Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 13 - This week in CS 1

Summary:
In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger delve into the shifting landscape of customer success (CS). The discussion highlighted several pivotal trends:

1. Increasing Importance of CS: The surge in attendance at CS events like the Totango Summit reflects the growing significance of customer success roles in businesses.
2. Role Rebranding Impacts Talent Acquisition: A noteworthy shift in job titling from 'program manager' to 'customer success' in Oklahoma led to a dramatic increase in the quality and quantity of applicants, emphasizing the attractiveness of the CS label.
3. Community and Learning: Events and webinars, such as those hosted by Success Coaching and Client Success, are pivotal for professional growth and networking within the CS community.
4. Innovative Tools and Models: The discussion covered new frameworks and tools that facilitate CS operations, including a new customer value framework by Sixth Sense and automation tools by Matik, which enhance efficiency in creating customer engagement materials.

Analysis:
The conversation between Trebon and Metzger provides insights into the evolution of customer success as a pivotal element of modern business strategy. As companies increasingly recognize the value of CS, there's a notable shift towards more strategic and data-driven approaches in managing customer relationships. This transformation is evidenced by the integration of advanced tools and methodologies that streamline operations and enhance customer engagement.

Evolving Job Roles and Titles: The change from 'program manager' to 'customer success' not only highlights the dynamism of job roles but also reflects a strategic repositioning that companies are adopting to attract talent. This rebranding signifies a broader shift in the job market and applicant pool towards the CS branding.

Professional Development and Networking: The emphasis on CS-related events and webinars underscores the importance of continuous learning and community engagement in professional growth. These platforms provide invaluable opportunities for sharing best practices, learning from industry leaders, and forging beneficial networks.

Technological Advancements: The adoption of new tools like the customer value framework by Sixth Sense and automation solutions by MatiK demonstrates the industry’s shift towards leveraging technology to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of CS operations. These innovations not only save time but also allow CS professionals to focus on strategic activities that directly impact customer satisfaction and retention.

In conclusion, the episode from the Customer Success Playbook Podcast vividly illustrates the evolving nature of customer success roles within the corporate landscape, highlighting the importance of strategic positioning, community building, and technological integration in mastering the art of customer success.

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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.

Transcript

Transcript

April 19, 2024, 6:17PM

Roman Trebon   0:06
Welcome to the customer Success Playbook Podcast, where we bring you the latest insights in the world of customer success.
Kevin, happy Friday.
How you doing?

   0:16
I'm doing well.
Roman Fridays are always a a good day to to think about the week and recap and.

Roman Trebon   0:24
Yeah, for sure for sure.
I I probably should have introduced myself, Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger, right?
If you've ever heard the show before, but Kevin, we got a little, we're gonna do a little weekly Roundup here.
See what's going on in the world of customer success.
How does that sound to you?

   0:38
Sounds like a plan.

Roman Trebon   0:40
All right, let's start with some news.
Some things I you know, we saw on the on the, on the Google Wire this week article out from to tango, you know record attendance at their summit in San Francisco this year, Kev over 1000 executive professionals went out to attend that.
I mean, surprise you that we're seeing record attendance in CS events.

   1:03
Yeah, it doesn't.
I mean, I think customer success, you know as a yeah customer success has become a focus at a lot of businesses even with the changes to what customer success is over the last couple of years.
Actually I think because of the changes to customer success and really trying to become more data driven and really looking at what what data is telling us and how CS operations is changing and all that, I think it's it's these conferences are an opportunity for learning and I think that you know it makes sense right that you're seeing more people attending them and and we're past the COVID stuff.

Roman Trebon   1:40
Yeah.

   1:47
So I think that's a big thing too.

Roman Trebon   1:48
Yeah, I'm not surprised.
I was at.
I was.
I know you couldn't make it this morning.
I was at the Atlanta Customer Success coffee up in Roswell, GA we were we had like, I don't know how many people 1214 people for like a coffee.
Coffee.
And if you're not familiar with the Anna, this is just like 1 little suburb of Atlanta.
There's like Atlanta coffees all over town.
It was great.
So one thing a guy said, Kevin at the coffee though is I thought this was interesting.
He was hiring for a program manager job.
OK, they were hiring for program managers and this is out like in Oklahoma and he couldn't get like anyone like no applicants, very limited people coming in.
They took the reason they took the job breakdown.
They reposted it as customer success and he said it's flooded like the talent.
That's the amount of resumes.
And then just the quality of candidate, he said, is like insane just with that one shift like that would just from a name change, right.
And that's how many people I think that shows you right there just how much interest and how many people are getting into customer success.

   2:46
That's.
Yeah, that's. That's interesting.
Yeah, it's, it's interesting.
I it's interesting that you're not having the people who would be traditionally program managers applying, but as soon as you change it to a customer success, I guess you're getting the traditional program managers, they're going, I guess they're going to the customer success jobs as well and.

