Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 31 - Preethie Vimalan - Mastering the Customer Journey

Mastering the Customer Journey: Insights from Freshworks' Preethie Vimalan

In this insightful episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, host Roman Trebon engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Preethi Vimalan, Manager of Onboarding at Freshworks. Preethi shares her expertise on the five key phases of the customer journey: onboarding, adoption, dependency, value realization, and growth. The discussion delves into strategies for enhancing customer success, the importance of cross-functional collaboration, and the potential impact of AI on customer journey management.

Detailed Analysis

Preethi Vimalan brings a wealth of experience in managing customer journeys, emphasizing the importance of understanding and nurturing each phase of the customer lifecycle. She provides valuable insights on:

1. The evolution of customer journey understanding, moving beyond the simplistic onboarding-to-success model.
2. Tailoring the approach for different customer segments, particularly the importance of high-touch engagement for enterprise clients.
3. Strategies for driving post-onboarding adoption, including close collaboration with customer success managers and involving customers in product development through beta programs and advisory boards.
4. The critical role of internal communication and alignment in delivering a seamless customer experience.
5. Key lessons learned in implementing a comprehensive customer journey approach, including building strong relationships with sales and customer success teams, ensuring proper team enablement, and establishing robust feedback loops.
6. The potential impact of AI in enhancing data utilization, streamlining administrative tasks, and providing next-best-action recommendations.

The conversation also touches on the challenges of maintaining high-value QBRs and the importance of continuous refinement of the customer journey approach. Preethi's insights offer valuable guidance for organizations looking to enhance their customer success strategies and drive long-term value for their clients.

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Transcript

0:29

Hi everyone, welcome to the Cosmic Success

Roman Trebon: 0:31

Playbook Podcast. I'm Roman Trebon. My co host Kevin Metzger unable to join us today, so, it'll just be me flying solo, if you're listening, please do us a huge favor and give our show a rating, subscribe, and like so we can continue to grow our audience. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Preeti Vimalan. Manager of Onboarding at Freshworks. Preeti brings a wealth of experience in managing customer journeys and ensuring that every touch point adds value. She's been instrumental in crafting strategies that not only guide customers through the initial onboarding phase, but also ensure they receive continuous support throughout their journey. In today's episode of the Customer Success Playbook, we delve into the customer journey from onboarding to renewal. Preeti's gonna walk us through the five key phases, Onboarding, adoption, dependency, value, experience, and growth, discussing the importance of nurturing each stage and how dedicated teams can cater to distinct phases to maximize customer satisfaction and retention. Preeti, first off, welcome to the show.

Preethi Vimalan: 1:40

Thank you so much for having me on the podcast today. I think it's a real pleasure to be here and I'm extremely excited about this opportunity to dive into something that I'm very passionate about, ensuring that customer success happens throughout their journey with any organization. So thank you again.

Roman Trebon: 1:57

Yeah, no, we're excited. I'm excited to talk to you So to start, can you give us an overview of the five key phases of the customer journey and explain a little bit about why each is so crucial for customer success.

Preethi Vimalan: 2:11

Mm hmm. So I personally believe that identifying, understanding and nurturing customer journey is essential, not just to exceed customer expectations, but to meet them in first place. So initially we used to look at the customer journey in a very trivialized trance, right? But we just split into two parts. We onboard them and then move them to customer success. But we soon realized that. That's not how the customers looked at their journey with us. Let's take a simple example. Imagine that you are an Android user and you are switching to an iPhone for the very first time. your journey with the iPhone is not going to be the same throughout your lifetime with it. Like it is going to differ your expectations and what you're looking out of it will differ based on how long you've been using it, For example, the first few weeks, you want to focus on three things. You want to ensure that you're able to make, receive calls. You set up your most important apps, like, you know, the most frequently used ones like WhatsApp, getting to know how to set up that alarm, you know, how to click those. pictures, record those videos, etc. And you want to do it in a simpler way compared to your previous phone experience. Your new phone could be way better, but you still need some time to get used to it. Now, expanding this into the world of SaaS is what we call the onboarding phase. the focus is very simple. We want to simplify the existing process and set them up. We identify the most important process, the processes that creates the most impact and have them implemented. And most importantly, we help our customers train their teams so they feel confident about the product right from day one. onboarding is all about Making that first impression count now going back to your phone example, not that you're comfortable with the basic functions. You'd now be curious about what else the phone can offer. You know, maybe set up those widgets. Start using notes, Siri and shortcuts. Now this is what we call an adoption phase, so we focus on guiding the customers to explore the key features that aligns with their specific needs because that's The goal is not just to use the product, but to use it effectively in a way that drives value for their businesses. higher adoption rate usually means higher satisfaction and lower churn too. That's the second phase. The third one is, a definition of how integral you've become, let's take the example of a phone again, when you start adopting it, it's no longer just a phone, it's literally a tool that you rely upon. Similarly, in the third phase, you transition from The product being a useful tool to being an indispensable part of their day to day activities. our role here is to deepen that engagement by introducing advanced features, offering continuous support and ensuring The product remains integral to their success. The fourth one is the value realisation phase. You know, it's all about, hey, how much time you've saved with your phone, or how secure is the Apple ecosystem for you, or just convenience of having everything work together seamlessly, right? So this is the phase where we help our customers measure the benefit of using our solution. our job is to make sure that they see and feel this value consistently, which solidifies their commitment to our product. And finally, it's the growth phase. When you're happy with your iPhone, you're naturally going to start considering other products, iPad, Apple watch, or you might even recommend it to your friend. this is where the relationship deepens and expands, because we want to expand our partnership with the customers. We want to help them find. more ways to succeed with our solutions. So in essence, each phase of the customer journey is built upon the previous one. the idea is to create a cumulative effect that drives satisfaction, retention and growth.

