Customer Success Playbook Podcast Season 2 Episode 16 - Pulse Recap

In the latest episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, Kevin Metzger recapped his recent trip to St. Louis for the Gainsight Conference. The episode covered his experiences from networking events to insightful sessions on AI and customer success strategies. Highlights included discussions on Gainsight’s roadmap, innovative AI projects, and strategic planning for customer success initiatives. Kevin emphasized the importance of networking, shared key takeaways from various sessions, and is excited about upcoming guests for the podcast.

Detailed Analysis and Business-Relevant Insights

Networking and Community Engagement

Kevin’s trip began with a networking happy hour hosted by James from Atlanta Customer Success and Growth Molecules. Such events are crucial for fostering connections within the customer success community, allowing professionals to share experiences and insights. The value of these interactions cannot be overstated as they often lead to collaborations and new business opportunities.

AI and Customer Success: Gainsight’s Vision

The conference's main focus was on AI’s role in customer success. Gainsight CEO Nick opened the event with a session highlighting the company’s AI initiatives. Kevin noted the emphasis on AI-driven tools designed to enhance customer interactions and streamline success strategies. The demo showcased both current capabilities and future developments, reflecting the rapid integration of AI in customer success.

Vanessa Gotti from OpenAI also presented, providing insights into AI’s potential in customer success. Her sessions underscored the transformative impact of AI, from personalized customer interactions to predictive analytics. For businesses, adopting AI tools can lead to more efficient processes, improved customer satisfaction, and ultimately, better retention rates.

Project Prioritization and Implementation: LinkedIn’s Approach

A particularly enlightening session was presented by LinkedIn representatives, who discussed their project prioritization framework. This included evaluating project proposals based on potential impact and feasibility. They introduced "Project Stitch," an AI-driven initiative aimed at providing personalized guidance at scale. This project involved extensive prompt engineering and testing to ensure accuracy and reliability in automated customer interactions.

For businesses, the key takeaway is the importance of a structured approach to project management, especially when integrating new technologies like AI. Prioritizing projects that offer significant returns and aligning them with strategic goals can drive innovation while maintaining operational efficiency.

Customer Success and Financial Metrics

Jay Nathan’s session on understanding customer success from a P&L perspective was another highlight. He illustrated how changes in customer success strategies directly impact financial metrics such as gross margin and lifetime value (LTV). By linking customer success initiatives to tangible financial outcomes, businesses can better justify investments in this area and demonstrate their value to stakeholders.

Upcoming Guests a

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Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:30

right, welcome to the customer success playbook podcast Kevin is back from his trip to st. Louis my co host kevin metzger. Kevin. How are you doing today?

Kevin Metzger: 0:39

Man, I'm doing great. Excited to be home just because there were so many takeaways and so much stuff for me to go follow up on that I'm, I'm, I'm excited about everything that came out of it. It was a, it was a great trip.

Roman Trebon: 0:52

So for our audience, if you didn't listen to our last couple of episodes, Kevin, you were out in St. Louis for the Gainsight conference. Is that right? That's that's correct. Yep. So you're there all, I think you got there Tuesday and you came home Friday. So let's start with. Let's start when you first get there, Kev. Let's start with Tuesday. So I think you had a dinner that night, a reception. What did you do Tuesday when you got to town?

Kevin Metzger: 1:16

Yeah. So, I mean, James from, you know Atlanta customer success and one of our former guests and, and It was going out there and his company growth molecules and Amelia, who's the CEO of growth molecules was also a guest. Another guest of the same couple of guys there. They, they were hosting a happy hour. So,

1:39

you

Kevin Metzger: 1:39

know got in in the afternoon, checked into the conference, got one, got my My little tag for the weekend. I should've got that down here for any video but got the tag and all of that kind of stuff and registered. And then once once we got in, went over to the, to the happy hour and there were just a ton of people there got to meet lots and lots of people at the happy hour. Got to me and just and just have a lot of conversations and it was it was just it. Honestly, getting there and having that to do and going out and being able to meet people. It was a great, great experience to, to execute on and just get started and get into the conference.

Roman Trebon: 2:21

That's a great idea by James to have that on the first day. It sounds like, I guess the actual conference started Wednesday. If I was like the actual sessions to sort of Wednesday cab. So to come and have something Tuesday. You know, I think when you go to these conferences, at least for me, you want to, you know, you want, you want learnings, you want to take something back, right, something you can incorporate, and then networking. So to start out with the nice networking, and James is picking up the tab, I mean, that's not a bad way to start the the conference, right?

Kevin Metzger: 2:45

Yeah, it wasn't bad at all.

Roman Trebon: 2:47

So Wednesday, so Wednesday is the first day of sessions, Kev. Let's, let's start with Wednesday. What were the highlights for you in terms of sessions on Wednesday?

