Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 17 - Week in Review

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 17 of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast! This week, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger review the latest in customer success news and insights. They discuss standout articles on leadership within CSM roles, including a piece by Marcus Wrench on how high-performing CSMs embody leadership qualities. The episode also features a video post by Justin Chappelle on B2B customer experience and evolving survey methodologies.

Kevin shares his experience at the Gainsight Pulse conference, highlighting Gainsight's "Human-First AI" initiative and its impact on the customer success landscape. The hosts delve into the balance between automation and human-centered approaches, discussing the implications for the workforce and customer engagement.

Looking ahead, the podcast teases upcoming episodes with exciting guests like Nik Mijik from Matik, Sam Cummings from DataPlant, and Peter Orr from GuideCX. They discuss innovations in data utilization, AI-driven customer success strategies, and onboarding automation.

Finally, they invite listeners to the upcoming Atlanta Customer Success Playbook Pickleball game, promising a fun day of networking and community building.

Tune in for a comprehensive week in review, thought-provoking discussions, and a sneak peek at what’s next in the world of customer success. Don’t miss it!

Please Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe.

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.

Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:31

Welcome to the Customer Success Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Roman Trebon, joined by my co host, Kevin Metzger. Kevin, how are you doing?

Kevin Metzger: 0:42

Roman, I'm doing excellent. It's uh, we're at the end of Memorial Day weekend. Did you have a nice weekend?

Roman Trebon: 0:48

It was a nice weekend. Weather here in Atlanta was a little, uh, iffy at times, a lot of rain. We got Kev very humid. Uh, but it was nice. Went out to the, uh, movies last night. Went to see fall guy, uh, with Ryan Gosling, check that out. Not a bad flick. I think my wife was super into it, I think, more because of Ryan Gosling than the plot, but, uh, I totally get that. I was into it because of Ryan Gosling as well, and, uh, yeah, it was a good weekend. Went to the Alpharetta Arts Festival and walked around, did some shopping, so it was fun. How about you?

Kevin Metzger: 1:22

Nice, yeah, we had a nice weekend as well, a bunch of, uh, graduation parties, um, Got to see a couple, a couple of kids, one, one who I've known since, she was born, graduating, going to college and a year, she's a year older than my, you know, my daughter. So it's like, it's just crazy. But good weekend. I mean, and then got to have a dinner with my mom and my in laws today, for Memorial day. So that was nice to.

Roman Trebon: 1:53

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, Kev, this week on the episode, we're going to do the Customer Success Week in Review, right? So we've scoured the news front. We got a couple of great articles that we found, and I think the first one is on LinkedIn, Kev, and it was an article, uh, it was an article by Marcus Wrench talking about how, you know, high performing CSMs, you know, they go beyond just being reactive and proactive, how they've really developed into leaders. I really enjoyed this article. I think you're the one that found this. What are your thoughts and why should our, our audience check this out, uh, this article out?

Kevin Metzger: 2:32

Yeah, well, and it's, it's not just checking the article. I mean, I think checking the articles out is great, but really the thoughts here are, you and I had a discussion last week with somebody talking about the podcast targets leaders or CSMs. And, and there are topics, right. That are leader specific in the podcasts in some episodes. And then a lot of the stuff is generally important to CSMs as a whole. but. It was spinning in my head, and then I saw it in this article that CSM is really the best CSMs are leaders, right? And what does that mean? So as a CSM, you've got to show leadership in proactively addressing issues with your customer. You've got to show leadership and working with your customer on making sure that the products meet their needs. You've got to show leadership. And working internally with your cost with your company cross functionally to make sure that product is getting information from the customers and your engineering teams are delivering on time for your customers and and all of that and all of those things are our leadership functions, right? And those are the things that as I was really thinking about it, and I think. There must have been something else that I was thinking about related to it, but the best CSMs are true leaders. It doesn't matter whether they're meeting a team or whether they're acting as a CSM with a, with a customer, they are, they are going to act and have leadership qualities that allow them to be, um, Effective as CSMs, and that's that's kind of where it was going. And I think the article calls out some specific points that that kind of align with those thoughts.

