The Customer Success Playbook
Welcome to “The Customer Success Playbook,” a fresh podcast initiative spearheaded by Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon. Immerse yourself with us in the dynamic realm of customer success, where we unravel the latest insights, inspirations, and wisdom from recognized leaders in the Customer Success domain.
Our journey began with a simple yet profound belief: that meaningful conversations can significantly impact our professional trajectory. With this ethos, we’ve embarked on a mission to bring to you the voices of seasoned and revered professionals in the field. Our episodes have seen the likes of Sue Nabeth Moore, Greg Daines, Jeff Heclker, James Scott, David Ellin, and David Jackson, who have generously shared their expertise on a variety of pertinent topics.
We’ve delved into the intricacies of Profit and Loss Statements in Customer Success with Dave Jacksson, explored the potential of Customer Success Platforms with Dave Ellin, and unravelled the role of AI in Customer Success with all guests. With Sue, we navigated the waters of Organizational Alignment, while Greg brought to light strategies for Reducing Churn. Not to be missed is James insightful discourse on the Current Trends in Customer Success and Jeff’s thoughts on Service Delivery in CS.
Each episode is crafted with the intention to ignite curiosity and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement among customer success professionals. Our discussions transcend the conventional, probing into the proactive approach, and the evolving landscape of customer success.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the industry, our goal is to propel your customer success prowess to greater heights. The rich tapestry of topics we cover ensures there’s something for everyone, from the fundamentals to the advanced strategies that shape the modern customer success playbook.
Our upcoming episodes promise a wealth of knowledge with topics like CS Math, Training, AI, Getting hired in CS, and CS Tool reviews, ensuring our listeners stay ahead of the curve in this fast-evolving field. The roadmap ahead is laden with engaging dialogues with yet more industry mavens, aimed at equipping you with the acumen to excel in your customer success journey.
At “The Customer Success Playbook,” our zeal for aiding others and disseminating our expertise to the community fuels our endeavor. Embark on this enlightening voyage with us, and escalate your customer success game to unparalleled levels.
Join us on this quest for knowledge, engage with a community of like-minded professionals, and elevate your customer success game to the next level. Your journey towards mastering customer success begins here, at “The Customer Success Playbook.” Keep On Playing!!
The Customer Success Playbook
Customer Success Playbook Episode 5 - David Ellin - The Playbook to Implementing CS Platforms
Welcome to 'The Customer Success Playbook,' your essential guide to mastering the customer success arena. Hosted by Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger, we bring you thought-provoking insights, strategies, and experiences from the industry's leading minds. Whether you're a seasoned professional or a newcomer, this podcast is your resource to elevate your customer success game.
Show Topic and Guest Intro:
Today, we delve into the pivotal process of maturing an organization to the point of selecting and implementing a Customer Success platform. This isn't just about the platform - it's about the right strategy, people, and processes that make it successful. From identifying organizational goals to discussing change management and resources for successful implementation, we're covering it all. To help us navigate this complex topic, we're joined by David Ellin.
David, is a top-rated Customer Success leader with over two decades of experience spanning start-ups to multibillion-dollar corporations. David, recognized twice as a Top 100 Customer Success influencer, has a track record of transforming Customer Success teams and delivering increased client value. He's achieved significant feats in client renewals and up-sell/cross-sell revenue growth. Currently, as a Revenue Architect at Winning by Design, David is leveraging his deep expertise to emphasize a customer-centric approach and the importance of measuring improvements.
Join us as we blend expert advice and insightful discussions to help you navigate the customer success landscape. With David Ellin's wealth of knowledge, let's explore how to take your customer success journey to the next level.
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You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcast
Twitter - @CS_Playbook
You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.
You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.
Roman T.
Welcome to the customer Success playbook podcast. That's all about. Elevating your customer success game.
I'm Roman Trebon with me is my co-host. Kevin Metzger. We're here to bring you the latest insights inspiration and expertise from top leaders in the field of customer success. Kevin. We got a great topic today. I'm ready. I'm excited to jump into this. How about yourself?
