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Dan Ennis – Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Success

Aseem Chandra: [00:00:00] Okay let’s, let’s go ahead and get started. So, really excited to, to be here. I’ll pick it off with my introduction and Immersa and then introduce our guests today. So this is, this is part of a webinar series that we launched late last year, follow up last year, and we’ve seen the community continue to grow around it.

Aseem Chandra: We’re really excited for those of you signed up and are able to join us today. My name is Asim Chandra. I’m the founder, CEO of Immersa. Immersa is focused on how to take product usage data and make it available for customer success and sales teams to help you operationalize data and drive identify where there’s churn, risk or growth opportunities in your install base at an account level.

Aseem Chandra: My guest today is Dan Ennis, and Dan was nominated and is one of the top 100 CS strategists in 2022. He was named the top 25 most creative CS leader last year. He is currently with monday.com which if you are tracking that company is on a tear in terms of the growth. And the conversation we’re gonna have today is really around the [00:01:00] dos and don’ts of scaling customer success.

Aseem Chandra: And Dan is has lived through this and continues to live through away. And I’m gonna hand this over to Dan for his introduction. Dan, tell us a little about you.

Dan Ennis: Thanks Aseem. Like Aseem mentioned, I manage the scale customer success team here@monday.com and I’ve been with Monday for about two and a half years now and have helped kind of be on the ground floor when we built out the scale sub-segment here at Monday.

Dan Ennis: But I’ve been in customer success for about a, a decade now and have really had a lot of experience working with kind of different size companies along. Their trajectory, whether it’s kind of a larger organization post going public like Monday now or even earlier stage startups in the past as well.

Dan Ennis: And so got a lot of experience with being able to work on scaling out the customer success practices when you can’t just throw headcount at a problem at different stages of companies with different levels of infrastructure in place.

Aseem Chandra: Great. So, so Dan, let’s tell us a [00:02:00] little bit about your previous experiences and where you worked before we get into the experience that you’ve had with Monday.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So I’ve been part of prior organizations. So some of the formal customer success at an organization called Think hr Now Mineral was a part of working with them as they built out some of their continued customer success practices and as they continued to scale their team and their offerings, going from a very traditional one person, one C s M doing everything.

Dan Ennis: Sales, right? So going from the concept of one point of contact for a customer, period to those scaling out the team when it comes to the different specializations. So specializing out implementation at some point, specializing out account managers at another point, as well as continuing to work on how we could help our customers better achieve their goals because there was.

Dan Ennis: Fairly unique model there of B2B to B with that company where we sold the people who gave that to [00:03:00] their customers. So therefore we needed to be able to scale adoption Yeah. With their customers who were using our product. So that was where some of that began being built out. And then some experience at a company called Beekeeper, where a very similar process there where they were a communication platform.

Dan Ennis: That was specifically for non desk workers. And so being able to work with our teams and the maybe more desk-bound employees at some of those orgs to help roll this out and work with them on how do they scale that out to their employees. So that’s what my prior background before Monday has looked a lot like from a, a perspective of scaling and just being a part of the, the customer journey throughout those different organizations.

Perfect.

Aseem Chandra: Perfect. So, so Dan let’s, let’s talk a little bit about monday.com. So I think most of us are familiar, but for those that are not, it’d be great if you can share a little bit about what the company does. Katie says it’s our favorite tool. Mine too. But let’s, let’s, for the audience that’s not familiar with what Monday does, maybe take a moment to explain [00:04:00] that.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So Monday aims to be a, a work operating system where you can go in and not just manage projects, which might be how a lot of people think of, of Monday as project management, but go to perform any of your workflows, anything from creating A C R M if you’re not buying a purpose-built c r m to building out your own ticket intake system.

Dan Ennis: To managing projects and tracking progress on those different things as people might be thinking of that. And so Monday makes sure to be a hub where you can do all your work. So whether that’s through natively being able to do that directly within Monday itself or through connections through connecting to other tools that might be purpose-built that talk to Monday so that way you’re able to have that one centralized work operating system where you are managing all of your work that you’re doing.

Dan Ennis: So that’s. In a high level, in a nutshell. And really people love it because of the, the customizable nature of what you can build in Monday and that [00:05:00] kind of very strong emphasis on that low-code, being able to build out what you want within Monday. Which I think from a customer success perspective is exciting cuz it keeps things fresh because.

Dan Ennis: We’re not targeting just one type of use case and one vertical where we go really deep in one industry. Keeps it both challenging but also very exciting in the customer success team because we work with such a, a diverse array of users and companies and user profiles as we help them accomplish their goals with Monday.

Aseem Chandra: Very cool. Very cool. And you know, since we’re gonna be talking about scaling Dan, I looked up a little bit of Monday’s growth trajectory and shared that with the audience. But in the two and a half years that you’ve been part of the company, the company started was, was roughly at 116 million in revenue or a r r in 2020 and then double that nearly in 2021 to 300 million.

