The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.

Digital Advice from a CS OG and Innovator with Irit Eizips of CSM Practice | Episode 047

• Alex Turkovic, Irit Eizips • Episode 47

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Irit Eizips has been in and around CS for a long time. From being in on the ground floor at Gainsight to running her very successful consultancy, she has been a staple in the CS community and consistently produces fantastic content that we all benefit from! 

In this episode, we get into: 

  • Irit’s days at the early-stage Gainsight and the culture of startups
  • Her home in consulting (CSM Practice) vs. being a full time employee
  • Being part of CS from the ground floor
  • The advancement of CS to where certification and degree programs have enabled college grads an entry into the field
  • Digital motions should support the work of humans in CS
  • Implementing too much digital without touchpoints along the way can actually have negative customer implications
  • Identifying risk in customers who are disengaging with digital programs
  • Over-use of email via redundancy and simultaneous emails from multiple organizations
  • The use of avatars in digital for communications to make things more fun when appropriate
  • Protecting revenue and expansion via process automations to flag risk early before renewal and even close it early
  • A few examples of great digital motions and practical advice around designing them
  • Designing digital-first motions with client outcomes & a customer journey front and center

Loads of great info in this one. Enjoy! I know I sure did...

Irit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eizips/
CSM Practice: https://www.csmpractice.com/
CSM Practice YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSMPractice

Resources:

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The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Speaker 1:

Where are customers getting themselves into trouble, like you know, what are the moments along the customer journey where we really need to celebrate their wins when they accomplish something, or if they're behind on something, where they those things then define your vehicle right and and, and how you engage the customer that way, um so yeah, that would be a really great place to start to even figure out what are your intentions.

Speaker 2:

Your intentions should stem from the, the key moments in a client's life cycle. How do you even know what should your intentions be? Well, you look at the customer journey. What are the things that are going really well? How can we celebrate them? What are the things that are not doing so well? How can we mitigate them? By introducing these, you know, engagement strategies way earlier in the process, so that we have less of that.

Speaker 1:

And once again, welcome to the Digital Customer Success Podcast with me, alex Trokovich. So glad you could join us here today and every week as I seek out and interview leaders and practitioners who are innovating and building great scaled CS programs. My goal is to share what I've learned and to bring you along with me for the ride so that you get the insights that you need to build and evolve your own digital CS program. If you'd like more info, want to get in touch or sign up for the latest updates, go to digitalcustomersuccesscom. For now, let's get started. Hello and welcome to the show. It's lovely to have you back. If you're a regular listener, I also know a lot of you have recently joined the club, so to speak. So welcome to the show, pleased to have you and pleased to see you.

Speaker 1:

Today's conversation is with none other than Irit Izips, who is kind of a legend in CS. She's been around since day one, whatever day. That was very early at Gainsight, but has been in the consulting space for a long time with CSM Practice, along with her podcast and YouTube channel. She interviews some great people on those shows, has great conversations and, I know, helps lots of folks in their CS journey as well, has a new coaching program out that she talks about a little bit as well. But you know, we obviously talk about digital and we talk about, you know, humans and digital, lots of practical application stuff and examples in this episode, including, you know, identifying risk in customers digitally, and you know, really cool resources she mentions as well that are linked in the show notes. But enough of this yapping, let's get on to this conversation with Irit Izips, who I enjoyed speaking with immensely. I enjoyed speaking with immensely.

Speaker 1:

Pleased to have you on the podcast, because you know you are well, I mean, I guess, most recently, it should be noted that you are a CX Hall of Fame inductee, which means you're a big deal and you know you. I also recently saw, didn't you like, cross 10,000 subs on YouTube or something like that.

Speaker 2:

I think we're a little over 10,000. Yeah, which like for?

Speaker 1:

CS standards is like a million right. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Never thought about it like that.

Speaker 1:

In CS world. That's a lot of subscribers, but I want to welcome you to the podcast because it's you know you're, you're kind of a uh, a little bit of a legend You've been, you know you, you advise the best of the best and and it's uh, I can't wait to share this conversation with the audience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Awesome, Getting to, uh, getting really excited. Alex, I think you're a legend as well and I love your podcast and it was such a treat when you asked me to be on it. Yeah for sure.