Kevin M.
Super excited.
Roman T.
so, the topic today Kev is we're gonna talk about Maturing and organization to the point of choosing and implementing a customer success platform, right? And so a customer success platform. It's a total to manage an optimize in organizations customer success efforts. And I think we all know this, but the solution itself is not a silver bullet, right? You don't bring the solution in and flip the switch and then all that value starts dripping out of it that doesn't happen, right?
And so what we're going to talk about today on the episode is All the necessary preliminary processes. Customer journeys, data, change management, and resources that you need to have in place to drive the implementation successfully and also talk about what's what are some of the pitfalls organizations may have as they bring these platforms into the food It's okay. about this this week. We got a great guest lined up to talk You want to you want to take the honors and introduce our guest?
honors and introduce
Kevin M.
yeah, I'm super excited to introduce David Ellin today, he's a Susan customer success leader, with over two decades of experience, and he's a two-time 100 customer top 100 customer success, Influencer, David has an extensive experience and sales, operations, and customer. Success, roles, and diverse companies from star startups to leadership roles, and to multi-billion dollar corporations. Some of David's key accomplishments include securing. 1.2 billion in client, renewals, and over a hundred million in upsell cross-sell revenue growth.
He led the transformation of a client success team from a tactical to a strategic focus. Thereby delivering greater client value. And he's also has implemented a voice of the customer program with a closed-loop action plan, which resulted in 35 points, NPS improvement. David was VP of customer success at radio and head of customer success at eBay. Most recently David joined winning by design where he serves as a revenue. Architect in customer success as key areas of expertise, include strategizing for customer success,
designing customer success, organizations and building long-term customer relationships. It also provides essential advice to revenue leaders. Emphasizing the importance of customer centric approach, over a sales centric one, the necessity of measuring improvements and the significant dividends that can be
reaped from incremental enhancements in customer retention and expansion. David, welcome to the show.
David E.
Thanks, guys. I'm really excited to be here with you guys today.
Roman T.
Yeah. Thanks David. This is awesome. I feel like Kevin like if we were going a podcast episode on shooting free throws and we got Steph curry to join us. I feel like this is what it's like. So this is this is awesome. So so can you want to jump into jump into the topic with David?
Kevin M.
Sure. So David let's let's get right into it and Really start with the question. How mature does a customer success organization need to be to provide Prior to implementing a CS platform.
David E.
So, I've got a friend in the customer success space. That answers every question with two words. It depends. And this is a great example of it, depends because because it really depends on how you define a mature company, right? You can have a company that's 10 years old, they have 25 csms, but if they don't have a defined customer journey with standard motions to drive success, they're really not mature in the customer success space. You could have another company that's only three years old and they have five csms, but they've got to define customer journey, they understand their motions that they go through. that they go through. They tend to be much more mature, right? So it really depends When we talk about maturity, I think we have to talk about maturity in terms of
customer journey, understanding the customer, and understanding the motions that they're going to follow in order to achieve the desired outcomes that their customers want as opposed to like financial maturity or age maturity.
Kevin M.
Sure. And that makes a lot of sense now. So what are the steps you would go through to kind of start defining? What needs to be in place? I mean, you imagine the customer journey. Yeah. You mentioned themselves, motions, and all that would kind of, how would you list out all the things that really need to be in place before you start going through the process of
Of making a platform selection or making even a decision to implement the platform.
David E.
Yeah, so in my opinion, I think the issues really be more about being prepared to be successful with a platform right? Making those decisions ahead of time what your objectives are what your customer journey looks like what you're trying to do with a platform. Right, there are some platforms that are better at managing churn. There are others that are better at digital engagement. You know, to be able to support a CS organization, some require and enablement or operations team with specialized skills others or more configurable by Csms. So it's really understanding what your needs are and and we where you determine what you know what at what point you need to pull the trigger for what type of solution you're looking for, right? There's also a point where CS organizations shouldn't implement a CS platform.