Roman Trebon   3:11
Yeah, Andrew gang, people that are in customer success, right, that are probably never would have applied the program manager, right.
So you get all those those folks, so alright.

   3:18
Yeah.
Well, it it.
It's interesting.
One of the conversations I have often inside is we customer success is program management, right?
You're running a customer's program ohm and in in a lot of cases, especially at the enterprise level.
Uh, if you're doing an enterprise type work with enterprise type customers, you're helping to run a customer program, so.

Roman Trebon   3:47
And I agree.
Alright, Kev, let's move down in the news world.
What we got, we I saw on on the news wire.
Six cents came out with a new customer value framework.
I don't know if you had a chance to look at that yet, but they have our friend Justin.
They put it out.
It's really nice if you go to 6th sense.com you can see the 6th dimension success model, but breaks it into kind of how clients can best get value from their investment.
Six sense.
Uh, Jim, check that out at all, Kev.

   4:15
Yeah, I did.
And you know, I think it's really they.
They obviously making a huge investment in their community to try and drive ohm, you know, drive understanding through their community and really drive community to help help each other.
Anybody who comes in, you know, the, the, the six, the six points right that they have umm, the customer community offering with self service and resources and peer connections and expert support is one point and then they have a certification program and then they've got.
Virtual gatherings.
So they're really doing a lot to try and just drive drive the community bringing apart another one, a partner ecosystem and bringing that in ohm.

Roman Trebon   4:56
Yeah.

   5:05
I I think it's.
I think it's a good example of what a company can do that's trying to build a community around its offering and really, really some interesting stuff there.

Roman Trebon   5:18
Yeah, I would love.
It as a customer, I would love that right.
And and if you, I mean it's a great framework on how how other clients are getting value out of it, how you know Justin and his team get value you know are helping clients get value out of it.
So I think it's great in the website looks great, so check it out and let's tag Justin.
We gotta get him on the show here.
He's doing a lot of great stuff over at six cents, so we gotta get him on the show here soon.
All right, events kept.

   5:40
Yep.

Roman Trebon   5:43
There's like going back kind of this topic of events.
There's a ton of events coming up.
We have success coaching our friend Andrew.
They have tons of events.
You gotta check out their website.
Check get on their newsletter.
I know you were on a Kev, but they have a leadership roundtable on May 15th at 2:00 Eastern.
It's about developing lasting relationships with stakeholders, so I am signed up.
I'm looking forward to that.
If you've never been on a success coaching webinar, I know you have Kev, but they got a pretty big audience so it'll be they already.
Andrews grade.
He's he's awesome to host those things.
And yeah, every time I can try to carve out time for it, I always get a nugget or two out of those webinars.

   6:21
Yeah, I I you know, I I can't remember what it was this week or last week he had he had he was hosting one of the webinars that that he does and I think it was I think I got pinged on LinkedIn that it was going on and I had a couple minutes so I jumped in to to listen and there's just always something in his webinars that you can take away.
Ohh the great great resource for learning.

Roman Trebon   6:46
Yeah.
No, it's all again, if you're not on.
If you don't get their weekly, I think it's weekly newsletter.
I get it, I get.
I think it's weekly by weekly it's it's chock full of information.
I love when he does like the roundup of everything's coming for the month, so I can kind of plan ahead and May 15th and 16.
Saint Louis Kev.
Gain sight Pulse Conference 2500 attendees 70 plus sessions.
I know you are taking the old family trucks are up there and heading up to the game site Pulse, am I right?

   7:18
I am.
I'm I'm very excited.
This will be my.
This will be my first pulse.

Roman Trebon   7:22
It's awesome.

   7:22
Ohm, there's about.
I think there's about six people coming, going to polls from the Atlanta area that are part of the customer Success Network.
James is going Justin's going, uh, some of the other folks that we know are are going as well.

Roman Trebon   7:34
That's awesome.

   7:37
So I'm excited about it.
They've got a ton of well, they've got like 6 different major tracks, including AI and innovations, CSM excellence, CS operations, product adoption, Community management and customer education.
You know, I'm.
I'm gonna focus on their AI and innovation track.
Imagine that I'm interested in that.

Roman Trebon   8:04
Yes.
Hi, shocker man.
We went to guess that.

   8:07
And then I'm gonna try and grab some some of sessions for through, you know, the CS operations track and maybe the CSM excellence track.

Roman Trebon   8:14
Yeah, it's like the Super Bowl of customer success, right?

   8:15
I think that's kind.

Roman Trebon   8:18
Like it's got to be the biggest one of, if not the biggest event, right?
I mean it's it's huge.