Kevin Metzger: 2:56

Yeah. So, I mean, first it was, you know, Nick opened it up, right. And

Roman Trebon: 3:02

looking dapper, by the way, I don't know. Nick's probably not listening, but man, did he look good? I saw the LinkedIn post.

Kevin Metzger: 3:08

Yeah, he he, he's, he's definitely A better dresser

Roman Trebon: 3:11

than me? That's, that goes without saying, Kev. He's definitely a better dresser than you and I.

Kevin Metzger: 3:16

Yeah, he's got some flair that I,

Roman Trebon: 3:18

I aspire to.

Kevin Metzger: 3:19

So, but they had a great session. Talked a lot about what Gainsight's doing. A lot of it's focused, it's focused on ai. Kind of did a demo of what they've got planning planned and. Some, some of it I guess, is in place and some of it's still on the roadmap, but it was a good session to listen to and, and hear what they have and what they're thinking about and where they're going. So, so that was great. I got to hear from a couple of you know, very interesting people about things that they've been doing as well. In, in the sessions of Vanessa. Gotti talked from, she's a lead of customer success at OpenAI. Oh,

Roman Trebon: 3:56

that's cool. I'm sure you were all over that little AI talk.

Kevin Metzger: 4:00

Yeah, yeah. She also presented in a session on Thursday that I attended. That was, that was great as well. So it was, it was very cool to hear her and her vision on the panel, er, you know, with Nick and then to hear her also on the panel as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, so I'm

Roman Trebon: 4:17

curious. How many people I this is, you know, you're not gonna have a real answer. So I'm going to ask you to make up an answer. How many people do you think were gains like customers that were there versus people like just interested in customer success and wanted to learn more about the space

Kevin Metzger: 4:33

or network? So, yeah, I mean, I will tell you that there were some people that were there like that I met that I know were that were there that were interested in the space and the network. Obviously a lot of the vendors are, some of them are directly in the space. Calendar Lee was there. They, you know, are associated with the space.

Roman Trebon: 4:54

Yeah.

Kevin Metzger: 4:54

So you kind of have that. And

4:57

Ed Glavin and Roman, they got the game. Customer success is their claim to fame. On the podcast, they light the spark. Elevating your skills, creating a mark. Let's dive deeper into the playbook, the secrets they share. No need to look from onboarding to retention. They've got it all, success is the goal, gonna stand tall. With each episode, they share their views. Strategies and tactics that you can use from challenges to triumphs to cover it all. Helping you navigate when you hit a wall. So tune in now and join the quest. Kevin and Roman put you to the test. Empowering your journey in customer success. With insights and wisdom, you'll be the best. Um, Um, Helping you navigate when you hit a wall. Um, So tune in now and join the quest.

Kevin Metzger: 6:24

then I think the large majority are. Customers or potential customers, and then and then there are a few other folks that were there to network to, you know, to meet people. There's recruiters. There are people who are looking to hire people who are looking for jobs there. I think there was all kinds of folks there for various reasons.

Roman Trebon: 6:49

Yeah, no, I'm just curious. I was thinking about it as you were talking about the opening, you know, the keynote with what's coming on the road map, etc. You know, and I'm assuming my guess was it was probably heavy client. So as someone that wasn't there, Kev on the you've heard. I know it sounds like you went to a bunch of sessions on AI. About like where AI is getting incorporated into space for for us that we're on to we couldn't make it out there. Like what? What? What did you hear that you wanted to share with with people like myself in our audience in terms of where is AI like anything jump out at you? It's like, oh, wow, I didn't. That sounds new or that sounds exciting that we maybe we haven't talked about in the show before. Yeah, so

Kevin Metzger: 7:31

You know, I I think The linkedin did a did a presentation and there were two people from linkedin That were presenting and they talked about two things. I talked about one was Basically how they prioritize projects and the because one person was sitting on the prioritization committee he was kind of You I think they had a CS and then the other person was also a leader in CS, but it, she, she had a project proposal. So they talked about the project that she went through and proposed as well as the format they used for prioritizing projects and looking at AI things and how, how they were making their decisions. And one of the key takeaways from him was like, A lot of stuff's coming at

8:15

you

Kevin Metzger: 8:16

when you prioritize, you want to look at your big bets. You want to look at your home runs where your small wins, you're going to take a, you know, ultimately you want to select from that bunch, a few of each potentially to determine what you're going to do. And look at the costs associated. He talked about how you kind of categorize projects and put some hard numbers around the project. So you're kind of evaluating fairly and looking at the return and all of that from the same kind of perspective. And then he talked about the fact that really you got to take 80 to 90 percent of the proposed projects and realize that those are junk and throw them out.