Right. So, in my opinion, you know, if you don't have that defined ideal customer journey, you don't have the right journey stages. You don't have any defined work streams or the data that you want to capture it just, it doesn't make sense.
Kevin M.
Yes. Sir. from an
Roman T.
Oh, okay.
Kevin M.
grad room.
Roman T.
Go have you follow up?
Kevin M.
Yeah, I was just gonna say from If it doesn't make sense, right? And we don't have a customer journey Defined. And we don't. Who are the code?
What should a CS lead, right? I'm driving an organization. I've got my, I'm the the lead of the organization.
What's my first step in good stepping back and saying Okay we want to get we know we want to drive, We know we probably want to improve our processes so that we can get to a place of starting this journey.
David E.
Yeah, so yeah, so I I think an organization should look at a couple of things and I'll throw these out in no particular order, right? So they're not, I'm not prioritizing in my mind but the first thing they should look at or one of the first things they should look at is identifying the challenges that they're having in their business, right? What is it that they want to solve for if you don't know what you want to improve, you don't know what you're working towards, You can't have a path to get there, right? It could be retention, It could be
Kevin M.
Okay.
David E.
lack of standardized processes, It could be lack of automation, for key processes, It could also be the lack of data, Right? We don't have the ability to capture the data we want or We're capturing data and we don't know how to analyze it. We don't know how to use it to to make determinations about is a customer healthy. Are they not healthy? Is there a propensity to renew? Are they not going to renew, right? Once they know the objectives, then they should develop processes that can be standardized to drive successful outcomes for those objectives, right? That includes identifying, the data that they want, or how they're going to use it, how they're going to analyze it and report on it. If they do want to implement a CS platform, they should start. If they do want to implement a CS platform,
Searching the various platforms and try to identify, you know, which one's best aligned to the outcomes that they want to achieve, right. As I said, some of them are great for reducing churn. Others are great for digital engagement with their customers, and then they want to look at their budget. They want to look at their tech stack to figure out, you know, do do the platforms that they're looking for have APIs that fit into their CRM
their data warehouse, maybe their BI tool or their dashboard tool that they might be using if they have one and then they also have to look at the skill set, right? Do I have the skill set that I need in order to implement this properly? Or if I don't have a sales ops team or a Csop's team or an enablement team?
Do I need something that out of the box can be just configured by a CSM by toggling switches on and off.
Kevin M.
Right.
Roman T.
Yeah. Yeah and and that's great Dave and so as you know, as I as I think through this, you know, it sounds like there's a lot, you know. Obviously it sounds like you have to be somewhat mature and again I know you how you define it earlier, right? It's not just age right? But it's like you got to have a lot of these, you know, your business challenges are, you need to know what your ideal customer journey is. You could have data in a certain place, so, it sounds like there's you and I don't know what, you know, on the step ladder maturity, Dave, where that's at but that sounds like a lot of Pre-work to get even into the
conversation of how can a solution help meet our challenges, right? So It from your experience. As organizations, start this journey to start looking at solutions, are there are there certain areas where maybe they haven't done enough sort of prep or double clicking to make sure that they're ready to bring in a solution? Is it, is it around the data? Maybe, it's not where it needs to be. Is it maybe the journeys aren't defined or they just kind of swimming because they're doing so much. And they're looking for some sort of solution to help them without kind of really defining what those goals and objectives are.
David E.
Yeah. You know, one of the big misconceptions and maybe we'll even get into this a little bit later, but one of the misconceptions out there is, I'm gonna buy a platform, it's gonna solve all my problems, right? And it doesn't work that way. So understanding, the customer journey is paramount to being able to identify those key moments that matter for a customer and then
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
creating motions that make that journey successful. So, if you think of a journey map, the same way you would think of a roadmap, right? So let's say we want to take a trip. We're all sitting here in Atlanta, Georgia, right now let's say you want to go from Atlanta to New York. Right? If we don't understand what that journey looks like, before we even get in the car, we're never going to make it, right? So we need to understand, not only the moments but which moments are critical and which moments aren't critical.
