Customer Success Playbook Podcast Season 2 Episode 25 - Swati Garg - CS Leaders

In the latest episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger interviewed Swati Garg, a renowned entrepreneur and thought leader in customer success (CS). The discussion delved into the evolving role of CS leaders, highlighting the shift from reactive to proactive strategies, the increasing importance of data and technology, and the essential qualities needed for effective leadership in this field. Garg shared her insights on how companies can navigate current market challenges and the critical role of AI in enhancing customer interactions and business efficiency.

The Evolving Role of Customer Success

Swati Garg emphasized that the role of customer success leaders has significantly evolved over the past few years. Previously, CS was primarily focused on customer satisfaction and retention. Today, it is increasingly recognized as a revenue driver. This shift necessitates a more proactive approach to customer engagement and the strategic use of data to enhance customer value. Garg noted that modern CS leaders must be adept at tying customer success metrics to revenue, thereby demonstrating the value of CS initiatives to internal stakeholders.

Essential Qualities of CS Leaders

Garg identified five critical qualities that companies look for in CS leaders:

1. Revenue Focus: Leaders need to understand how to connect CS activities with revenue generation.
2. Business Acumen: A deep understanding of the business, including product features and market needs, is essential.
3. Industry Knowledge: Familiarity with customer personas and industry-specific challenges helps in tailoring customer interactions.
4. Communication Skills: Effective internal and external communication is crucial for aligning team efforts and understanding customer feedback.
5. Data-Driven Decision Making: The ability to leverage data and AI tools to inform strategy and improve customer outcomes.

The Role of Technology and AI

Swati Garg discussed the critical role of technology, particularly AI, in customer success. She highlighted that while there are numerous CS platforms available, the key is to select tools that align with the company's specific needs. AI can enhance personalization, provide predictive analytics, and streamline operations. However, Garg cautioned that not all companies may need to adopt AI immediately; the focus should be on finding tools that truly add value to their operations.

Current Market Trends and Challenges

The discussion also covered current trends in the CS job market. Garg noted a high demand for CS leaders who can manage complex customer relationships and possess strong industry knowledge. Despite an abundance of candidates, companies are becoming more selective, seeking individuals with specific skill sets and cultural fit. She also mentioned the importance of hybrid work models in fostering team culture and enhancing collaboration.

Conclusion

Swati Garg's insights underscore the transformative changes in the customer success landscape. As companies increasingly view CS as a strategic function tied to revenue, the role of CS leaders be

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Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:20

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook Podcast. I'm Roman Trebon, and with me always, my co host Kevin Metzger. If you're listening, do us a huge favor and give our show a rating, subscribe, and like it so we can continue to grow our audience. Kevin, I just got back from the beach, I'm feeling relaxed, I'm excited for our episode, our guest today. How you been?

Kevin Metzger: 0:43

I've been great. had a busy week working and all that, but was jealous of you spending time at the beach.

Roman Trebon: 0:50

I did. I did no work, Kevin. I actually unplugged a little bit this time. I typically don't unplug. I completely unplugged, almost like 80 percent unplugged, which to me almost feels like completely unplugged. So, I feel great and we have an amazing show lined up, don't we?

Kevin Metzger: 1:03

Yeah, we do. I'm excited about today's show. We have the pleasure of speaking with Swati Garg. Swati is a female serial entrepreneur who started her first venture in 2016 when she brought to life her vision of Milo Associates, a recruitment firm specializing in customer success and professional services. In alignment with a focus in customer success, she also co founded CUSP, a Chicago customer success community, designed to build a robust customer success community through knowledge sharing, networking, and regular meetups. Swathi individually, and on behalf of Melo Associates, Has been highlighted across multiple platforms, including being named one of smart carrots, top 50 customer success influencers. One of USA. Today's top 10 recruiting experts was featured in Yahoo finance and Milo associates was named 2023 Stevie awards winner swathy. Also Was also named a 2023 success coaching customer success thought leader, as well as 2024 ever after most creative customer success leader. Swathi is a great, in a great position to discuss today's topic, what companies value in a customer success leader. Swathi, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Swati Garg: 2:26

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me today, Kevin and Roman. We really appreciate it. I'm excited about today.