Speaker 1:

I do want to before we kind of get into the nitty gritty. I did do a little bit of LinkedIn stalking, because that's what you do and and I, you know, one of the things that I didn't realize before kind of hitting the expand button is that you were at your kind of early days at Gainsight.

Speaker 1:

Mm, hmm, yeah that's what I mean. That must have. Obviously it was. It was, you know, 2013, 2014, I believe it was. So it was a while ago and the company was probably a whole lot different back then. But what was that? What were the vibes back then at Gainsight?

Speaker 2:

All right. Listen, if I hadn't worked at Gainsight, I don't think I would have been part of this customer success movement. So I have to say thank you to Nick Maeda to interviewing me and giving me the thumbs up to join the company when I did. Interviewing me and giving me the thumbs up to join the company when I did Back then there were 18 people when I joined, so myself, the VP, marketing at that time and the product management or product marketing guy all joined the same day. We had a blast. I mean, it was just like about 20 people, you know.

Speaker 2:

And and back then, you know, we were all sitting in a open space, a makeshift of what used to be probably a restaurant. At some point that was turned into a big space for startup companies and we owned the entire, the entire second floor. But they're like we it was. It was really kind of like crazy days, I think in those times for Gainsight. We were a very tight group. Everybody knew everybody, obviously, and I would have to give Nick a lot of props for setting the culture very early on to be a fun company and his big thing was childlike joy and we had Nerf guns in the office. We had lots of games. We had the office manager who, by the way, is Dan Steinman's the CCO's back then wife. She's a hoot. I'm good friends with her till this day and she organized like beer pongs on Friday and sushi Fridays, a bunch of stuff. It was fun. It was just startup days.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, I didn't, I didn't realize it was that few people there. So, yeah, and I mean that that culture of fun is so I've, I've had the pleasure of being part of a couple of companies, but one in particular, where there was a lot of fun to be had and you know.

Speaker 1:

One thing in particular I remember is we used to do this thing every year called Culture Day, where every team would like pick a different culture, whether it was like a nationality or whether it was like I mean, one year we picked like prison culture or like you know a culture, a collection of people, right, and we would just offer food and beverages and it was your opportunity to just go around the office and honestly get a little drunk. But um, it does. Those like startup, small companies are super fun if you get to live those.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, exactly, that's. That's part of the fun of joining a very early stage startup and I would say, uh, uh, I think Gainsight is still like that. Even though they have, you know, well over 20 people at this point, it's still very much a core value for Nick Maeda as he leads, continues to lead the company and I think now it's basically ingrained in the company's culture and I think it's kudos for him for making that happen and making that a priority.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I guess, fast forward then a few years. You, you exited, and, um, you know, I guess CSM practice has been a thing for you for a for quite a while now, right? What was that journey for you?

Speaker 2:

You know, when I was at Gainsight and we had the very first conference in the world for customer success, back then there weren't a lot of customer success teams but there were a lot of SaaS companies that were struggling with churn. And when we set up the conference we thought, well, maybe we'll have 200 people. We were calling everybody we knew to invite them to it and we thought, you know, if we're lucky, we'll have 200 people. We were calling everybody we knew to invite them to it and we thought, you know, if we're lucky, we'll get 250 people. And so we organized the room to have about 200, 250 seats in it. We had 300 show up and so it was like standing, you know, like standing kind of event. People stood around the room, you know, leaning on walls to hear what was going on, and you can kind of feel the popcorn popping you know, like those and you knew it was going to be a big thing.

Speaker 2:

And my world, I, you know. My history is that for the most part of my life I started out as a management strategy consultant and then I transitioned into tech consulting and then accounting consulting and then back, but I've been a consultant for the most part of my life and the only time I worked for software companies I could count in like the number of years in my five fingers Right.

Speaker 2:

So, I always felt, even in Gainsight, I had a tremendous role. I was reporting to Nick, I was reporting to other executives. It was really just like a grand experience and I was given a lot of opportunities, of given a lot of opportunities and I still felt like how do you call this square peg in a round hole, because I'm used to being a consultant.

Speaker 2:

I know how consultant works. I don't necessarily know how to fit in, as in a software company, and I had to leave because I guess I just didn't. It just something didn't feel right. But what did feel right is the customer success movement and as a consultant, you always dream to be in the right place at the right time and start your consulting firm about something that's like really super hip. So I started the very first strategy consulting firm that solely focuses on customer success in July of 2014.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

And back then, you know, nobody believed in customer success, so I don't know why I was thinking that this is going to be a thriving business.