Let's say we decide we want to stop for dinner along the way, right? The truth is that's not a critical moment. We can get off at any exit, we could find a restaurant, we can get back on any exit and proceed along the way, right? But the intersection between Interstate 85 and Interstate, 95 is a critical moment. If we miss that intersection, we're off our journey and it's gonna take a lot of work to get back on the journey.
So, you know, some pieces of the journey have to hit out of the ballpark and others you don't and having understanding what those are. So that a platform can help you support that piece of the journey is really, really important.
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
An example on a longer customer journey is a one-on-one call with a power. User may not be a critical moment, even though it might be a key touch point. But having a quarterly business review or an executive business review is a critical touch point, right? There are CS platforms that are great at helping CS teams, prepare, and execute business reviews. there are others that don't even have a module that touches that so,
Really understanding those pieces of it pieces of. It is really critical. and I'd say, you know, one of the other things is Determining which which platform you implement, and how you're going to configure it. Once you know, all that information is also critical. If you if you think about you remember back in the days when and I guess these are still big but ERPs.
Enterprise resource planning
Roman T.
Oh yeah.
David E.
software, right?
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
There was a there was a time back in the and I'm dating myself here. I think in the late 1980s, we're 72% of all ERP, implementations failed. And the reason that they failed is because they weren't configured properly to do what the companies wanted them to do. So it's not just about buying one, it's about implementing it the right way.
Kevin M.
Yeah. Putting putting the pieces together so that they match your your goals and objectives.
David E.
Yeah, I heard somebody give an example of this one time there. There's a couple of CS platforms out there. That are a lot like Lincoln logs. I don't know if you ever played with Lincoln logs when you were a kid but it's it's a CS platform. Can be a lot like Lincoln logs, right? You open the box, you dump them all out. You got a bunch of tools. But you don't actually have a log cabin until you put all the tools together in the right way.
Right, it's the same thing with some of these CS platforms is there's got there's a lot of functionality in there but you have to have the expertise to piece it together.
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
Right.
Roman T.
And I love that analogy Dave. Like I, I think back when we used to play as Lincoln logs as a kid, might my sister, made the pretty log cabin house, right? Mine looked like we, like, I was playing a game of like, you know, sticking things anywhere you could, and that's probably the wrong implementation, right? She did all the way, that's the build, the log cabin. So so I love that.
David E.
Yeah.
Roman T.
So so Dave, let's say, okay, let's say a company is done all of this, right? They've come in, they've they've kind of matched, the, the tools that are at a solution could offer and and, and they really build this out. They've done the pre-planning the rate of bringing in so as they as they go live, what, you know, talk a little bit about maybe, you know, what needs to happen from a change management perspective, like a training perspective. Like, How does this stick long term because Just being in, you know, the the Corporation Space For a long time. I've seen flavors of the month coming go over time in some solutions sticking, Others. Don't, I'm curious from a CS platform even if you align them correctly, How
do you get these? How do you get adaptability, How do you get people to use them? How do you drive value continuously? How do you
David E.
Yeah, I would say, the first thing that comes to my mind, Roman in that situation is making sure that you're getting buy-in from the users, right? The last thing that you want to do is have a bunch of A bunch of technology people buying what they think. They should buy implementing it, the way they think. They should implement it. And then they hand it over to users, and the users Go boy, this doesn't do anything. We need to do, it doesn't give us anything meaningful, right?
Roman T.
You know.
David E.
I I I'll give you a personal example that I had. It's kind of a little bit of an aside but I joined a company a number of years ago and I was running the CS organization was a very large CS organization. We had 70 or 80 people we responsible for about 900 million dollars in ACV,
each year. And every time we would get a new release of our software, we would look at The functionality and we and and so the, the product people would put all these pieces of functionality together. These enhancements, they throw them over the wall to us and say, Here you go. Go out and sell them. And my team, we would do a debrief on the functionality. My team would look at me and they go
This isn't what our customers want. Right. None of them are talking about this stuff. This is not what's hot in the marketplace, and I finally went back
Roman T.