Roman Trebon: 6:23

I love that, Preeti. So from your experience, as a client moves through those different journeys, and thanks for giving us the background and explanation, on those and I love the phone example because we're all familiar with phones and how they work. Right? So it's perfect. Typically across that journey? Where does the maybe the the. Does the journey break down or where is there issues? Do you from your experience? Where do they start? Does it start in onboarding? Or do you think most companies get that part down, but then they don't really get into the adoption phase, the dependency phase. Curious where, where SaaS companies typically have struggles, tying in that end to end customer journey.

Preethi Vimalan: 7:01

I think it's in two places. First is with the adoption phase. Most companies think that once we help the customers with the zero to one journey, we have set them up for success. And because the professional services team handles so many customers at the same time, we move on from one customer to another. we fail to really work with the customer on the adoption phase. The second place I feel is The value definition phase, professional services primarily is, you know, a one time engagement. We kind of failed to loop back in and help the customers understand the value of the product. Yes, there are QBR is happening, but. How effective is your QBR? How much are you showing the customer about the time that they have saved or the money that you have saved by using the product? I feel like there is a gap out here, which is why things kind of slipped through the cracks.

7:52

Preeti, How did you come up with

Roman Trebon: 7:54

these customer life cycle buckets? I'm curious. they're perfect. I think they completely align and they're great, but is this your own? Did you pick from other places?

Preethi Vimalan: 8:01

To be entirely honest, I think it's about being close to the customers, being close to the product team, being close to the customer success team and listening to them. when we started out, we were focusing only on onboarding then we realized there is much more than onboarding. The customer success teams deviated from their role and started implementing things for the customers. And that's when we realized, That's not what a CSM must do. That's typically what professional services team must do. So let's pick it out from them and let them do their job. that's how we realized more about the dependency and the adoption phase. And then we realized that, you know what? we're doing so much. We might as well see, hey, are we showing the right value? Are the reports and analytics actually reflecting the work that we are doing? it's all about, Keeping the eyes and ears and hearts open, listening to the feedback constructively making sure that we bridge the gap that the customer faces within the product because of the lack of a role.

Roman Trebon: 9:00

So when you talk about customers going from onboarding to adoption and then, through the life cycle. does that apply to all customers? should every customer have that same journey? Or if I have really big enterprise customers, should that be their journey? But then if I'm a really small client, do they need to go through all those same journeys as well. I'm curious how you guys approach that.

Preethi Vimalan: 9:24

I'm going to answer this slightly differently. Every customer goes through this journey regardless of whether we as professional services or customer success team is participating in that journey or not. But what I've realized is, we are a limited size team and there is something called, needs versus. Resources fit that comes in place. So enterprise customers. need us the most because of the landscape of the requirements that they have. The, you know, SMB customers and mid market customers are mostly self sufficient because of the lesser complexity of the use cases. So it's more like on a neat basis, we get involved with the smaller or mid market customers, but we very, very strongly recommend to attach ourselves in this customer journey for the enterprise customers.

Roman Trebon: 10:16

I like that. I've seen a lot of times, organizations will do a great job through onboarding and then that adaption phase, getting people to really use the features and functionalities and make it a sticky product. That sometimes, is an area of opportunity. what strategies would you recommend for our listening audience if they're trying to drive adoption, post onboarding to get users really, using the solution? What have you seen to be effective to

10:41

get that adoption as high as possible?