Speaker 2:

So it was a grind, maybe for the first two to three years, but I was doing something that I loved. I was doing something that I believed in and super passionate about and the way that I was looking at it I was thinking, okay, gainsight can lead the technology and they will probably put most of the investment in educating companies that are their clients for the most part, even though, granted to them, they did a lot of education for the entire community with their books and their conference open for everybody, and certification programs that were open for everybody. But I thought you know, somebody actually needs to hold these companies hands and teach them how to implement it and deal with change management. And so I thought you know what I could be a reinforcement player in this arena and make sure that I educate as well. From my perspective, which is not necessarily biased towards a specific technology in our product roadmap, but it's more unbiased and unhinged on anything and I started doing that and you know I don't regret it.

Speaker 2:

I think it was a tremendous journey and I'm very honored to be part of that customer success movement and say, yes, you know what I did have a weight in how fast this movement and change, the radical change in how businesses are doing business. Not just software companies are doing business, but everybody embraced customer success. And what a great journey. It is to say, hey, I've been a tremendous part in it.

Speaker 1:

You were in on the ground floor, so to speak.

Speaker 2:

Ground floor like the OG the original gangster.

Speaker 1:

That's right, ogcs, you need a t-shirt. You should work on that. It is interesting, though, because there are so many people in CS that you speak with and the assumption is that you did something else and you found your way into CS, and everybody has their own little journey into role. We're now finding people that are new to their careers and they're starting in CS, which is a whole new thing. Is that interesting for you to kind of observe, or have you made some observations along those lines?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I've seen it evolve, obviously. So in the early days, people were migrating into CS from other roles. Obviously, it would have been highly unlikely that somebody would hire into CS somebody that had no professional experience. And I think sometimes, around 2019, 2020, when universities started teaching CS, the certification programs had been a little bit more popular and companies, on the other hand, were opening up more and more scaled CS, meaning before 2019, most companies not all of them, most companies heavily invested in high touch.

Speaker 2:

When you do high touch, you need a consultative CS. You know it's very rare that you'll bring somebody right off of college to do that because they need to have some industry expertise. But when you open it up for a scaled engagement model, like what we call scaled CS or pooled model, or you start having specialized roles in CS renewal, manager, onboarding, specialist, activation, specialist for companies that are more PLG, but the first touch, they actually want it to be personalized you could definitely now hire somebody right off of college, give them the right talk track, the right product training and they could do a really good job at it. So I think that that's why we're seeing this change. It's part of the evolution of customer success and the maturity of the business industry in embracing it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, you mentioned scaled a bit ago, so you know you're an amazing segue master, so to speak, which is, you know we are on the Digital CS podcast and obviously digital is a part of any healthy scaled program. You know, one thing that I ask all of my guests is what their kind of elevator pitch definition of digital CS is, because it does vary from person to person, and I'd love to get your sense on that and what your own definition is if you had to describe it in a few seconds.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I could but I'll give it a go.

Speaker 2:

Well, the way my brain works is that everything has to be categorized, and my personality doesn't like to have black and white definitions, but I would say that digital CS is anything that we can scale fast as we grow faster, faster. For high touch, it would mean potentially having clear playbooks with AI enabled and whatever we can do, you know, taking all the manual processes and making them automated so that we can focus on value-based activities. For lower touch, it could be a pooled model, alongside working with marketing to create awareness in a large, more scalable manner and I love to define scale with the word scale, by the way. That's so brilliant, right and pure digital CS would mean, by the way, I think pure digital CS, I'm going to say it's a high risk strategy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And we can dive into that. But pure digital CS means that you almost never have a personable touch point with your end users or your buyer. It's pure self-serve buyer. It's pure self-serve. And I would include a myriad of methodologies and strategies around that, from building community to educating, to expanding the relationship.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know I've maintained for a while this digital thing, or you don't have this digital thing and in reality it's like, hey, why not use this digital thing as like your way of bolstering your human activity? Like you, know, it should be kind of the other way around, to where, like you know, your humans need to be supported by what you do.

Speaker 2:

digitally, you need to be supported by what you do digitally. A hundred percent agree, and I really thank you for delivering that message.

