Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 15 - The week in review

In the recent episode of the "Customer Success Playbook" podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger delved into a week filled with personal anecdotes, customer success strategies, and community-building within the industry. Key discussions included the power of root cause analysis in business operations, the significance of customer success managers (CSMs), and the various events highlighting the appreciation for CSMs. 

The Importance of Root Cause Analysis in Business Success

One of the episode's central themes was the application of root cause analysis (RCA) not just in technology but across all business processes. Kevin emphasized how RCA is crucial for identifying issues that may not necessarily be tech-related but are often embedded within business processes. This approach is fundamental for businesses looking to sustain growth and efficiency, as it helps in pinpointing problems and formulating strategic solutions that prevent recurrence.

Celebrating Customer Success Managers

The conversation also highlighted "CSM Appreciation Week" organized by Churn Zero, showcasing the industry’s recognition of the hard work and dedication of customer success managers. This event is pivotal in reminding organizations of the value of regularly appreciating their CSMs, akin to celebrating Mother's Day, as mentioned by the hosts. Such initiatives not only boost morale but also reinforce the importance of customer success in reducing churn and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Check out: Churn Zero CSM Appreciation Week

Business Insights and Forward-Looking Strategies

Throughout the episode, Roman and Kevin explored various forward-looking strategies that companies can adopt. For instance, Greg Danes's customer results strategy template CRS Guide (usrfiles.com)  was mentioned as a valuable tool for businesses aiming to align technology solutions with customer needs effectively. 

Additionally, discussions on the onboarding of new users in existing accounts suggested a significant area for development in many organizations, pointing towards the need for improved training and resource allocation. Check out Donna's discussion which we point to the episode - Do you formally onboard new users in existing accounts?

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: [00:00:00] Welcome to the customer success playbook podcast kev. We're going to talk about the week in customer success. How are you doing today? 

Kevin Metzger: And I'm doing great. Been, a busy week. We're actually recording a little late. I think both of us were traveling in different directions this past week. 

Roman Trebon: Yeah, I was down in Cancun, Kev, checking out the, I was going to say I was checking out the customer success landscape down there, but that's actually so far from the truth.

I was checking out the pool and the beach all week. So it was awesome down there. 

Kevin Metzger: Nice. Yeah, I was I was down in Orlando not for the TSIA conference, which you know, was going on this week. But prior to that, the, the, the much bigger conference was the the summit cheer championships for the season.

My daughter's team was, was there, went down with her. But unfortunately did not get to Make it to the second day. So we [00:01:00] spent the day in the park and go to Magic Kingdom. The Animal Kingdom hit Hollywood Studios a little bit, so good time. Well, 

Roman Trebon: I, 

Kevin Metzger: I'd 

Roman Trebon: say it's a win-win. I selfishly, I'd say not going to day two may have been the bigger win, but yeah, again, I, you know, I get it.

I, so, yeah. 

Kevin Metzger: Her and her friend did a little TikTok that got got like. 500 likes in a couple of hours because we didn't get to go to to finals. So we're at the parks. 

Roman Trebon: Oh, that's awesome. That's a good segue cab. Hey, we are on Tik TOK. The customer success playbook is on Tik TOK. So check us out on there.

If you like to do short videos and dance TOK does. Check us out. We're on there. So you know, like us and, and, and read, read, tick talk or whatever the, the lingo is, because you can see how, how little I know about the platform. So with that, let's get into the week in customer success, right? Before we do that, [00:02:00] let's, I guess the first thing that we, we launched an episode with, with Christy Faltruso last week have about talking about.

Her launching a customer success community on their platform, which is called customer success. So that may have been a little bit confusing for some folks. Yeah. Client success, client success. So it may have been a little confusing. We talked client success a lot in, in there was a platform, but she's also building a community out, but she was great, Kev.

I love that. She was so transparent on the big kind of like dreams and aspirations she had for this community. And, you know, she was great. She was like, Hey, this is great. Mark, right. And here's what we're doing to kind of learn from that, et cetera. What were your thoughts after listening to the episode?

Kevin Metzger: Yeah, well, first, I mean, Christie is so entertaining to listen to and, and just in talk with so that was, that was great, but I, to me, I think one of the biggest takeaways and it's not relevant to the To the community, you know, discussion that we had, [00:03:00] but it's just in general about business. And, you know, it's something that in technology they do what's called an RCA, right?

Which is where you're

root cause analysis. Sorry, I was losing the terms root cause analysis. So when you look at a problem in technology, you want to figure out what caused it and then try and figure out how to stop it, or how to stop it from reoccurring again. This is it's not just a technology thing, right? Technology is what technology is, is enabling business processes.