Aseem Chandra: And then last year was not too Shay either with 50 plus percent growth to 460 million in 2022. And, and so clearly all because of you. Tell us more about how [00:06:00] the CS team has evolved in, in all of that growth. Ha.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So the customer success teams work very closely with, with Monday being, you know, very much our product led growth company where truly following that land and expand model, we know that this might sound cliche to, to people to hear, but customers that want to expand and grow with a product are successful customers.

Dan Ennis: So they might come in for one use case, and if they don’t accomplish that use case, they’re never going to want to expand and bring in other use cases, however, If they do find success with that, not only are they then happy with the result that they’re getting with that particular use case that they may be initially purchased Monday for, they now are realizing the opportunities of how it can benefit all these other use cases that they have that they might not have even realized going on that front.

Dan Ennis: So with that, the customer success team works very closely with our, our account management team. I, I know we joke and, and. A, it’s a topic of conversations about friction between customer success and sales. But at, at Monday, definitely not something that I, I feel like [00:07:00] we’ve experienced particularly, there’s a really close alignment where the sales team is very invested in customers being successful.

Dan Ennis: So they want to make sure that they’re working with customers who are experiencing success because they know that that’s how it snowballs and how people are wanting to use even more of Monday. So when we come in as helping make customers successful, helping advise on how to make sure that they’re getting the most out of Monday and accomplishing their, their goals, which creates that, that snowball of a, of a flywheel of customers who.

Dan Ennis: Purchase Monday for use case X, experience success with that, realize they can do Y, expand into Y, and so on and so forth. And we come in and play a key role in that as a customer success organization. Got it.

Aseem Chandra: So Dan, I was just curious if there’s others in the audience that work at PLG companies or transforming to PLG companies.

Aseem Chandra: Looks like we have a little bit of both going on in the audience. So let’s maybe spend a few minutes on this. Katie, Gary, Evan, if you have other questions you’d like to ask of Dan, please post [00:08:00] those there and I’ll bring those up for you. But love to hear where others are from which companies do you represent and what kinds of questions you might have for Dan.

Aseem Chandra: Please participate as an audience, ask your questions. We’ll we’ll keep that live and interesting. So Dan, I think you kind of touched on one of the key points that I frequently hear from PLG companies, which is, what is the handoff between the sales and the CS team look like? Right? And it varies a lot depending on the, the type of company, the, the type of product, the scale at which you’re selling, et cetera.

Aseem Chandra: But tell, tell me a little bit more about how that works for you at.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So looks different depending on the segment as well, and how involved the, the C S M, the human individual will, that actual human C s M will be on the account. So, looks a little different on our, our scale side as opposed to some of the other sides.

Dan Ennis: So there’s two components to it. Number one is a very thoroughly detailed. Actual handoff object that that creates and captures all of the information and is very robust in our [00:09:00] C R M because we understand that we don’t want to just have a great meeting with conversation ensuring that’s going from sales to CS or to our implementation team.

Dan Ennis: We wanna make sure that’s captured so the future people can look back at that when that happens. Right? And whether it’s because an account is moving from one CSM to another or. For whatever reason, whatever could be going on, we want to make sure that that’s documented. So the first part is a very thorough kind of document there.

Dan Ennis: And then a brief kind of touchpoint scheduled with the C S m. Whoever might be involved from implementation, depending on, on where that account is and the sales representative to see is there any extra color or anything that needed to be shared beyond that, just to sync on the, on the plan with the customer.

Dan Ennis: But we really try to put our emphasis on what’s documented because we want to make sure. That, that is something that includes all the information someone would need to know to be able to look at this account fresh and understand what do I need to do. And we, we really do believe that that documentation is extremely key [00:10:00] and our sales reps do a, a great job at that on our sales team.

Dan Ennis: So Michael,

Aseem Chandra: as, as a customer to monday.com, I’ve actually experienced you know, that handoff and there’s actually a really interest, there’s a couple of questions here. One from Gary, another one from Michael. So I’ll, I’ll bring those both up. Mm-hmm. Both are relevant to this conversation. So Michael wants to know what does that handoff object consist of?

Aseem Chandra: Right? So when a sales executive, you know, signs off on a deal, and I assume it’s gonna be a little bit different, significantly different, depending on which segment that the account is. You know, cuz for us it was pretty self-service, very transparent. We didn’t even, couldn’t even tell that, that there was a transition, but I’m sure for enterprise accounts it’s probably not the case with more complex use cases.

Aseem Chandra: So maybe talk a little bit about that and I’ll pick up Gary’s

Dan Ennis: question next. Absolutely. And so within that it includes things like what is the actual use case that they want to use Monday. Detailed that as much as possible at a high level. What were the big win points? What was it that caused this deal to be won?