Speaker 2:

So important You're at stamp of approval right there. No, listen. A few years back I did a presentation at a conference called TSW, organized by the famous organization TSIA. It's a membership organization for large enterprise companies for the most part, and they have this conference twice a year and I had the honor of presenting with Salesforce.

Speaker 2:

Salesforce and the executive that was presenting with me showcased that they actually had an experiment where they took a large cohort of their clients I think it was like X ARR, fairly like six figure ARR and below low six figure ARR and below and because they had so much self-service and predictive analytics and their digital strategy was so mature that they thought you know what? We don't really need to assign a designated CSM for them. We can switch them over to self-serve, and what they found is that right. So here's what they found when you increase digital engagement alongside the personal touch, at some point it actually amplifies the personal touch and you'll see an increase in renewals and an increase in add-ons. You know they have like the marketplace, but as soon as you do too much CS and no personal touch or human touch or very little, too little of it what they've actually seen is a sharp decline in add-on purchases on their marketplace as well as increase in churn.

Speaker 2:

So one you're right, hybrid approach is really important, and not only that, you need to find the right place where the digital and personal interject intersect, and that's like your optimal point, and so it might take you a little bit of time to play around with it. To say what's the right level of personal touch versus digital touch, where I see an increase in renewals and an increase in upsell, and where is it too much digital that I'm starting to see a negative trend, and get it just right. You won't know exactly what is that, but I can tell you that when you go full digital CS, even if your churn is not super high and your upsell is good, it might just mean that it could be even the churn could be even lower and upsell could be even higher if you had one or two personal touch points that you decided on in critical moments in the lifecycle of the customer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, you know, I think it's. I mean, it's that old adage of like, once you start seeing, you know, repeated messages that are of maybe kind of questionable value or no value, you end up just ignoring everything else that comes after that. Right, I mean with email, right, if you're on the receiving end of too many emails from one individual and you're just like I can't I don't have brain space for that I think you know, ideally you would use that as part of a healthy digital program to identify customers who are disengaging with your digital programs, for that human outreach, you know, like, if they've stopped opening your emails or they, you know they're dismissing their in-app notifications and stuff like that, that that should kind of ring some alarm bells sometimes, I think should kind of ring some alarm bells.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes, I think Absolutely. I've seen the email system or sequence emails really being abused by a few clients that were just onboarding into my coaching programs. We have marketing campaigns and we keep on sending the same marketing messages. After they signed up for trial, after they already started using the system, I still feed them these generic marketing emails. I mean, come on, shouldn't you just stop that and make it a little bit more personalized? Talk about account-based marketing.

Speaker 2:

If the client is in a different phase, you need to have some sort of personalization and, by the way, they keep doing it every day. Not only are you getting those totally unrelevant for you, you're going to get them every day instead of now switching gears and showing you how you can set up the system. Get more use cases. Do it like a pro. Let me give you industry best practices, like things that you're actually concerned about when you're just on board with a company, so doing it too often. Not the right content, I mean not the right use case. Like I'm sending you stuff for lawyers when you're an accountant, I mean the list goes on. How much this is being abused? Right, you're an accountant, I?

Speaker 1:

mean the list goes on. How much this is being abused, right? I mean simply put, like let's recognize when you've closed a deal and let's let's move you from one email list to another email list and that second, like I saw something had a.

Speaker 1:

I had just like a uh, uh, a duh moment the other day. I forget what I signed up for something sassy, something you know freemium kind of SAS platform. I forget what I signed up for Something sassy, something you know, freemium kind of SaaS platform. I forget what it was. If I remember it, I'll mention it. The onboarding emails were brilliant for kind of two reasons. One is they were very short, like super short. There were eight of them and I knew from the first email that there were eight of them because in the subject line it said what the email was about is like three words and at the end, in brackets, it was like one of eight, two of eight, three of eight. I'm like why aren't more people doing this? Because it's so important in an onboarding journey to give your customer like the context of where they are in that journey so that they're progressing towards completion. Love that, what a great tip. I just thought it was brilliant. I was like I'm going to start doing that.

Speaker 2:

I think I am too. That's what I love about this space you meet a person, you learn something new. By the way, I don't think I know everything. That's what I love about this space you meet a person, you learn something new. By the way, I don't think I know everything. That's why I love doing my podcast. I always learn something new. But this is kind of like cool tip, you know, tell them how many there are in the series and keep it super short. Coming from a specific person or did they come from like a marketing email? And B? Did they include a video in them or were they just text only?