You know.
David E.
to the head of product development. And I said, Tell me about your process for identifying, the features and the functionality that you're working on. And so he took me into the product development room and it was this big room, big enough for about 15 people and all of the walls were nothing but this whiteboard stuff that you can write on and they had ideas all over the place. And I brought some of my people into the room. And I said, How many of these features are your customers talking about? And they said, basically none. And so, I talked to the product development leader about maybe changing the process.
You know, we've been in this a long time, we know better. And so I finally went to our CEO. And I said, You know, we're kind of broken here. And he said, Tell me about it and he didn't believe me and I said, Come with me to five customers and let's talk about some of the feature enhancements that we've released. And let's kind of gauge the the response of these five customers.
And he went on this trip with me. He came back and he said We're gonna do this differently because nobody's gonna buy anything that we've developed, right?
Roman T.
Yeah. Yeah.
David E.
And and I said, Okay and and he said, How do you think we should approach it? And so I told him and he said Great, you now own product development.
Kevin M.
but,
David E.
Wasn't what I was looking for but I
Kevin M.
Be careful what you.
David E.
changed but I changed the whole process because of what change management needs to look like. So the first thing I did was I got our customers involved in talking about what they needed because they're the users, right? The last thing I want to do is deliver something to a user that they don't need even for free and they're not willing to certain pay for certainly. So the first thing that I always start with is get the buy-in from the users. So the ops team, the enablement team whoever is responsible for implementing the platform, purchasing the platform needs to talk to the Csms, the account managers. If account managers responsible for expansion and renewal, they need to be involved, right? Talk to the users, and find out what their skill set is where their challenges are, what functionality?
They need. And how they're going to use it, right? Then when you implement something, they've already been part of the process. That immediately gives you a leapfrog in into change management.
The second thing I would say is You need to have active project management. You need to make sure that things are staying on time on schedule people that are accountable for things are doing the things they need sometimes. That means the csms, providing information to be enablement team so that they can configure the system properly, but all in all you need to have the right voices in the room at the right time. And leadership needs to reinforce the need to use the platform.
Roman T.
If yeah.
David E.
So the the back end the long tail of change management is really user adoption. It's the same thing CSM space when
Kevin M.
Right.
David E.
they're trying to get a customer to adopt their platform, right? And that and and managing change that
Roman T.
Yeah.
Kevin M.
Yeah.
David E.
way.
Roman T.
Yeah.
Kevin M.
Yeah, so and I mean, So and You got to measure, basically the the adoption. Imagine along the way right? And measure the usage and kind of have that feedback loop so that you can find out problems are right.
David E.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean exactly if I'm if I'm an enablement person and I've got functionality out there for a CSM to be able to configure digital touch to customers. I want to see that they're using it. I want to know that they understand how to use it, right? If I don't see any of my csms using that piece of functionality either, the functionality is not working.
They don't think it's valuable or probably more often than not, they don't know how to use it. Right?
Kevin M.
Yeah.
David E.
They were never trained properly, right, but they're not raising their hands and saying, Teach me, they're just working around it and not using it. So understanding the usability of it and the adoption is critical.
Kevin M.
Yeah, and then into your point, I guess, training programs as well, right? Making sure.
Roman T.
Yeah, it's staying in touch, Dave?
David E.
Yeah.
Roman T.
Like I think you said earlier is like keeping in touch with that you and user right from the beginning, and it's continuous right as their needs evolve. The platform needs to evolve and having that active project management. And then obviously the leadership, you know, support there, that's going to drive behaviors as well, right? You know, it's it's, you can probably replace this with CRM or some other tools. It's the same story where they, you know, you you build it. The users aren't engaged. They don't find value in it. You know, you ask them, Why aren't you using this platform? And they say stuff, like My boss doesn't care. I don't doesn't do anything for me to send me any time and you're like, Well, why isn't this, Why are we getting value from this system? It's the same thing and I think you're, you're analogy even back when you were, you took over product management, kind of is a great one for internal tools as well.
