!

The stage is yours!

P.S. Have a unique career story to share? I'm always on the lookout for exceptional experiences to feature. If you think your journey could inspire our community, feel free to submit your story using this quick form. While I can't feature everyone, I carefully review each submission to bring the most impactful insights to my readers.

Why this interview matters: Lara built Customer Success at Sitecore from the ground up, scaling to a 75-person global org across APJ, AMER, and EMEA while owning ~€180M in annual renewals.

She led a perpetual→SaaS transition, installed telemetry for value realization, and aligned 12 departments around one lifecycle. That’s real leadership under real pressure.

What you’ll walk away with today: concrete ways to operationalize outcomes with telemetry, balance renewals with growth, and use AI as leverage—plus links to playbooks and templates you can deploy this week.

If you need execution-grade runbooks, start with the CS Playbook Library to ship proven motions fast. You’ll find practical save plays, onboarding cadences, and escalation patterns inside the library at The CS Playbook Library and the broader Playbooks hub.

My Field Notes

• Value proof, not promises. If you’re formalizing success planning, anchor outcomes and product signals directly in your plan. A simple first step is to grab the Free Customer Success Plan Template and then deepen it with the advanced patterns in Master Customer Success Plans.

• Lifecycle beats heroics. When CS, Product, and Sales share one lifecycle spine, renewals get boring (the good kind). If your handoffs are ad hoc, the Customer Success Lifecycle Automation Playbook shows how to wire moments-that-matter without adding bureaucracy.

• AI is leverage, not a replacement. Start with risk triage, pattern detection, and rapid answer retrieval. For a pragmatic rollout, use the AI Customer Success Implementation Guide and the predictive system in AI Won’t Replace CSMs.

• Renewals thrive on proof. When you need an exec-safe metrics spine, align your narrative with the essentials in Top SaaS Metrics & KPIs and the leadership-level view in Success Metrics for Business & CS Leaders.

• Kill tiers; route by need. If “tiering theater” is slowing growth, redesign coverage with Appropriate Experience (AX)—it replaces ARR-based tiers with context-based recipes.

PART 1/2 — Career Journey and Evolution of Customer Success

Your Professional Journey

Q: Can you tell us about your career leading up to your role as Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Renewals at Sitecore?

I started at Sitecore 7 years ago and built the organization from scratch. I was the first Customer Success Manager (CSM).

I needed to set the strategy along with the budget and work out who we would service first as we scaled.

We built the CS team and the entire Operations team globally to 75 people across 3 regions, APJ, AMER, and EMEA.

I was also given the remit to build a Renewals team globally managing €180M in renewals a year, so significant volumes quarterly.

I took the team through a perpetual to SaaS transition and built a Value Realization Framework to drive outcomes with Telemetry tracking.

I carried out a Customer Lifecycle Project across 12 departments to align our Customer Journey, the moments that matter to enhance our Customer Experience.

We built an incredible ethos and culture.

Editor’s note: If you’re standing up success plans from scratch, start lightweight with the Free Customer Success Plan Template and upgrade it as your telemetry matures via Master Customer Success Plans.

Early Career Foundations and Adaptability

Q: Throughout your career, from your roles at Oracle and Facebook to your latest position at Sitecore, how have the core principles of customer success evolved, and what consistent approaches have you relied on despite rapid changes in the digital landscape?

Customer Success is all about the customer.

As a leader, you represent the Customer in the organization.

So it is important to ensure the experience they have enables success planning, achievement of their goals, and value realization, so that they feel gaining outcomes for their business and the renewal is a non-event.

It’s changed not in what we do but how we do it. It’s become more refined in driving outcomes, which is the right direction.

However, Customer Success as a department is continuously under scrutiny for not being a cost base but driving additional revenue streams for cross-sell and upsell.

This is easy when you have a product that is easy to implement, and the user experience is fluid.

As we move into product-led growth with Product teams becoming more accountable for the renewal, the ability to cross-sell and upsell, the whole customer lifecycle, and accountability for the customer come to life.

It always needs to be end-to-end management.

“Customer Success is all about the customer. As a leader, you represent the Customer in the organization.”

Strategic Vision and Leadership

Q: As a leader in customer success and renewals, how do you balance having a long-term strategic vision with meeting the immediate needs of your clients?

It’s about setting goals at the beginning of the year and sticking to these goals, despite the roadblocks and the incoming fire drills.

It’s about consistently providing overviews to the team on how you are doing against the goals, quarterly to track your progress.

So that everyone can see what’s possible, and how they are contributing, is making a difference to the overall goal.

It’s amazing what you can achieve when everyone is pointing in the right direction.

Building and Sustaining Customer Relationships

Q: Can you share a specific example where using a creative approach to customer success significantly impacted renewals or customer loyalty in your previous roles?

Creating a Value Realization Framework with Telemetry tracking helped us identify what success looked like with the product and how we can guide our customers to achieving those goals.

It was a tangible output to show outcome-based customer success activity which made it easier for the renewal discussion as value was seen.

Data-Driven Customer Success

Q: Given your experience with data-focused products at Oracle Marketing Cloud, how do you use data analytics and insights to drive customer success strategies at Sitecore?

Data is key to your success.

Not just to show how your customers are performing or not and predicting renewal outcomes, but also to identify where things need attention and fixing in the customer journey to make that experience a better one.

It helped me justify headcount too.

When we could show investment in CSMs was more cost-effective than adding more Account Executives (AEs) to the business.

To learn more about leveraging data in customer success, check out my quick guide on Top SaaS Metrics And KPIs”.

Editor’s note: For a concise metrics spine you can defend in the boardroom, keep Top SaaS Metrics & KPIs handy, and use the exec-level perspective in Success Metrics for Business & CS Leaders to align on definitions.

Cross-Functional Collaboration and Career Development

Q: How do you encourage collaboration between the customer success team and other departments, such as sales and product development, to ensure a cohesive customer experience?

Understanding the whole picture for the customer and running the customer lifecycle project created such momentum as multiple departments were bringing their expertise.

The customer journey became such a focus that we even had Customer workshops run by the People & Culture team to see how we could enhance our focus and goals culturally.

Ensuring that there is a clear RACI* and end-to-end tracking to understand who has responsibility for the customer at any point in the customer cycle gives clarity.

*RACI stands for “Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed”. It’s a responsibility assignment matrix used in project management to clarify roles and responsibilities)

Discover more strategies for effective collaboration in my guide on CS Product Teamwork Tips.

Editor’s note: If your handoffs live in spreadsheets, the Customer Success Lifecycle Automation Playbook shows how to replace heroics with predictable, instrumented moments.

Challenges and Future of Customer Success

Q: Reflecting on your career, what has been the most challenging aspect of leading customer success teams, and how have you innovated to address this challenge?

One of the most challenging times was after Covid when new business started to dry up and costs started to escalate.

We needed to let some of the team go. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

I had brought these people in and they were part of our culture and what we had built.

As a leader, there are difficult situations that need to be managed and I also then needed to take the remaining team through to achieve our targets.

It’s not that you agree with what’s happening but you are there to lead under all circumstances and do the right thing by the people you manage.

The Future of Customer Success

Q: With the evolution of digital experience platforms and the growing importance of personalized customer interactions, what do you see as the future of customer success, and how should CS pros prepare?

The future is “more efficiency” with AI.

It’s not going to replace relationships and setting outcomes but it will allow you to track your customers’ activity and predict risk quicker.

AI will:

know your product well.

allow you to understand your customers better than you.

answer questions faster than you and will recognize patterns more accurately than you.

help you be more effective in managing relationships

allow you to do less and achieve more.

The success of a CSM is tied to the value they bring.

So AI will be a game changer in how we understand, interact with customers, and predict needs.

CSMs should be embracing it and using Gemini, ChatGPT, and other platforms to help them understand their customers better.

However, Outcomes over Outputs.

It will shift the perspective of outcomes—customers will be able to achieve more value.

“The future is more efficiency with AI. It’s not going to replace relationships and setting outcomes, but it will allow you to track your customers’ activity and predict risk quicker.”

Explore more about the role of AI in my article on AI-Powered Customer Success.

Editor’s note: If you’re starting from zero, implement one high-signal risk model first using the AI Customer Success Implementation Guide, then layer proactive plays from AI Won’t Replace CSMs.

PART 2/2 — Global Expansion, Leadership, and Career Philosophy

Global Expansion and Leadership Philosophy

Lessons from Global Expansion

Q: Sitecore’s strategic path to international expansion has been a key part of its success. What lessons have you learned about adapting customer success strategies to different markets and cultures?

Expansion of a customer across markets and cultures comes down to setting the right expectations and setting goals to achieve collectively with customers.

Without value gained, customers won’t have the drive to work with you on expansion.

Editor’s note: When your book skews enterprise, pair outcome signals with commercial ones. The method in Customer Success: Beyond Traditional Metrics for Large Accounts is a good starting point.

Fundamental Principles for Global Expansion

Q: From your experience at Facebook’s Atlas to your role at Sitecore, you’ve navigated the complexities of global expansion and client relationship management. What are the core principles you follow when scaling customer success operations internationally, and what pitfalls should organizations be aware of in this process?

The right leaders are key to success, not only in building the team but also in managing the customers in the right way.

Over-servicing was one thing we needed to manage as we scaled to manage more customers and widened our level of influence internally with other teams.

Setting a clear RACI internally is very important so everyone knows who is managing the customer and when.

But with the customer, it’s equally important to set the right expectations and not over-promise.

Personal Leadership Philosophy

Q: How has your personal leadership philosophy evolved, and what key lessons would you share with upcoming customer success leaders to inspire and guide them?

Being yourself and leading with integrity is exceptionally important for fellowship.

I have tried to be my most authentic self by understanding myself and what drives me.

Then I have been very open and honest with the people who work with me, at times too honest.

However, this has built an incredible culture where everyone was happy to come to work.

Everyone felt safe and knew what they were there for and what they were contributing.

People then go the extra mile as they know their WHY.

The WHY is so important, why are you here, and why should people work for you?

Editor’s note: Moving from IC → Manager? Map your gaps with the promotion systems used in Scaling Customer Success: The Ultimate Guide.

Defining Moments and Adaptation

Q: Throughout your career journey, you’ve held important roles in customer success across various industries, from tech giants like Oracle and Facebook to leading digital experience platforms like Sitecore. Could you share a defining moment or experience that shaped your approach to customer success, and how has it influenced your strategies?

My defining moment was coming out of Oracle, I didn’t realize how much I learned there.

So when the opportunity arose to build a team from scratch globally across 3000 customers, I grabbed it although it was a scary task.

The team I brought in was my defining moment.

Those individuals helped build and shape a culture that we are all so proud of.

There were times when I was so overwhelmed by the task in front but I used to chunk down the task and as one of my team used to say—we built it one bite at a time!

Navigating Digital Evolution and Customer Success Strategies

Q: Your career has spanned different stages of digital evolution, from the rise of online transactions at News UK to the development of digital advertising technologies at Facebook. How have you adapted your customer success strategies to align with changing digital landscapes, and what advice would you give to professionals navigating similar transitions in their industries?

I have adapted from online advertising to client services to customer success.

It’s been an evolution and I have consistently been able to adapt.

I have taken a whole team through perpetual to subscription to SaaS and that has been the biggest task at Sitecore, with all of us adapting.

It doesn’t just take the Customer Success team, it takes the whole company.

A lot of the Customer Success team was driving the agenda and influencing other areas of the business to change and adapt for an enhanced Customer Journey.

Key Pillars of Customer Success

Q: What are the key success metrics you tracked?

We were tracking GRR, NRR, Renewal Rate %, Extended Terms, Uplift on contracts, Advocacy, CSAT, NPS, and the Adoption stage (with telemetry).

Editor’s note: For clean executive alignment, use the leadership summary format in Success Metrics for Business & CS Leaders and the field primer in Top 5 Customer Success Metrics.

Adapting Customer Success Initiatives

Q: In your time at Oracle, you managed a diverse portfolio of products for various industries, each with unique challenges and opportunities. How do you approach adapting customer success initiatives to meet the specific needs of different client segments, and what lessons can other professionals learn from this approach in their own fields?

It’s always about understanding the opportunity these customers want to achieve and how best you can assist them in achieving it.

Remember, though, you can’t do unique solutions or bespoke services as you cannot scale it.

Everything needs to be scalable, and there will be compromises.

Collaboration and Seamless Customer Experience

Q: Your background covers not only customer success but also sales, business development, and marketing. How do you leverage this diverse experience to foster collaboration between departments and ensure a smooth customer experience journey, and what advice would you offer to those aiming to break down silos within their organizations?

I am very commercial in my mindset and work collaboratively with sales, after all, why are we all there—it’s to grow the business.

Everyone should be a salesperson.

I have been lucky to have touched on all those areas, so I work across the lifecycle very well, as I understand what all those functions do and what they are measured on.

We all play a part in growth, and the overall customer success drives our success as a team and company. With an aligned cycle with systems and processes to track our customer activity, you can use the data to draw insights to help set the right targets for growth.

Balancing Revenue Growth and Customer Satisfaction

Q: Throughout your career, you’ve shown an ability to drive revenue growth while maintaining a focus on customer satisfaction. How do you strike a balance between these seemingly conflicting priorities, and what strategies have you found most effective in achieving both short-term results and long-term loyalty?

Ultimately, it’s about the right ideal customer profile and setting the right expectations.