So if you got a business process, a lot of the times the root cause isn't necessary, Sarah Lee, the technology itself. It's something in the business process and doing root cause analysis is are such a. Critical critical thing to the success of any business. So figuring out what went wrong in any process, figuring out how to avoid that going along a second time and making the changes measurable [00:04:00] changes that you can say, Hey, this is what happened.

This is why it happened. And this is what we're going to do to avoid it happening again. It's just, I think it's critical to making having success in business. 

Roman Trebon: No, I agree. That's a great takeaway, Kev. For me, the biggest takeaway is, you know, you hear a lot of times that companies should fail fast and failure's okay, and yeah, that's how you learn.

And kind of going back to you, Seth, like doing an RCA and understanding what happens so you can kind of improve and get better. I think it's rare to actually hear a leader say, Hey, I failed, right? Like you hear about the concept of failure. I don't hear a lot of people actually say, Hey, I failed. This didn't work out how I thought.

And being that open and transparent and vulnerable to share that. I loved it. So like, and you said, Christie could talk about paint drying and I'd be hooked for 30 minutes on it. Right. She's, she's amazing. So let's get in this week, May 6th through the 10th Kev. Is churn zeros CSM appreciation week. So did you know that?[00:05:00] 

Kevin Metzger: Yeah, I, I've heard about a couple of different places. I think it's a great, great thing. I mean, actually, you, you you shared it with me first to be, to be fair. I broke the news. I broke the news. You did break the news. And what, what, what a great thing, right? I mean, we've got people, especially if you're in leadership You've got people working hard every day.

Your, your CSM team working hard every day to try and make sure that they are reducing churn, making sure the customer services, getting service, making sure they're meeting their goals. And you know, it's, it's easy to forget to give the appreciation that, you know, we should be doing on a regular basis.

You, you shouldn't need a week, but it's great to have a week. And. It's like 

Roman Trebon: Mother's Day, Mother's Day Sunday, Kevin. I mean, we don't, we shouldn't really have to have a need for Mother's Day. It should be all the time. Right. But it's, it is glad that we do carve out a specific time to recognize all the work moms do.

Right. 

Kevin Metzger: Exactly. [00:06:00] So, so it's fantastic. And you know, one of the things that, that they've done, I think is great. They've got a bunch of partners involved. There's, you know, discounts. Some of the folks we've talked to, you've got growth molecules out there. You've got success coaching out there. They're giving discounts.

You should check out the page, turn zeros, CSM appreciation week, look it up. You'll find the page and you can find all of the offers and things that people are putting out there to, to help CSMs basically as appreciation for everything they do, and it's really, it's awesome. 

Roman Trebon: Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, they have, they have a kudo board so you can recognize your team on there.

They have downloadable graphics with like super cool, like you know, recognition for CSMs. They're giving out these super sweet CSM t shirts Kev. So again, If you track down any churn zero people next week, when you're in St. Louis, try to give me one of those t shirts, man. I'd love those t shirts they have.

And like you said, 20 percent off growth molecules customer success training, [00:07:00] success coaching has a, as a code off there for 150 off some training, so, and there's tons. So go there, like Kevin said, Google it. You'll find it awesome stuff. Speaking of people we've had on the show. Mr. Greg Danes just came out with a, at least I've seen, you know, the, you shared me a customer results strategy template and guide, right?

Which is, it's awesome. It's, it's really a, it's a takeaway item that you can download and you can start using right away. And what it really does is. It outlines kind of for you know, you can use this for your clients and your customers, you know What's the key result that they're trying to drive? What's the result metric that they need to be successful?

What's the solutions they're going to need from a technology perspective to to enable that change and then? You know what the result behaviors are going to be right? So it's all in that templated guide I love it. I love that kind of stuff, Kev. I love those downloadable items [00:08:00] where you can like start to use yourself.

And I think Greg hit another 

Kevin Metzger: Yeah, I agree. I think it was it's simple in concept, right? But it just, it gets to the point very quickly. So what is it that you're trying to achieve? How are you going to measure that achievement? What, what are the things you need in place to make it happen? And what are the changes that That you need to make in your business to make it happen.

So if you got all that down, you review it with a customer and say, Hey, this is where we're going. This is what we want to achieve. You get agreement from the customer that this is what you want to achieve. Now you've got some customer focused, customer driven metrics that are. Gear to reduce churn, right?

I mean, because if you're getting a customer to achieve what they're trying to achieve, you're going to reduce churn. And that's what Greg's all about, right? Pretty much everything he communicates is about how do you reduce churn? And how do you drive customer results? [00:09:00] Like you said, another great product that Greg put out.

Simple, free, go use it, look it up. It's not hard, but it helps structure your thinking. 

Roman Trebon: Yeah, it's awesome. So we'll put a link we can put a link in the in the show to to get people to find it Right. I think again you can google it and find it but and go go listen to the episode with greg, right? If you haven't listened to the episode with greg, he knocked it off the ballpark.