David E.
Yeah. I mean the other and there's one other one. I would probably add. And that would be the use of power users, right.
Roman T.
All right. No.
David E.
If you can enlist one or two power users, who can be the voice of the rest of the team and share, what's working, and not, and they can get that real expertise. So another CSM might go to one of the power uses and say Help me figure that out that helps drive change as well and and it accelerates it to some degree.
Roman T.
You know.
Kevin M.
Yeah, that makes makes a lot of sense.
David E.
Yeah.
Kevin M.
Sit. What are, what are some of the common misconceptions about customer success success platforms?
David E.
Yeah, so the first one, I think I touched on before is I would say it's it's not the magic bullet. It's not it's it's not the thing where, okay my churn is too high, my retention is too low, my adoption really isn't very good. I'm gonna buy this piece of technology and put it in place and all my problems are going to be solved. Right? I can't tell you how many clients I've done work for where they tell me that they're abandoning the CS platform because they thought it was the magic bullet that they needed. And then when I go through them, some of the things that we've talked about today, what was the process that you used to pick the platform? How did you implement it? What did you do about training and change management and they didn't have any of those things in place?
You know, they they said, Oh, you know, we were told that this would just solve all of our problems and it doesn't. Right. So that would be. The first thing is, is be very careful and understand it's a mechanism to help you get. There it is, not the end, all be all. That that you think it is, right?
And then the second biggest misconception, I would say is that companies don't understand that. A lot of these platforms are not plug and play, they do require knowledge and skill to be able to do something and I'll give you a great example. About two or three months ago, I completed a series of customer success playbooks. For a company that was using one of the more commonly known CS platforms.
And when I said to them, Okay, how are we going to build these plaid these playbooks into your CS tool and activate them in a way that they present themselves to the Csms and to the account managers in a proactive way? Right, I'm looking at this piece of data and it's telling me I have to launch this play. I have to go have this call with this customer. I have to send this email about adoption, whatever the case may be.
And the answer I got was we don't really know how to do that. We only have one person that's trained on the CS platform and she's leaving in two weeks. And we haven't replaced her yet.
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
Right. So so it's it's one of those things where you have to understand what it's going to take, not only to implement a system but to maintain the system as well. Right now, they could have said We built this platform. We implemented this platform with the idea of outsourcing. Any changes that we want to make implementing any playbooks and functionality in this particular case this client had no idea what to do next and so I had to stay on and walk them through what activating the platform and building it out in their technology tools look like. Right.
And and a lot of times companies fall, very short on that. I'm always impressed when I go into a client and we start talking about the tools that in in their tech stack and what they're doing, and how they're using them. And they go. Yeah, we've got a team and they're, they're active in it, they're trained, they stay up to date. They go to training every three months. I mean, it's it's doesn't happen often but that's the ideal situation.
Kevin M.
Yeah, that's pretty unusual to find. I mean, but,
David E.
Yeah.
Roman T.
Now that's the ideal state. That's the idea, you know, that's great. You you again, you're engaged with your users, you have your support team. That's well skilled and continuously learning to get the most helping even the users. Get the most value out of the platform as well. So Dave, we've talked about some misconceptions, some pitfalls let's say, An organization has, you know, they they have aligned their objectives like You've touched on a few of like the benefits of a CS platform When companies get it, right? I want to just make sure because again, I I I'm more of I come from more of a CRM background. I've never actually used a CS platform, so I'm curious when it when all the kind of stores of line. The planning goes well what are some of? What can an organization get out of this? When they when they actually do implement this correctly?
David E.
Well there, there God, there's so many of them. It gets me excited to think about the benefits of really using a platform properly. I'd say number one. And again, not in any certain order but just the way they're coming into
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
my head efficiency, right? You can do so much more so much more so many more tasks more efficiently. If you've got the right platform, that's leading you through the customer journey, right? And because you can be more efficient, then there's cost savings involved there, right? Either that means Csms can handle more accounts, so you can have a higher CSM to clock client ratio.