Roman Trebon: 4:20

Yeah, a lot of good points in the article. I liked it said leadership and CSM is, you know, picking up customers where they are and leading them into the promised land. Right? One bullet stuck out with me. And, you know, there's. I love some of the, and I like the article because there's a lot of check, you know, it's each one's like a bulleted list of, of things to think about. But I like that last one they had in the article, which is, you know, eliminate every single activity that does not help customers to move forward and is not required internally and focused on scoring the big points. Right. I feel like a lot of times, Kev, you get so into doing all of these activities, all of these tasks. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's, it's a lot of it's noise, right? Like, is it really helping the customer? Right. I love that. It's, it's something I read it, Kevin. I actually went back and looked at my, my, my, my week ahead. And I'm like, what am I doing here? What do I have planned? That's not going to score those points from my customer that, that the article talk article talked about, which is a refreshing viewpoint, which I really. All right, the other one, you had an article from our, uh, our friend, Justin Chappelle, right? Justin, uh, is in the Atlanta area. He's a speaker. He's a CX authority. Uh, and he had a, uh, a video post, which I like those video posts on, on LinkedIn, Kev. I, it's like different, right? It's not an article with a lot of posts that you actually have the video in there. And so Justin talks about, uh, you know, B2B customer experience and evolving serving survey methodologies and. And closed loop as practices. So it resonated, resonated for me, Kev. I'm in the B2B sector. I know you're in the B2B sector. So what'd you hear from Justin that, that stood out to you?

Kevin Metzger: 6:01

Yeah, I think Justin was really kind of talking in a sense about the voice of the voice of the customer type stuff and really looking at, you know, How do you interface with these B2B customers versus a B2C customer and customer surveys is really what his point was is not the best way to do it. The best time to interfaces with the customer is in the app when they're doing their. Their work and that you have the opportunity to ask the directed question about what they're doing at the time and you're keeping it to one to two questions. You're making it very short, easy for the customer to respond, and that's how you're getting your best feedback and response from the customer at the point of execution when they're doing when they're doing the task that you've got. You want to get feedback on.

Roman Trebon: 6:51

Yeah, I think in the app is great. If you can meet your customers in the app, though, I do think in the B2B world, though, a lot of times you're maybe your economic buyers, the people that are pulling the purse to have the have the budget, they may, they may not be in the app. So you're not going to be able to hit them there. Right. But I do like, right, he said, I think he said, you know, B2C customers, it's really transactional, right? So you really want to get those promoters up? But in the b2b world you have for the most part you have these These clients as customers for a while, you know, either uh, either a yearly contract or sometimes multiple years So it's when you do engage is finding those moments that matter. And then I can get keep it short, right? You know, we, we just sent out. We just did a survey to our couple of our B2B clients. And I think it was 2 questions. It was like, how would you rate us and why? Right? It was super short and sweet. And the feedback we got. About the survey was positive. It was right. Like I, it was perfect. That's here's why I scored is the score. Here's why. And that cuts through all the other layers of nuance. And it gave us the insight and the actions that we needed, which was, is what's, what it all matters. That's what it matters. Right. So.

Kevin Metzger: 7:58

Yep. And, and, and in the end, I think the points are trying to drive, um, ensure that you get your response right. So that's, so you gotta ask the right questions at the right place. I think you made a really good point. It's not always the buyer, that's the one that are the app users. So you, you wanna make sure you get the right engagement.

Roman Trebon: 8:21

So the, the next, the next thing, uh, in this, we can review Kev Gainsight. I know you were out there last week and I hope you enjoyed our show. If you, Kevin was at, in St. Louis at the Pulse conference. So if you want to hear all about it, check out our episode last week. But Kev, uh, they, they talked about this human first AI that Gainsight's coming out with. Um, give us a little background on, I think Nick presented this at the conference. What was the whole. What is the human first AI?