There are always conflicting priorities with doing the right thing for a customer vs. hitting your sales targets, especially working in a PE-backed business.

However, the customer is important.

It’s expensive to acquire new customers these days so the retention of customers is paramount to a SaaS business.

There is a balance that needs to be navigated.

Editor’s note: If tiers are slowing execution, route by context using Appropriate Experience (AX)—it aligns resources to what it takes for the customer to win right now.

Building High-Performing Teams and Staying Ahead of Industry Trends

Q: In your role at Sitecore, you led a global team responsible for delivering exceptional customer experiences. What key qualities do you look for when building and nurturing a high-performing customer success team, and how do you cultivate a culture of continuous learning and innovation within your organization?

You bring in people who care about customers!

But they also need to show qualities as to how they are being proactive.

Successful CSMs don’t wait for problems to arise. They anticipate customer needs and address potential challenges before they become issues.

This proactive approach helps build trust and reliability.

Having a clear vision of what success looks like for both the customer and your organization is essential.

Setting measurable goals and detailed success plans can align efforts and ensure that both parties are working towards the same objectives.

Focus on high-impact activities that drive customer adoption, retention, and desired outcomes.

Efficient time management and prioritization of critical tasks can significantly enhance productivity and outcomes.

Think Win-Win.

Customer success is about creating mutually beneficial relationships.

Foster a partnership mentality where both the customer and your organization benefit. This collaborative approach builds stronger, more productive relationships.

Listen to your customers proactively and with empathy.

Understanding their needs and challenges before offering solutions can build deeper connections and ensure that you’re addressing the real issues.

Collaboration across internal teams (sales, product, support) is key to delivering a cohesive customer experience.

Leveraging the diverse strengths of your team can lead to more comprehensive and effective solutions.

Continuous learning and development are vital.

Have a growth mindset.

Stay updated on industry trends, customer success best practices, and new technologies.

Investing in personal and professional growth keeps you effective and innovative.

For more insights on team building, read my Customer Success Team Building Guide.

Editor’s note: If resourcing is tight, use the workload math in CSM Ratio Optimization and the save system in The CSM Churn Rescue Playbook to protect revenue without burning out the team.

Staying Ahead of Industry Trends

Q: From your early experiences at Wanadoo to your leadership role at Sitecore, you’ve witnessed firsthand the evolution of digital marketing and customer engagement strategies. How do you stay ahead of industry trends and technological advancements to anticipate your clients’ future needs, and what advice would you give to professionals seeking to future-proof their careers in the ever-changing landscape of digital transformation?

I would use LinkedIn.

Build your network across groups you would like to be affiliated with and start following influential people you want to learn from.

The professional social network is now critical to your career success.

Stay updated with the latest trends in my article on Digital Customer Success Trends.

Editor’s note: If you’re repositioning your skill set for AI-infused CS roles, the interview prep system in Crush AI-Powered CSM Interviews will help you show up sharp.

Navigating Challenges and Conflict Resolution

Q: As someone who has successfully managed large-scale client portfolios across diverse industries, what are the most common challenges you’ve encountered in customer success, and how do you approach problem-solving and conflict resolution to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes for both your clients and your organization?

I have had many problems with individuals in other teams, mainly in Sales over the years.

I have had resistance to how we should be working for customers or aligning data.

I tackle everything for the greater good of the Customer.

I am representing the Customer after all, and I take accountability for this.

Aligning systems and data is now critical to the success of the customer, after al,l without it you don’t understand the whole picture end-to-end.

With the impending AI capability that will need to be adopted company-wide.

Without a joined-up approach to systems, data, and content, you will be left behind.

I learned quickly that it’s never personal.

It’s just politics, so work out how to go around them. They always leave if they are difficult characters, and when they do, you drive it forward quickly 🙂.

Personal Insights and Future Plans

Influential Leaders

Q: Are there any industry leaders whose expertise and insights you actively follow and draw inspiration from?

There are many people in my network I am inspired by.

The most valuable learnings were the CCO events that Gainsight used to run for a few days in June yearly, where CS leaders got together and talked over problems they were facing and how others were tackling those.

It was so inspirational, and we all used to come away with actions.

The CS community wanted to share and help drive everyone else forward. Your community and network are critical.

Leadership Philosophy

Q: What guiding principles or philosophies inform your approach to building and leading successful customer success teams?

I have always had the philosophy that any of my team members are only with me for a short period of time.

In that time, it’s my responsibility to help them grow, learn new skills, and give feedback so they can flourish in their careers.

That is what I focused on in my last role and had my management use it too as a way of managing.

We built an incredible team.

We grew leaders, and we continue growing Customer Success Managers for their next steps.

What’s Next For You?

Q: What are your next moves/plans/projects?

I am looking for my next Senior Customer role.

A Chief Customer Officer role managing all the post-sales activities to ensure that the Customer Journey is smooth for the customer.

Focusing on Onboarding, Adoption, and Consumption & Growth.

I have a commercial side to me that is very goal-oriented.

The opportunity to align everything end-to-end and work with my peers to do that so the Customer Experience is exceptional is where my passion lies.

Advice to Younger Self

Q: If you could offer one piece of career advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Enjoy the journey more, and push yourself, but not too far.

A balance is necessary; it is not all work, work, work.

Preferred Quote

Q: What quote resonates with you most, both professionally and personally?

My favorite quote is the famous Theodore Roosevelt quote about striving valiantly and daring greatly:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” —Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

The man in the Arena passage shows the importance of action and striving towards worthy goals in life idle to criticism, laziness, and inaction.

Personal Hobbies

Q: Outside of work, family, or travel, what hobbies or activities do you enjoy the most?

I love books, so I have a ton of self-help books. Also, I read a lot about health, gut microbiome, mold, and how to prevent disease. I am also a gym addict on weights and HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training).

Newsletter Feedback

Q: How valuable do you find my weekly newsletter?

Your newsletter is incredibly valuable to all Customer Success pros on their journey to servicing customers; it gives a view on how and what they can do next. It’s the tangible things that really help someone take action.

Closing Thoughts

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Work for people you love and work with a product you are passionate about.

It’s all about the people you learn from and the culture of Customer Success you are within and around. It’s so important to be learning from others; if you aren’t learning, move on!

Thank you, Lara, for your insights and thought leadership!

It’s been such a great pleasure hosting you on The CS Café!

My Key Takeaways

• Outcomes over outputs. Instrument value and make renewal a non-event; the fastest start is the Free Customer Success Plan Template upgraded with telemetry from day one.

• One lifecycle, many owners. Replace functional silos with shared moments-that-matter using the Lifecycle Automation Playbook.

• AI = speed, scale, signal. Begin with a single risk model and an internal Q&A brain using the AI implementation guide.

• Proof wins renewals. Keep your leadership conversation grounded in Top SaaS Metrics & KPIs and the executive roll-up in Success Metrics for Business & CS Leaders.

• Route by context. If tiers are slowing growth, redesign coverage with Appropriate Experience (AX).

Thank you, Gillian, for sharing your story and insights on all things Customer Success with us at The CS Café!

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

Key Highlights from My Interview with Gillian Core:

• Career Journey: Insights into Gillian’s career path and milestones.

• Customer Success Organization: Understanding the hierarchy and structure of customer success teams.

• Integration of Education and Leadership: How her educational background influenced leadership in CS.

• Adapting CS Strategies for Enterprises: Tailoring approaches for large-scale businesses.

• Board Level Integration: How she ensures CS has a seat at the table.

• Metrics for Impact Measurement: Specific KPIs for tracking CS impact.

• Major Challenges in CS: Navigating obstacles in customer success management.

• Her Impressive Tech Stack: Overview of Gillian’s technology toolkit.

• Customer Segmentation Strategies: Customizing CS for diverse market segments.

• Feedback Gathering Channels: Methods for collecting customer insights and influencing product development.

• Talent Attraction and Retention: Building a culture of employee engagement.

• Interdepartmental Collaboration: Aligning CS with sales, marketing, and product teams.

• Emerging Trends in CS: Gillian's perspective on the latest industry developments and the future of CS.

• Investment in Training and Development: Nurturing skill growth within CS teams.

• Her Take on CS Layoffs: Lessons, recommendations, and insights to overcome challenges.

• Key Lessons for CS Prioritization: Fundamental principles for CS success.

• Learning Resources: Gillian's go-to recommendations.

• Career Advice: Insights for leaders and aspiring CS professionals.

• And more!

Introduction and Company Overview

Can you provide a brief overview of the problem Placer.ai solves for its customers in practice? 

Placer.ai provides data on any physical location to make informed decisions in real estate, retail, and any industry that has a physical location or investments in those locations.

Data is based on foot traffic that is extrapolated from mobile applications tracking where visitors actually come from.

And Placer provides its data to customers.

At my previous company, Reputation.com, the main difference for a CSM would be that Reputation manages its customers’ data with natural language logic extrapolating ratings, reviews, and surveys into a Reputation Score that allows national chains and individual locations to manage their reputation with customers. 

Although they are both B2B SaaS there is a critical difference in the day-to-day management when you are selling data or managing customer data between two databases.

The latter is more prone to emergency management and more urgent in nature. 

About You and Your Experience

Could you share your professional journey so far?

I began my career in NYC in advertising as an account manager which is equivalent to a CSM today.

After I earned my MBA from Columbia University, I started my own agency focused on triple-bottom-line businesses—those that care about profit, people, and sustainability.

One of my clients was an advertising revenue model that served ad space in email messages with a non-profit cause which led me to the ESP (email service provider) and CRM (customer relationship management) businesses and eventually to  B2B SaaS. 

The activities that always served me no matter where I went, were to volunteer for everything, know the numbers better than anyone else, speak up in meetings with an opinion, and always introduce yourself - even if you are the most junior person in the room. 

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Organizational Structure and Reporting

Can you elaborate on your customer success organization and its reporting hierarchy within the company? 

Whether at Placer or my previous company Reputation, CSMs were responsible for product adoption and retention.

There are four main components when you think of the CS organizational structure:

• Charter - What is the core objective? At both, it was product adoption and retention

• Structure and Resources - Beyond Adoption what should CS own? At Placer it was only retention. At Reputation, it was retention and upsell.

• Engagement Model - How should sales and CS engage each other? At Placer, sales only focused on new sales. At Reputation, they supported the customer throughout the life cycle. Clear delineation is critical here. Paying two teams on retention is not effective. 

• Talent and Compensation - What are the right hiring profiles? I hire for human characteristics; willingness to be a part of a team, emotional intelligence, relational intelligence (knowing one’s place in a SaaS organization), and analytical inquisitiveness (the desire to ask why and to leave something better than you found it). All other skills can be taught with a great enablement curriculum, but those are characteristics that great CSMs have, and cannot be taught. 

Additionally, I have used Radford and found it incredibly beneficial.

Radford explains job levels through four components; knowledge, problem-solving, interaction, and impact. Really considering the impact a role makes and not just the knowledge required is critical.

To hire, I highly recommend using the CCAT, the Criteria Emotional Intelligence evaluation, and a presentation to fully evaluate a candidate.

Those tools also create a foundation for future coaching.

It is also important to think about organizational hierarchy.

A good rule of thumb is no more than six direct reports to any manager including yourself. 

Education and Leadership Skills in Customer Success

How do you integrate your educational background and leadership skills into managing and developing the customer success team? 

I had the privilege of taking a High Performance Leadership class while at Columbia University from Michael Feiner the author of “The Feiner Points of Leadership.”

The thing that really stuck with me is a story he told about the day he retired and the day after etc.

No one called.

These careers take all of our hearts, attention, and time, but no one will remember how “great” or not that we performed.

It is all about the memories we create with individuals including clients and how we make them feel. 

Tailoring Customer Success Strategies for Enterprises

Drawing from your work with large enterprises, how do you adapt customer success strategies for customers in similar industries?

Enterprise customer success has longer sales cycles, more influencers on both the customer side and internally, and requires C-Suite presentation skills.

In my history, I have found it is always better to hire a more tenured professional with a background in the clients’ industry and role and train them on being a CSM.

The best Enterprise CSMs want to be thought leaders and consultants.

CSMs with consulting backgrounds also do very well with enterprise clients. 

Commitment to Customer Success

How do you ensure customer success has a seat at the board level? 

Easy, know why customers stay, leave, and grow by segment and very tactfully explain how you can address any gaps with specific executive “asks”.

When examining why customers cancel, it is critical to document churn reasons.

Churn reasons are defined by who internally could solve that reason. If they leave due to a failure to answer their support ticket, those should be summarized by segment, product, ARR, and have suggestions with the support team regularly.

EVERY customer who leaves should be interviewed by someone other than their CSM, a director, or a VP. 

Another helpful tool is to classify churn into two buckets; avoidable and unavoidable

Use unavoidable as a baseline at the beginning of the year.

This is incredibly helpful with the board and C-Suite when you are thinking about setting reasonable churn targets.

An example of unavoidable would be the shrinking of small businesses. Maybe 5% of your SMB customers go out of business each year.

That should be accounted for and known as unavoidable churn. 

Here’s my cheat sheet on reasons. 

Customer Success Metrics

What specific KPIs or metrics do you track to measure the impact of your customer success efforts?

I run a system that PREPs CSMs for success.

These metrics are tracked and form a foundation for performance reviews. The hardest part is documenting the business value and staying on top of that relationship, always checking in to see if they are satisfied with the results.

Customers don't always tell you when you are failing. You have to get creative in how you ask during each interaction. 