Dan Ennis: Like what was it that brought that over the line for this customer? Cause it’s helpful for the c [00:11:00] s m to be aware of on a long term basis. Okay, what were the parts of Monday that were most important to this customer? And includes what were any potential challenges that they saw in the process so they can include that.

Dan Ennis: So again, the c s M can be aware of. If it’s, they’re coming from spreadsheets and they’re concerned about just getting a, a team of their employees to, to use a tool, right? Like, that’s a great thing to, to be aware of for someone going in on the, on the front end. So those are at the, the highest level, the use case, what was most important to them that helped kind of seal the deal and what were the potential challenges.

Dan Ennis: And then within that, there’s also, of course, some contact mapping. Here are the people that you’d wanna work with. Here’s calling out specifically, which are the actual decision makers, who you’re gonna work with during the implementation process, all those kinds of things. And then maybe some color about those particular contacts in addition to, like, we of course track the actual contacts within.

Dan Ennis: Our [00:12:00] CRM as well. Mm-hmm. , but they give that context around those as it relates to that new deal. So that way there’s any context on who they spoke with and everything like that. So trying to make it really clear there. And then any potential growth they could see down the line. Got

Aseem Chandra: it. I think I think that resonates quite a bit, you know, not just establishing what is it that the team is trying to accomplish, but who’s the team that you’re working with?

Aseem Chandra: Gary Hoffman is with a legal tech PLG company. And his question, which I think would resonate with you since you serve a large number of customers, including SMB accounts, so do. And his question is, how do customers get to realize that they’re underperforming when they do not communicate?

Aseem Chandra: Right? So are there signals that your team looks for, particularly in the SMB segment and where you may be working with the founder or the executive at the company? How do you communicate with them when they’re not communicating back to you? How do you find those signals of whether the customer’s not performing well in your.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So that’s a, a great question there [00:13:00] in the sense of, excuse me, what we work on here is obviously end of the day, the most helpful thing is, does the customer feel that they’re having success with what they’re accomplishing? Right? Because that Trump’s end of the day, most any database signal you could put in, right?

Dan Ennis: Because if they purchased it to do X and they’re accomplishing x, They don’t care what the data shows. They’re happy because they’re doing X and vice versa. If they’re bought it to do X, they don’t care if the data looks fantastic. If they’re not accomplishing x, I bought Monday to do this. That’s what matters end of the day.

Dan Ennis: So most ideally, you’re having those conversations. But transparently when you’re not. We have done a lot of work on finding what those signals are, that point to customers that are not being successful. And we can tr and what we’ve done is we’ve done a lot of work on translating those from not just.

Dan Ennis: Feature-based, product-based metrics because transparently, that’s very insularly focused. If [00:14:00] it’s positioned solely that way. Customer doesn’t care about a feature for a feature’s sake, but transitioning those as to what does that mean for a customer? If we’ve noticed that there’s been a, a large dip or lack of adoption in, for example, using some of our communication features, right, rather than just saying, , you’re not using the communication features.

Dan Ennis: Mm-hmm. , that’s usually successful. That might not resonate with a customer so much as sharing with them. We’ve noticed that this isn’t being used as much. We’re concerned that you might be having a lot of transitioning for your customers as their context switching for your team as they’re having to communicate about what’s going on in Monday elsewhere.

Dan Ennis: Are they doing that? Are you experiencing that or talking about how. We know that those communications help foster that, that social environment that’s conducive to adoption. Are you experiencing that? Because we’re not seeing this and so positioning this not just as, Hey, here’s data. Cause a customer doesn’t care about that for its own sake.

Dan Ennis: We try to be very data driven, but we [00:15:00] understand. While we need that data to make decisions and want to share that with customers, we want to make sure that we’re doing our best to communicate that in a way that resonates and is valuable to them. Got it. So that’s what I would say. A lot of what we do is we, we spend time looking at those signals, which we’ve done a lot of work to see what are the meaningful signals.

Dan Ennis: Because with a, a product as diverse as Monday, with so many features, it’s not as simple. Well, they’ll be using feature X a certain amount of times because people’s use cases are so diverse, they might not need feature X and be very successful. So that’s just a, an example of how we approach that and how we make sure that that’s being positioned from customer-centric perspective, which I think we’ll get into in a little bit about how there’s kind of this myth that scale is all about doing things in an automated way and losing the customer a little bit when that’s absolutely not the case.

Dan Ennis: It’s about being,

Aseem Chandra: so Dan, let’s, let’s. Hold that thought, cuz I’m gonna come back to it. I think that’s an important point that you just made, but I’m gonna go back to the point you made about data driven and there’s actually some [00:16:00] additional questions starting to pop up. Ragner actually is appreciative of the concept of structuring the handover.

Aseem Chandra: So something they might wanna try at their company. But the, the key point here on data driven and, and the question that follows from Rena is about how do you gather feed. Through surveys or other mechanisms. I’m curious, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m sure you do, A lot of companies do n p s surveys, so that’s obviously a very relevant signal.