Or it means you don't necessarily have to hire as many people. On your CST. So that would be number one.
Kevin M.
Right.
David E.
I'd say number two, You get things right more often than you don't. And what I mean by that is a CS having a CS platform and implementing it properly forces. You to come up with standardized processes, that are repeatable, processes from CSM to CSM. Right? You figure out the best practice.
Roman T.
Yep.
David E.
You implement your system that way and then everybody's doing it the way. The best practice was designed so you tend to get better outcomes. with that, if you get better outcomes and your delivering more of your customers outcomes to your customer that translates into higher retention, Lower churn and greater opportunity for expansion. Right, I'd say number three.
You get users you get employee satisfaction right. When you take a CSM team and you give them a set of tools that makes their job easier and more fun and they feel like they're getting, they're getting benefit from it, they're enjoying their job more, they're making their customers happy.
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
Right? They can find data in the right place when they need it in. The data is accurate. Right. Huge benefit, right?
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
So you reduce your internal turnover, you're not losing as many employees people stay on, they like it, they tell their friends, their friends want to come work there. So there's a lot of staffing benefits to it as well.
Roman T.
Yeah that's the time. Yeah, that that's a lot right there, David, I'm sure you could probably list three four, five seven others, right as well. One company for those, those big ones, there are huge. I am curious, Kevin, I got one more. Follow-up question for Dave here again, I I am super intrigued by this topic. I I In terms of the platforms.
How are they already incorporating AI elements? Dave into these like is This is it already there? Is it coming? I'm just curious how you talked about maybe like efficiency being one of the top ones and that kind of jumped off the page to me as are Are these software organizations already embedding this into their CS tools?
David E.
The the short answer to that is. Yes they are.
Roman T.
Okay.
David E.
It's a very, very hot topic. There's a lot of CS discussion forums out on the web that I participate in and there's a lot of discussion about How do we implement AI, how do we use it? When is it good? When is it not good?
Obviously, people are thinking that AI is going to replace the CSM. I don't think it's gonna replace the CSM. It shouldn't replace the CSM. And I spend a lot of my time talking to see to see us platform companies. In fact, just last week I met with the founder of a brand new CS platform. It's not even on the market yet it's going into alpha testing at the beginning. Of August. And the platform was solely designed
about, Hey, how AI can help the CSM? Do their job better and more efficiently.
Kevin M.
Oh well.
David E.
So it's not really even a client facing thing. It's all about. It's it's a platform to be used by Csms, for csms Whereas other platforms are built to be used by csms for customer engagement.
Right? It's a little bit different. They're taking a difference in on it.
Kevin M.
It's almost like it's almost operations CS operation. Sorry.
David E.
Yeah, they're they're trying to use AI to make CS operations more efficient. But in general, the, the other
Roman T.
that's,
David E.
platforms that are out, there are all figuring out How do I incorporate AI, right? How do I learn from what's already being done? How do I look at? A customer usage of a platform. Right, the company's platform. How do I see how they're using it? And predict additional use cases.
And predict additional use Predict additional expansion opportunities, Right? Predict renewal or churn, Right.
Roman T.
Yeah.
Kevin M.
Up.
David E.
So how do I make it smarter? How do I look at the trend in customer feedback or the trend in support tickets, right?
Kevin M.
So, a lot of them know pipe stuff.
David E.
Right? And learn from that, and send the CSM, a different set of tasks to do based on what I've learned about. The way the customer is using the platform. Right, so it's not pre-programmed. Whenever anybody does X, They get why from the CSM. There could be a million paths and the AI is looking at what's been done. Figuring out what that next logical step should be and then proactively sending that to the CSM. And saying, Based on what I see here,
this is what I think you should be doing next.
Roman T.
Yeah, that's exciting. That's neat.
Kevin M.
but,
David E.