He is awesome you know, he is all about, like you said, Kev results and delivering value to the clients and, and really you know, on on why that's important and the impact that has on on churn. Alright, we're gonna keep going on a, on a who's who of guests, right? Kev. And, and we had Donna Weber on recently.

And I'd love following, you know, Donna's newsletter. So, you know, if you're listening out there, you're, you're not on Donna's Donna Weber's newsletter. Get on there. She has tons of amazing content. I know you are, Kev. What I love about it is she has, well, what I love about it, she actually put a link to our show on there.

So I [00:10:00] love that , but that's selfish. But, but I do love that she has even has stuff like, Hey, here's what I'm reading. And it may not even be customer success stuff, right? It's just, it, there's so many things from customer success to outside interest, but she had a video, which I really liked. I wanna get your thoughts on it, Kev, on it was ask the question, are you onboarding new users in existing accounts?

Okay, so I will say that we're not doing that right. We're not doing a great good enough job at my at my current Organization in that, right. But it was very, very thought provoking, but I love your thoughts on it, your experience with it. What, what, what were your takeaways here in the onboarding of new people into an already existing account?

Kevin Metzger: Yeah. So I'm not surprised that. She said it on one hand because I often I've fallen in that realm in the past as well. What did surprise me [00:11:00] slightly was number 70 percent she said in a certain informal survey she took in a class she was teaching, but still 70 percent of a classroom was not were not we're not doing onboarding yeah, me too, right?

That's what's important of new customers. New users for existing customers, so I think it's it's a it's kind of one of those revelation thoughts. I don't think there's a lot of work to turn it. She, you know, she suggests, right? You can do some enablement, use some enablement training app stuff, 

Roman Trebon: right?

You do in app stuff. You could have, you know, knowledge bases. I mean, it's not like this heavy takeaways for me. It doesn't have to be this huge. Investment of time. You can do this without throwing a ton of, of, of resources at it. Right. 

Kevin Metzger: Yep, absolutely. So Donna's worth, worth every cent, every second listening.

So, you know, [00:12:00] great. Yes, her content is great when she puts out additional stuff. So definitely worth listening to again. Yeah. She's awesome. And we'll put a link to that as well in the show notes. Awesome. 

Roman Trebon: So last thing, Kev, you are I hope the bags are packed. You're getting close to St. Louis. You excited, 

Kevin Metzger: man.

I've been this morning, early this morning, I woke up pretty early around 4 AM, had a little bit of a headache, but sat down and started looking at the conference and scheduled out all of my Scheduled out all my sessions. I've got growth modules is hosting something on Tuesday night that I'm going to like a happy hour.

That 

Roman Trebon: looks nice. Yeah, 

Kevin Metzger: go into the happy hour Tuesday night. You know, we've got the intro session. And then there's a bunch of AI stuff. I'm going to there was somebody I'm trying to think there a lot of sessions and, you know, some of our, you know, Some of our folks from Atlanta, we've got several folks from Atlanta [00:13:00] presenting.

You know, Justin is, is presenting we've got it's, I, I, I'm, I'm very excited. 

Roman Trebon: Who's who Kev? It's a, it's the who's who of customer success. Like I said, I told you last week, I'm so jealous, man, that you're heading out there, but so for our audience, if you're listening and you're, you're, maybe you're listening on your flight to St.

Louis disappointing news. Kevin and I are customer success playbook polos which we, we, we were getting not ready for production quite yet. So you won't see Kevin wearing one of our, our slick polo shirts. But you, you hopefully recognize them from LinkedIn and, and from our YouTube channel, stop and say, hi, like I said, Kevin's buying first drink for everyone that comes up to him and introduces.

So I'm already spending the budget. We don't have Kev. So again, first drinks on Kev. If you, if you got introduced and say, you watch the show, listen to the show, we, we, we'd appreciate it. But you're having a great time. I can't wait for you to come back next week, hear all about it. [00:14:00] I'm going to live vicariously through you.

So I'm sure you'll check out our LinkedIn page. I'm sure you're going to be posting a bunch of pictures. You may have some special impromptu one on ones with people. I'm excited to see what comes out of next week. 

Kevin Metzger: Yeah, I'm certainly hoping to try and try and figure out some one on one type things.

I got to figure out the technology piece of that, but I'm working on that. I, that's, that's, that's my last task before I go. So that hopefully we can do some some impromptu interviews while we're there. Yeah, it's going to be great. Yeah. 

Roman Trebon: That seems to be a wrap for this week in customer success.

You got anything else here for our audience before we adjourn? 

Kevin Metzger: Keep 

Roman Trebon: on playing. Keep on playing everyone.