Aseem Chandra: But in terms of data-driven processes, can we double click that a little bit? Like what kind of data feeds do you use? You know, do you use product usage data as a PLG company? What does that signal look like for you? So maybe take a moment to, to take us through that part of

Dan Ennis: the discussion.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So nail on the head there. We do a lot based on product usage data. We do look at NPSs, however, we, we understand that and this is something that I, I’m grateful for others having mentioned as well, that NPS is a, is a metric that is a signal, but we can often [00:17:00] misuse it. So it’s something that we’re aware of, but not necessarily something that is, Super heavily involved directly on, on some of the things we do on the, the customer success side.

Dan Ennis: But we do send out surveys that do talk about what level of success they’re having with Monday that we target not to every user, where maybe the NPSs right, is something that typically in most products, targets. The whole swath of users as opposed to something that’s targeting those that we’ve already designated in our CM as champions.

Dan Ennis: Right? So something that talks about how successful they’re feeling or how how empowered they’re feeling to accomplish what they need to within Monday. Mm-hmm. . So we do that on occasion and we take that feedback as something that we, we look at because that’s their direct response. But in addition to that, yes, we look at product data.

Dan Ennis: What we do is we try to see. And this is where our Bizos team and I know that a tool like ERSA can also be, be helpful for, for those that don’t have maybe an organization that’s as built out to do. The way we were [00:18:00] able to so they could use another tool out there, but what they do is they looked at that data and they help reverse engineer what were successful customers looking like, as well as what were customers that churn, what did they look like over time?

Dan Ennis: And so we were able to understand and get a strong idea of what that looks like from a data perspective. And a lot of that is yes, product usage when we’re not talking to. If we’re not talking to a customer directly right away, which in the scale side we’re not always talking to them directly. So we can use those pointers to understand where is that needed?

Dan Ennis: Cause we’re relying on the, the data that has been shared to show these are customers that are likely to churn or these are those that are likely on a path to success to even help accelerate that growth. Got it.

Aseem Chandra: So, Let you know, you, you have a broader thesis around scaling. So maybe let’s start our attention there.

Aseem Chandra: You talked about the four pillars of scaling when we [00:19:00] had our initial conversation data being one of those, but could you talk a little bit about what the other three pillars are and how do those combine the work to create scale?

Dan Ennis: Yeah, absolutely. So when talking about kind of the pillars of scale I think even before the pillars, just to kind of give as a, as a groundwork is the idea of thinking through What the goal is of your scaling out what you’re trying to accomplish and trying to make sure you’re keeping the, the customer at the center, they’re undergirding.

Dan Ennis: So if these are the four pillars, that’s the foundation on, on which the four pillars are built is the customer because end of the day when scaling, whether it’s because of external pressures or whatever other reason, you wanna make sure that what you’re doing is delivering. What the customer needs, when and how they need it.

Dan Ennis: And that’s what, what scale’s about. And then to support that is where these four pillars come in, right? So the data, which is allowing you to understand the signals of these customers at scale because you’re not able to talk to all of them. [00:20:00] And again, that’s feature not bug. So what is the data that you need?

Dan Ennis: So understanding and looking through what is it that is important and going to be impactful. And this is why you start with the, the other component, like I mentioned, of that foundation of the customer and what your goal is and what that journey is that you want to see. Cause that’s what will tell you which data’s important.

Dan Ennis: Hmm. And then from there you can look at the process, right? So what is it that you want to accomplish? What is that journey? What is it that you want to have, be something that’s done at a human intervention level? What do you want to have that is automated within a product? Or what do you want to have that is accomplished via other methods?

Dan Ennis: So you’re thinking through what are the processes? What is it that you want to actually. Right. So think through, you know, playbooks, plays the journey. All of those things fall broadly under the category of processes. And I think that these are the kinds of questions that you want to be asking before you get to this third one, which is [00:21:00] technology.

Dan Ennis: Too often I think companies when trying to think about scaling, go straight to the technology because they rightly know they do. technology to do this, right, that there’s no problem with with going to technology. The problem though is technology is no substitute for strategy. So you need the strategy that will determine how and what technology is going to empower you to do that.

Dan Ennis: For example. So you would need to be able to understand what is the data you wanna look for, what are you missing from a data perspective? So maybe you want a tool. From a technology perspective that’s going to do that and help you identify that data. Maybe you’ve identified that you want something that’s automated messaging in product and you don’t really have a way to do that right now.

Dan Ennis: So you need technology that’s going to empower that, fill in the blank because these other components are what will dig, dictate what technology you. So the technology supports the strategy, not the other way around, right? You don’t want technology dictating your strategy, it’s the other way around. [00:22:00] So it’s a key pillar that empowers the rest.

Dan Ennis: But just make sure not to start on that pillar first. Otherwise you’ll, you’ll end up with a, a tech stack that’s kind of hodgepodge put together as opposed to one that serves the strategy you’re trying to accomplish. Yeah. And then lastly, the, the community being the fourth, fourth pillar. Having customers in a way where they can learn from each other is something that is massive.