Kevin Metzger: 8:52

Yeah. So they had, I think it's a six or seven, seven points, right? Eliminate blind spots, remove grunt work to make time for what matters. Turn every teammate into your best teammate, make self service not suck. Uh, Transform novices into gurus and then help customers find their work besties. Now, some of that's some of that's you kind of need to break down a little bit more. Um, but the intention is okay with all of these, right? Are you taking the work out the grunt work, the daily work? Are you making things easier for your customer? Um, And so the daily grunt type stuff automation of that is one of those things, and it's kind of I think the second one I mentioned making self service not suck. We all know all the voice you know things that we go through on a day to day basis. Still don't work quite the way you think they should as you're getting involved with all of the AI stuff, and I think it's a matter of tuning and getting some of the AI functions there. But it is an interesting thing, right? A part of it, um, Robin, you and I were talking about this beforehand and I'll kind of let you talk about it. But part of it is, how does this, what does it mean to be human first AI? And so, uh, what are your thoughts on that?

Roman Trebon: 10:22

Well, I, again, you shared this with me. I was interested in, in, again, when you read the bullets and what, uh, uh, Mr. Meta and Gates, I talk about makes sense. Like you said, take all of the. The the the low value work AI can do that and let humans focus on our strengths, right? Which is the high value work, right? I I hear it Kev my first thought and you know me I'm not I I'm not a very cynical person, but I hear that human first AI And it's not just GainSight. I've heard this from other companies now. They are putting you in around AI. And to me, it sounds very markety, right? It's softening, I think, the blow of what AI is, or the impact AI is going to have in the workplace, right? Where it's not. You know, I think a lot of people, and there's fear about AI and there should be, I think a certain level of fear with AI, right? I don't think it's like end of the world's coming and, you know, Terminator is next week, but I do think, you know, there's people in the workforce that are, are, are worried about it. And because of this, I think a lot of companies that are now AI first are putting human, human first, human centric, and a lot of marketing around AI. So it doesn't feel like AI is coming to get your job. It's. AI is now we're empowering you to do the work that's of a lot of value, empowering you to do the work that you want to do. And like you and I said, Kev, it's not one or the other. I think there is, it's, it both can be true. Do I feel like there's marketing with a lot of this human first AI? Absolutely. Do I do think that AI can help you drive out low value work and focus on high value? Absolutely. So I, I think it is, it's that very gray area, right? Like most things it's, it's somewhere in, in the middle there, right?

Kevin Metzger: 12:05

Yeah, yeah, and I agree. I mean, I think there's and actually, I think the crowd agreed, right? Um, there were a couple of points where, um, comments were made about a negative comments were made about AI. And there were cheers from the crowd. And I honestly, I think, uh, So conference called South by Southwest where, uh, South by Southwest is basically a conference about technology and futuristic stuff. They had the same thing happen, right? Kind of people came out and spoke about AI in the crowd. Not so sure there's, there's definitely an impact from it, right? We all know it. Um, hopefully you

Roman Trebon: 12:47

went, you said real quick to interrupt, you went to a. Um, a networking event here in Atlanta, I think last week, right? A local, uh, customer success, coffee event. I keep me honest here. I used to have a 12 people there, uh, around there in the ballpark. Over 50 percent in the customer success space. We're looking for work, right? I mean, I don't know if that's in my, in the, in the ballpark of numbers. They're in the

Kevin Metzger: 13:11

ballpark. Yeah, you're

Roman Trebon: 13:13

yeah. So, so when you have a lot in this, is it new? I mean, we've had people on the show who, you know, we're looking for jobs recently, right? Like, you know, if there's a lot of. Um, there's a lot of change in the customer success space. There's a lot of companies, uh, downsizing. There's a lot of people looking for work. So I think with that. When you have AI coming and you hear the reduction of work or the automation of task and you don't need people that, you know, you don't need five people to do the job of what AI could do when you hear all that it is, you know, I totally get the reaction of the audience right where it's.

Kevin Metzger: 13:51

And like, I'll tell you, it's

Roman Trebon: 13:53

tough. It's tough.

Kevin Metzger: 13:55

Yeah. And right now I don't think it's, it's not that. Right? I mean, it's not, it's not AI that is, it's, it's the economy that's got the jobs going the way

Roman Trebon: 14:05

they do, right? No, no, no. You're right.

Kevin Metzger: 14:07

Absolutely

Roman Trebon: 14:07

not. But.