Customer Success Challenges

What major challenges have you come across in your role at Placer.ai and how have you addressed them? 

No matter which SaaS company, building meaningful relationships where the CSM is a surprise or delight in the customers’ day and they are providing the business value is a full-time job!

Companies shift priorities.

Key contacts change jobs. Products fail.

But a CSM must stay ahead of whether the customer is making money or saving money with your product and quantifying it so that they have an internal rationale and talk track to keep renewing year after year. 

Customer Success Tools and Technologies

What's your tech stack, and how do you leverage AI to boost team productivity and customer experiences?

• I know there are CSPs out there, however I do think Salesforce is adequate to stay proactive and share data and tasks from sales to CS and executives.

• Service Cloud has been my favorite support software.

• Rocketlane is great for onboarding. 

• Gong for recording with the automated transcription of calls tracked in your SFDC fields.

• Zoom surveys at the end of calls to ensure customers are satisfied.

• Hubspot to send automation to SMBs and manage your NPS (which should also be sent in-platform for the best response)

• Pendo and Lessonly for customer onboarding with ease and certification. 

• Insided for customer community and gifting.

Customer Segmentation and Targeting

How do you segment your customer base, and adapt your CS strategies for different segments or target markets? 

It is important to group customers by how they buy, what they can spend, and their service expectations. 

Typically you will end up with an enterprise, mid-market, and commercial team.

Commercial teams are highly focused on automation.

The interesting thing I have found is that typically the mid-market teams expand at a higher rate due to short sales cycles and also suffer the greatest churn. 

Customer Feedback Mechanisms

What methods and channels do you use to gather customer feedback, and how is this feedback used to drive product and service improvements?

For feedback at many of the SaaS companies I have led, we use NPS and frequent surveys based on milestones and support.

All feedback is gathered by category, i.e. product or issue, and reviewed each month in-depth to write up trends.

If there is ever negative customer feedback a CSM and the director are required to call within 24 hours.

Most recently, we have added a survey at the end of each Zoom call for a customer ranking 1-5 stars that is used in performance reviews and coaching. 

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Employee Engagement and Retention

What strategies do you use to attract and retain top talent within your team, and how do you foster a culture of employee engagement and growth? 

Attracting talent is a full-time job on LinkedIn. 

I don’t mean job postings but actually responding to all of the talents that reach out daily.

Additionally, just being responsive.

Candidates spend their valuable time with you and it is critical to respond to their thank you notes and outreach. It is also equally critical for the talent team to provide productive feedback. It will only help them. 

How many of us knew better until someone told us?  

For recruitment, I think we need to do more than post when we need someone.

I think we need to think about recruitment as a sales and marketing function. What if we were looking for an analyst and our CS leader spoke at the local school for data analysts?

It would create a group of followers of potential candidates. A great book on this topic is, “Hiring Success” by Jerome Ternynck, CEO of Smart Recruiters. 

Ensuring you have enablement programs that equip CSMs for their careers and not just at your company can be another differentiator.

For engagement and growth, I think it is critical to spend quality time in smaller meetings.

CSMs know their manager but little else.

Off-site meetings at least once a year also help to create camaraderie. 

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Personalization, Collaboration, and Advocacy

How do you foster collaboration between customer success, sales, marketing, and product teams to ensure a seamless customer experience? 

The best way to foster collaboration is to have one set of customer metrics and one budget.

If that leader is holding weekly, face-to-face, and “hard” meetings where each of those leaders has a respected voice, collaboration will follow.

There can be no back-channel conversations without the group present. 

Industry Trends and Predictions 

What emerging trends do you anticipate shaping the future of Customer Success?

• Instituting an SMB AI character emoji that represents your CSM and follows the customer the life of the relationship because people work with people, not products

• Customer education rather than product training.

  Helping customers understand the use case and successes of like customers to better strategize for themselves. Rather than just creating videos on how to use the product. 

• No work in an office for self-motivated CSMs.

Training, Development, and Continuous Improvement

How do you invest in the training and development of your customer success team, and what strategies do you use to foster a culture of continuous improvement? 

It is critical to highlight the career path for your CSMs.

Without it, the motivation is drained.

The career path should highlight the attributes and accomplishments required at each level. This should be tied to PREP and performance reviews.

However, I do always highlight for individuals professional advancement is one part you and your performance and the other part timing or luck.

If there isn’t a role open, it is hard to get it.  

I also invest in enablement.

There should be at least one individual who is drafting the CS educational curriculum at the organization. It is a full-time job. 

Here’s a snippet of what I have implemented.

The CS training portion should focus on key pillars.

The Leadership Challenge should be something any CSM can take anywhere and is a core differentiator when attracting talent. 

Handling Organizational Changes and Layoffs

1. What is your perspective on recent layoffs in customer success organizations? 

Layoffs are done many times to move out bottom performers.

Make sure you are getting a performance review and if you have any questions they are in writing with quantifiable, attainable, and specific goals.

Also, spend an hour a day on yourself.

Reading, writing, and making one new acquaintance a week.

It is so hard.

But, it is too late after you are already unemployed.

Also, take AT LEAST one interview a year. Be confident in the going rate for your role. 

2. Did you have any in your teams? If so, how did you ensure continuity in service? 

Yes, I have had and have executed layoffs many times throughout my career. My biggest regret is not insisting on performance reviews EVERY quarter so people had a chance to get feedback and improve. 

Lessons Learned and Recommendations

Reflecting on your experience, what key lessons should customer success leaders prioritize, and what advice would you offer any CS professional in the field? 

Always manage up, down, and sideways at the same time.

They are all UBER critical.

If you are on a 1-on-1 with anyone up or down and they are getting their kids or walking the dog, take the time and go to see them in person.

Make sure they are buying into what you are doing. There is no such thing as too much face time. (As long as it is structured and has an objective.)

Personal Insights

Are there any books or resources that have significantly influenced your career trajectory or approach to customer success?

Customer Success by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy.

I have bought a copy for every CSM at every company I am at.

It is a great foundation for professionals who are just starting.

And, Lincoln Murphy is also a great speaker at kick-offs.

Thought Leaders

Are there industry leaders whose expertise and insights you actively follow and draw inspiration from?

• The CS Cafe!

• Markus Rentsch

• GrowthCurve.IO

• Lincoln Murphy 

Best Career Advice

If you could offer one piece of career advice to your younger self, what would it be? 

In the layoff culture we have today, I would tell myself and everyone out there to fight the pain, don’t look back, and enjoy those rare moments of free time!

Self-worth is never determined by anyone outside of yourself and certainly not in a job. 

Preferred Quote

What quote resonates with you most, both professionally and personally?

“Press ahead and do not look back.”

It is a biblical story but it is so true for all of us today. We will miss the blessings ahead if we keep looking back.

We must, no matter how hard, always press ahead. 

Hobbies

Outside of work, family, or travel, what hobbies or activities do you enjoy the most?

I am a soccer nut and forever renovator.

I played at Tulane and still play and coach. I have three sons that keep me busy. And, I am remodeling my second house with a 7 v 7 soccer field for fun. 

And That’s It

Thank you Gillian for your insights and thought leadership!

It’s been such a great pleasure hosting you on The CS Café!

-Hakan.

Want to share your own story? Or you know a top player you’d love to see on CS My Way?

Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

I’ll speak to you in the next edition.

Cheers,

-Hakan.

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Footnotes:

• Visit The CS Café Store for self-help guides and resources.

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• Share Your Story for a spotlight interview opportunity.

• Need help? Work with me.

I’m super excited to present you my next interview with Roxanne Rowe, AVP of Customer Success at Trackunit, a leading SaaS-based IoT solution provider to the global construction equipment industry!

Thank you, Roxanne, for sharing your story and insights with us on The CS Café!

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

About Trackunit

Trackunit enables a customer (Rental/OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer/ Contractor) to collect and analyze machine data in real-time to deliver proactive, actionable insights that empower them and their customers with data-driven foresight.

Trackunit’s hardware and software solutions increase connectivity across the construction ecosystem – bringing assets, people, and processes together on one platform.

Our ambition is to eliminate downtime and turn construction into the most useful industry for the world.

About You

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Welcome to this exciting new space—CS My Way—where you can learn from the best in the industry and get ahead in Customer Success and beyond.

Each week, I engage in conversations with top executives — Chief Customer Officers, VP/Head of CS, founders, and CEOs. Together, we discuss how they drive success for their customers.

💡I always learn a lot from these exclusive interviews, packed with massive value, practical examples, key takeaways, and best practices from each leader.

I hope they’ll inspire you to build world-class CS organizations and accelerate your career in Customer Success and beyond.

💥I'm thrilled to bring you today my latest conversation with Kevin Herrholtz, Vice President of Customer Success at Minty (formerly AddShoppers), a leading digital commerce platform for brands and shoppers that save people time and money.

Thank you, Kevin, for sharing your story and insights with us on The CS Café!

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

About You

You have a massive experience in the education field.

As an adjunct instructor at Bryant & Stratton College and in your consulting role at Client Success Central, how do you bring an educational perspective into client success? Are there principles from teaching that you find applicable in your current role?

My background is education which started as a middle school teacher for the first 7 years of my professional career.

I also have a Master’s degree in instructional design and I thought my initial journey would be building out a training curriculum for organizations.

I take that background and apply it to everything we do within client success.

Our whole training process is small achievable bits of information that are delivered in multiple mediums overtime.

This reinforces the foundational concepts that our clients need to get to the more challenging concepts.

That same approach is taken even during our QBRs.

We break them down into small segments. We don’t see it as a straight line, but rather as 10 mini segments with goals tied to them.

For me, it’s been the most natural path to go from K12 education to corporate education to customer success.

All of those elements make for a more comprehensive customer experience and journey.

About Customer Success

In your role as Vice President of Client Success, what specific strategies have you found most effective in ensuring the success of your clients at Minty?

All of our clients have success plans where we target their specific business outcomes and set benchmark KPIs that are time-based to ensure we consistently track them.

For our scaled clients, we utilized a one-to-many approach with a combination of asynchronous training, self-paced options, and weekly webinars to ensure we track toward their primary business goals.

Adapting to Diverse Client Needs

Minty serves a variety of eCommerce brands. How do you tailor your customer success approach to accommodate the unique needs and goals of such a diverse client base?

This is the reason for creating success plans with our clients.

The real challenge is our long tail of accounts. We have close to 1000 clients that fall into this cohort.

These clients receive surveys that capture their business outcomes.

As an organization, we know that there are three reasons why someone would want to adopt our technology. We have tailored scaled strategies that are geared to meet these primary objectives.

Balancing Automation and Personalization

With the advancements in technology, how do you find a balance between using automation for efficiency and maintaining a personalized approach to customer success interactions?

Like most organizations, we practice high-touch customer success for our strategic clients where we have set QBRs and meet frequently.

However, we try to employ those same strategies in an automated way for our long tail of accounts.

We want to know the business outcomes of all of our clients.

Even if they are part of our long tail of accounts, we practice a pooled model where we still can meet with our clients on a requested basis to ensure they are making progress on and meeting the stated KPIs and goals within a specific time frame.

We also intervene with these clients if we see they are not making progress and hitting their objectives.

Handling Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is key for improvement. How do you actively collect and use feedback to improve the services and products offered by Minty?

Here’s how we do it in practice:

We have touchpoints throughout the customer journey.

We deploy satisfaction surveys after onboarding, once the software is fully deployed and anytime we release a new feature.

The appropriate team(s) that is impacted by the feedback is mobilized to review the sentiment and appropriate action is taken.

The key internal SLA that we maintain is that all client feedback must be responded to the day the feedback was collected.

Measuring Success

In your role as VP of Client Success, what key metrics do you focus on to measure the success and health of your clients at Minty? How do these metrics guide your team in ensuring ongoing value for your clients?

The leading indicators that help us drive towards these goals are the performance in terms of revenue that we drive for the clients that we partner with.

At the beginning of our partnership, we meet with clients either 1:1 or a scaled approach to collect what their projected revenue goals are. 

Our services are then set up to ensure we continuously strive towards these revenue goals.

We set up milestones and KPIs along the way that are mutually agreed upon with the client to ensure that we are making progress.

Key client milestones include how frequently shoppers are opening the emails we send and engaging with them.

We are just now building out our health scoring framework where we can drive CSM action if these time-bound milestones are not being met.

Client Onboarding and Tech Support

Your background includes roles in client onboarding and tech support. How do you ensure a seamless onboarding process for clients, and what role does tech support play in enhancing the overall client experience?

Every step in the onboarding process is carefully mapped out.

“Value 1” needs to be hit early to maintain momentum and squash fear or uncertainty around deploying our solution.

Our technical support team is not only very knowledgeable.

But we operate off of a service level agreement of responding to every submitted case within an hour and a half that it was received - Monday through Friday.

Speed is of the utmost importance as it shows that we are committed to our clients and we truly do care about their inquiries.

Balancing Long-Term Relationships with Short-Term Goals

In your role at Turning Technologies, you were Vice President of Customer Success and Solutions. How do you balance the need for achieving short-term goals with the importance of building long-term relationships with clients?

It was extremely important for us to educate our clients on a very complex software on what their path the maturity was.

We establish short-term goals with our clients that were achievable, and of course, time-bound.

We did this with:

• a human-first approach by an always-on community to support our clients

• an accessible customer support team

• and a high-touch CSM approach.

We found out pretty early on that relationship strength, or lack thereof was one of the biggest predictors of churn.