Kevin Metzger: 2:31

Yeah, so are we. Let's go ahead and get started with the topic. So today we're hoping to dive deep into what we know every customer success leader should be able to strategically influence and organize, maximize customer value, measure, communicate success, et cetera. But Swathi, what does that mean and how has the role changed in the last few years?

Swati Garg: 2:56

Yeah, the world's changed a lot in the last few years. previously, in customer success, we were very focused on satisfaction, retention, a lot of our work was more reactive, right? There wasn't always a number tied to revenue. Fast forward to today, so much has changed, right? We're all about proactive customer engagement, overall health, of the customer, right? Customer success is being increasingly viewed as a revenue driver, which is so important for us because that is what we're doing and it's nice to finally see that kind of come together and having metrics closely aligned to that. And then there's so much more data around customers now too, so I think a lot has changed maybe in the last even five years or so.

Roman Trebon: 3:39

So Swati, what are the top qualities and skills companies are looking for in a customer success leader today?

Swati Garg: 3:47

So I would say there's really five top skills that we're really focused on, right? So one, leaders that are focused more on the revenue generation side, right? So understanding how to tie customer success To revenue and being able to communicate that right to their leadership to their board and to their internal team so they can speak to customers like really well. And like, with from coming from a very educated perspective in that space. Right? Understanding the business. I think that, you know, one of the big things is that customer success, you don't want to just be focused on this on, on your function. Now, CS leaders really need to understand the business overall, right? Really understanding what, what parts of the product, What features are doing really well, what features aren't doing really well, what their customers want. So understanding the business overall is going to be really helpful with that. We're seeing more and more industry knowledge is becoming more important, making sure that CS leaders understand the customer persona, understand how to speak to the customer, understand the industry that the customer is in, not only what their product is in, So but also, you know, become their trusted advisor, right? That's becoming more and more important. And obviously having really strong communication skills internally and externally, and then I'll kind of like end with just making decisions using data, we're seeing more and more in terms of customer success platforms having a lot more robust data features, all of the easy These AI functionalities are coming out, so it's not only important to have them, but it's also important to understand how to leverage them and use them to really provide strong customer data and feedback.

Kevin Metzger: 5:32

that's great. And so along those lines, like with the, what kind of technology and what kind of, Data analytics. should the customer success leader be focused on? What should they be looking at?

Swati Garg: 5:46

I'm going to go back to leveraging the data, really understanding the different CS platforms. There have been Several that have come up in the last few years, they went from like a few main ones to an abundance of CS platforms, and they're all using data and leveraging AI and various different ways. So being able to understand how to implement that, how to leverage that and what platform is gonna be best for their business. Obviously, every platform has a slight differentiator. Based on company size, industry, all of that. So understanding which one is going to be best for their business is going to be really important. And then using these tools to drive efficiency, streamline. I actually hate saying, you know, doing more with less, but that is what companies are trying to do right now. And, we're starting to see, Some movement more in the market slowly. But you know, that concept of trying to do more with less is still there instead of people necessarily, adding a hundred people in head count, they're trying to leverage this data in AI to be able to be more efficient and make informed decisions. Based on hiring needs informed decisions for the customers. So data and technologies is so important now, probably more than ever.

Roman Trebon: 7:03

And Swathi, what are the challenges that customer success leaders are, walking into, you talked about trying to do more with less, maximizing revenue, understanding the business, what are the challenges that these leaders that you're recruiting for and that are coming to these organizations, what are they challenged when they're joining these organizations?

Swati Garg: 7:25

Yeah. So some of the big ones that we're seeing are really obviously customer attention and expansion in this market, you know, retaining customers and ideally expanding them is one of the biggest challenges that sales leaders are facing, right? Wanting to keep the customers that they already have. I would say that's number one. I would scalability, right? Figuring out how to scale their products, their services, their team, however they can Staying lean has been the number one method that companies are doing right now. And so how can they come in and scale while staying lean and developing processes and systems that can help a company grow without adding A lot more tools are a lot more people and kind of keeping the budget in check. I would say the third one is ensuring that customers have a really strong customer journey. Right? So being able to leaders coming in and collaborating really well internally with sales and marketing, making sure that everything is super aligned so they can provide a really seamless experience to help with that retention and expansion and scalability.