   8:22
It's it's definitely one of the biggest events.
You know it, it's obviously it's hosted by Gainsight, but they have tons.

Roman Trebon   8:27
Yep.

   8:31
That I I think the competitors are all there as well and definitely the.
You know various people sponsoring it.
You pointed it out and I I think I somehow hadn't hadn't really seen it.
Matic is gonna be a sponsor there and uh, you know Maddox?

Roman Trebon   8:50
Yep.

   8:55
Very, very interesting tool.
Very, very cool tool.
It's basically an automation tool for building.
Customer success to sales decks.
Uh, pretty much if you have information that you have to gather and you're going to put it into a general standardized presentation type template, then Matic really has a lot of the tools and hooks to be able to grab that information from whatever your your source of data is and process it and then put it into the deck.
And it really helps save a lot of time.
They've actually got some AI tools to help build talk tracks for the decks.
Once the decks are developed.

Roman Trebon   9:39
Ah, that's neat.
I like I need that like right now.
I gotta I gotta presentation.
Coming up, I could use some some talk tracks.

   9:46
Yeah.
So the that's it's a really interesting tool.
I was thinking about it.
One of the things that I've done with my CSM teams would be to.
I ran a monthly a monthly session with my team for QBR's or mores to go over any of the decks and run through the talking tracks and make sure everything's been developed and give that kind of feedback.
This would help basically one if somebody couldn't attend, I think it would help allow that person to really get in without having to go through that feedback session.
But I think you could also take those sessions up another level by allowing all of the data and a lot of times people would come in with questions about the data.
Looks like this and I don't know why it's it looks this way this month.
Can we figure it out as opposed to if you had the automation process and you're able to build the deck and even have look at the talk track, then you could come in and say, hey, these are the key issues that I saw, which is really what the intentions of those sessions were was to say, let's get down to the key issues and make sure we're focusing on the right stuff.
But it it it would, it would take that session down, which was often could could be several hours depending on the types of questions I was getting ohm and it could take that down to really a minimal amount of time focusing on the key key issues with the right things.

Roman Trebon   11:06
Yeah.

   11:13
I I see magic being a huge value.
Add to to companies if they're interested in it.
Had the pleasure of being able to sit with.
Nick, last last week or two weeks ago, at a dinner, their CEO and just really great guy to talk with and like I said, I think they're doing some really interesting stuff and I really can't see a lot of value in in the tool.

Roman Trebon   11:41
Yeah.
We have two.
Maybe we should explore that.
I love to learn more about that.
It's interesting.
I literally literally kept on right now.
If I could plug it in and use it, I'd be all over it, right?
Like I am in the midst of this as we speak.
So that's anything you can save time like that.
I think that's huge, right?
Especially if you don't a bunch of these. Right.

   12:02
Yeah. Yep.

Roman Trebon   12:04
Alright.
Well, you'll you'll be out in Saint Louis if you listen to the show.
If you see Kevin out there, he'll buy you a drink.
So stop by and say hi to him.
He'll be you may be wearing a customer success Playbook shirt.
Kevin my is that is that news accurate?

   12:21
Yeah, I'm going to try and make that accurate news by then.

Roman Trebon   12:25
OK, alright, alright.
With the beat in the buying it buying people drink.
If you come up to Kevin about the show, that's true.
That part I can I can guarantee Kevin's all in on that.
So stop and say hi.
Alright, we got customer success, the company cab with client success.

   12:40
Client success.
Client success, yeah.

Roman Trebon   12:43
Yeah, client success.
I screwed it up.
Umm.
With with Christy felt Trusso, they're doing a whole bunch of boot camp sessions.
Yeah.
So if you have not checked those out, do so.
I know there's one I'm interested in on May 7th at 1:00 PM Eastern.
It's called reon boarding proactive approach to improve adoption, address turnover and support program evolution.
So I know we had Donna on earlier a couple episodes ago, onboarding.
I'd love to kind of hear Christy and the on boarding and you know that that approach and so check those out.
I think there's a whole Kevin, you said there's whole calendar of games coming up, right?

   13:21
Yeah, there's a whole calendar of them.
They've got basically one every Tuesday in May, and honestly I think they've been doing Tuesday sessions for a while.
I actually attended one this week with Christy on basically data driven insights and the key being looking for the insights and she really a great great presenter.

Roman Trebon   13:32
And nice.

   13:41
Obviously she's she's the she's.

Roman Trebon   13:41
Yeah.

   13:46
She's the chief customer officer at client success and she's got a couple of podcasts in the industry as well.
And just a really ohm in.
Insightful person to listen to.

Roman Trebon   13:59
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what else?
I hope we can get on the show soon, right?
So maybe that would be awesome.
So someone we're trying to track down that would be great.
Yeah.
So check out client success.
All those boot camps you said Tuesdays?
I think Dev so that would be.
That's awesome.
Uh, the last event I have in the customer success world break.