We heavily partnered with our training and enablement teams to formulate a cohesive onboarding and implementation process that contained client checkpoints (meetings) along the way.

Impact of Technology on Client Success

With the rapid evolution of technology, how do you see emerging trends, such as AI and automation, impacting the field of client success? Are there specific technologies that you believe will play a critical role in the future of client success?

The role of technology will continue to become more prevalent.

This is a quite positive thing.

The challenge that we still have today is properly scaling customer success so that all clients receive a human-first experience that is supplemented with technology.

The world of digital customer success, or using in-app messaging, training, and community resources has revolutionized how we can work with many clients on a personalized level.

I still think there is progress that needs to be made and the role of technology will absolutely help us get there.

About Layoffs in Customer Success

Given the evolving landscape, many companies continue laying people off primarily their customer success positions. What's your take on it?

Customer Success can easily be viewed as an extension of support which can make it easier to justify cutting the position.

They cut the position because they viewed it as a cost center.

That means that the teams need to be focused not only on retention but also on the growth of their current customer base.

The growth can come through upsells with additional licenses consumed or cross-sells where we can solve additional problems across the organization.

I see it as much more important to the leader of the customer success organization to make growth a priority, so they are not seen as an easily expendable part of the organization.

Personal Growth and Leadership

Throughout your career, you've held many leadership roles. How have you continued to evolve as a leader, and what advice would you give to professionals aspiring to reach executive levels in client success or related fields?

You have to be very committed to learning every day something new about your chosen field.

I still make it a point to read or watch webinars for at least 30 to 60 minutes every day.

I had a mentor many years ago who told me this:

You will probably never come up with something that is brand new.

There are already others who are out there who have done it and done it very well.

You need to beg borrow and steal all the ideas that others have already perfected and make it work for yourself.

In addition, understand your business inside and out.

Understand other areas in the organization that you can positively impact.

Roll up your sleeves and contribute anywhere you positively can in your organization, and eventually will be recognized. 

Personal Insights

What books or resources have had a significant impact on your thinking or approach to your career?

• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin is my leadership go-to book.

  It’s a no-nonsense approach to leading a team and taking personal responsibility for every outcome.

• The 7 Pillars of Customer Success by Wayne McColloch is my go-to CS book.

  I “think” I’ve read them all and this is the only one that breaks information down into actionable steps. At least in my opinion.

Continuous Learning Sources

How do you stay updated on industry trends and best practices in your role? Are there specific blogs, podcasts, or newsletters you find particularly valuable?

I try to consume as much as possible.

I do enjoy the webinars produced by Client Success and Kristi Faltorusso, as well as Irit Eizips and her CS Practice YouTube channel.

I also enjoy what Jay Nathan has done with the Grow Gain Retain podcast series.

Leadership Philosophy

In your leadership roles, what principles or philosophies have guided your approach to building and leading successful teams?

I think it’s important to be empathetic to your team’s needs as human beings first.

We have to realize as leaders we are all human beings, and your team shows up every day with emotions, feelings, and thoughts.

It’s important to be caring as a human being first.

If you do, you’ll be amazed at the production you will get from your team.

Best Career Advice

Earlier in my career, I was so hyper-focused on climbing the ranks.

Looking back, I wish I had taken more time to learn to better prepare myself as the promotions came.

Preferred Quote

“At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou

Hobbies

Anytime with my family is a good time. I try to cherish those moments as much as possible. 

And That’s It

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kevin as much as I did interviewing him!

Want to share your own story?

Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

I’ll speak to you in the next edition.

Cheers,

-Hakan.

COMING UP NEXT on CS MY WAY #10

Roxanne Rowe, AVP of Customer Success at TrackUnit 🚀🚀

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Share The Customer Success Café Newsletter

Welcome to this exciting new space—CS My Way—where you can learn from the best in the industry and get ahead in Customer Success and beyond.

Each week, I engage in conversations with top executives — Chief Customer Officers, VP/Head of CS, founders, and CEOs. Together, we discuss how they drive success for their customers.

💡I always learn a lot from these exclusive interviews, packed with massive value, practical examples, key takeaways, and best practices from each leader.

I hope they’ll inspire you to build world-class CS organizations and accelerate your career in Customer Success and beyond.

💥I'm thrilled to bring you today my latest conversation with Kirsten DiChiappari, Vice President of Customer Success at vCom Solutions, the leading provider that helps businesses manage the cost of their IT spend from the procurement of an asset through payment and analysis.

Thank you, Kirsten, for sharing your story and insights with us on The CS Café — #1 Weekly Customer Success Newsletter!

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

About You

Can you share the journey that led to your current role as VP of CS at vCom?

It was the happiest accident.

I was in the hiring process with a different company and went to Glassdoor to do some research.

Turns out they had terrible reviews and an incredibly toxic work environment, which explained why they'd declined my request to meet with the team I'd be leading. I wasn't aware that Glassdoor had job postings until that day when I found the one for my role at vCom.

Things really do work out in a multitude of ways, as I am now lucky to work for an org that has repeatedly been awarded Great Place to Work, Healthy Workforce, Top CEOs, and Best Places to Work!  

I left this career after my daughter was born when a combination of poor market forces that made employers stop investing in employees collided with a strong focus on avoiding legal issues, which led to policies and procedures being driven solely by that concern.

I found two back-to-back opportunities managing companies in the wellness space.

It was a nice transition that offered me flexibility while my children were small and also landed me in the Chamber of Commerce and Business Network International (BNI), two organizations that were valuable in teaching me how smaller local businesses survived and thrived.

In my board role, I shared a lot of advice and recommendations with fellow business leaders on how to tackle online marketing and social media, eventually parlaying this hobby into a boutique agency of my own.

I taught business owners through the Chamber of Commerce, Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, and Small Business Association, also working with local radio, TV, and newspapers to consult with their advertisers, and ultimately selling my business to a local media group.

I led their digital agency until I took an opportunity with Presslaff Interactive Revenue to build marketing and sales programs for their customers, traveling around the country to train media sales executives.

After Presslaff was acquired, I got the opportunity to go build, and then lead the Customer Success team at BlueVenn (acquired by Upland), through their own acquisition years later.

I transitioned to have businesses as my customers and now have both my team and our customers as my customers. 🙂      

Client Retention Strategies

Drawing from your experience at BlueVenn, where you were responsible for retaining and expanding a significant base of SaaS customers, can you share a specific strategy or initiative that you found particularly effective in ensuring long-term client relationships?

It's not at all original, but:

“The simplest strategy is to successfully deliver the product customers bought - as expected and when expected.”

Transparent and proactive communication is critical to overcoming any potential issues.

Waffling or avoiding hard conversations is a recipe for disaster so I encourage my teams to say what needs to be said.

Customers hate being disappointed (who wouldn't), but they ultimately appreciate clarity and the opportunity to adjust plans in advance of a miss. 

Beyond that, keep talking.

Remind (aka SHOW) a customer the value your solution provides – and make sure it's actually still providing that value.

Needs change and the best way to guarantee renewals is to regularly seek alignment.

I think of what we do as a 'personal trainer' model - it's not something we can do alone; it really requires customer participation (partnership) to be successful.  

Operational Efficiency

Given the breadth of services vCom offers, how do you ensure seamless coordination between departments to deliver a unified customer experience?

Technology certainly plays a big part so that everyone can access the info necessary to do their jobs.

Using the right tools for the right activities is also key, there's a joke about a meeting that could have been an email, and lord knows there are plenty of emails that should have been an Instant Message (IM).

As for the human side, two things stand out to me:

• Leveraging our whole company for ideas to improve how we do what we do

• And cascading information to the whole organization. 

Our leadership is very transparent.

They provide regular updates on our financials, our go-to-market strategy, important changes to the market, and the impact on our business.

They don't treat any department or any role as not deserving of this information, and everyone is empowered to seek clarity, challenge ideas, and recommend alternatives.  

Driving Adoption and ROI

At Presslaff Interactive Revenue, you focused on training sales teams and clients on the adoption and use of innovative solutions. How do you approach the challenge of ensuring that clients not only adopt vCom's services but also realize tangible ROI from their investment?

If you can create opportunities for a customer to grow revenue, you've got their attention.

“If you can solve a problem for them, saving them time or money, and if you can do it faster or better than they could themselves, you've got their attention.”

You have to know your unique customers and what each needs – and you absolutely have to capture what they define as success in your relationship.

This benchmark should be documented and shared between both organizations and regularly measured and revised, as necessary.

This allows for the creation of an appropriate account plan built to achieve their desired ROI. 

Here’s what we’ve covered in the 2nd part of our conversation:

• Kirsten’s Metrics for Success

• Industry Engagement and Thought Leadership

• Personalized Customer Experiences

• Adaptability and Innovation

• Building Strategic Partnerships

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Measuring and Communicating Success

• Balancing Business Metrics and Customer Experience

• Training and Development Initiatives

• Proactive Customer Engagement & Issue Resolution

• Crisis Management and Resilience

• Her Tech Stack and Take on AI

• Her Perspective on Customer Success Layoffs

• Thought Leaders She’s Following

• Her Leadership Philosophy

• Her Best Career Advice

• And More!

Metrics for Success

What KPIs do you track daily to gauge the effectiveness of your customer success initiatives, and how do you use these metrics to drive continuous improvement?

Here’s our North Star:

…

Upgrade now and learn CS from the best leaders in the field like Kirsten DiChiappari — not in theory!

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Tasneem Nomanbhai, Premium subscriber.

Accelerate Your Success

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Welcome to this exciting new space—CS My Way—where you can learn from the best in the industry and get ahead in Customer Success and beyond.

Each week, I engage in conversations with top executives — Chief Customer Officers, VP/Head of CS, founders, and CEOs. Together, we discuss how they drive success for their customers.

💡I always learn a lot from these exclusive interviews, packed with massive value, practical examples, key takeaways, and best practices from each leader.

I hope they’ll inspire you to build world-class CS organizations and accelerate your career in Customer Success and beyond.

💥I'm thrilled to bring you today my latest conversation with Krystel Leal, Head Of Customer Success at OneText, a conversational sales company that helps brands increase sales through automated text-to-buy.

Thank you, Krystel, for sharing your story with us on The CS Café — #1 Weekly Customer Success Newsletter!

Your insights of working at an early-stage startup are a boost for our community 🚀

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

About OneText

OneText is a text-to-buy and conversational sales company.

Our mission is to make it easy for any brand that has customer phone numbers to treat those numbers like cards on file.

At a resort, you are able to pay for your mojito with your room number — we're here to bring that same level of convenience to online shopping.

With OneText, you can literally make a purchase with just one word and one text.

About You

I'm originally from Portugal and studied Communication in Paris, France.

After doing a couple of internships in the industry, I decided to become a remote freelancer in marketing and web development.

When I moved to California in 2017, I had to not only brush up on my English skills but also make new connections and figure out how I could work for a tech startup in Silicon Valley one day.

Fast forward six years, and here I am working at a tech startup in Silicon Valley, all thanks to meeting Jonathan Fudem, CEO and co-founder of OneText, when he started his journey of building the company.

Every single day, I'm committed to learning, growing, and pushing myself to make this adventure the greatest one yet.

The Shift from Operations to Customer Success

You transitioned from being the Head of Operations at StartSe to leading Customer Success at OneText. How did your experience in operations contribute to your approach to customer success, and what key lessons can others in similar transitions apply?

When it comes to changing careers or pursuing new opportunities, it's key to take a close look at your transferable skills.

These skills are often underestimated but they are so important.

In my personal experience, I found that even though I came from a theoretical background, there were skills from my college education that could be applied in the digital world.

This realization helped when I decided to become a freelancer.

Soft skills play a vital role in every aspect of my journey.

Additionally, from my time in operations and as a web project manager, I learned how to work with different stakeholders and efficiently organize and prioritize different demands and needs.

Driving Customer Success in a Frictionless Commerce Environment

OneText's mission is to make commerce frictionless. How does the focus on turning every phone number into a universal payment method impact your customer success strategy, and what unique challenges and opportunities does it present?

At OneText, we work with Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) brands.

When it comes to segmentation, it is not an easy task in the retail and ecommerce industry.

Why?

The differences we find among all our merchants can be seen as both a challenge and an opportunity.

On one hand, it makes it incredibly challenging to create a standardized customer journey for everyone.

On the other hand, it allows us to constantly rethink our product, features, and verticals to better serve the diverse needs of our merchants.

Here’s what we’ve covered in the 2nd part of our conversation:

• Daily Routines for Customer Success Excellence

• How To Best Collaborate With Other Departments

• From Marketing Strategist to Customer Success Leader

• Lessons Learned from EdTech to Fintech

• Applying Her University Experience to Tech

• Her Perspective on Customer Success Layoffs

• International Experience and Cultural Sensitivity

• Lessons Learned from Digital Nomadism

• Her Tech Stack

• Personal Insights & Leadership Philosophy

• And more!

Daily Routines for Customer Success Excellence

As the Head of Customer Success at OneText, can you walk us through a typical day in your role? What routines or practices do you prioritize to ensure excellence in customer success on a daily basis?

Similar to everyone in Customer Success, I feel that I don't have a typical day.

But let me start by saying that I'm a huge fan of time-blocking.

Here’s why: …

Upgrade now and learn CS from the best leaders in the field like Krystel Leal — not in theory!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I upgraded to Premium to access your exclusive content and learn from you. I find your content very valuable.”

Tasneem Nomanbhai, Premium subscriber.