Kevin Metzger: 8:32

I want to dive in on that for a minute, especially the last thing. So ensuring alignment and what kind of things do you see leaders doing? Or do you think the expectation is that leaders do To align with sales, marketing product, making sure that they're bringing really the voice of the customer into those discussions and how are, how are leaders aligning?

Swati Garg: 8:58

I think I kind of was going back to communication, right? Having really strong communication skills. I think internally with their peers and with their leaders, but also handling customer feedback really well, right? Being able to understand. What the customer feedback is, and being able to communicate that to the right teams and providing the ROI on why these are so important I think are probably the biggest things.

Roman Trebon: 9:24

Well, I think what, what about the big buzzword or a buzzword? the topic du jour is AI, right? So everyone's talking about AI, you know, automation. From your experience, like what are you already seeing an impact in organizations by bringing in AI and the focus on automation, or how do you see those playing a role with customer success leaders moving forward?

Swati Garg: 9:50

So obviously there are a few main things that AI is helping CS leaders with, but to kind of go back just a second, I think that everyone is trying to figure out how to leverage AI right now, right? So AI is important. how do we leverage it? How do we use it? Do we even need it? I think every leader and every team is really trying to figure out what makes sense for their organization. And I don't think it's I don't think it's immediately like, Okay, we have a I. We need to plug it in. It's more of like, Okay, I is this big tool that is becoming more and more robust in the world. How are we going to leverage it? And I think the companies that need it are leveraging it. Well, are doing it by like working with a I to personalize customer interactions, getting more predictive analytics so they can actually forecast better Right. Getting more customer insights to be able to predict what customers need and be proactive about that. And then, of course, we talked about, efficiency and streamlining and trying to do more with less. I'm not just talking about people, I'm talking about, you know, minimizing tools you know, being careful with their budget, with hiring, really Anything that is going to cost the company money. You know, trying to streamline and improve efficiency in that regard. But I would say only companies that know and are using AI well and know it's going to help. I don't think everyone is. Implementing it right away. I think companies are still trying to figure out how to implement it and what tools to use. But I think the companies that are doing it and know they need it are doing it in the ways I just described.

Kevin Metzger: 11:29

Let's change directions a little bit. What trends are you seeing in the demand for customer success leaders across the different industries?

Swati Garg: 11:38

There's a high demand for leaders who can manage like really complex customer relationships. And really have, strong industry knowledge and understanding the customer persona right now, even though there are an abundance of candidates in the market, companies are becoming much more granular and much more specific in. who they are hiring, they want somebody who understands the industry really well. They want somebody who understands the customer persona really well. So leaders can come and speak the language right away and become that trusted advisor, It's becoming really, really important. And this is more like administrative, but hybrid. Hybrid is a growing trend so leaders that are close by offices that can come in and really provide that on site culture and experience for teams, or at least travel to it quickly is becoming more and more of an important trend.

Roman Trebon: 12:35

makes sense. So Kevin and I do a lot of local SWATHI and Atlanta networking. And I always like to get a gauge because we're kind of I'm stuck in Atlanta most of the time and so I'm curious, like from your perspective, a broader national view, what is the market for customer success, talent and leaders today? Is it? Are more companies hiring customer success? Do you see there's more jobs opening? Do you see that there's more candidates? Also, I'm just curious to get a feel for it because It seems again like there's more and more people looking for those kind of customer success leadership rules, but I again One man perception it seems to be a little bit less than it used to be So anyway, just wanted to kind of pressure test that and see what you're seeing at a broader stage

Swati Garg: 13:25

Yeah. So I think from a customer success candidate level, there's an abundance of candidates, right? I think there is a huge growth spurt in the interest of the field, which I think is amazing. People are really strong communicators and technical all the amazing skills that we want in a CS person. I think people are starting to discover that. I just talked to someone yesterday who had never heard of it and is interested. Right. So I think more and more people are getting interested in space. I think that's amazing for the growth of the function. In my opinion to that extent with the market. I am seeing a lot more roles on the leadership level. I think that when it comes to teams, people are keeping teams lean, right? With being able to leverage all of these data and tools. So I think it feels like there's an abundance of candidates out there and not a lot of roles. But I think companies have just been on hold for a little bit longer than we'd like. But I do see that changing. And I do see that evolving later this year. I think that I'm, you know, and I'm hoping, and I'm going to say this, but I do feel like we're very close to the end. I don't think it's going to be this explosive growth that, people are maybe hoping for, but I do think we're going to get to a new normal very soon where we are going to see hiring and growing and backfilling a little bit more than we have seen in the last year, year and a half.