Speaker 1:

It's a great question. So the other, the other thing about them is that I got, I think, two a day for four days and that would two a day, but they were short, right, it's like okay, now do this One thing, click done. And I think the briefness of it allowed for that kind of cadence but it kept you kind of like okay, top of mind, like hey, you know, I'm going to be with you for four days, so use this. It's not going to be this five week thing, but to your point, it was short. A couple of them had some videos in there, but it wasn't like narrated stuff, it was more like GIF type video Go here, click on this and do that.

Speaker 1:

And I think they came from a persona. I think they came from a generalized kind of inbox. But I do love a good persona for digital motions. It does create some personality. So I love that you asked that question, because I do think a lot of people kind of struggle with okay, should I be on brand and on marketing, kind of speak, or should I be like a human or at least an avatar?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I wonder if anybody did a research to say, when you use an avatar, but it's a consistent avatar for the duration of the life cycle, doctor, whatever, yeah, doctor, scope, right? Or is it from the CEO, if it's a small company that sells to, you know, individuals like a B2C, almost like a small business owners, or should it be your designated CSM? You know, I'm in the strong opinion that if you're going to use this email sequence and it's a higher touch model, you should use your CSM as the persona sending those emails. And if you have a very low touch, like a long tail customer base, 10,000, 7,000 customers and you're not going to have a designated CSM, then yeah, either an avatar or the CEO or the whomever is heading support or whatnot.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, I totally agree. I also think there's some room for fun there, especially for your platform and your customer base. Like I don't know if you're, I think it depends on your customer base, right.

Speaker 2:

Like an animated avatar. If you're like a big company, you're not going to send it from the CEO, obviously, and you have a long customer tail. Yeah, come up with a, with a persona.

Speaker 1:

You know, like a chatbot should have the same persona and your, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, make it animated, make it fun. Why?

Speaker 2:

not. I mean, why not have a?

Speaker 1:

mascot right Like Salesforce kind of has their little thing.

Speaker 2:

I forget what it is.

Speaker 1:

but so so, in those eight emails that you loved so much, did they include an embedded video some of them did, yeah, so like a like a like a gif type situation, but it wasn't like a gif okay, animated gif, but not a video like a one minute video light video that was like.

Speaker 2:

This is how to uh like an animated gif. You click here. Let me show you how it's done. Okay, yeah, basically.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So one of the things I wanted to ask you about, which you know on this podcast we've talked a lot about just like digital motions you know building efficiency throughout teams and helping customers and all that kind of stuff, but I know that you help a lot of your clients through revenue retention and you know really building strategy around protecting your revenue and you know making sure that renewal goes through and you've got expansion kind of lined up and whatnot. And I'm curious what your opinion is about the role of digital in that, because I mean, you're not going to have complex, you know financial discussions in your digital channels, but there's but I but but I do think there's probably room for digital in the lead up to that. I'm just curious what your kind of take on all that is.

Speaker 2:

I mean, there's so many opportunities to leverage automation during the renewal process to make a killer process. So if you were looking for higher touch, one of the things I encourage all of my clients to do is either send the annual survey or just an email with one question, hypothetically if you could renew right now, would you? Yeah, just to flag risk early, and early is not 30 days before the renewal.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

It's 90 days at a minimum by the way.

Speaker 2:

Because, yeah, tsaa, by the way, they did a benchmark survey and they found that on average, it takes about 90 days to resolve a technical issue. I'm not talking about okay, I can't log in I'm talking about, like, a technical issue that a company have that might otherwise not renew unless you solve it. So why not ask that question 120 days or 180 days prior to the renewal? By the way, if you do send it out 120 days prior to the renewal and they say, yeah, actually I would. By the way, if you do send it out 120 days prior to the renewal and they say, yeah, actually I would, then it gives you an incentive to, you know, have a conversation about renewing early.

Speaker 2:

I just had a podcast episode launched with Renew Plus, a new podcast by Renew Track and Michael, their CEO. Pretty awesome, yeah, pretty awesome podcast. I think it's going to be bonanza, like a better word. I chose that word. It's going to be great, I love it. And he said that they're obviously enabling clients to have the renewal process completely automated. And he said that with the right incentives and the right approach, they can increase the average time to renew. They can advance it by 45 days. So their clients seeing it happens because you put some things and some of the things that you can automate is that question.