Dan Ennis: It’s something that both helps foster that social adoption because they’re getting to talk to other users and encourage each other and learn from each other’s use cases as well as transparently. If a user’s asking a question there, they’re not asking your support. They’re not asking your customer success team, which therefore from a scaling perspective just reduces the amount of direct need there.

Dan Ennis: Yeah. No, that’s great.

Aseem Chandra: I think look, the, the four areas you covered just now, first, you know, data second process. What is the customer journey and what’s the process that supports the customer journey? Then moving to what technology you [00:23:00] need to get to the right que, you know to get a response to the right questions along that customer.

Aseem Chandra: And then finally community. I think it’s so important the the four as you talked about. So talk a little bit, little bit about how do you measure scaling, you know, what metrics do you use? Now we, we, the most common one that I hear about from CS teams is coverage ratios, right? How many accounts does a customer success?

Aseem Chandra: Manager or person or team cover in their portfolio. And those ratios vary depending on enterprise, mid-market, smb, et cetera. But are there better ways to think about how you are scaling and are you scaling well? How do you think

Dan Ennis: about it? Yeah. And so I do think that Within that, there’s a couple different ways that you would want to, to approach it.

Dan Ennis: Number one, I think that while those are, are helpful, And they can be good. I don’t think that those should be the primary simply because again, it’s almost like the, like the technology where it should be, that should be in service [00:24:00] of the goal, not the goal itself. Right? Like my goal isn’t necessarily to get that number as high as possible.

Dan Ennis: Right. That’s, that’s maybe a corollary to it. But what I want to do is depending on the goal of the team, right, which obviously as a customer success team, those boil down to gross retention, net retention, adoption as a leading indicator of these different things, right? With the customer segment based on what they need within.

Dan Ennis: Their particular segment, which we’ll probably talk about in, in a little bit, the idea of segmenting and, and how that can be approached

Dan Ennis: from there. We would then yes, try to then get the efficiency of Is the account load, right? How are they, you know, covering these different accounts, but starting with those goals and knowing what you want to accomplish from a process perspective and from the high level outcome, determining that the other [00:25:00] way around because.

Dan Ennis: You might, if you’re just going for the other goal, you might in theory feel like you’re getting the right outcomes by having a, a really high account to c s M ratio in this scaled segment. But if you’re not hitting the business goals that you truly want to hit, you haven’t actually scaled that.

Dan Ennis: you’ve just reduced your business outcomes. And so that is a bit of a moving slider based on what it is that your outcomes are. And as well as transparently are we talking about. Looking at a situation where you’re doing that just in response to the current economic environment where you’ve just gotta figure out how to make, do with the existing headcount that you have for some organizations that some are feeling, you know, hiring freezes or even layoffs that some organizations have gone through versus are we talking in a, a growth period where you’re proactively getting ahead of that.

Dan Ennis: And so that’s where I think from my perspective, it’s not a black and white answer on the only way to, to look at. I

Aseem Chandra: think you just made a really important [00:26:00] point. Dan and I, I think it’s worth sort of reiterating that a bit, which is, are you being forced into you know, creating scale through, because there’s attrition, because there’s economic headwinds because there’s.

Aseem Chandra: Layoffs, et cetera or are you being proactive and planning for growth? And those are different types of scaling mechanisms that, you know, the scaling opportunities. How, what’s your advice for companies? I mean, many companies right now, as you can, as you know, of course, like, you know, there’s a lot of over hiring that occurred in the 20 20, 20 21 timeframe in response to the pandemic as everybody moved.

Aseem Chandra: And then, you know, there’s a little bit of that indigestion going on right now where companies are shedding a lot of weight and, you know, cutting employees and a very unfortunate situation for the tech industry at the moment. But for, for either type of scaling, what would be your advice to companies that are going through that now, whether that’s because there’s continuing to grow as, as you guys are, or whether that’s because.[00:27:00]

Aseem Chandra: They’re cutting back on their employees right now. What, what, what advice would you have for them? How, how, how should they think about the problem

Dan Ennis: differently? Yeah. So the challenges are a little different. Yeah. Within that, to your point. So I, I’ll, I’ll start with saying, Regardless of where your company is on that spectrum right now to borrow a phrase that’s, that’s used in another way to borrow the phrase, right.

Dan Ennis: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Right? If to, to kind of borrow that phrase, if, if the best time to begun scaling this out. Was at the beginning of your building your customer success practice and thinking through how you could scale that down the line. The second best time is now.

Dan Ennis: So within that, regardless of where you find yourself on that spectrum, begin thinking about that, begin building towards that. So I would say it’s less necessarily that the things you need to think about are. Extremely different and more. The challenges are different. So for example, for a company that may be doing this a bit more reactively, [00:28:00] cause you are suddenly in a a case where you’d counted on doubling your C S M headcount by the end of this year.