Roman Trebon: 8:54

Yeah. So I like, I like that. They kind of walk you through their project kind of submittal process, as how. How projects, you know, go from getting, you know, submitted to getting killed. Even sometimes it sounds like making it to funding and, or, you know, proof of concept, whatever it may be. That's interesting.

Kevin Metzger: 9:11

Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was good. And then really the project that they implemented and talked about, they called project stitch and really it was about how you. Bring personalized guidance at, at scale, right? So how do you use AI overall project and discussion was interesting. That's talked about how much time they spent working on owning the know, the prompt and how they put the information around to get the prompts, right. And all of that and how they worked on really training it so that it doesn't hallucinate and give bad data, et cetera. On top of that, what I found really interesting is they actually have two algorithms that after they get a job. So once they have been, she said there was a lot of testing in the process and trying to get through and build it and trying to make it right. But ultimately, they were still not at like. Generating 100 percent responses that they felt comfortable with being able to send customers from an automations process. So they built two new tools to additional tools to actually evaluate the results and determine whether or not it was good or needed to be thrown out. But now you've got a decision making tree that allows you to actually say, Hey, this there. These are the things we're looking for. We don't see that. Throw that out. It didn't occur. It, it wasn't generated properly. Now go regenerate one and see whether it comes out properly. So you've automated the process and it gets the approval and it's an automation of approval that you can send out,

Roman Trebon: 10:44

man. The, the, the, that is a, that's awesome. And the, it's fun part being being part of a big company, but you can start to invest stuff like that, right? Like that is, that's, that's pretty cool. So you

Kevin Metzger: 10:55

talked, well, here's the thing. That stuff is, is it understanding the projects and where they're doing them at big companies also allows you to figure out how you might be able to do some of that stuff and, and the smaller companies as well, which

Roman Trebon: 11:08

Oh, it'll eventually come down. All of that stuff starts, you know, you got to fund it somehow. Right. And then it all gets scaled at some point. Right. So, I'll look forward to it in 2036. That'll be awesome. So actually it'll be much faster, you know technology changes Things are here and there may have taken me until then, you know years ago now you can accelerate that that time You know, probably next year right two years from now. It'll be so much faster So so, you know kevin, you know, they they have that like, you know drinking game if you hear this words You're gonna drink Would AI be the word at the Gainsight conference you would've had to drink the most with, or was it personalization? What was the, what was the trendy word at the conference?

Kevin Metzger: 11:45

So, so I'm te tell a story. My, my celebration from coming home from the conference which we actually planned this way back way back when, but we took the kids to see Zach BrownMan and Kenny Chesney on, oh geez Saturday night. We're still sitting in the stands. I wasn't there while this happened, but the girl in front of us was so drunk, my wife ended up having to go get a security guard to go to check on her. And yeah, whatever. That's how drunk I'd have been if I was taking a shot. Every time I heard the word

Roman Trebon: 12:17

AI. Yeah. Yeah. Not shocking that AI was the most trendy word used and not, not shocking that someone was absolutely hammered at a Kenny Chesney concert, both are about as shocking as the sun coming up this morning. Right. So so you, I know you saw James out there. You saw, you saw Amelia, any other guests, any other former guests you ran into when you're out there? Julie. You saw Julie Fox? Julie Fox. New, has a new gig. So I noticed you probably just started, right? So probably probably a little too early to hear how that's gone, but She is awesome as in person as she was as a

Kevin Metzger: 12:51

guest. She she's incredible. Julie and I had a great conversation. We had lunch together. Yeah, I talked with her about her, about her search and how that went and all of that. And she's the best man. She's fantastic. Just great, great conversation and great to talk to her.

13:08

Yeah.

Kevin Metzger: 13:08

If you're listening to the show, just as helpful in person as she was on the podcast. If you're not following her on

Roman Trebon: 13:14

LinkedIn, follow her on LinkedIn. She's like a must follow. She has the best posts. She's the, she's the best content. I am jealous. You met, you met her out there. I'm so, Julie, if you're listening, I'm taking a rain check. I'll, I'll see you at the next. Big CS event. Hopefully soon so what else? What other highlights from the from the week? Anything else you want to touch on from the big trip to Saint Louis?

Kevin Metzger: 13:35

Yeah, I mean, so really both days. Great conference. Great conferences are great sessions. Yeah, I did sit in. It was such a cool coincidence. I sat in the J Nathan section session on CSPNL or actually it wasn't CSPNL. It was understanding Customer success from the perspective of a PNL, but it was a coincidence that earlier in the day I had retaken Dave Jackson's CS PNL clip and posted it to the site as I have. That's so cool, you know, and then got to sit in a session and listen to Jay talk about it and Jay. You know, kind of, he really helped you understand how certain changes actually impact the PNL. Yeah, and you know, by increasing average revenue per customer, what the impact is or increasing gross revenue margin per customer, the impact. Basically, those impact your gross margins increasing gross retention rates basically helps impact your LTV. Like, so he did a good job of talking about how everything was was associated to the balance sheet and where you, when you're making changes, what those changes impact I'm sorry, not the balance sheet, but the P& L.