Speaker 2:

You can also automate completely, especially if the contracts are you know whether they're simple, just time consuming and doing manually. You can totally automate the compilation of you know everything all the contracts, everything that the PO, everything that's sort of the communication, everything that's related to you know manual work, that's just busy work. So then the CSM, or the renewal manager, plays a role in having the right conversation about upsell, about you know, renewing early or extending the contract conditions. Now, if you're in a complete PLG, meaning product-led growth, self-serve, you can still leverage the renewal moment to increase upsell attach rate to the renewal motion. And again, I think the technology helps a lot in that sense.

Speaker 2:

If you set it up so that as they renew, it doesn't renew to completely automatically, but they get an email and say hey, by the way, we have this promotion, here's a code. If you do that, you also get this, this and that that's a good one. Can we create awareness to what else you can have? And if you're already committed to my brand, you have a good experience. Why not A sign up for a two-year deal instead of one for your upcoming renewal and get some discount if you know you're not leaving anytime soon, or upgrade with a heavy discount or whatever incentives you have out there, like a better support or whatever it is that you're going to offer or announce a new module and kind of like.

Speaker 2:

Allow for that moment to amplify by creating awareness to what are the possibilities the client can take as they approach the renewal. And again, I think that the critical piece is to A leverage technology to find risk, like the hypothetical question is one of them, and second, create awareness to what else opens up. If you are already loyal to my brand, how else can we expand on that relationship?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's great insight and, I think, really good practical advice and, granted, full renewal.

Speaker 1:

Automation isn't a luxury that I think a lot of you know, a lot of companies have, just because there's inherent complexity that you have to solve for.

Speaker 1:

But I, I, I think that you know, in a, in a, especially in a post COVID world, where everybody's just gotten used a little bit more to operating like digitally and like remotely and like those those old sales cycles and statements of work and all that kind of stuff still necessary, but it just feels dinosaurish these days and so you know it would be cool to see a lot more of that stuff kind of move automated and and you know, you know it's. It's kind of like, again, it's that combination of human and digital, like that first question, like how likely are you to renew? Um, that starts your branching right there, you know, and and from there you have further branching that may or may not have humans involved, depending on what your answer is and depending on you know what it is that you're you're after with the account. So, um, that's, I guess, in the wild or among you know your clients from a consultancy perspective? Have you seen some really cool digital motions or things where you've been like oh, I recognize what that is. That's really neat.

Speaker 2:

I think that Yair Bottinger when I interviewed him on my podcast on YouTube, he had some really cool stuff that he's done podcast on YouTube. He had some really cool stuff that he's done. One to upgrade a bunch of clients from an old version to a new version and the way he was thinking about it when he was designing it like the actual framework. I think he used something like you have to think about what is the next bucket, talk about your eight sequence email. Right, that was just one step that you were encouraged to do. I think that's why the sequence that you liked worked so much, so well.

Speaker 2:

And then he did the same thing, but he used a platform called EverAfter because it was like a little bit more complicated. More steps needed to have some videos in it to make it happen. Obviously, more steps needed to have some videos in it to make it happen. Obviously, upgrading from an old platform to a new one is a big deal and if you want to have 300 or 700 customers do it all in four short weeks, you have to think about automation. You're not going to be able to meet with it. You don't have an army of CSMs to work with each of them individually.

Speaker 1:

Right, exactly.

Speaker 2:

And so I think that whenever you're thinking about upgrade, onboarding, upsell, whatever the problem, when there's like multiple steps included, you want to think about avoiding overwhelming your clients. Meaning an email or a page with lots of different steps I think it's completely overwhelming. You don't want to underwhelm them, like give them something stupid Okay, log in, then send the other email but you want to get the whelm just right. And to me, that means that when you do it, you get a little bit of a wow moment when you get that done, and maybe it's like three simple steps, but then you get some sort of a result and I think it takes a little bit of art and creativity to think how to break those steps down so that you get the whelm just right, even though you're just using digital components. And I encourage everybody to watch that, and I encourage everybody to watch that.

Speaker 2:

He actually had two YouTube videos that we record, two videos that we posted on YouTube for the podcast where he walks through the framework, and both he's showing some really great examples. If you wanted to get that framework really digested. Well, just to watch those videos.