Dan Ennis: And then you just found out that you’re not only not doubling your C S M headcount, you actually gonna buy the end of q1, have 70% of your CSM team and. The company’s needing you to manage that same book of business. The challenge in those cases, Will be to still set a strategy in that case, because I, I think that the worst thing a co a company can do in that case is just try to, using the existing CSMs that they have left, for example, try to accomplish and do the exact same thing.

Dan Ennis: So throw more accounts on some CSMs don’t change what they’re, they’re setting the customer expectations to do. So just being reactive and expecting. From less is one challenge. And the second challenge within that is truly to, like I said, set a goal and strategy. What is it that is going to [00:29:00] be different for the customer journey?

Dan Ennis: How can we. Deliver value to the customers, because a lot of times when that happens and it’s just a, a cost saving measure, and this is something that I know I’m preaching to the choir when I’m talking to an audience of CS leaders, that the CS leader feels like the person that gets lost in the shuffle There.

Dan Ennis: Within the company is the customer, cuz they’re expected to just get a, a, a less experience. As the company is saying, do more with less people. So as a a customer success leader, think through what are the ways that we can still add value and help move customers through the customer journey. Which is something I actually saw someone mention in the chat, which I think is a fantastic resource to think about.

Dan Ennis: So thanks Samuel for that. I think is a great way to think through how can we continue to move customers through the journey, knowing we can’t rely on a one-to-one interaction to do it where we may have historically. Very well said. Yeah. [00:30:00] Yeah. So from those I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I

Aseem Chandra: think very well said.

Aseem Chandra: Which is, you know, how do you, first of all, understanding what your customer’s journey looks like. When it first originates from when they first see an ad or join a webinar or, you know, find out about you, and then they move to your website and into your product. And then, you know, through your product sort of deeper and deeper in there, there’s different tools that are available to help you figure out what they’re experiencing.

Aseem Chandra: Now from, from your lens you know, how do you connect the dots, Dan, from, you know, When bef like there’s different stages of the customer journey, how do you connect the dots across and how do you make sure that they’re progressing through that journey? What, what tools do you use? Just maybe talk a little bit about the tech and tooling

Dan Ennis: as well.

Dan Ennis: Absolutely. So from our perspective we use, because a lot of that is related to product data which is not, Activated users, right? It’s it’s actual number of, of how they’re using it, because we understand that that’s something that’s really I important. So as we’ve [00:31:00] mapped what that journey looks like for us, we, we do primarily look on and rely on our, our BI tools to help measure where a customer is within that journey.

Dan Ennis: And if they’re off track on that obviously within BI tools, a, a CSM could go in and. Run queries and, and identify different things that they want to to run themselves. What we’ve done is we’ve set it up in such a way that they’ve access to reports in there that specifically call out the accounts that are off track on that journey that are moving off of that, and then from there it highlights, these are the ones that might need.

Dan Ennis: Maybe a one to many campaign or a one to many initiative first, and then those that are still on there because we see how long they’ve been off of that journey and how far they are. What’s that deviation? Cause we have those different milestones in, in adoption so that they can then know where do they follow up from a, a human perspective.

Dan Ennis: At what point does that human intervention come in? To help mitigate risk, for example, right. To help get [00:32:00] them back on track. So for us, it primarily has been because of what we’ve been able to build out our, our BI tools. But I, I do know that there are customer success platforms that do that for organizations as well as, again, tools such as I know what ERSA does and what others have done that help identify what those milestones are.

Dan Ennis: So that’s where, where that can come in. But that’s what we’ve historically. . Got it.

Aseem Chandra: So, lot of interesting questions, some that have been delivered privately in the q and H channel and some that are up here. So I’m gonna go try and hit as many of these as possible. And maybe Dan, just in the interest of time as pointed and sharper response you can offer, so we can get through a few of these.

Aseem Chandra: So Gary Hoffman brings up the point how, you know, what you want to know is when will the customer renew and build it renew. So how do you address that? What, what tools or tech advice you have for somebody who’s trying to figure that?

Dan Ennis: Yeah, absolutely. Short version. Look at your customers that have renewed historically and map out what does that look like?

Dan Ennis: What does their journey look like? What are those that have turned and [00:33:00] not renewed? So you can de determine a renewal likelihood. And then you can use that to determine what level of human intervention. Is needed and when to, to get that confirmation and when in the timeline that comes into place. And the more you see a high level of accuracy or a non-high level of accuracy from what you’ve built allows you to iterate.

Dan Ennis: All these things I talk about with mapping these journeys and using data are iterative. You’re not doing a a set it and forget it. You’re coming up with a model. Looking at those customers that have either renewed or churn to map where you think involvement would be needed and then iterate according.