Preethi Vimalan: 10:44

First, work closely with the customer success managers. don't talk about just the present needs, but also start talking about the future needs, because nobody wants a solution that solves only for today's problem. they want a product that will evolve as their business evolves, right? So always be open to having conversations about future, always. Anticipate the pain points that might come through the values that the customers can realize reiterate the, you know, adoption of these features, adoption of these specific processes, keeping the future in mind, and this, I think we can do it very, very strongly with the collaboration with the customer success team because they take care of the business strategy. We take care of the day to day items and marrying these two is like the best possible team the customer can get. Something that I am very fond of is bringing the customers close to the product. What I mean by this is, Be open to share, share your road map with the customers and engage them and encourage them to give feedback onto your product. So what this means is customers start thinking about the features you're building. they start voicing their opinions on it. once you incorporate this feedback and release the feature, customers are a lot more excited about using it to see the real time value. So, strongly encouraging the customers to participate in these beta programs, participate in the customer advisory boards where they can give you feedback on the product and the roadmaps, has been humongously successful for us.

Roman Trebon: 12:17

Yeah, I love the, I love the concept advisory boards. I think they're terrific. And I'm glad you mentioned feedback. I'm sure it's important through all the phases of the customer journey, right? To make sure you're listening and in tune with not just the customers but even employees, the support desk, the CSM team, the product team, making sure everyone's gathering feedback. I love that. So on that, how important is it to socialize? The customer life cycle to the internal organization so that everyone's aware of what it is and why it's important. And did you guys go through that as you adopted this? I'm curious how you, you know, the change management just internally to socialize. This is what a customer journey looks like and why each of these phases is so important.

Preethi Vimalan: 13:01

I think it's super important because one team cannot do all of this, right? You need teams to be working together. Even if they're not customer facing you need to make sure that you get the right data from the product team. You get the right customer impulse from the customer success team and the support team. So it's very, very important. That we basically communicate how we see the customer journey and how we see ourselves helping customers for two reasons. one strong collaboration between internal teams is important so we can help the customer together as one team. Secondly, the internal teams must know that. there is this team that can help us solve this particular problem with the customer. once the internal teams know about it, they will talk to the customers. the customers will get to know about it because being professional services team. We're not the first touch point for the customers. It's always the, account executives and sales engineers. We're not the last touch point because it's always the customer success team. both these teams need to dip in and out of us and call us to fit into the ad hoc needs the customers have. So it's super important to not just tell the customer journey or expected outcome, but also to tell. How we can add value and help the customers reach specific outcomes in each part of this journey this can be socialized with the customers and customers will be willing to take help too

Roman Trebon: 14:25

I love that and you've hit the nail on the head client success or customer success isn't It's an, it's an organization doctrine, right? The entire organization owns customer success. It's not, Oh, customer success. It's the customer success team. They are a piece of a bigger, a bigger puzzle. And you also hit on something earlier, which is the QBRs. I've been in so many QBRs where there's no value to those meetings. And people wonder why aren't the executives showing up? because. You're showing a bunch of operational metrics and support tickets that add no value. I want to fall asleep halfway through this. as you guys have gone through this journey from PS to customer stats and really bridging this customer journey together and operationalizing it. What advice would you give to organizations that are maybe early, looking at their own customer journeys and how their internal teams aligned any lessons learned from how you, when you guys went through it, that you would share with our audience?

Preethi Vimalan: 15:22

A lot. Because it's not like we could implement it the very next day, right? It really took us a long time to get where we are. And I think it's also important to highlight that we're still not perfect. We are still learning and trying to improve on this journey. But, if I have to Possibly think about top three lessons. One would be have extremely close relationship with the sales team and the customer success team. Build collaterals that are easy to digest so they are able to consume what value that you can add and they are able to socialize it with the customer. the Second, Make sure that you are rightly skilled. You have skilled people. You are enabling your teams internally as well. you don't throw them into a storm and ask them to figure it out, but you actually work out the mechanics of it. Enable your team, support your team so they can make their customer successful. making sure that you're rightly resourced, making sure that there are right skilled people in your team to support the customers onto this journey, that's second. And third, establish a very, very strong feedback loop with the customers. With the CSM teams with the sales teams with the product team, the entire reason we're trying to help the customers is to make them successful. So you need to have those validations received and we need to make sure that. I think it's important to call out that, feedbacks of all sorts will come in, but as a professional services leader, you have to pick and choose the feedback that you want to work on, start implementing changes in an incremental way, allow the change to see the effect, and then see, hey, how can you reiterate or redo things? So I think these three would be my top three.

Roman Trebon: 17:16

I love it. And like you said, it's continuous, right? You're not done. You didn't put the, you know, the customer journey away. It's continuously evolving and improving. And, and on that pretty, where do you see, you know, a big topic that everyone, all of our listened audience and people we talked to want to hear about is. Artificial intelligence. So I'm curious, as you look at your kind of your customer journey today, and what rule do you, does, does, does AI play or do you foresee AI potentially playing, as you continue to refine your customer journey?