Kevin Metzger: 14:09

From a growth perspective, which I, you know, we're, we're in an election year, election years are always tough years. Economically, you usually get out of an election year. You see an economy kind of tend to go off. I think you're going to see some economic growth coming. Regardless of what happens, just because that tends to happen from post election years. And when you see that, I think you'll see some growth. But the question is, are you going to see the job growth come with it? Because you are going to have a starting to really be implemented in a lot of these places. And your scale should change the way you scale. You're not going to need as many people to scale up as much. Now, our roles, right, is to, in my opinion right now is preparing for this kind of economy and what's happening. You need to understand what you can do with AI. You've got to be thinking about how you can use it and where you can start applying it to make. Yes, to probably take away some of your daily tasks, but it's going to let you be more effective and service more customers. And then you got to be thinking about OK, once I can automate automated all these tasks, what are the next next set of tasks I can potentially build and create? And then automate, right? So, yeah, a lot of our work over the next five, ten years, and I don't care what field you're in, I don't care what role you're in, um, I think is going to be looking at how do you optimize the use of AI to make, make the process work better. And then, honestly, I, I think we're going to have to figure out ways to compensate people for work they did in building those processes so that they can get ongoing compensation for it. But I, I, that's. That's, yeah, that's beyond the scope of the show.

Roman Trebon: 15:56

That's definitely be, I want a different episode, at least I'll say that, but it's just the world we're in, Kev, you know, like, you know, the company I'm with, we're growing, right. We're looking to scale. Right. And you know, we're not, the conversations we have aren't, how do we add bodies? It's how do we do more with automate? Like same thing. How do we automate? How do we. Streamline processes. I mean, I think it's we're not unique. We're like every company in the world Every all of our clients every customer is the same way And the reality is it just if if a if a job rule took 10 people five years ago It's not taking that many This year, and it'll take even less five years now, right? It's just the reality of where we're headed. So

Kevin Metzger: 16:36

the truth is, is that this isn't a new conversation and it's not a new thing. We've been doing it for the last 40 years. I mean, that's what, that's what technology has been doing for the last four years.

Roman Trebon: 16:47

You can go back to the, yeah, the Ford factory line, right? Same thing back then, right? Same, same thing. Same thing. All right. So Kev, that's a good transition. I don't know if it's a good transition. It's, we're going to transition from that topic to, uh, something a little bit more, uh, uh, optimistic, which is. Really, which is really human, which is all the guests you have, uh, you have lined up. So we'll sneak peek here. Cab, what do we, who do we have targeted coming up here in, as we, as we get into June, which is unbelievable. It's already June, right?

Kevin Metzger: 17:20

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, We've got, uh, we've got Nick, uh, Magica, and I, I think I'm pronouncing his last name wrong, but Nick magic from Matic, um, which I met Nick a couple of times. Um, now I'm out of Mac. Gainsight. I met him through James. I've seen him do a demo. He has a great product. And one of the things I saw Nick kind of post recently related to data and the, because his product takes data, uses it to put it into, um, operational, uh, uh, Things like mores, um, PBRs, DAX,

Roman Trebon: 18:07

PDFs.

Kevin Metzger: 18:09

Yeah, building DAX automatically and all that. But one of the, he had a little post on data. And as part of it, he said, uh, don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Um, in the scope of using your data and getting started. So I thought that was good. That reminded me of basically one of my, my favorite authors, which is Seth Godin. Um, who Wrote a book on that. Basically, you got to ship, you got to get your stuff moving. You got to ship. Um, so I'm excited to have Nick coming up. I think, uh, Nick's in a couple of weeks. I think next week we've got Sam Cummings from data plan. Um, yeah, he's. Basically got a leading AI solution and customer success, you know, the ideas context times value times speed equals what he's calling digital empathy or and hyper personalization and some really entertaining. Can't wait to bring you. Our discussion with Sam and then after that we've got Peter Orr from GuideCX. Roman, I know you're excited about talking with Peter because it's kind of an onboarding AI front end solution that I think Peter is talking about with GuideCX.