Aseem Chandra: Got it. Now there’s a question in the q and a session from Stamato. The question is, what are your thoughts on the best setup between customer success and the product team in order, in order to translate client feedback in a scale environment? So how do you bring client feedback from the CS team to the product team?

Aseem Chandra: Is how I interpret this question. In a scale environ. ,

Dan Ennis: great question. So we use a very similar [00:34:00] mechanism transparently to the, to the rest of our to the rest of our, our customer success teams. We, we try to make it so that customer feedback is customer feedback, and we, we associate it at an, at an account level so that you see feedback related, you know, that that can aggregate a r r associated with feedback.

Dan Ennis: But then we also, you aggregate that, so if it’s a similar request, it’s, it’s with another broader request there. So whether that’s coming from us. As the customer success team because we are hearing it or customers have the ability to submit feedback directly within the product. There’s, those are the kind of the two main ways of capturing that.

Dan Ennis: And then we’ve got kind of internal mechanisms for liaising between our, you know, product and customer success teams to ensure alignment there. Okay.

Aseem Chandra: There are several questions from both Sam and Heather around mapping customer journeys. What’s a good tool out there? They mentioned lucid Miro, et cetera, but are there other ways in which you’ve come across where teams map customer journeys to understand how the customer’s actually going through their products and and use

Dan Ennis: cases?

Dan Ennis: Yeah, it all depends on, [00:35:00] on what your, what you’re trying to do. Or is it, is it something you’re trying to have more visual like you’ve mentioned with a couple of those Miro and I would add, you know, Canva in there and things like that to create different resources. Are you trying to have this listed more as a, as a flow that you’re kind of tracking steps you’ve got?

Dan Ennis: Anything as simple as I would, I hate to, you know, say something as simple as a, a spreadsheet, but that’s starting there is better than not starting at all. But tracking that is important. I would be remiss to not mention how we are able to do that within Monday directly. We’re able to track a customer journey and, and map that out both visually with some of our Monday features within our docs, as well as just as a process within a a board.

Dan Ennis: We can, we’ve mapped out what that looks like but there’s any number of tools and it depends on what your specific need is for the way you want to do that, but I think that you’ve touched on a lot of the, the big ones. Yeah.

Aseem Chandra: Sam, you’re bringing out an important point on the q and a or on the chat session about how c s m teams generally cover onboarding, retention, sometimes not even differentiate very well between those.

Aseem Chandra: So one of the things I will [00:36:00] mention is that you know from an ERSA standpoint, we’ve actually created customer journeys and broken that out into. Five, six different stages and onboarding, retention, et cetera. Pretty distinct stages and there’s very distinct activities that we’ve discovered that need to happen.

Aseem Chandra: So if there’s interest in that conversation, please, please reach out. Happy to, happy to help you with and take you through what we’ve learned. Okay, so there’s a question from RNA about how do you capture feature enhancement request and bugs? Do you have a one door policy and separate types of requests, or do you separate upfront visibility for the client?

Aseem Chandra: So, I, I, I think the question’s kind of pointing to, again, The lines of getting feedback to your product team, but more specifically around bugs and issues with the product. I mean,

Dan Ennis: yes. A short version, right? Like, so there’s different, you know, Accused for looking at things that are bugs that are, you know, affecting existing features that should be working in a certain way versus an enhancement request.

Dan Ennis: So I think that those are, you know, treated differently on the internal side, of course. And then like every company, everything’s triaged and [00:37:00] prioritized based on impact, visibility low hanging fruit, ease of fix, right. All those kinds of things that, that go into all of a prioritization model. Yeah.

Dan Ennis: So Dan

Aseem Chandra: I’m gonna just put it out there if anybody has any final questions that they’d like to ask of you. But, you know, while that’s coming up you know, one of the questions I do have around the recent environment that we’ve seen, which is kind of leading to that forced scaling for a lot of teams.

Aseem Chandra: What’s your advice to anyone who’s been recently laid off or finds themselves you know, in a situation where they have to lay off a part of your, part of their team? What advice would you offer to either one of those two types of scenarios that we see pretty often these days, particularly from a customer success lens.

Aseem Chandra: Right. Talk about CS teams. Yeah. Yeah,

Dan Ennis: I was gonna say, yeah. So, great, great question and one that, you know, I gotta, I wanna give a second to be thoughtful here. Because both, both sides of that equation are difficult for people, right? Whether you’re the the leader having to do that or you’ve [00:38:00] been the one impacted.

Dan Ennis: That said, obviously, you know, both sides are difficult with that being an imbalance, one of those being significantly more difficult. So for those that have been laid off, you know, in the, in the customer success space, The first part, and this is gonna sound cliche, but have grace with yourself. Take what your time is, go on your pace.

Dan Ennis: Because it is a loss, there can be a, a, a pressure, and especially for those that are, that were high performers or that were driven in their career. To get right back at it right away and hit the ground running. And in theory, that sounds great and nice and able to do that. However often it, there’s, there’s a, a warning, there’s a, you know, a downtime period.