Speaker 1:

We'll link it in the show notes so that folks can go watch it. Yeah, that's cool. I love that, and I love that you used the word Like we have overwhelm, we have underwhelm, whelm. I don't, is it a thing? Like, just write whelm Get the whelm, just right.

Speaker 2:

By the way, that's something that I learned it from somebody else. There's a guy called Taki Moore and he says that a lot. I was like yeah, you know what recipe book, playbook kind of standards in terms of implementing digital.

Speaker 1:

Like, there are many different flavors and there are so many variables that everyone's digital emotions look a little bit different. Sure, everyone kind of has access to email stuff and maybe some in-product, but your actual strategy and what you do and all that kind of stuff varies from client to client. But are there some consistencies when it comes to you actually advise your clients on their digital strategy? Are there some kind of go-to things that you always kind of advise clients do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, actually I have a full framework and a model for that and we're actually approaching it from a customer-centric standpoint. We start with the intent what are we trying to accomplish and what are the wow moments that we want to create in that journey and only then design it for that, and then the how is you know becomes minor. We will look at the intent, what we want to accomplish, and then, when we design, we point the path to get this done. We create the content and only then we think about okay, what channels are our clients on so that we can broadcast and create awareness to this new content? And then what's the best way for them to digest it? Is it with group, you know, open office hours? Is it a workshop that they need to sign up and it's like a five five session, maybe a certification program? Are we putting those videos on a library and with a course and a training? You know, it just depends. Is it a five sequence email? Where are, where are they?

Speaker 2:

first of all, and what's the best way to digest it, pending the complexity and how long it takes and how much handholding they might need. But yeah, there's absolutely a framework for that handholding they might need.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, there's absolutely a framework for that. Yeah, I mean, I think the inclination when it comes to some of these things is to start way too early. You're like, okay, yeah, we need onboarding emails, so let's go do that. Sure, okay, but now let's do this and let's do this, instead of you know, kind of like saying, okay, where are customers getting themselves into trouble? Like, you know, what are the moments along the customer journey where we really need to celebrate their wins, when they accomplish something, or if they're behind on something, where do they need a little bit of extra shove? A little bit of extra extra shove, and and a lot of times, I think once you define those things, they, they, those things then define your vehicle right and and and how you engage the customer that way.

Speaker 2:

Um, so, yeah, that would be a really great place to start to even figure out what are your intentions. Your intentions should stem from the the key moments in a client's life cycle, just like you said. Thank you for clarifying that. I think that's a really good point. How do you even know what should your intentions be so well? How can we mitigate them? By introducing these you know engagement strategies way earlier in the process, so that we have less of them. Yeah, exactly Exactly.

Speaker 1:

There's a reason why the majority of your support cases land in this category, so you might as well go after that, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah exactly. Brilliant.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly Brilliant. So look, as we kind of start to you know, wrap up our conversation. I would which I've thoroughly enjoyed, by the way, and I think we could probably do a whole nother hour on this stuff but I'd love to get a sense from you. What's in your content diet what do you pay attention to, because I love you know sharing that with the audience. Content diet what do you pay attention to? Because I love you know sharing that with the audience, so that they can also pay attention to those things uh, what do I love to watch and like, uh, read and that kind of.

Speaker 2:

I think, like you know for me, in terms of, uh, just in general, I love reading business books in general. I don't necessarily so much immerse myself in CS books, although when one comes out I would usually read it. So the last two books that I've read were one, the Seven Pillars by Wayne McCulloch, the Seven Pillars of Customer Success, and I also read the CCO book by Rod Cherkas and the Onboarding Matters by Donna Weber. I think, yeah, there you go. All of them are really great books. I recommend them to all of them, to everybody, to all of them, I recommend Rod.

Speaker 2:

Cherkas to read his own book.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, to everyone. Have you read your book?

Speaker 2:

All of them are great. You'd be surprised, I think Donna Weber definitely read her book because she did an audio version of it, which was brilliant, totally so for her I think that was like a lot of work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think I embarrassed her when she was on the podcast because I complimented her on her voiceover skills.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I thought she did a really good job honestly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it says something about something when you compliment her. I think people should know that they're doing a good job, and I think all three of them did a great job. Really, quite a bit is that when you read Wayne McCulloch's book, it has a lot of tactical advice and models which I think really help understand very deep context around how do you structure the strategy. And I love Rod's book because I learned something new about storytelling and things that I not necessarily thought about and like. His approach to metrics honestly is a little bit different than mine, but it was really interesting to see how other people think Mine is better, by the way no, I'm just kidding, it's just different.