Accelerate Your Career

Read more

Welcome to this exciting new space—CS My Way—where you can learn from the best in the industry and get ahead in Customer Success and beyond.

Each week, I engage in conversations with top executives — Chief Customer Officers, VP/Head of CS, founders, and CEOs. Together, we discuss how they drive success for their customers.

💡I always learn a lot from these exclusive interviews, packed with massive value, practical examples, key takeaways, and best practices from each leader.

I hope they’ll inspire you to build world-class CS organizations and accelerate your career in Customer Success and beyond.

💥I'm thrilled to bring you today my latest conversation with Melissa Garcia, Director of Renewal Operations at Chief, the renowned private network that executive women rely on to raise their leadership game!

Founded in 2019, Chief is the largest community of senior executive women, representing more than 10,000 companies and 77% of the Fortune 100. Chief has been recognized as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies and one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. 🚀🚀

And Melissa has a ton to tell you about her massive experience and insights into customer success operations and strategies. You'll learn a lot - an incredible journey, guaranteed!

Thank you, Melissa, for sharing your story with us on The CS Café — #1 Weekly Customer Success Newsletter.

Your insights are a boost for our community 🚀🚀

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

About You

My journey to Chief was certainly not a traditional one.

I had been following Chief for a while and was super interested in the company. I was intrigued by the mission and closely followed Chief's developments.

I stayed in constant communication with individuals I had connected with during the interview process and after applying and interviewing three times, the opportunity for this role aligned perfectly with my strengths and experience in customer success and renewals.

I feel incredibly lucky that I now find myself in a role that resonates deeply with my professional journey. 

Career Transitions and Networking

You have a super interesting and diverse career.

Transitioning from editorial writing to account management, what role has networking played in your career, and how did it contribute to your successful pivots?

Networking is truly such a necessary tool when you’re thinking about or trying to execute a pivot in your career, and just in general at work.

Despite this, I secured an interview without knowing anyone in the industry, managed to sell myself and my skills, and landed a position at ClassPass.

It was during my time there that I actively began building my network and connecting with more folks in Customer Success and within the tech space.

This then allowed me to advance quickly as I learned from those around me and made a consistent effort to schedule things like coffee chats to meet folks in other departments.

Pivoting to Account Management

Making this shift from editorial writing to account management is a significant change. Can you share specific challenges you faced during this transition, and what advice do you have for people looking to pivot into roles that may seem outside their initial career trajectory?

The fear of seemingly taking steps backward with each role change can be daunting and I have felt that myself.

However, it's key to challenge the notion that progress is always upward.

This mindset can inadvertently impede our willingness to explore new opportunities and can therefore block us from pivoting altogether.

While I acknowledge the privilege associated with this advice, sometimes it's necessary to prioritize the experience you may be able to get or try a new industry over immediate financial gains or a linear career progression.

Additionally, becoming adept at selling your story and articulating your unique narrative is so pivotal.

Operational Mindset

I read that your early roles in writing allowed you to develop an operational mindset. How do you apply operational skills and strategic thinking to the renewal operations at Chief, and what lessons from your early career still resonate in your approach today?

The integration of operational skills and strategic thinking is a constant in my current role.

Simultaneously, I'm tasked with consistently envisioning and taking into account the broader picture and ensuring we provide consistent value to our members.

Earlier in my career, I was part of a startup apparel company called Social Sunday, where versatility was key.

The role demanded diverse responsibilities, extensive travel, and a “wear many hats” mentality.

The mindset of always intentionally considering every decision and prioritizing all pieces of the puzzle that it took to operate effectively remains integral to my approach to work and decision making and I always carry that with me.

Productivity - Balancing Multiple Roles

With a track record spanning roles in diverse industries all at the same time, such as being a Mentor at Aspire to Her and a Member at Badassery, how do you balance multiple roles, and what productivity strategies do you find most valuable in managing such a dynamic portfolio? In short, what's your secret to productivity?

While I wish there were a magic secret I could share for staying consistently productive and organized, the reality is that it's an ongoing practice every day.

Taking on different projects or committing to new endeavors requires constant self-assessment.

This means regularly questioning why you are doing certain tasks and evaluating their contribution to your broader goals or organizational objectives.

It’s also helpful to not be unafraid to say no, to understand your peak productivity hours, and then where you can align your day accordingly.

It's also key to be flexible and open to shifting your approach to productivity as needed.

If a change in your routine enhances efficiency, don't hesitate to make that adjustment.

Doing something simply because it's the way you've always done it isn't reason enough to persist with it.

Adaptability and a mindful approach to your time are key components to staying on top of things.

Leadership and Team Culture

You highlighted the importance of leadership and team culture. How do you create a healthy and uplifting working environment within your team, and what impact do you believe this has on the success of retention efforts?

Creating a positive and supportive work environment is extremely critical to me and something I take very seriously.

I approach leadership with a human-first mindset, acknowledging that each team member has a life beyond the workplace, and it's key to honor and accommodate that reality.

Effective communication is the cornerstone of my leadership philosophy.

I invest time in understanding the working styles of individuals on my team, and how they prefer to receive feedback, and then foster an environment that aligns with these preferences.

I am also a firm believer in grounding my team in reality.

“Transparency and openness are key values for me, as I believe in communicating the 'why' behind our actions.”

Creating a space for questions and involving the team in the decision-making process helps build trust and a sense of belonging, which builds team culture.

Here’s what we’ve covered in the 2nd part of our conversation:

• Customer Success and Renewal Operations: Key Insights

• Coaching and Mentorship - Time Management

• Personal and Professional Balance

• Her Career Highs and Lows

• Melissa’s Personal Growth and Motivation Hacks

• How To Overcome Challenges at Work

• Her Leadership Philosophy & Personal Insights

• A Powerful Career Advice That Might Change Your Life

• And more!

Customer Success and Renewal Operations

In your roles at Wagmo, Trendalytics, and now Chief, you've been heavily involved in Customer Success and Renewal Operations. What skills and strengths have you found most critical for success in these roles?

For me, it’s about building lasting relationships and ensuring renewals.

And it all boils down to delivering value.

Here’s how I do it: …

Upgrade now and learn CS from the best leaders in the field like Melissa Garcia — not in theory!

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Accelerate Your Career

Read more

Welcome to this exciting new space—CS My Way—where you can learn from the best in the industry and get ahead in Customer Success and beyond.

Each week, I engage in conversations with top executives — Chief Customer Officers, VP/Head of CS, founders, and CEOs. Together, we discuss how they drive success for their customers.

💡I always learn a lot from these exclusive interviews, packed with massive value, practical examples, key takeaways, and best practices from each leader.

I hope they’ll inspire you to build world-class CS organizations and accelerate your career in Customer Success and beyond.

Today we explore all things Customer Education and its critical importance for CS in today’s most innovative businesses.

So excited to bring you my latest conversation with Jill Favro Sawatzky, Chief Customer Officer at Thought Industries, one of the world's leading online learning platforms.

Thank you, Jill, for accepting my invitation.

The stage is yours!

P.S. Want to share your own story? Fill out this form and I’ll get back to you over email.

About Thought Industries

We provide a platform where companies can create interactive online courses and training for their customers. It's like building a personalized classroom in the digital world, tailored just for their needs.

A major use case for us is companies training their customers on the products they’ve bought.

Whether it's a new software or a complex service, we make it easier for them to understand and use it to its full potential.

This way, companies using Thought Industries see happier customers, getting more value from their purchases.

So, in short, we're helping businesses teach their customers in a fun and effective way, turning them into savvy users and fans of their products.

We have many customers, too, that are large training companies.

The learning IS their product.

So for them, the front-end learning experience is a huge priority for how they present themselves in the market.

They're able to use Thought Industries to customize and deliver a personalized, industry-leading learning product.

About You

Becoming Chief Customer Officer at Thought Industries has been quite the adventure!

My journey has been fueled by my passion for customer success and a relentless pursuit of learning.

I started my career in Project Management in Professional Services at IBM.

Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to transition into a role where I could help existing customers achieve value over their entire journey.

The field of CS evolved over time as did my career as I stepped into roles that challenged and expanded my understanding of how to drive customer value.

After IBM, I moved into Director and VP roles at Citrix, PROS, and Commvault.

Professional Insights

As the Chief Customer Officer, my role is multi-faceted and dynamic.

It's not just about overseeing a team.

It's about nurturing a deeply customer-centric culture.

This means constantly evaluating and evolving our approach to customer education.

We work closely with our product development teams to ensure our offerings meet the changing needs of our clients and keep an eye on the market to anticipate trends.

It's a balancing act between being a visionary, a strategist, and an executor.

Organizational Structure

The structure of our Customer Experience (CX) team is designed to build collaboration and agility.

Here’s how we are structured:

It includes:

1. Professional Services,

2. Customer Success,

3. Support,

4. and Customer Education.

It also includes a new team, which we call the Technical Investigations Team. This team ensures that nothing falls through the cracks for our customers.

Their job is to find solutions for customer challenges that may be outside the scope of any of the other teams.

The entire CX team is the heartbeat of our organization, ensuring that every client gets the most out of our platform.

Our team works in close concert with our product development, sales, and marketing teams, forming a cohesive unit aligned with our goals and strategies.

This structure ensures that we're quick to respond to market changes, agile in our approach, and always focused on delivering the best possible experience to our customers.

Company Specific Insights

In my role, I've focused on demonstrating the direct correlation between customer success and the financial health of Thought Industries.

My approach involves not only providing top-notch customer education but also using data to track and measure the success of our initiatives, ensuring that we're always moving the needle in the right direction.

The Evolving Landscape in Customer Education

It’s been a constant evolution, and since I joined Thought Industries, I've witnessed significant shifts.

There's been a move towards creating more interactive, personalized, and user-centric learning experiences.

Adapting to these changes has meant investing in technology that allows us to deliver adaptive learning paths and leveraging data analytics to get deeper insights into user engagement.

It’s not just about keeping up with trends.

It's about leading the charge in redefining how customer education is perceived and delivered.

Driving Customer Adoption

Strategies for Adoption

It’s about understanding the customer's journey and crafting experiences that resonate with them.

It starts with quickly getting our customers to value with streamlined onboarding.

Think of this as the express lane to getting customers up and running.

It’s about making the onboarding process as smooth and intuitive as possible. This includes clear guidance, step-by-step tutorials, and readily available support.

We also tailor our educational content to meet the specific needs of different user groups.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s more like having a custom-fit suit.

We make sure that the content is relevant, engaging, and directly applicable to the tasks our customers want to accomplish.

It’s like showing them the hidden gems of our platform.

As we educate them on these features, we help them get even more value out of their investment.

Focusing on reducing the Time to Value and implementing these strategies had significant improvements in customer adoption and satisfaction.

Balancing Personalization and Scale

Thought Industries focuses on personalized learning experiences. How do you find the balance between personalization and scalability, especially when serving a diverse range of customers, from midmarket enterprises to Fortune 500 companies?

Finding the sweet spot is one of the biggest challenges in customer education.

We address this by leveraging technology such as AI-driven recommendations, which allow us to offer personalized content at scale.

Our scalable content management system can serve a large number of customers, from mid-sized businesses to large enterprises, efficiently.

This approach makes sure that each client receives a learning experience that feels just right for them, while we keep the ability to serve a large and diverse client base.

Success Stories

Can you share a specific success story where the implementation of customer education significantly contributed to a client's growth, retention, or overall success?

There are many success stories at Thought Industries, but one that stands out involves a software company that recently experienced transformative growth and retention by implementing our platform.

They offer both free and paid content across many of their different customer groups, from large enterprises to individual consumers.

They also offer a huge range of formats in their training program - everything from virtual labs to certifications.

After tailoring the learning paths and content to their specific audiences, the client saw a significant increase in user engagement.

This not only contributed to their immediate success in terms of user satisfaction and retention but also played a critical role in their overall market growth.

That’s the power of effective customer education and its impact on business success.

Implementation Challenges

What are some common challenges organizations face when implementing customer education initiatives, and how has Thought Industries addressed them?

I’ve got a long answer for this question because it’s such an important part of my role.

Here are the biggest ones that I’ve observed:

Content Relevance

• Challenge: Keeping educational content relevant and up-to-date.

• Our Approach: Continuously updating courses and materials based on industry trends and user feedback from one central asset manager.

Learner Engagement

• Challenge: Maintaining engagement across diverse learning styles.

• Our Approach: Using interactive content, gamification, and personalized learning paths.

Scalability

• Challenge: Expanding customer education for a growing user base.

• Our Approach: Employing a platform designed for effortless scalability, accommodating any number of users across many segments.

Measuring Impact

• Challenge: Demonstrating the business impact and ROI of customer education.

• Our Approach: Leveraging analytics tools to track engagement and link education to customer satisfaction and product usage.

System Integration

• Challenge: Integrating the education platform with existing business systems.

• Our Approach: Offering flexible APIs for smooth integration with clients' tech stacks.

Globalization and Localization

• Challenge: Localizing content for global audiences.

• Our Approach: Adapting content to meet cultural, linguistic, and regional needs.

We help our customers address these challenges by staying adaptive, data-driven, and customer-focused.

Impact on Retention

You've led customer success teams at various companies. How does a strong customer education strategy contribute to customer retention, and what key lessons have you learned in this regard?

A well-crafted customer education strategy is critical.

It's about empowering users with the knowledge they need to make the most of your product, thereby fostering a sense of loyalty and satisfaction.