Roman Trebon: 19:29

Oh, well, I'm excited about all of them to be honest. Like I I'm excited to kind of, this is like a, this is like the best of both worlds, right? We get to meet all these folks. We get to learn all about this software. Right. And it's like, it's amazing. Like just going back to MADEC real quick. There's nothing I, I do not like less, I think, than putting PowerPoints together, Kev, like when I have to like do point PowerPoint together, I'm just terrible at it, like my vision of what I want and what actually, like whatever I actually put on a slide is the, couldn't be more contrasted, right? Like imagine like this in my head, I want the slide to be like a Picasso. And then when I put a slide together, it looks like stick figures, right? It is never get it right. And if we can autumn, if Nick has a tool and Maddock has a tool that can like use actual customer data and help build, you know, whatever it is, data sheets, PDFs, you know, insert slides in the QBRs. I mean, that's a lot of going back to, we talk about the low value work. Like think about all that time people spend on PowerPoints. You know what I mean? Like, just, I mean, you can, you know, get rid of that and focus on actually, you know, understanding the results, analyzing results, salute, coming up with solutions. That's the value. Like, so I'm excited about that. And then, yeah, you had mentioned, uh, well, obviously data plan again, kind of goes into, you know, using data again, and, uh, I know they have a lot around revenue to cab, which I'm really interested around, like, you know, revenue growth and revenue operation. So I'm excited to have that conversation. And then, uh, yeah, for sure on on guide. CX, right? That goes in since our conversation with Donna on onboarding. And so, you know, at again at my organization, we've actually incorporated a lot of the. The process that Donna, she had her orchestrated onboarding, right? So we've actually incorporated a. Uh, client handoff into our process, which we didn't have before we had Don on the show. And so again, now that there's tools that can actually do some of this onboarding automation and make that a little easier Yeah, I mean probably a conversation cab I would have had just at work So if we could have it on the show, it it knocks out kills a couple birds with one stone, which is great

Kevin Metzger: 21:40

Yeah, and I think some of the other value of the tool that Peter had is, I think it does a good job of really, if I remember correctly, um, helping share information between the sales team and the CSM professional services teams as well, which I think, you know, definitely, I had. Has been in most companies at one point in time, an issue, and it's something that you've got to figure out how to address. If there's a tool to help address it all the better. Um, generally, I don't think it's just a tool issue. I think it's also, uh, you know, making sure to understand how to address the politics within the office to make sure that those conversations happen and are more open and that you're having those open conversations. The, the open conversations between sales, onboarding the CS teams and all of that. Those are important conversations to have regardless of the tool, but maybe we'll get into that a little bit too.

Roman Trebon: 22:38

Yeah, no, I'm excited for it. So you've done, you, you've, you've knocked out of the ballpark, Kevin, uh, from St. Louis, you've lined up a ton of guests. So, and we're, that's only who we have confirmed. We actually have a whole bucket of guests that we're not going to share quite yet. They're not quite ready for, for prime time, but we're close to locking in, securing even more guests as we get into the, uh, the human depths of summer here, uh, down here in Atlantic. Uh, but no excited cap for, for who we have upcoming. And then we have a big event Friday. Um, may 31st in Atlanta. So we have our Atlanta. Customer success playbook, pick a ball game coming this Friday, Kev. So I thought I took a look at weather. It looks supposed to be nice Friday afternoon. So if you're in the Atlanta area, uh, want to come out and play some pickleball or just hang out, come out. We have, uh, we'll have some drinks and snacks, some great networking and, uh, come out and join us in the North. Yeah,

Kevin Metzger: 23:37

and we'll, uh, we'll rotate people through and don't worry about how good you are. We want to just, we want to get out there. We want to have fun, uh, get a little exercise in and get some networking. And that's, uh, that's what it's all about. Hope you can join us.

Roman Trebon: 23:52

That's right. We, we won't start planning for money until next time out. So you gotta, you don't That's right. Kidding. Alright, Kev, well, uh, another great week in review when it comes to customer success. Uh, some great articles, we'll put'em in our, in our show. So if you wanna go check those articles out, anything we ference, they'll be in the, uh, in the show notes. So you can click on'em, read'em. Uh, if, check us out on, uh, LinkedIn. I'm at Roman Reon. Kevin is at Kevin Metzger. We have our own customer success playbook, LinkedIn page as well. You can also find us at customer success, playbook. ai. Kevin, anything else I missed? Just keep on playing.