Speaker 2:

I was like, hi, interesting, okay, I'm still like mine better, but it's always good to see how people approach and think about these things and you can always learn something new and mad respect for all of them, you know for writing these books. So I recommend you know, if you're new to customer success or you're a CS executive and just needs to be inspired, just read these three books. And, of course, if you have the time, sign up for my youtube channel csm practice. My focus is on strategies and methodologies and playbooks that work. So I end up interviewing a lot of cs execs and team leaders and cs ops managers just to ask them hey, what did you do and what worked for you, and can you give us all the little details so that everybody can learn how to uplevel their CSM practice?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's one of the things I love about your channel is is is you walk you? Invariably, after every conversation, you walk away with like stuff that you can go. Do you know um which is which is which is so cool? So um mission complete on that one Nice job.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and, if I can put like a quick plug, that's the essence, necessarily, of my new coaching program for startups. As you know, I've been working with a lot of different companies over since 2013, so 2014, now almost 10 years and primarily I used to work with larger companies. That used to be my domain, and in the last two, three years, I used to work with larger companies. Uh, you know, that used to be my domain, and in the last two, three years, I've gotten a lot of asks from startups hey, can you work with us too? And I said I think it's like too much, like you know, it would be too much requirements for your resources and budget. And then I said you know what you read. Enough is enough. You're going to build a coaching program for startups, startup executives, team leaders, and just take everything that you've learned in the last decade and open it up for them.

Speaker 2:

And I'm proud to say that this year 2024, I've officially launched my 120 plus NRR coaching program. It's designed for startups and I this is like. The goal of the coaching program is not to show you a bunch of videos, which you could do on my YouTube channel, but actually give you the templates, give you the coaching, the address, how to implement it in your organization and all the support that you need to get this done and accelerate your pace to 120 plus NRR. And if you're already there, how do you scale that up as you continue to grow? So if anybody's interested actually you know I'm just going to put this plug in go to my company's website, csnpracticecom, and, yeah, let's get a conversation going to see if that might be a good fit.

Speaker 1:

That's cool. I love that you're doing that and it's it's. I think it's an underserved part of the market for sure. So that's good stuff, I agree, is there? Is there anyone you thought out to, maybe somebody that's doing something you know particularly cool and digital, or somebody that you're just a general fan of?

Speaker 2:

Like I said, I'm big, big, big fan of Yael Bottinger and what he does, big fan of Gainset and the thought leadership that they produce around scaled CS community online communities, and you should also check Planhat and the sales machine. All of them are doing really great things in the lower touch and scaling CS. Uh, obviously, software companies, but I really love the, the content uh that they produce and, um, I think the their focus is there for scaled CS and, uh, that's my world. You know, this is what I uh love learning. I think you know full admission.

Speaker 2:

You know, sometimes I talk to people on LinkedIn that message me or whatever, and if they're an executive, I always ask them you know what is, what is your focus? And in December, I must have talked to I don't know 30 different CS executives and I would say that 80% of them, if not more, say that. 80% of them, if not more, said that they were working on something and they were working on scaling their CS engagement model Like bar none. 80% of all the executives that I spoke to in the past two months and we're in January 2024, are focused on scaling their operations, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And so I think it's going to be just like a. You know Konami is down, you have less people. You have to learn, you have to squeeze it and get the most out of what you have. I think it's going to be a big, big focus for 2024.

Speaker 1:

Well, look, it's been a pleasure. I'm such a big fan of yours and I'm glad we could make this work, and I appreciate you taking an hour out of your day and joining me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Listen man, it was awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for everybody that listened Really appreciate you taking the time to listen to us both chit-chatting and it was absolutely awesome being here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital Customer Success Podcast. If you like what we're doing, consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. It really helps us to grow and to provide value to a broader audience. You can view the Digital Customer Success definition word map and get more details about the show at digitalcustomersuccesscom. My name is Alex Terkovich. Thanks again for joining and we'll see you next time.

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