From my experience, continuously updating content and integrating user feedback are key.

It's also important to keep the content relevant and engaging, ensuring that users feel a continuous connection with the product and see the value in sticking around.

Thought Leadership Through Education

Customer education can position a company as a thought leader. How does Thought Industries leverage its education platform to establish thought leadership and differentiate itself in the market?

Our own Thought Industries Academy is a key example of what a robust education platform can look like.

This is achieved by providing cutting-edge educational content, sharing industry insights, and fostering a vibrant community of learners.

As we do so, we not only demonstrate our expertise in the field but also create a space where ideas and best practices can be exchanged, further cementing our role as innovators and leaders in the customer education space.

Our CEO, Barry Kelly, along with Daniel Quick has also written a book on customer education called “The Customer Education Playbook: How Leading Companies Engage, Convert and Retain Customers”.

It’s a great example of how Thought Industries provides thought leadership to the industry.

Personalization Beyond Content

Personalization is often associated with content. Can you share examples of how Thought Industries personalizes the entire customer education experience, beyond just content delivery?

We create a learning experience that adapts to the individual needs and preferences of each user.

This includes adaptive user interfaces that adjust based on user behavior, customized learning paths that are tailored to specific roles and objectives, and interactive elements that cater to different learning styles.

As we personalize the entire experience, we ensure that each user gets the most relevant and effective learning journey possible.

Evaluating Customer Education Platforms

Having been involved in implementing learning systems, what advice would you give to organizations looking to evaluate and choose a customer education platform that aligns with their business objectives?

Selecting the right customer education platform is key.

The user experience is vital, so a platform that is intuitive and can be white-labeled for every customer is a must.

Additionally, robust analytics features are essential to track the effectiveness of your educational content and understand user engagement.

Building a Learning Community

Establishing a community around training and certifications is one of your major goals. How does Thought Industries foster such communities, and what role do they play in Customer Success?

We place a strong focus on building learning communities.

These provide a space for users to interact, share experiences, and learn from each other.

These communities are more than just a place for learning.

They're a source of ongoing engagement and play a key role in the overall success of our customers.

Transitioning from On-Premise to Cloud

You've dealt with transitioning customers from on-premise to cloud-based environments. What complexities arise in this transition, and how does customer education help address these complexities?

The transition can be complex.

The best approach to easing this transition involves having comprehensive education and support.

You need to provide resources that guide users through the transition process, address common concerns, and help them understand the benefits of moving to a cloud environment.

As you demystify the process and offer hands-on support, you can make the transition as seamless as possible.

Continuous Learning for Customer Success Teams

In your experience, how do you ensure that customer success teams continuously learn and adapt to new trends and best practices in the customer education space?

We foster a culture of continuous learning through regular training sessions, encouraging attendance at industry events, and facilitating internal knowledge-sharing sessions.

We have quite a number of individuals who have extensive experience in the industry and are members of the greater customer education community. They lead both internal and external thought leadership sessions for us.

As we stay on top of the latest trends and best practices in customer education, our teams are better equipped to meet the evolving needs of our clients and deliver exceptional service.

The Role of Customer Success Managers

Evolution of CSM Roles

With your extensive experience in leading large customer success teams, how have you observed the role of Customer Success Managers evolve, especially in terms of their increasing or changing involvement in customer education initiatives?

The role of Customer Success Managers (CSMs) has evolved significantly, especially in the context of customer education.

CSMs are increasingly becoming integral to education initiatives, playing a pivotal role in understanding customer needs and ensuring that the educational content is aligned with these needs.

This evolution reflects the growing importance of education in customer success and the need for CSMs to be well-versed in the educational tools and strategies that can drive customer engagement and satisfaction.

About The Current Job Market & Layoffs

What's your take on companies laying off Customer Success pros primarily?

Customer Success is not just about keeping customers happy.

It's about ensuring that they are getting the most value from a product or service, which in turn drives retention and growth.

It's essential to maintain a strong Customer Success presence, especially in challenging economic times, as they are the ones who help retain and grow the customer base.

How do you ensure CS has a seat at the board level?

It starts by demonstrating the direct impact of Customer Success on the company's bottom line.

It's about framing Customer Success as a strategic partner in the company's growth, not just a support function.

Lessons from Your Previous Roles

Reflecting on your experiences at Commvault, PROS, and other organizations, what valuable lessons have you brought to Thought Industries regarding structuring and leading successful Customer Success and education programs?

One key lesson I've brought to Thought Industries is the importance of aligning Customer Success and education programs closely with business outcomes.

It's about understanding that these programs are not just about teaching customers how to use a product but about helping them achieve their business goals using our product.

This requires a deep understanding of different customer segments and designing tailored programs that address their needs.

Another key lesson is the importance of data in driving decisions and measuring success.

Using data to refine and optimize our programs continually ensures that we are always delivering value and staying relevant to our customers' evolving needs.

Key Metrics for Customer Education

Beyond traditional CS metrics, what KPIs or other metrics do you find most insightful in measuring the success of customer education programs?

Beyond traditional customer success metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), several other KPIs are insightful in measuring the success of customer education programs.

These include:

• completion rates of training modules

• the time taken to complete courses

• engagement scores (like quiz scores, and forum participation)

• and the application of learned skills in practical scenarios, demonstrating product adoption.

Another critical metric is the correlation between education engagement and customer health scores.

This can indicate how well-educated customers are better able to utilize and benefit from the product, and even renew with your company at a higher rate than untrained customers.

Tracking these metrics helps us understand the effectiveness of our educational content and its impact on overall Customer Success.

Your Tech Stack

We use different tools and platforms to drive CS.

Our tech stack includes our own platform as a learning management system (LMS) at its core.

It’s complemented by CRM tools like Salesforce and Gainsight for customer data management.

We also leverage data analytics platforms to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences.

For communication and collaboration, we use tools like Slack and Zoom, which help us stay connected with our customers and teams.

Additionally, we incorporate feedback tools to gather real-time responses from our users, enabling us to make swift adjustments to our strategies and content.

About AI

AI has enormous potential in customer education and the Thought Industries platform.

AI can be used to generate learning content quickly.

As it analyzes user data, AI can tailor educational content to individual learning styles and needs, making the learning experience more effective and engaging.

It can also help in predicting which customers might face challenges and proactively offer them additional resources.

Personal Insights

What books or resources have had a significant impact on your thinking or approach to your career?

The book “The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty” by Matthew Dixon has been out for more than ten years but I find that the insights in the book are more relevant than ever today.

The “Customer Success Economy” by Nick Mehta and Alison Pickens is a great reference book to keep on the shelf regarding CS.

Captivating Podcasts

I'm an avid listener of podcasts like "Masters of Scale" by Reid Hoffman and "HBR IdeaCast" from Harvard Business Review.

They provide great insights into business growth and leadership.

I also love the “Hidden Brain” podcast on NPR for the incredible scientific information that they share about human behavior. It’s very relevant to both work and personal life.

On social media, LinkedIn is my go-to for industry insights and networking, while X (Twitter) helps me stay on top of real-time trends and discussions.

Leadership Philosophy

My leadership philosophy is:

I believe in leading by example and creating an environment where team members feel valued, heard, and motivated to grow.

Empathy guides my interactions, ensuring I understand the team's challenges and aspirations.

Transparency in communication builds trust and alignment.

And fostering a growth mindset encourages innovation and continuous learning within the team.

Preferred Quote

One quote that resonates deeply with me is:

It reminds me of the importance of personal accountability and the impact individual actions can have in shaping our environment, both professionally and personally.

Hobbies

Outside of work, I have a passion for road cycling.

It's not only a great way to stay fit, but it also offers a sense of freedom and adventure, as well as being a social network.

Plus, there’s beer afterward!

Additionally, I love reading — it's a perfect way to relax and expand my horizons.

These hobbies provide a balance to my professional life, allowing me to recharge and come back to work with fresh energy and ideas.

Closing Thoughts

I'd like to emphasize the importance of continuous learning, both personally and professionally.

In a world that's constantly evolving, staying curious and open to new ideas is key.

And remember, the journey is as important as the destination — enjoy the process and the learnings it brings.

And That’s It

I hope you enjoyed my interview with Jill as much as I did interviewing her.

Want to share your own story for a potential spotlight opportunity?

Fill out this quick form and I’ll get back to you over email.

I’ll speak to you in the next edition.

Cheers,

Hakan.

CS MY WAY - Learn CS from the best leaders in the field

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About You

I am a Kiwi based in Sydney, Australia.

I have been in technology for 30 years. I have always worked for US software companies, both enterprises in the form of Oracle, IBM, VMware, and now GitLab and startups such as Tealium and Marketo. 

I think of my career as a portfolio rather than a path. 

There has been my time in tech, but it’s complemented by 8 years simultaneously in governance roles as a non-executive director, and my time in elite sport with the old endurance adventure along the way.

The lessons learned on the side of a mountain or at the board table complement and strengthen my contribution to tech.

Technology has always fascinated me in terms of the benefits it can provide businesses in innovation and efficiency. That’s what drew me in and holds me in a tech career.

Key Achievements 

Taking Tealium from 4 employees in APJ with no customers to 70 employees and 50 customers in 5 years, with a product that did not even have a category when we started.

I have represented  NZ 6 times in triathlons and cycled over the highest rideable pass, Thorong La, in the Himalayas.

Currently, I am cycling in Sri Lanka from tip to tip.

Driving Customer Success

The strategy I always return to is customer connection.

No matter what problem you are trying to solve within your business, you should never lose sight of your customer.

Ensuring there is an ongoing dialogue at multiple levels of the business, especially with a set of key stakeholders, will prevent the business from straying too far from customer needs.

Ensure you hear early about issues with the relationship, and often, the customers are the best sources for product development direction.

This dialogue has to be give/get in nature; there is plenty for the vendor in that kind of conversation, but what is in it for the customer?

Also, this is a process that the executive needs to be deeply invested in, to ensure the conversation occurs at all levels of the customer. 

What’s Your Take On AI and Customer Success?

Embrace it and educate yourself on how you can use it just as you would any other tool, such as search or analytics.

What Generative AI (Gen AI) can deliver will quickly become table stakes for everyone; the quicker you learn how to value-add to that, the better.

Learn how to use it to speed the generation of foundational content, and then you add your unique insight to this.

Customer Success struggles with scale, and Gen AI has the potential to help accelerate some of the more repetitive, mundane tasks, such as basic success plans.

On those micro-credentials I mentioned earlier, make one prompt engineering, another understanding of what Gen AI is good at and what it should not be used for, and finally, use Gen AI for Creative Ideation.

In terms of how you make your career resilient to the impact of AI, cultivate your uniquely human skills.

Of the three pillars of CS I mentioned earlier, that is Mindset, the leading edge of technical/industry/category.

And for your CS skills, it’s relationship building, commercial conversations, and so on.

Building a Customer-Centric Culture

Customer Success at VMware has a paid and vendor-invested offering.

When I joined the business, the team already had a remarkably strong customer-centric culture due in part to the amount of time they spent with their customers, as the paid offer enabled more time to be spent and for this to be on-site.

Maintaining customer centricity and uniformity, given the size of the customer, was more of the focus.

As they say, what gets measured gets done, so having a uniform metric for customer sentiment, initially NPS and later perspective score, helped detect where there may be an issue with centricity.  

It comes down to caring and delivering to the customer outcomes.

So it starts at the beginning of the relationship with understanding what those are and maintaining mutual alignment with those via success plans throughout the relationship.

Ensuring these are shared as customer-centricity must be company-wide.

Here’s what we covered in the 2nd part of our interview:

• Team Empowerment

  Discover how trust and empowerment are the keys to success in leading diverse teams across 16 countries.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

  Learn practical tips for effective collaboration by focusing on "What's In It For Me" and building strong customer relationships.

• Proactive Customer Engagement

  Explore strategies like customer gatherings, benchmarking, and proactive risk reviews to ensure lasting customer success.

• Leveraging Technology

  Find out how to navigate challenges with customer success tools, productivity tools, and collaborative alignment using OKRs.

• Measuring and Iterating - Key Metrics

  Simplify success metrics to align with business objectives and proactively manage customer risk.

• Continuous Improvement

  Dive into building a learning environment for continuous improvement, where diverse views are welcomed.

• Advice for Leaders

  Gain insights on leading from your current role, building a career portfolio, and valuable advice for personal and professional development.

• In The News

  Understand the impact of recent layoffs in the Customer Success community and the importance of refining metrics and considering paid offers.

• What's Next

  Get a glimpse into what the future holds for Catherine in 2024 and her exciting exploration of new opportunities.

• Her Hobbies and Recommendations

  Explore Catherine’s amazing hobbies, involvement with a non-profit, and recommendations for influential people to follow and podcasts to listen to.

Team Empowerment

Trust is the key to motivation and empowerment.

For me, I am a leader of leaders. They are the specialists in their regions, teams, and products.

My job is to trust them to do that and provide the support and guidance to optimise success in that.

As a virtual team spread across 16 countries, empowerment comes from leading to outcomes, removing the temptation to micromanage (which is impossible with such a diverse team), and enabling the teams to flex to the different environments in which they work.

I believe in building brave spaces where teams operate with radical candour. To openly assess when things go wrong as they will, proactively resolve, and prevent repetition.

All teams in technology companies need to be embedded in ongoing learning.

The WEP Future of Jobs Report 2023 estimates that half of our skills will be disrupted, so ensuring the team is constantly learning is imperative.