Roman Trebon: 14:45

I love it. That's good news. We got to put a breaking news banner cap on the bottom.

Kevin Metzger: 14:52

Yeah, I'm not being political election years. Throw stuff into the mix with companies doing hiring. Do you think that it, it'll be post election that we start seeing things open up or do you think it might open up before then?

Swati Garg: 15:06

Oh my gosh. I wish I was psychic, but I've heard from various sources that I think like the end of Q3, things are going to pick up, but I would say I personally think there's going to be a pickup in the next month or two. And then like another pickup post election. So almost like, like too little, too little, we get some

Kevin Metzger: 15:29

humps. Yeah.

Swati Garg: 15:32

think it's going to be sooner rather than later, but I think we just need to continue to be patient with the market.

Roman Trebon: 15:38

Well, you talked about like how you just talked to someone recently that just Learn is learning about customer success, right? They're new to the space. I'd like to take a step back You've been doing this for a while now So, how did you come across customer success? Like where did milo associates? Like how did that all emerge? I'm curious how you Gravitated to it so early not early but way earlier than a lot of people are and we're kind of ahead of Where customer success was

Swati Garg: 16:04

Yeah, so it's been almost eight years, which I honestly can't even believe. But I think it's, you know, I got, I got really lucky. So when I started recruiting, I recruited for really everything under the sun and it was trying to figure out where I wanted to focus and I got introduced to my first customer success executive and my first. CS client. I didn't know what CS was at the time and they were in your executive. They were willing to teach me because they wanted to work with a small shop. I was obviously a small shop and I kind of fell in love with the space. I loved the challenge of finding the right CS person, I mean, like the intersection of being technical and customer facing, finding that skill set, finding that person along with all the nuances of what CS is and how it's different at every org. I honestly just kind of fell in love with the recruitment and like the challenge around it and to the people. I mean, everyone I've interacted with it's just always super fun and really loves what they're doing and they enjoy their day to day, which unfortunately in like every space is not the case. So I think, you know, it was just kind of like a fun, it was a coincidence I started. But then I kind of doubled down and intentionally was like, this is my focus. Cause I was looking for something that I was more passionate about and didn't just want to kind of fall into a default niche or function. and I saw the business value too. Like I understood how retaining customers was really important for the business. I took a leap of faith, and I was like, this is gonna grow. And for the first few years, I kept explaining to people what CS was, until for the most part, I didn't have to anymore, right? You still hear, like I said, I'll have onesies and twosies of people who haven't heard about it. But I think it really depends on what space they're in, where they're coming from. But I feel like people who are generally in the tech space, know CS now. And I wouldn't say that was the case, like six years ago.

Kevin Metzger: 17:53

Yeah, no, it's cool because here you talk about the culture of CS is neat. Like, and you do, you get very interesting people coming into the industry. And. That's cool how you came in and actually helped educate folks on it as well. Speaking of culture and culture fit when a candidate's going to a company and looking at a company, how do you suggest that they assess, you know, the specific company's customer success team and the cultural fit as A leader coming into a company and how the company takes, sees customer success and whether there's a good mesh there.