Preethi Vimalan: 17:47

You know, everyone keeps telling about how. AI can make us superhumans. I very, very strongly believe in that the most important place I see AI playing in is giving the right data to the right people during each customer journey, we live in a world where. Data is so subjective. It's hard, especially as organizations scale, finding the right data and capturing it is super hard. So I think AI plays a super important role here. The second place that I see AI Being helpful is in terms of helping us with the admin work with the right documentations needed. the right templates needed showing us trends on what's working and what's not working. So I really see AI playing like a super important role here, but this is an interesting question. what's your point of view here?

Roman Trebon: 18:43

Well, you've already teed up one, which is the next best action, right? So help me do the next best action. I, I also think AI, it's going to take a lot of the, and it already is within my organization, a lot of the low value work out of the equation, which frees up time to really focus on the important tasks that matter to our clients. And the other thing I think is data. There's so much data, and it really takes a lot of time to really analyze and understand where clients may have opportunities to, take on some of those advanced features, right? Based off the data and Today, at least in today's world, in our org, it's manual. It takes a lot of time. And I think AI can do that at super speeds with tons of data where now instead of trying to find where the client could use some additional services or features, the AI is going to already point us there. And then we can start to have those conversations. I'm looking forward to that for sure.

Preethi Vimalan: 19:40

Absolutely.

Roman Trebon: 19:41

All right, Preeti. we've gotten to the point now we're going to get into our rapid fire questions. are you ready for this?

Preethi Vimalan: 19:47

I think so.

Roman Trebon: 19:49

are you an early bird or night owl?

Preethi Vimalan: 19:51

Early bird.

Roman Trebon: 19:52

how early, what time you get up in the mornings? 4.

Preethi Vimalan: 19:55

30 is my sweet spot. I love it.

Roman Trebon: 19:57

We're on the same schedule. I love it. A place you'd like to travel that you've never been.

Preethi Vimalan: 20:04

That's an interesting question. So, I very, very recently, I mean, I've been hooked onto this videos of Svalbard. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. So Svalbard is. you know, part of Norwegian region, but it's not really part of Schengen. And, it's the northmost part of the Arctic circle. It's very small, about 56 kilometers, very less people there. So, that's on my bucket list.

Roman Trebon: 20:27

So, oh, that would be awesome. Yeah. Send some pics. If you go there, that'd be great. Okay. Do you have a personal or professional book recommendation?

Preethi Vimalan: 20:38

Personal book recommendation. There's this book called Flow by Mihaly. I absolutely love it. And the second book that I really like is The Courage to be Disliked. So I think just by my book recommendations, you would notice that I'm very spiritual. I love reading about life and stuff like that. So yeah.

Roman Trebon: 20:58

I love it. Oh, thank you. I'll check those out. I'm an avid reader. they're going to be added to my Kindle wishlist. you were based in Freiburg, Germany. If I traveled to Freiburg, Germany, what is the one thing I'm going? I need to go see in where am I eating?

Preethi Vimalan: 21:13

You have to have this beer from a local brewery called Firelink. I've heard people say that it's the best beer in the entire world. And it's available only in Freiburg. Like you cannot even get it in Berlin or any other German cities. So that's one. Best place to see. my favorite is this area called Metzhausen. Sunsets are absolutely beautiful there. pink, lavender skies, autumn skies. So visit during spring or autumn and catch those sunsets.

Roman Trebon: 21:42

Oh, awesome. I love it. All right. It's on my bucket list now. I'm adding that to my bucket list. So, Preeti, where can our audience find more about you or Freshworks and what's happening, with you?

Preethi Vimalan: 21:53

I think LinkedIn is the first place. I'm unfortunately very social media averse, so I'm not in any other social media except for WhatsApp, but people can Google Freshworks. Freshworks is a very widely used software, especially in the world of customer support and IT, so just Googling would be the best place.

Roman Trebon: 22:11

Preeti, thank you much for joining us. I really enjoyed the conversation and learning about your customer journey and how you got to that. we really appreciate it.

Preethi Vimalan: 22:19

Thank you so much for making me comfortable and being an absolutely fantastic person to have this conversation too.

Roman Trebon: 22:25

Oh, I'm blushing. If you got my pod, the podcast audience can't see it, but I'm blushing. Thanks for listening. You can check us out on LinkedIn. I'm at Roman Trebon. Kevin who can't join us today is at Kevin Metzger on LinkedIn. We have a customer success playbook page on LinkedIn. So check us out there. you'll see clips from our interview with Preethi as well as our upcoming guests. Again, if you like us, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button that helps drive our growth and helps us, connect with our audience and reach more people. Uh, thanks for listening and as always and keep on playing.