Cool stuff. Yeah, it's cool.
Roman T.
It is. All right. Kevin you got any final questions for day before we hit him with the rapid fire questions?
Kevin M.
I think David you want to wrap wrap up any thoughts?
David E.
Yeah. Now, I mean I think we we covered a lot. There's a lot of information out there about CS platforms. There's a lot of articles that have been published comparing one platform to another where some are strong where some orange. So, for companies that are looking to get involved in a platform, do some research. Get some demos but narrow down to what you want based on what you're doing first and just do your homework. Right? It's it's not that silver bullet, you, you put the work in, you'll get a great benefit out of a CS platform.
Roman T.
I love it. I love it. Awesome Dave. Well, we got a couple rapid fire questions for you. So we, we do this with our guests here. We got five questions off the cuff, Dave. Alright, so we haven't prepped you for these right? So these are the hard hitters here, right? So, all right, let's start with this. Are you an early bird or a night out? Dave,
David E.
Early bird.
Roman T.
Early bird. What's one hobby you have outside of work? That helps you unwind.
David E.
I build expert Lego sets.
Roman T.
Oh, that's awesome.
Kevin M.
How awesome?
David E.
They're all over my house. My wife hates it.
Roman T.
Oh, that's cool. I was, that's awesome. I like that one. I guess maybe take a follow-up afterwards. They see a picture one of those ones. I'm always.
David E.
I've got lots of pictures of yeah.
Roman T.
I do you have a favorite sport? You watch or play?
David E.
My favorite sport to watch is baseball. I'm a big Braves fan season ticket holder. Go to a lot of the games from a playing perspective. When I was younger, it was baseball because I I actually played baseball up until two years ago. um, but right now playing probably tennis
Roman T.
Okay, nice. Um one place you'd want to travel that you've never been before. You've never been.
David E.
One place that I want to travel that. I've never traveled to before. I just got off the phone right before our call about somebody that just came back from 10 days in Portugal. I've been all throughout Europe. I've been to the Baltic states, Russia was on my list, but I've accomplished that I've been to Russia, I would probably say
Portugal.
Roman T.
Nice nice.
David E.
And and maybe before both of those, it was Alaska. But I've now been to Alaska and that was on my bucket list. So yeah, I would love to travel with some of those to some of the places in Portugal.
Roman T.
That'd be awesome. Yeah I hope you can check out one off the bucket list here soon. All right you have a book recommendation for our audience.
David E.
Um, from a C s perspective. Yeah, I've probably got several of them right here behind me. I, I would say for people who are
Kevin M.
Right.
David E.
just getting in the CS or really trying to build their knowledge, the book customer success, by Nick Mayta, he's the founder of Gain site,
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
probably one of the best ones out
Roman T.
Yeah.
David E.
there another one that's good out there is for those of you that are more experienced in the CS world, the chief customer, the Chief Customer Officer hand. Is a great book, it just came out. I think I think in April, Um, by Rod Turkish also a really really good book for those people that are more experienced. Maybe you're a director level, you're a VP. You're trying to get to that next level. Right? What is a chief customer officer? Do that.
A VP or a director doesn't do. Those would be too. I'd throw out there.
Roman T.
Thanks David. Those are awesome and you you're off the hot seat now. So you've done. You've done, you've done it, amazing
Kevin M.
Right.
Roman T.
job and and with that that's a wrap for this episode of the customer success PlayBook we We hope you found our conversation with Dave Insightful. If you enjoyed this episode, Please like, Subscribe, comment and share it with your friends and colleagues spreading the word about our podcast helps us reach more people. Like you who are passionate about customer success. Join us. Join us again next time. As we continue to explore the future of the profession, and help you grow Kevin's. Gonna give a tease for our next guest.
But we have a few lined up and I'm not sure who's gonna come up first. So no tease on this episode but definitely subscribe and like it. So, when we put out new content, you'll get notified. And with that with that, keep learning, keep growing and take your customer success game to the next level.
Kevin M.
Keep on playing.