Dan Ennis: So have that grace with yourself that you’re, you’re not gonna necessarily be able to hit the ground running as fast as, as you would like to be able to. If you are, that’s fantastic, go for it. But if you’re not, there’s nothing. That’s not something wrong with, with you as the person doing that. Then lean on your network.

Dan Ennis: Don’t be, you know, afraid to, to ask for introductions. Hopefully you’ve been building your network before [00:39:00] this. Again, same thing like I mentioned earlier with scaling out. Best time to have built a, a network was, you know, months to years ago. Second best time is now. But if you’re doing that make sure that when you’re working and asking for.

Dan Ennis: Introductions or asking for things from someone in this process. Still remember the principles that you applied as a A C S M when you were making asks of of customers, which is really that you still wanna make sure you’re providing them value. Yeah. So if it’s somebody that you already have an established relationship with and you’ve done that, yes, feel free.

Dan Ennis: Go ahead. Just make that ask, Hey, can you make this intro in such and such a place? Because you’ve already built that relationship. But if you haven’t already, make sure you’re finding ways to add value. And that would be the kind of final component to this would be find ways to use this time to still be developing you, to still be growing in those skills.

Dan Ennis: Whether that’s taking this time that you’ll now have more downtime to contribute to, whether it’s LinkedIn or a blog, or different ways to write out what you’ve done in the past and help build [00:40:00] that experience out. So I’ll pause there. That’s kind of the, the first one I would say related to those that were.

Dan Ennis: Being laid off and identifying. And then for those that are going through the process on the other side, as a leader, having to do that similarly, first is you’re really needing to manage up and manage down on both sides of that. The manage up is. Being transparent and advocating with the leadership above you about what expectations can now look like.

Dan Ennis: Because typically for, for a leader and the customer success leader, they’re not the one who made the call that layoffs were needed, right? So they’re needing to manage up with those that helped make those decisions on this is what we need to be successful now. Can’t have the headcount, this is what we need to do, or this is what successful looks like now as far as changing processes.

Dan Ennis: So a big part of that is learning to manage. Which can be a difficult skill in and of itself, and we [00:41:00] could have a whole webinar just about learning to manage up, but that’s one component. And the second is, Again, it sounds cliche, but have grace with your teams. They’re going through a difficult time.

Dan Ennis: Those that are still there. Some will feel survivor’s guilt of, oh my goodness, like so and so that was let go. I thought they were doing better than me. They might be feeling fear. They might be feeling any number of uncertainty or demotivation as they, they just look at the amount of work that they might feel they have to do.

Dan Ennis: So have grace with your team and over. Be transparent as much as you can with your teams about the things you’re doing to advocate for and work on their goals and their customers.

Aseem Chandra: And thank you. That was wonderful advice I think for, for both parties. It’s never easy in either situation and good advice.

Aseem Chandra: I think Michael is sharing some, some of his personal experiences here as well. You know, I, I wanna, I wanna leave on a more positive note. I think I will say, you know, over the past I’ve been part of this industry in the tech [00:42:00] industry over 20, 25 years. And what I’ve found is that people are more than willing to help in any situation.

Aseem Chandra: And what you have to do is ask. And a lot of times I see people hesitate to ask. And, you know, whether it’s their confidence that shake in, whether it’s you know, whatever personal situation they might be in that, in that moment. But ask and and you’ll be surprised by the help you receive and the empathy that you receive.

Aseem Chandra: So let’s, let’s close there. I, fantastic conversation. Really enjoyed it. Dan, to the audience, thank you so much for participating and asking your questions. We’re, we’re gonna do this every week and we have a new and exciting guest show up here every week. We’ve been very fortunate with the guests we’ve had so far.

Aseem Chandra: And you can find recordings of previous conversations on our website at a mea c o under resources and events. And you know, I, if you have someone in mind that you think should be part of our forum as a guest, please in introduce us or introduce yourself. We’d love to talk to you if you have questions.

Aseem Chandra: For Dan or for me after [00:43:00] this conversation, you can reach out to either one of us. Dan, what’s the best way for people to approach.

Dan Ennis: Yeah. Best way would just be to, to find me on LinkedIn. I’ll drop my, my LinkedIn there in the chat so people can see it. But that’d be the easiest way. Just reach out to me there.

Dan Ennis: I’m fairly active on, on LinkedIn and whether we’re just chatting over LinkedIn or leads to a different conversation offline. Awesome.

Aseem Chandra: Dan, thank you. Thank you for that. And similarly, you can reach out to me at my LinkedIn. or@asimmea.co. And I look forward to seeing many of you next week. We will have a new guest.

Aseem Chandra: We’ll share that information on our website here shortly then. Thank you so much for your time and audience. Thank you so much.

 

Speakers

Aseem Chandra, Co-founder & CEO @ Immersa 
Luke Ferrel, Senior Director of Customer Success @ Outreach

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