Swati Garg: 18:35

Yeah. So, I mean, Milo Associates, we're really big on mutual fit, right? That is the most important thing to us when we're doing recruitment. Part of our recruitment process originally on the client side or on the company side is we do a deep dive call. So we ask a lot of questions to understand. The company values, t day to day of the company culture, the management s what the company culture values are. So when we go side and we're starting t Talk to people who we think could potentially be a fit for our client, We're asking a lot of questions about how do they define a good culture? What motivates them, right? Why they left their previous roles and you know, how they communicate, right? Like to really understand, like, are they going to get along with their manager? You know, are they going to enjoy the company culture? Everyone defines a good culture differently, right? When like, I have a great culture, like, what does that even mean? A great culture to you could not be a great culture to somebody else. You know, as people grow and change, like what they define as good changes and what we're really good at is figuring out what good means to you right now. And what good is to the company. So we're just trying to get the same goods together. If that makes sense, that's how we assess, right. It's all about. Making sure that we're aligning values and aligning communication and aligning that people who want the same day to day.

Roman Trebon: 20:05

Yeah, I think that's so important. I think those probing questions you talked about are so important to try to understand, you know, what that culture is like. And I just talked to someone that left an organization because it was a complete oil and water situation. They were not culturally aligned and they both sort of agreed it was not a good fit. so important. So Kev, I think. It's time to get into the hard hitting questions unless you have some other items here for Swappy.

Kevin Metzger: 20:30

let's hit on the hard hitting questions.

Roman Trebon: 20:32

all right. all right. A place you'd like to travel that you've never been?

Swati Garg: 20:38

I want to go to Africa to like go to a real safari one day. Yeah,

Kevin Metzger: 20:44

that would be awesome. That'd be great. Yeah, that's exciting. how about a favorite book?

Swati Garg: 20:50

I would say the one that I actually reference the most is Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. I reference that the most in conversation, so I'm gonna say that's my favorite.

Roman Trebon: 20:58

Awesome. Are you an early bird or night owl?

Swati Garg: 21:02

I'm an I dowl. yeah, I'm working on being an early bird. It's just, it hasn't happened yet. One day.

Kevin Metzger: 21:11

Yeah, I had to change. I made myself change to an early bird. I was a night owl.

Swati Garg: 21:17

Oh, I would love your strategies. Cause I think that's something that I've been trying to do for a few years.

Kevin Metzger: 21:26

how about do you, any sports that you enjoy?

Swati Garg: 21:29

This isn't a sport, but I'm on a ski ball league. So if you know, the arcade game of a, yeah, it's a lot of sport. I love skee ball and I'm on a league and I do that weekly. I don't really play any sports, I guess. But when it comes to like watching, I like gymnastics and I'll watch basketball ice skating, but I don't really play any sports.

Roman Trebon: 21:51

I can't believe you're in a skeeball league. That is the coolest thing I've ever heard. That is awesome. I didn't know those existed. Now I have to look up. I, I like literally like eight minutes after this podcast recording, I'm going to go look up and see if Atlanta has skeeball leagues.

Swati Garg: 22:06

You should. The one in Chicago has been around for 10 plus years and it's been like run by the same person and he's amazing and so passionate. Honestly, everyone I've met is a lot of fun. I mean, some of these people have been playing. for 10 plus a year. I mean, they're amazing. There's all these different games that they can do with this, simple, set up. it's honestly a blast and it's a great midweek, stress buster. So very low commitment. I would highly recommend it to anyone that wants to try it. It's a lot of fun.

Roman Trebon: 22:36

Really? Yeah. Yeah. So awesome. Swati, where else can our audience find you, Mealoc Associates? Where can they find more information about you and what you do?

Swati Garg: 22:47

Yeah, I mean, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Obviously we have a LinkedIn page. And then I would also say just milo associates. com. We try to keep that pretty updated. We also have monthly webinars highlighting CS and PS leaders on talent and people topics. So if you want to just continue to learn and grow, I would say milaassociates. com and our LinkedIn page are probably the best way to connect with Mila Associates, but you can always connect with me. I'm on LinkedIn like maybe 30 times a day. So, you know, you'll, you'll hear from me pretty quickly.

Roman Trebon: 23:19

That's awesome. Well, Swapi, thank you so much for joining us. I love the conversation. This has been awesome and I know our audience will as well. Thanks everyone for listening. We hope you enjoyed our conversation. Check us out on LinkedIn as well. at Roman Trebon, you can find me. You can find Kevin at Kevin Metzger. Check out our customer success playbook page on LinkedIn as well. We'll have videos of this episode and others that you can check us out. And as always, thanks for listening. Keep on playing everyone.