Ensuring all the team members have Individual Development Plans, which are reviewed with their leaders quarterly.

15% of their time, i.e. 6 hours per week, is needed for learning to ensure they simply stay current.

This means they need to be scheduling micro-learning daily through podcasts, short YouTube training, etc. 

It’s important to keep the team structure and people's careers moving as this is the healthiest, most resilient state for the individual and their employer. Career ladders, Individual development plans, and succession plans need to be used in concert to ensure this fluidity.

SPIFs and ongoing recognition are always useful complements to help with engagement and empowerment.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Know your colleagues and their KPIs and ensure that collaboration is driving toward success for everyone.

Regular cadences that progress everyone’s KPI are the most successful.

One of Customer Success's unique values in this collaboration is our relationship with everyone, including a deep knowing of what’s up with the customer.

Recently, the business asked CS to help our customers consume credits that were going unused and expirin,g which was a lost opportunity for our customers and VMware.

It wasn’t until sales goals were aligned that they also came to the table.

When they did, there was a new building of relationship and coming together that had benefits way outside the particular program of work.

How Do You Drive Proactive Customer Engagement?

By providing gatherings (breakfasts or half-day sessions) for the Customers to come together and get unique access to resources and information.

We struggled initially to get these meetings reinstated post-Covid but we persisted, and they returned to a valuable rhythm with our customers.

The cross-customer networking component of these sessions should not be underestimated. 

Providing cross-company anonymised benchmarking is another great value add for our customers. Without the vendor brokering this, it is difficult for our customers to understand how they are progressing, especially when it comes to new tech, where industry standards are still being developed.

Ensuring we get our senior executive across a key customer, including regular face-to-face visits, helps if issues do occur, as there are then multiple levels of connection.

We use a Bi-weekly Customer Risk Review process with a series of standardized metrics to get ahead of problems before they become urgent and ensure the right level of executive oversight.

Leveraging Technology

We use Gainsight for Customer Success.

It's a good tool, but it is not designed to cope with the complex structures of our large customers, so there is some insight we lose.

This is a challenge for all of the Customer Success platforms in the market, and there is some freedom in having a simple data structure for the Customer data, but the CS tool does need to map the Customer view held in other source systems to be effective.

A lot of our productivity tools, such as the Customer Risk Dashboard, are internally built and maintained due to the number of source systems we have.

The company uses Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to increase collaborative alignment which we maintain through Workboard.

Measuring and Iterating - Key Metrics

Success is mapped to ARR growth, adoption growth, and increased credit burn, which align directly with overall business objectives.

It is important to boil the metrics down to 2-3 significant ones when reviewing progress with the whole of the business.

There are lots of other metrics that are leading and lagging indicators that need to be reviewed on a weekly or biweekly basis to ensure you are proactively managing your customer risk.

It should include monitoring renewal risk for the current quarter and Q+1, perspective score risk, relative adoption progress, and consumption.

Continuous Improvement

To facilitate continuous improvement with customers, it is key to cultivate a team environment where learning is at the very foundation and where the team worries less about whether they know the answers, but rather comes with their sleeves rolled up to find the solutions. 

Given the speed at which things are changing, we want it to be a learning team that invites diverse views with team skills to debrief and reset when things go wrong. 

An inclusive, learning environment has three primary conditions. 

1. First, a clear Purpose provides the motivating force that makes it easier for us to work hard to overcome obstacles because we care, or at least we understand how the work we are doing fits into a larger whole and who depends upon us to deliver, because frankly, teamwork is hard and people need motivation to do it. 

2. Second is psychological safety is a belief that it is okay to take interpersonal risks in this group, like admitting a mistake. It is essential for good teamwork. Teamwork is hard, and it won’t always go well. We have to be able to openly process those things together to make progress. 

3. Thirdly, interpersonal skills can be described as emotional intelligence, but often it is just the ability to engage in thoughtful conversations with others.

Check out the work of Dr Amy Edmonson and her recent book, The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.

It’s an interesting perspective on how to change your view of failure to enable learning and continuous improvement.

Her research examines psychological safety and teaming within and between organisations.

I am particularly interested in how leaders enable the learning and collaboration that are vital to performance in a dynamic environment.

Advice for Leaders

Lead from your current role, even as an individual contributor.

For two reasons:

1. It’s great practice and includes a place to make mistakes where the stakes are low. 

2. Second, that behaviour is seen and will lead to other opportunities.

I mentioned a career portfolio rather than a path earlier.

What I learned from racing Kona taught me a lot about resilience when times get tough.

What I learned around the boardroom table helped me write better business cases.

Whether you are a Mum, a carer, or a golfer, use your whole life experiences to be a better leader. 

Check out HBR - Why you should build a Career Portfolio for more details on Career Portfolios.

Your Take On CS Layoffs

The layoffs that have highly impacted the Customer Success community in the past year are a factor of the age of our profession.

We are still quite young and developing our value proposition.

I think we need to get to one metric that Senior Execs and the board care about that signifies our value.

I know there will always be many metrics that capture the state of the customer, but not having refined down to one hurts us when the squeeze comes on, and the business is working out what they can do without.

If I were going to pick a metric, it would probably be NRR.

CS will also likely need to consider paid offers, as VMware has.

Where there is a revenue stream, there is insulation when times are tough, and it helps with headcount allocation, which I think is another area that challenges Customer Success’s growth.

From an individual development lens, I think successful CS professionals need to divide their development evenly across 3 fields:

1. CS-specific skills

2. Mindset

3. And technical/industry/category knowledge.

It is the last field that earns us a seat at the customer table, bringing value to them.

I think today, it is where we are least stron,g and that has also contributed to the impact of the layoffs.

This pressure crucible of layoffs, while hard, is good.

It will strengthen the CS profession for years to come.

Hobbies and Recommendations

Adventuring and racing, mostly on bikes, are part of my life portfolio.

It takes me around the world, tests my limits, and reminds me of my privilege.

I have just joined the board of Brainwave Australia, an NFP focused on families who have children with acquired head injuries. A path my own family has trodden more than once.

People I follow

Dr Kristen Ferguson -  author of Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership

Dr. Amy Edmonson - is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. She is the author of The Fearless Organization and The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.

Dr Ben Hamer - Futurist who comments on the future of work, keynote speaker, and author of The Kickass Career: How to succeed in the future of work, now

Podcast I recommend:

Rethink Moments with Rachel Botsman

Brene Brown's Dare to Lead (this is no longer being released but is still available on Spotify and is highly useful).

Refer a friend

About AgentSync

In short, what does AgentSync do?

Could you share the top challenge the company solves for its customers?

AgentSync builds a modern insurance infrastructure that connects carriers, agencies, managing general agents (MGAs), and producers.

We provide data intelligence and streamlined onboarding and compliance management processes that reduce costs, increase efficiency, and get insurance agents ready to sell in hours instead of weeks.

About You

Can you tell us about the journey that led to your current role as VP of CS?

Right out of college, I started at Accenture in a consulting role in a combination of implementation and strategy roles.

I also had visibility across multiple industries. Like most consulting roles, I was customer-facing for the entirety of my time at Accenture.

After Accenture, I briefly spent time at a boutique consulting firm based in Atlanta. It was there that I realized that I wanted to actually operationalize the solutions I had designed.

I ended up at a cybersecurity company called Secureworks where I was directly supporting the service management team. At the time, Secureworks was more on-prem, platform as a service-style business and so my work was more focused on driving process improvements from a traditional IT Service Management (ITSM) perspective.

Secureworks decided to migrate to a SaaS model and created its first iteration of cybersecurity software.

I was asked to design, build, and staff the first CSM function there. I ultimately asked to lead the function and about six months in I knew I really enjoyed Customer Success.

My passion rotated toward a horizontal CS focus rather than a verticalized industry specialization.

This led me to other positions at Typeform and now AgentSync.

What inspired you to pursue this career path?

My inspiration came from building the function at Secureworks and realizing that I found my professional calling.

The ability to solve problems for customers and showcase how the software ultimately helps the customers reach their goals is really rewarding.

I'm glad that this is my career.

Key Achievements

Could you share one or two of your proudest accomplishments so far?

One of my proudest accomplishments is creating a CS function where the Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) was in the low 80s and after a year the GRR had improved to 91%.

Being able to connect the actions my team took to direct customers’ results is something where I have a lot of pride.

Driving Customer Success

What's one strategy you found to be most effective for driving CS?

There is a lot of focus on Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) and Net Revenue Retention NRR as measures of success for CS.

But those are lagging indicators.

What is most important is that to drive true customer success we must focus on the actions we can actually control.

To that extent, I ensure my team members understand the goals/success criteria that each customer has in buying our software.

Without that, there is no way to prove if our software actually delivered against what a customer deemed to be most important to them.

What are the CS strategies you implemented that made a massive impact on your teams and the company?

Each framework I've designed is grounded in answering these three questions first.

I ask my team members to describe these in detail:

1. What does a 'gold' standard customer look like?

2. If you were the buyer of our software, what would be most important to you?

3. What are the attributes of a customer who is highly likely to renew?

By starting with these 3 questions, we can start to pinpoint attributes to build a methodology.

For example, if a 'gold' standard customer has daily usage of XYZ-defined features, then we can simply review each customer to see if they've achieved this parameter.

If the answer is yes, fantastic.

If the answer is no, then we need to support and align with the customer on daily usage.

Obviously, the art of CS is in helping a customer understand why daily usage is in support of achieving their goals/success. This is purely just one example.

Building a Customer-Centric Culture

How do you infuse a customer-centric culture within your teams?

We frequently ask ourselves:

• "What would the customer experience look like if we did this?" 

• "If we put ourselves in the shoes of the customer, how would the change impact them?"

Any specific practices or initiatives that help you focus on customer needs?

There are so many but one that is really important:

• Capturing customer product feedback, sharing with our product teams, and then ultimately being able to share that we released a new feature in response to their request. 

Team Empowerment

How do you motivate and empower your teams daily?

Employees are motivated by different things, so a leader needs to understand the drivers behind each individual. 

For example, I've had team members who are extremely motivated by their compensation. 

Others get the most joy from being called out in NPS verbatim as the reason for a high score. 

So, as a leader, we must design avenues where the rewards match their needs.

From an empowerment standpoint, it is important to allow team members to share their ideas for solutions. 

We are all adults with a plethora of experience and perspectives.  No single leader could know the answer to every problem.

Allowing team members to be integral to solutions and having a seat at the table helps them feel more empowered and ultimately in control of their careers.

Are there particular tools that help you boost team performance?

I've used Catalyst and Matik at two companies. 

Catalyst, when implemented well, enables a true 360-degree view of a customer.  No need to have 500,000 tabs open to do your job. 

Matik enables the automatic creation of presentations, so a team member doesn't need to dig into various sources to plug data into a slide.  This is a massive time saver and enables consistent delivery across the team. 

About AI

Your take on AI and Customer Success

There is a time and a place for AI. 

I've seen team members use ChatGPT to help draft a sensitive email.  Those one-off use cases are helpful. 

That said, really great customer success is truly a mix of Art and Science. 

We can be prescriptive about a methodology we want our teams to follow (science), we can use a health score, and have AI surface recommendations (science).

But the best CSMs understand that underneath it all, relationships and human interaction matter (art). 

AI cannot replicate that aspect. 

I also manage a support team and I see AI being an amazing tool to surface answers to support questions from our curated help content without having any human intervention. 

Are there any AI tools you/your teams are using, like automated note-taking, meeting summaries, etc.?

We currently have Gong, which has great summarisation, but we are also exploring Update AI, which is more purpose-built for Customer Success. 

The note-taking and summaries I've seen created by Update AI could be a massive time saver for all CSMs.  

Cross-Functional Collaboration

How do you promote collaboration between customer success teams and other internal departments like Sales, Marketing, or Product?

To have the most collaboration with Sales and CS, the teams must be aligned on the same goals/outcomes. 

Oftentimes, the motivation/alignment comes from the compensation plans.  If the plans are not complementary, then the collaboration will be lacking. 

For Marketing, Customer Success benefits most when there is a product marketing and customer marketing function. 

With budgets being consistently cut in both functions, this often can be challenging.  However, when these teams exist, it can be incredible. 

CSMs can leverage incredible product and customer marketing content to ensure customers are up to date on the latest features, use cases, and how-to on their product. 

Furthermore, CSMs can share feedback with marketing on what customers are asking for the most in terms of content. Together, these teams can impact/influence customers!

Product and CSM relationship is critical. 

The classic new feature, strategic roadmap vs customer needs tension, is real.  It will never go away.

Leaders on both sides must understand the nuance of the challenges each is trying to solve. 

If there is empathy, it can help smooth this natural tension.  Where the most success is in this relationship is where there is compromise.  

Ensuring Customer Success - Proactive Customer Engagement

What proactive approaches do you take for customer engagement?

If we've successfully identified what our customers' goals and success criteria are, then we have a perfect mechanism for tracking and proactively reaching out. 

If we feel we are lagging on a goal, then we can reach out for a discussion regarding the goal. 

Furthermore, and this is not true for all SaaS businesses, if we see a drop off in certain usage metrics, we can proactively reach out to understand the changes in the customer's business that would necessitate the change.  

How do you identify and address customer needs before they become urgent?

Aside from having metrics to monitor, one of the easiest ways to understand customers' needs is to ask open-ended questions. 

Questions or statements that start with "What”, "How", or "Tell me more" open the door for a conversation regarding the customer. 