Roman Trebon: 14:54

Yeah. No, I mean, it's, if you, if you weren't at the conference, you want to hear more about the p and l. Listen to our episode with Dave. I think it was our second episode. It was one of our first guest, one of our early episodes. Kev, one of my favorites still.'cause I think Dave hit that outta the park, right? He really talked about if, if you're not looking at p and l for a customer success org, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna be out of a job here soon, right? You're, you're, you're just not. You're not looking at it right. You're become a service center and it's going to be all cost. And he was great. So it's cool that they leveraged Dave when you were there. It's, it's too bad, Dave. I'm sure Dave, I know Dave's over in in Europe. So he probably didn't make a guest appearance, but that would've been cool to meet Dave as well. So you're okay. So St. Louis good trip back in Atlanta. The good news is I don't want to share too much here, Kev, but you were able to line up some guests that are going to be coming on the show. Is that accurate?

Kevin Metzger: 15:46

I was and yeah, we got some we've got some good and exciting guests coming up. I think I want to hold off on announcing. No,

Roman Trebon: 15:57

let's wait. We gotta keep coming back. Yeah That's you're gonna you know, we don't want to tee it up too much but Audience in case you know as you're listening kevin didn't share the list with me prior to the show It's deep. We had to get him to a conference every week. We'd have guests every every couple of days if we get him out to a conference every week. So he did a great job, Kev. So kudos on your recruitment. We need you for the recruit for my Pitt, Pitt football my, my Pitt Panthers in football. If you get this, if you get those kinds of results, Kev, at a conference, man, you need to be recruiting for us.

Kevin Metzger: 16:25

Yeah, well, hopefully actually I can't comment on I can't make that comment about my team. I owe that. No, no, I, we start talking tab,

Roman Trebon: 16:34

but we're going to go to a whole different rabbit hole and this is going to take a new spin. But so Kev, awesome conference. It sounds like you got to meet guests. You got to hear tons of awesome topics on CS lined up a bunch of guests for us. And yeah,

Kevin Metzger: 16:51

it was a great conference. You know, I really enjoyed it, Roman. I know we've got one more announcement. We are. What are we announcing, Kev? I'll give you the date. And that's what I probably just told

Roman Trebon: 17:04

you. Yeah, I know. So, you're right. On May 31st, right? Is that the date, Kev, I'm thinking of? May 31st, in Atlanta. Kevin and I are going to be hosting our Customer Success Playbook. Pickleball event. So if you're in the Atlanta area if you're in the south southeast, I don't know come on down take it It's gonna be friday afternoon. We're gonna send out a check out our linkedin pages. We're gonna be announcing in here soon RSVP check it out if we welcome all levels it's more for the networking than it is for the actual pickleball, but Get a, get a paddle. If you don't have one, I'm sure we can find you one. It should be an awesome event. Pickleball is a great, super fun way to meet people, be a little bit active and, and have a great afternoon. So

Kevin Metzger: 17:54

I'm looking forward to it. And even if you've never done it before, it's not that hard to learn. Come on out. No, we'll get you into a game.

Roman Trebon: 18:00

You'll get to come on out again. You'll meet awesome people. We've already had a lot of people RSVP and let us know they're interested. So I'm excited for that. So yes, the the first of hopefully many Atlanta customer success playbook pickleball game. So who knows? Maybe that'll be a thing for us moving forward.

Kevin Metzger: 18:20

Sounds good. We might have to host them around

Roman Trebon: 18:21

the

Kevin Metzger: 18:21

nation.

Roman Trebon: 18:23

I'm all in man. I'm all in on a pickleball, customer success pickleball tour. We'll go to St. Louis, man. I didn't know Gainsight was founded out in St. Louis. So maybe that's our next stop. We'll go to St. Louis. We'll play a little pickleball and go see a Cardinals game or something. That'd be awesome. Sounds like a plan. Well, hey Kev, thanks for sharing all the details of the trip. Lots of guests upcoming, so make sure you like, subscribe to our, our our podcast feeds. Check out our YouTube page, check us out on LinkedIn, at Roman Trebon, at Kevin Metzger. We also have a LinkedIn customer success playbook page as well. Kev, you're doing a great job with the video feeds now, we got video feeds in there, it's looking great. So you've taken the LinkedIn page to a new new level. So check it out. And with that Kev, keep on playing