   14:19
This is a huge one.

Roman Trebon   14:19
Have you ready for this one?
This is the maybe the biggest one.

   14:20
This is a huge one.

Roman Trebon   14:22
This is huge.
I mean, step step aside, paulse, we got the we're forming the Atlanta, the first customer success, Atlanta Pickleball gathering.
Kevin, we're getting some good feedback.
I'm excited.
I think in May before Paul's we'll, we'll, we'll have, I think 3 quarts of of people playing at least I think it will be.
I think it'll be fun.

   14:43
Yeah.
No, it'll be fun.
I yeah.
You.
You said you had posted a picture of us playing pickle ball from this weekend.

Roman Trebon   14:51
Yeah, I did, yeah.

   14:53
You got a bunch of feedback.
You're like, maybe we should tournament.
I'm all in.
Let's do it.

Roman Trebon   14:57
It'll be great and it's different, right?

   14:57
It's awesome.
I'm excited.

Roman Trebon   14:59
It's different than like.
Can you go to like, a a happy hour?
You it's like when you start playing pickleball with people or any kind of it's that's fun.
You know, it's different.

   15:07
Yeah.

Roman Trebon   15:07
It's a great way to get to know someone and the Atlanta.
Seriously, I know we've said on the show, but the Atlanta customer success community is amazing.
It is so big and vibrant and I know we're lucky to be down here.
It's great.
Last news, Kev, I didn't talk about this new intro music.

   15:26
Ah yeah.

Roman Trebon   15:27
New intro music.
I actually got a text from someone.
Swear said hey, love the new intro music.

   15:34
Did you really awesome?

Roman Trebon   15:34
So where did it come from?
Camp, where did it come from?

   15:38
Where to come from?
Yes, so I.
I've been playing with a couple of different music AI's, and so we did.
Umm yeah, but soon studio and Suno are the two that I used and I I think the final version.
Uh, that we ended up using, I believe was from.
Uh.
Sooner and yeah, it's a cool, cool experience to actually build a song.
I've built a couple of songs now.
So much so that my son the other day I was playing one for him and he was on his way to school and he told me he thought I needed to.
I needed screen time limitations.

Roman Trebon   16:32
Ha ha ha ha.
That's great.
That's great.
No, I love the new intro song.
It was a fun process.
You you had cheered actually a couple different versions and samples and genres and yeah, it's great.
Next up, though, what's next?
You're not gonna just stop at the interim music.
I think if you were working on some new, some new cover art as well, right?

   16:52
I I am an actually I, you know, saw last night.
I think yesterday there was a release of.
Elie MLL Lambda 3, which is Microsoft.
I'm sorry not Microsoft metas.
Uh, new large language model and actually I've got after after we we get off the show.

Roman Trebon   17:12
Umm.

   17:17
I gotta show you another I built in image in there which I think is kind of cool.
I don't know whether it's the image will we may have two, we may have to have one for embroidering on charts, but I think this one I did with Mata yesterday is really really cool and.

Roman Trebon   17:32
That's awesome.
Yeah, we'll take a look if it has a picture of me.
Just make sure you AI me up to look like I'm a, you know, 25% better looking and and bigger than I am.

   17:39
Superman.

Roman Trebon   17:42
So that's.

   17:42
I I don't think it's possible to make you any better looking man.

Roman Trebon   17:45
Ah, that's a great point.
You you raise a great point, Kev.
We're not anything else we gonna we wrap up this week here, both figuratively and literally, or we anything else here we wanna discuss.

   17:56
Ohm, you know, I I I think it's it's been a great week.
Lots.
Lots of information coming around, lots of seminars, lots of stuff coming up.

Roman Trebon   18:10
You know.

   18:11
I just I think we we want to keep you focused on it because it's a lot of opportunities to learn and participate and and grow your career and you know want to encourage folks to spend the time doing that.

Roman Trebon   18:26
Yeah.
No, you don't know in the head.
I you, you and I talked about it, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on.
Hopefully is Kevin and I do these roundup shows.
It's like a one stop shop where you can kind of hear what's going on.
So you don't have to search Google News and search all the websites and hopefully we can kind of bring you the highlights and let you know what we're attending and our thoughts on it.
So all right, Kev, have a great weekend.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Check us out at Roman Trebon at LinkedIn at Kevin Metzger on LinkedIn.
The customer success Playbook page on LinkedIn, we're posting Kevin's doing some awesome videos on there.
Now we have a new video kind of editor that's that.
That's that's, you know, awesome.
So check out that page.
You'll see kind of clip from the show and and definitely links to the podcast as well.
So all right with that, Kev.

   19:12
Keep on playing.

Roman Trebon stopped transcription