It can illuminate business challenges, nuances in your software, etc., that could signal a challenge before it becomes urgent. 

Measuring and Iterating - Key Metrics

What key metrics do you track for measuring success?  

• % Green customers - CSM Sentiment or Health Score or both. 

• % Customer Goals Captured

• % Customer Goals met

• % Executive or Quarterly Value Reviews Held

If you have a health score, there are other metrics within the health score that can be reviewed and closely managed.

How do these metrics align with your overall business objectives? 

All of the metrics my team uses are in support of GRR/NRR as the lagging indicators of our success.

Continuous Improvement

Can you share your approach to continuous improvement/feedback loops in your customer success strategies?

One of the reasons that I love a good health score is that you can look at each input in the health score, create an action plan to address low scores on each input, and then measure if the action taken actually improved the health component. 

If yes, then you know the action is working.  If not, then it's time to rethink the action. 

This is just one example. 

Going back to what I mentioned earlier regarding the three questions:

If the product shifts, then it is always important to rethink the answers to those questions and the associated methodology that was developed. 

Any specific learnings from challenges or failures that led to positive changes?  

At a previous company, we had a health metric that wasn't improving with the action performed. 

We adjusted the action and then began seeing positive results. It was rewarding to see the impact of the change!

Advice for Aspiring Customer Success Leaders

What practical advice would you give to those aspiring to leadership roles in customer success?

First, you are the CEO of your career. That in and of itself is not practical. 

However, sharing with your manager that you want to be a leader and asking what skills you may need to become a leader is the first step to making it a reality. 

No one will know you want to be a leader unless you share that information.

Likewise, you cannot get coaching on important leadership skills unless they know you want to be a leader. 

Learn about business financials. This advice is actually important for those already in CS leadership positions.

I've heard many leaders say they want a seat at the executive leadership table but if you do not understand how your team's costs align on the P&L nor do you understand the revenue your team is accountable for, you will not get a seat at the table. 

Any specific insights from your career that others could follow in their professional journeys?

There have been a lot of key moments in my career. 

However, the one that has enabled me to have the most success is when I spent some time reading Finance & Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers. 

I received this advice from a COO I used to work for, and it has helped me immensely in my career.  I took the time to read the book and compare it to the public balance sheet for the company I was at. 

I was fortunate that I worked at a public company. 

However, even at private companies, you can ask to review this information or even pull down the balance sheet from any public company. 

They are typically found on the Investors page of any public company's homepage. 

The reason this mattered so much is enabled me to have intelligent and productive conversations with my finance partners. It also enabled me to challenge my team being categorised as COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold) vs CAC (Cost of Acquisition). 

This skill set is incredibly important!

In The News: CS Layoffs

What's your take on the layoffs that hit CS organisations primarily? 

My first reaction is disappointment. 

My practical reaction is that CS leaders didn't do a great job of sharing their impact on the business's financials/bottom line. 

As you can see, there is a bit of a theme here with these past few answers! 

If the CS team were driving results in a cost-efficient manner and were optimised for the specific business, it would make it easier to justify the continued investment in the function.  

What's Next for You

I'm relocating with my family to Colorado for my position at AgentSync.

I am thrilled about this opportunity and can't wait to start the new year (2024) in Colorado! 

Professionally, I desire to be a Chief Customer Officer. 

This is no secret with my boss (CRO at AgentSync)—see my comment earlier about ensuring your manager understands your career desires! 

I'm continuing to hone my skills in balancing customer needs with operational excellence.

Hobbies and Recommendations

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I have two young boys, 7 and 4 years old. I spend a lot of time with them.

They are wild, so we do lots of outdoor activities.

I'm looking forward to the opportunity to live in Colorad,o where the weather is more temperate than in Atlanta (i.e., less unbearable heat and humidity).

The access to trails and the mountains excites me, and I cannot wait to hike my first 14'er with my entire family. I've already done two!

Any books or podcasts you'd recommend?

From a CS and Leadership perspective, I really enjoy the Gain Grow Retain podcast as well as the B2B Leadership podcast.

Refer a friend

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CS My Way

I am beyond thrilled to introduce a new section in my newsletter — 'CS My Way'!

Welcome to this exciting new space where you can learn from the best in the industry and get ahead in your career and beyond.

Each week, I engage in conversations with top executives — Chief Customer Officers, VP/Head of CS, founders, and CEOs. Together, we discuss how they drive success for their customers.

I always learn a lot from these exclusive interviews — they are full of massive value with practical examples, key takeaways, and best practices from each leader.

I hope they’ll inspire you to contribute or build world-class CS organizations in the years to come 🚀🚀

Let’s Go!

So excited to kick off this new exploration with Shirley Chapman, Head Of Customer Success at Forrester, one of the world's most trusted research and advisory companies!

Thank you, Shirley, for accepting my invitation.

The stage is yours!

About Forrester

What does Forrester do? Could you share the top challenge the company solves for its customers?

As a research and advisory company, Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth, navigate change, and put their customers at the center of their leadership, strategy, and operations.

We serve the functional needs of tech, customer experience, sales, marketing, digital, and products.

In particular, we help clients shorten the distance between a bold vision and superior execution with a proven growth path.

About You

Where are you based, and can you tell us about the journey that led to your current role as Head of CS at Forrester?

I am a remote worker based in Winchester in the south of England. 

My career is long and varied, starting as a teacher of Economics and Business, then I moved into the tech world as a software trainer, and then as a manager. 

My CS journey began in 2009 while living in France, as a regional and global CSM for an online business language development company. 

Moving on to a tech skills development company, I moved back into leadership and we moved back to the UK (after 12 years in France). 

I joined Forrester in 2022 to lead the International Customer Success team, with teams across EMEA and APAC, as part of Forrester's global CS team.

What inspired you to pursue this career path?

Above all, my main motivation has always been to help people be the best they can be, whether as a school student, a member of my team, or a customer. 

I also just love learning about how different types of businesses work, and in particular, where the role of a CSM can help individuals within customer organizations be successful and drive results.

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Key Achievements

Could you share one or two of your proudest accomplishments so far?

When I became a leader at Pluralsight, we were a small team of 5 CSMs in EMEA and it was an incredible period of growing the regional business and a true sense of entrepreneurial team spirit.

We then grew the remote team and established an incredible team based in the new EMEA HQ.  I am proud of the growth and the results we achieved as a high-performing team of amazing individuals.  

On a personal note, I am also proud of being a cancer survivor, having been diagnosed when I was only 35 years old and with 2 very young children. 

It was a very challenging time, but it made me a stronger and more resilient person, which has been important in my career. I do believe it gave me a superpower of perspective. 

The work we do is important, but nothing is more important than health and family.

Driving Customer Success

What's one strategy you found to be most effective for driving CS?

Having data that proves the link between what CSMs are working on and retention is key, not only helping customers achieve value.

And I am careful about my wording—customers achieve value based on them solving their business challenges, rather than CS "delivering" value.

To have a seat at the exec table, we have to show that what we do drives renewals, regardless of whether the CSM owns the contractual relationship or not. 

In short, "keeping customers happy" is not an effective strategy.

Any unique approaches or frameworks that worked well for you?

Working with my senior leader at Pluralsight, we created an engagement journey, starting with what our customers needed throughout the journey. 

We did this recording with Irit Eizips on this subject. 

So many customer journeys are based on what we want a customer to do, or what we think they need, but this approach is anchored in the needs of the customer.

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Building a Customer-Centric Culture

How do you infuse a customer-centric culture within your teams?

It is quite simple:

Ask questions about what the customer is solving for, what is happening in their business, and what is going on in their world, encouraging them to see customers are individuals. 

Being curious about the individuals and the world they are working in helps keep the focus on our clients. 

And of course, Forrester's research is based on customer obsession so we have to practice what we preach!

Team Empowerment

How do you motivate and empower your teams daily?

• Reinforcing the link between the day-to-day and the initiatives and outcomes that our customers are working on

• Sharing the amazing feedback we hear from customers

• And having our customers talk at our events. 

Knowing that the work they do with customers, who are mainly senior leaders in large companies, and with the internal ecosystem, is empowering.

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About AI

Are there particular AI tools that help you boost team performance?

We are using our own tool, which is currently in beta for customers, called Izola.

We are also using an internal-only tool.

Generative AI (GenAI) is a game-changer for Forrester customers and the CS team. 

Not only are our incredible analysts providing great insights to our customers, but we are also exploring as a company and a CS team how we can make the most of the opportunity that GenAI presents. 

We are privileged to have access to those analysts and the wisdom they share with our customers. 

Cross-Functional Collaboration

How do you promote collaboration between customer success teams and other internal departments like Sales, Marketing, or Product?

At Forrester, CS reports to the Chief Sales Officer.

Our marketing team relies on CSMs to help with events, in terms of identifying speakers, driving attendance, and creating a great customer experience at the events. 

There are also regular connections between the global CSM organization and the product team to provide customer feedback and expertise in the evolution of the product.

Can you share a successful cross-functional initiative and its business impact?

This year, we had an initiative with our analysts from our research team, which focused on customer initiatives and outcomes.

There was a co-defined program of enablement, which was executed at the same time and with the same content. 

Having both organizations complete this work hand in hand created a common language and understanding that went beyond the 2 teams responsible for this work. 

Ensuring Customer Success - Proactive Customer Engagement

What proactive approaches do you take for customer engagement?

We have an omnichannel approach to engagement, which includes the CSM, our digital CSM team, and elements in our product that drive engagement.

How do you identify and address customer needs before they become urgent?

We have frequent and planned meetings with our individual stakeholders and regular meetings with the economic buyer, as well as data that indicates that there may be an issue, for example, if a customer hasn't had a call with their analysts for an extended period of time.

So we use data as well as being close to the customer with the CSM "risk radar" switched on to identify any early signs of a problem.

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Leveraging Technology

What tools or platforms do you use to drive customer success?

Salesforce, Microsoft Teams & Generative AI.

Measuring and Iterating - Key Metrics

What key metrics do you track for measuring success?

Our goals are based on the equivalent of Net Revenue Retention Rate (NRR), but we also track engagement activities and some key leading indicators of risk.

How do these metrics align with your overall business objectives?

Our focus is on retaining existing clients but also identifying growth opportunities based on the value achieved by our customers.

Advice for Aspiring Customer Success Leaders

What practical advice would you give to those aspiring to leadership roles in customer success?

Immerse yourself in the powerful CSM network that is available.

Attend webinars and conferences, read blogs and books, listen to podcasts, and comment on posts on LinkedIn.

Have an external mentor and, if possible, an internal one too, so they can give advice on where to spend your time and effort to set you up for success in a leadership role.

Share

Any specific insights from your career that others could follow in their professional journeys?

I have never intentionally planned my career.

However, I have always been open-minded about what might come next and adapt to opportunities that have arisen.

I am passionate about customer success, and the advice I have given to my children is to do what you love.

In The News: CS Layoffs

What's your take on the layoffs that hit CS organizations primarily? 

Sadly, I think they were inevitable.

As a profession, we have not influenced the CEOs sufficiently. 

Not being able to show a direct link to increasing revenue puts CS teams at high risk.

What's Next for You

I am 61, so retirement is definitely a consideration. But I am not ready to hang up my CS leader boots yet! 

However, I have bought a keyboard with a plan to learn enough to play a few tunes once I have retired. It is just as well I have a few years to learn because it is not easy (kudos to all piano/keyboard players reading this).

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Hobbies and Recommendations

What do you enjoy doing outside of work and family?

We are lucky to have an apartment in the French Alps. So we ski every winter and go walking in the summer. 

I do BodyPump (weight-lifting exercise) twice a week, and I do a bit of yoga as well as using the treadmill at the gym.

Any books or podcasts you'd recommend?

There are so many to choose from! 

I’d recommend The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath.

And for anyone hoping to move into Customer Success, definitely the "blue book" by Nick Mehta, and this other book.

I would also recommend the Women in Customer Success podcast as well as the CSM Practice YouTube channel.  

Refer a friend

Share The Customer Success Café Newsletter

When Ming Zhang, VP Customer Success at LineSlip Solutions reached out to me to be featured in my newsletter, I immediately accepted.

He is an industry expert reading my weekly notes every week since when I started almost 2 years ago! 

In this exclusive interview with me, he provides wisdom, guidance, and learnings that will help you in Customer Success.

So here we go. The stage is yours, Ming!

Where are you from?

I’m a first-generation Chinese immigrant. I currently live in the Boston area with my family and three kids.

I recall the day when I landed in Hawaii two decades ago. I only had some pocket money to go around. I cherished a hope to build my version of the American dream in this promised land of freedom.

Why did you join my newsletter?

I’m an early joiner of your CS Café.

I did it because I knew you on the LinkedIn network and enjoyed your insightful posts.

Also because your newsletter could serve as a more structured approach to the CS community and keep track of CS trends.

It turned out that I enjoyed all the 42 editions published thus far!

They each appeared precise and concise with a common interest to the general CS audience.

The edition #42 on the 7 reasons for joining a startup, appears to be a boost for any job seeker.

An avid reader of newsletters, I see your CS Café hitting my inbox every Sunday, at 9 a.m. ET sharp. This is when my quality time of the day starts.

The weekly 3-minute read will go a long way because I can distill wisdom from every edition.

Your newsletter is a goldmine that will continue to impact our CS community and will help us reach new highs for many years to come.

Your career path:

Read more